1980 Week: Melvin and Howard

          Director Jonathan Demme finally escaped the genre-movie ghetto with his sixth feature film, Melvin and Howard, an offbeat character study that sprang from a strange real-life episode. As written by Bo Goldman, who won an Oscar for his script, the movie tells the story of Melvin Dummar, a truck driver who claimed that he once gave reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes a ride through the Nevada desert—and that after Hughes’ death, a mystery man discreetly provided Melvin with a handwritten will granting Dummar a chunk of Hughes’ fortune. Yet the most unique (and most frustrating) aspect of Melvin and Howard is that the Hughes connection is largely incidental to the overall story—it’s merely the most colorful episode in Melvin’s pathetic odyssey.

          Melvin and Howard opens with a quick bit of Hughes (Jason Robards) driving a motorcycle across the desert until he has an accident. Then Melvin (Paul Le Mat) drives by and discovers a bedraggled old man with wild hair lying immobile by the side of the road. Melvin offers the disoriented stranger a ride. During the ensuing trek, the passenger identifies himself as Howard Hughes, but Melvin is skeptical. After Melvin drops off his passenger, Melvin returns to his grim life, where he lives in a trailer with his volatile wife, Lynda (Mary Steenburgen). Melvin’s drinking, inability to hold a job, and lack of steady money drives Lynda away, so she eventually leaves him, taking their child along. Melvin rebounds by getting a job driving a milk truck, and he remarries, this time to the more stable Bonnie (Pamela Reed). Eventually, Melvin and Bonnie set up house in a domicile adjoining the rural gas station of which Melvin becomes the manager.

          And that’s where the mystery man (Charles Napier) deposits the handwritten will. A peculiar legal battle ensues, with court officials and lawyers accusing Melvin of fabricating both the will and the story about giving Hughes a ride. Concurrently, Demme and Goldman play narrative games that challenge the audience to guess whether or not Melvin’s version of events is sincere. Although Melvin and Howard deserves ample credit for giving attention to the types of people Hollywood usually ignores—bums and drunks and losers—it’s more than a little bewildering. Melvin isn’t particularly interesting or sympathetic, and neither are the people around him. Furthermore, because the real court case went against Melvin, raising the strong possibility that he made up his story, the movie represents a missed opportunity to tell a yarn about a brazen scam artist.

          In the end, Melvin and Howard feels a bit like a character study of the schmuck next door experiencing his 15 minutes of fame. The problem is that the movie runs a whole lot longer than 15 minutes, and Demme—as has been his wont throughout his career—often seems more interested in peripheral moments than in scenes that actually drive the main story. So, while there’s something fundamentally humane about the overall endeavor, there’s also something mildly exploitive, with the clueless have-nots from America’s heartland presented somewhat like freaks in a sideshow.

Melvin and Howard: FUNKY

Firehouse (1973)

          Interesting only because of its cast, this brisk TV movie about racial tensions in a Los Angeles firefighting company was intended as the pilot for a series, but most of the name-brand actors disappeared between the initial telefilm and the first weekly episode, which didn’t air until a year after the pilot movie’s debut. Richard Roundtree, still riding high on the success of Shaft (1971) and its sequels, stars as Shelly Forsythe, an African-American firefighter who is tired of facing racism at work, to say nothing of accusations from civilians of being an Uncle Tom. Before Shelly enters the picture, however, viewers are introduced to an all-white company whose senior officer, Spike Ryerson (Vince Edwards), blames the recent death of his best friend on an at-large black arsonist. Thus, when Shelly is assigned to take the dead fireman’s place, Spike and his cronies haze the new arrival terribly. Worse, when one of the firemen witnesses Shelly allowing a black suspect to leave the scene of a crime, Spike presumes that Shelly is unwilling to help capture black crooks. Meanwhile, Shelly navigates the difficulties of his marriage to Michelle (Sheila Frazier), who wants him to succeed so they can improve their standard of living.

          All of this is standard stuff. Furthermore, many scenes in Firehouse look chintzy because the producers interspersed grainy newsreel footage instead of staging full-scale fire scenes. Yet despite the shallow writing and tacky production values, Firehouse is basically watchable thanks to the acting. Roundtree is excellent, proving once again that Hollywood missed a great opportunity by failing to place him in better projects; his mixture of charm and righteous indignation works well. Frazier is good, too, blending sexiness and strength. And while Edwards merely performs his role adequately, familiar actors in smaller parts add texture. Val Avery gives a salty turn as the company’s short-tempered cook, Andrew Duggan is authoritative as the company’s progressive-minded captain, Richard Jaeckel does solid work as one of Spike’s cohorts, and Michael Lerner appears fleetingly as a liberal civilian working with the fire company. (Paul Le Mat lingers on the fringes of the movie, as well.) Of these performers, only Jaeckel stayed on for the Firehouse series, which ran for a few months in 1974.

