Hot Tomorrows (1977)

          Made as his MFA thesis film while Martin Brest studied at the American Film Institute, Hot Tomorrows has many of the silly hallmarks one associates with student films, such as an angst-ridden protagonist and pretentious flourishes reflecting the influence of classic European art cinema. However, the picture also demonstrates many of the things that Brest did so well in his subsequent Hollywood films of the ’70s and ’80s, notably offbeat characterizations and sly humor. (Let’s not talk about Brest’s dubious latter-day pictures, because if you’re a fan of 1992’s Scent of a Woman or 2003’s Gigli, we probably don’t share the same taste.) Shot in grungy black and white at unusual locations throughout Los Angeles, Hot Tomorrows is a dark comedy about a transplanted New Yorker trying to make it as a writer. Fixated on death, he spends a strange evening escorting a buddy from back home around the city, eventually landing in such unlikely places as a nightclub featuring weird performance artists and a mortuary that serves free coffee to the after-hours crowed. The plot also involves a cranky little person played by Hervé Villechaize and the life-sized figure of death—a skeleton in a black robe holding a scythe—that the protagonist uses for decoration in his living room. At various times, Hot Tomorrows is deep, funny, tragic, and weird.

          Michael (Ken Lerner) is a gloomy youth preoccupied with memories of his dead aunt, so he spends his time writing depressing stories and taking night classes exploring Eastern theories about death. Louis (Ray Sharkey), just in from the Bronx, isn’t having any of this. Protesting in his loud dese-dem-dose accent, Louis says it’s time to ditch the heavy stuff and party. Unfortunately, both guys are broke, so they best they can do is bum around town and hope to stumble into something fun. Michael takes his pal to a club called the Paradise, where a strange musical troupe (played by an early version of nerd-pop band Oingo Boingo) performs. At the club, Michael and Louis befriend fellow Bronx guy Tony (Victor Argo) and his diminutive friend Alberict (Villechaize). Peculiar misadventures ensue. Considering his inexperience at the time, Brest does a remarkable job pulling naturalistic performances from his cast and unifying them into a cohesive style. This movie’s at its best during simple scenes of people talking, whether they’re bonding or fighting, and this movie’s at its worst whenever Brest gets arty with flashbacks, musical numbers, and narration. As gifted as Brest is behind the camera, it’s telling that he’s only written two of his subsequent features, adapting the wonderful Going in Style (1979) from Edward Cannon’s story and crafting the not-so-wonderful Gigli by himself.

Hot Tomorrows: FUNKY

1980 Week: Willie & Phil

          Given his well-known admiration for the work of Ingmar Bergman, filmmaker Woody Allen left himself open for easy criticism when he made the Bergman-esque psychodrama Interiors (1978), which many people initially dismissed as a weak homage to the work of a master. Time has revealed the depth of that film, though Allen’s debt to Bergman is inescapable when watching Interiors. Paul Mazursky’s romantic dramedy Willie & Phil has some interesting parallels to Interiors, though the indifference that greeted Willie & Phil during its initial release has not yet given way to critical rediscovery.

          Recycling the basic plot elements from François Truffaut’s beloved French New Wave film Jules and Jim (1962), Willie & Phil represents Mazursky’s sexual satire at its least credible. The characterizations have signs of life, but all three leading actors give underwhelming performances, and the echoes of Truffaut’s style are as affected as the forced insertion of ’70s spirituality into the storyline. It’s not as if Mazursky’s considerable powers failed him here, because some scenes have that special immediacy that distinguishes Mazursky’s best work. As a total experience, however, Willie & Phil is forgettable.
          Like Jules and Jim, this picture tracks the way two men become close friends, only to see their bond challenged by the arrival of a woman whom both men find irresistible. The men are Phil D’Amico (Ray Sharkey), a streetwise photographer with a suffocating overabundance of self-confidence, and Willie Kaufman (Michael Ontkean), a high-school teacher with a debilitating shortage of personal direction. They meet in 1960s New York at a screening of a Truffaut movie (wink, wink), then bond over their mutual desire to avoid the Vietnam-era draft. Soon they encounter Jeannette Sutherland (Margot Kidder), a freespirited beauty recently relocated from her home state of Kentucky to Greenwich Village. When she has money trouble, Willie says she can move in with him, and she and Willie become lovers. Thereafter, the story becomes an episodic litany of ’60s and ’70s signifiers. The friends drop acid and have a threesome. Willie gets into yoga. Jeannette joins the film industry. Phil transitions from shooting pictures to making commercials, so he relocates to California around the time Jeannette and Willie get married and have a child together. Later, when Willie’s spiritual questing takes him out of the country, Jeannette moves to California and stays with Phil. And so on.