Firehouse: FUNKY

Citizens Band (1977)

          While not a particularly interesting movie, the offbeat comedy Citizens Band represents the convergence of two interesting careers. For director Jonathan Demme, the movie was a breakthrough studio job after making three low-budget exploitation flicks for producer Roger Corman. For second-time screenwriter Paul Brickman, the movie provided a transition between working on existing material (Brickman debuted with the script for 1977’s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training) and creating brand-new characters; Brickman later blossomed as the writer/director of the extraordinary Risky Business (1983). A further point of interest is that while Citizens Band tangentially belongs to the mid-’70s vogue for trucker movies, it’s much more concerned with the possibilities of a communication format to bridge distances between people. In other words, this is an earnest project from serious people, so it can’t be discounted. Nonetheless, watching all 98 minutes of the loosely plotted and sluggishly paced feature requires abundant patience.

          Since Citizens Band never even remotely approaches outright hilarity, the charms of the picture are found in small character moments and—one of Demme’s specialties—scenes that celebrate human compassion and understanding. One wonders, however, whether a shambling assortment of kind-hearted vignettes was what Brickman had in mind, since certain sequences feel as if they were conceived to become full-on comedy setpieces. While Demme’s preference for intimacy over spectacle gives Citizens Band an amiable sense of reality, this directorial approach results in a decidedly low-energy cinematic experience.

          Anyway, in lieu of a proper storyline, the movie has a number of interconnected subplots. The main character, if only by default since he has the largest number of scenes, is Spider (Paul LeMat), a small-town CB-radio operator who watches out for truckers and vainly tries to keep emergency frequencies free of outside chatter. Spider lives with his ornery father (Roberts Blossom), a former trucker, and Spider’s part of a love triangle involving his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Electra (Candy Clark), and Spider’s brother, Blood (Bruce McGill). The Spider scenes are quite sleepy except when he plays vigilante by destroying radio equipment belonging to rule-breaking CB operators. Another thread of the movie involves a long-haul trucker nicknamed “Chrome Angel” (Charles Napier), who is revealed as a secret bigamist; the first meeting of his two wives plays out with unexpected warmth. There’s also some material involving various eccentric radio enthusiasts, such as Hot Coffee (Alix Elias), a plain-Jane hooker catering to truckers. The movie toggles back and forth between various characters, presenting one inconsequential scene after another. (Don’t be fooled by the exciting opening sequence of a truck derailment; thrills are in short supply thereafter.)

          Citizens Band has a slick look, thanks to inventive cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, though it’s questionable whether his moody style actually suits the material. Yet the presence of artful lighting is just one more random point in Citizens Band’s favor. The movie’s a collection of many things, some of which merit attention; the problem is that these things never coalesce into a worthwhile whole.

Citizens Band: FUNKY

Aloha, Bobby and Rose (1975)

          Although the ’70s produced a seemingly endless stream of dramas about mixed-up kids roaming the country and getting into trouble, many of these films felt as aimless as their protagonists. Aloha, Bobby and Rose is an exception. Atmospheric, credible, deliberate, and sensitive, the picture is a sharply observed story about a young man destined for difficulty and the damaged single mother who’s vulnerable enough to get drawn into his world.

          Bobby (Paul Le Mat) is a wiseass auto mechanic who bluffs his way through a pool game with tough East-LA Latinos until they discover he doesn’t have the cash to pay off his gambling debts. They give him a beating and promise there’s more to come if he doesn’t return the following evening with money. Bobby hustles friends for the bread but can’t put it together, then gets distracted when pretty young Rose (Dianne Hull) brings her car into the shop where he works. Characteristically ignoring his responsibilities, Bobby spends the day and evening courting Rose when he should be assembling a bankroll, and then he really gets into trouble—when Bobby pretends to stick up a convenience-store clerk, ostensibly for Rose’s amusement, the previously unseen store owner emerges with a gun and fires. The gunshot kills the clerk, and Rose instinctively whacks the owner on the head.

          Bobby and Rose flee, afraid they won’t be able to prove their innocence. Demonstrating that she’s cut from the same cloth as Bobby, Rose skips out on her kid to run away with Bobby, and during their travels they meet unruly Texans Buford (Tim McIntire) and Donna Sue (Leigh French); the couples spend a wild night in Tijuana before Bobby and Rose decide to retrieve her son from LA. This being an angst-ridden ’70s drama, suffice to say things don’t go according to plan.

          As in his debut picture, 1971’s Dusty and Sweets McGee, writer-director Floyd Mutrux swaths this movie in rich atmosphere. Every grimy wall and every banged-up prop feels right, and a long sequence of Bobby and Rose cruising the Sunset Strip—zooming past billboards for iconic ’70s rock albums—creates a vivid sense of a lost time. Cinematographer William A. Fraker, an old-school Hollywood pro best known for slick studio films, lends the same palpable realism to this picture than he gave to Dusty and Sweets McGee; his soft filters simulate the steamy haze that envelops Southern California on hot days. The soundtrack is terrific, annotating the heroes’ sad journey with tunes by Bob Dylan, Elton John, and various Motown artists (Little Eva’s “Locomotion” is used to ironic effect during a key scene).

          As for the performances, they’re naturalistic and vivid. Le Mat works the James Dean-wannabe groove typical to this type of picture, adeptly illustrating Bobby’s charms and shortcomings; Hull is frayed as a girl not yet ready for adult obligations; and McIntire is a force of nature as Buford, a crazy man who dances on tables, urinates in cars, and talks a great line of bullshit. Yet, even with all of these virtues, the beauty of Aloha, Bobby and Rose is that it’s so focused: Instead of trying to make a grand statement, it’s nothing more than a sensitively crafted drama filled with insights about the restless hearts of the young.

Aloha, Bobby and Rose: RIGHT ON

American Graffiti (1973) & More American Graffiti (1979)

          The most relatable picture in his entire filmography, American Graffiti offers an engaging riff on a formative period in George Lucas’ life, when being a kid on the verge of adulthood meant cruising for chicks in a great car on a cool California evening. The fact that Lucas once conceived and directed a story this full of believable characters makes it frustrating that so many of his latter-day projects lack recognizable humanity; it seems that once he departed for a galaxy far, far away, he never returned. Yet that frustration somehow deepens the resonance of American Graffiti, because just as the story captures a fleeting moment in the lives of its characters, the movie captures a fleeting moment in the life of its creator. Utilizing an innovative editing style in which brisk vignettes are interwoven to the accompaniment of a dense soundtrack comprising familiar vintage pop tunes, Lucas confounded his Universal Studios financiers but thrilled early-’70s moviegoers by conjuring the cinematic equivalent of switching the dial on a car radio. As soon as any given scene makes its statement, Lucas jumps to the next high point, repeating the adrenalized cycle until it’s time to call it a night.

          Set in Lucas’ hometown of Modesto circa 1962, American Graffiti follows the adventures of four recent high school graduates trying to figure out the next steps in their lives. They interact with a constellation of friends and strangers during a hectic night of romance, sex, vandalism, and vehicular excess. Some of the characters and relationships have more impact than others, but the various threads mesh comfortably and amplify each other. For instance, the melodramatic saga of Steve (Ron Howard) and his girlfriend Laurie (Cindy Williams) resonates with the obsessive quest by Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) to find a mysterious dreamgirl (Suzanne Somers). Moody greaser John (Paul Le Mat) and tough-guy drag racer Bob (Harrison Ford) add danger, while precocious Carol (Mackenzie Phillips) and hapless Terry (Charles Martin Smith) add humor. With wall-to-wall tunes expressing the characters’ raging hormones, Lucas weaves a quilt of adolescent angst and teen longing that simultaneously debunks and romanticizes the historical moment immediately preceding John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It’s a testament to Lucas’ craft that audiences fell in love with the exuberant surface of the movie despite the gloom bubbling underneath. The picture’s success did remarkable things for nearly everyone involved, helping Howard land the lead in the blockbuster sitcom Happy Days (1974–1984) and giving Lucas the box-office mojo to make Star Wars (1977).

          More American Graffiti is a very different type of film. Written and directed by Bill L. Norton under Lucas’ supervision, the picture explores what happened to several characters after the events of the first film. Howard, Le Mat, Smith, and Williams reprise their roles, and Ford makes a brief appearance. (Dreyfuss is notably absent.) A dark, experimental, and provocative examination of the tumultuous years spanning 1964 to 1967, More American Graffiti would have been nervy as a stand-alone film, so it’s outright ballsy as a major-studio sequel to a crowd-pleaser. Norton follows three storylines, giving each a distinctive look. Scenes with Howard and Williams are shot conventionally, accentuating the everyday misery of a couple drifting apart. Scenes with Smith’s character in Vietnam are shot on grainy 16mm with a boxy aspect ratio (even though the rest of the picture is widescreen). Trippiest of all are scenes with Candy Clark (whose character in the first picture was relatively minor); set in hippy-dippy San Francisco, these sequences use wild split-screen techniques. LeMat’s character appears in an extended flashback to which Norton frequently returns, like the chorus of a pop song. Tackling antiwar protests, draft dodgers, drug culture, women’s liberation, and other topics, the film is a too-deliberate survey of ’60s signifiers. That said, More American Graffiti has integrity to spare, bringing the shadows that hid beneath the first movie’s shiny surface to the foreground.

American Graffiti: RIGHT ON

More American Graffiti: FUNKY