          About the only thing that gives Willie & Phil shape is the dense narration track, performed by Mazursky and peppered with remarks along the lines of “10 months later, Willie was confused again.” The film is never difficult to follow, but it’s often difficult to enjoy, not because the characters are unpleasant—they’re all fragile in a relatable way—but because the characters and their experiences are so typical of the hippie era. Although Mazursky delivers the story with his customary intelligence and skill, he never defines Willie & Phil as a necessary artistic expansion of Jules and Jim, and he never proves that his characters merit this level of attention.

Willie & Phil: FUNKY

1980 Week: Heart Beat

          Given the endless fascination that people have for 1950s beatnik culture and especially for the work of Beat author Jack Kerouac, it’s surprising that no one’s attempted a proper biopic about the man. In fact, cursory research suggests this middling melodrama includes the first fictionalized onscreen depiction of Kerouac, who is played by the underrated actor John Heard as an earnest young man striving for meaning and recognition while also trying to reconcile the gap that exists between those two things. Yet Heart Beat isn’t primarily about Kerouac, who is merely one prong in a romantic triangle. The other people involved are Kerouac’s notorious pal Neal Cassady, an inspiration for one of the major characters in Kerouac’s classic 1957 book On the Road, and Cassaday’s wife, Carolyn, who wrote the memoir from which Heart Beat was adapted. The way that Kerouac gets lost in the shuffle is indicative of the narrative problems that plague Heart Beat. Although clearly made with care and conviction, the movie is indecisive and unfocused, trying to tell several stories at the same time and therefore serving none of those stories well.

          In the broadest strokes, Heart Beat explores the friendship between Jack (Heard), a straight-laced guy fascinated with the way Beats ignore the restrictions of Establishment culture, and Neal (Nick Nolte), a wild man who lives the Beatnik lifestyle to an extreme. Caught in the middle is Carolyn (Sissy Spacek), a society girl who impulsively joins Jack and Nick for an adventure into the unknown. Although Jack falls hard for Carolyn, he waits too long to make a move, and Neal swoops Carolyn into a torrid romance that later resolves into a conventional marriage. Before that happens, Carolyn is present for the creation of On the Road, which occasions a parting of the ways between Jack, who longs for mainstream success, and Neal, who resents having his life transformed into prose. Other friends drift in and out of the main characters’ vagabond existence, including Ira (Ray Sharkey), a loudmouth poet based upon the real-life Beat icon Alan Ginsburg. (Ira’s principal shtick involves screaming “cocksucker” in public places, which has the effect of reducing Ginsberg to a vulgar caricature.)

          During the first half of Heart Beat, in which writer-director John Byrum tracks the emergence of the romantic triangle, the movie is dull and meandering. During the second half, things get spicier, because Jack experiences success around the same time that Carolyn, Jack, and Neal attempt living as a threesome, with Carolyn moving between the beds of the two men she loves. Perhaps because of limitations in the source material (meaning Carolyn Cassidy’s book) and perhaps because of a failure of imagination on Byrum’s part, Heart Beat fails to genuinely illuminate its characters, thereby falling into the trap of simply re-creating interesting moments as museum dioramas. At its worst, the movie is a lifeless frame showcasing Jack Fisk’s immaculate production design, and sometimes the shadows cast by venetian blinds are the most compelling things onscreen. At its best, the movie gives Nolte room to portray Cassady as a merry prankster high on exploration and spontaneity.

Heart Beat: FUNKY

1980 Week: The Idolmaker

          Based on the real-life experiences of Bob Marcucci, the rock-music impresario who led Frankie Avalon and Fabian to teen-idol fame in the 1950s, this heavily fictionalized drama is forever on the cusp of becoming as formulaic and trite as the average made-for-TV biopic. Happily, the innate skills of the participants elevate the material just enough to keep The Idolmaker interesting, and the way the protagonist comes across as a hard-driving prick neutralizes any accusations that the piece is mere hagiography. Another reason The Idolmaker merits attention is that it marked the big-screen debuts for several notables: In addition to being the first feature directed by Taylor Hackford, who broke big two years later with An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), this movie introduced actors Peter Gallagher and Joe Pantoliano.

          Primarily set in New York City, The Idolmaker follows the adventures of Vincent Vacari (Ray Sharkey), an ambitious songwriter who realizes that his ethnic look and receding hairline will prevent him from becoming a star. Channeling his energies into talent management, Vincent discovers swaggering sax player Tomaso DeLorusso (Paul Land), then gradually transforms the young man into a heartthrob with the stage name “Tommy Dee.” Success follows, as do problems. Tommy’s ego grows out of control, and he dallies with underage groupies. Meanwhile, Vincent develops a love/hate relationship with Brenda Roberts (Tovah Feldshuh), editor of a teen-idol fan magazine—instead of collaborating with Brenda, Vincent competes with her. Like so many people in show business, Vincent suffers from a mixture of insecurity and vanity, because he can’t reconcile his behind-the-scenes success with his desire to perform onstage. Eventually, Vincent grooms a new foundling, Guido (Peter Gallagher), into Caesare, using a hype campaign to create the impression that Caesare is a star before he’s performed in public. The mind games that Vincent plays with Guido/Caesare push tensions in Vincent’s life to a breaking point.

          Featuring original songs penned by Brill Building stalwart Jeff Barry, The Idolmaker has authenticity to spare. Hackford shoots concert scenes well, and he shapes performances meticulously. The movie’s a bit too squeaky-clean, giving drug use and illicit sex the arm’s-length treatment, and the script (credited to Edward Di Lorenzo) falls into predictable rhythms. Gallagher’s performance is a problem, as well. Attacking scenes way too vigorously, he shows his lack of experience. However, this is Sharkey’s movie from top to bottom. Reaching a career pinnacle that earned him a Golden Globe, Sharkey incarnates a very specific kind of fast-talking hustler, while also showing aspects of sensitivity and wounded pride that make the songwriting aspect of the character believable.

The Idolmaker: GROOVY

Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978)

          Provocative themes related to counterculture idealism, illegal drugs, police corruption, and the Vietnam War intersect in Who’ll Stop the Rain, an exceptionally well-made drama/thriller that, somehow, never quite gels. The film is praiseworthy in many important ways, boasting evocative production values, sensitive performances, and suspenseful situations, so the picture’s shortcomings are outweighed by its plentiful virtues. Nonetheless, Who’ll Stop the Rain is frustrating, because judicious editing—or, better still, bolder reimagining during the process of translating the source material into a film script—could have accentuated the most important elements while also providing greater clarity and simplicity. Some background: Robert Stone, the author of the underlying novel and also the co-writer the script, ran with a cool crowd in the ’60s and ’70s, gaining insight into hipster icons ranging from Neil Cassady to Ken Kesey. Stone also amalgamated data about the role dope played in the lives of U.S. soldiers serving in Vietnam. The writer blended these ideas, plus notions from his fertile imagination, into the novel Dog Soldiers, which won the National Book Award in 1975. Alas, Stone’s story got muddy on the way to the screen.

          The picture follows three interconnected characters. During a prologue set in Vietnam, burned-out journalist John Converse (Michael Moriarty) hatches a get-rich scheme: He buys a stash of heroin, and then recruits his friend, soldier Ray Hicks (Nick Nolte), to smuggle the smack inside a military transport when Hicks returns to America. Right away, this set-up illuminates the textured character dynamics at work in Who’ll Stop the Rain; there’s a great moment when Hicks expresses surprise Converse is willing to use him so brazenly, thus revealing how deeply Converse’s idealism has been eroded by the ugliness of war. Hicks mules the package successfully, but unloading the drugs stateside proves troublesome. Converse’s wife, Marge (Tuesday Weld), has become a prescription-drug addict and therefore can’t arrange Hicks’ payoff as instructed. Worse, a corrupt DEA agent (Anthony Zerbe) pounces on the Converse home—while Hicks is there with the drugs—in order to steal the narcotics and wipe out anyone who gets in his way. Hicks escapes with Marge, but this sets in motion a long chase leading from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Converse returns to the U.S. and gets captured by the DEA agent, who tortures the would-be drug mogul and uses him for bait to lure Hicks (and Marge) from hiding. All of this culminates with a wild shootout at Hicks’ hippie hideaway in the Southern California desert.

          Listing all the ways this story doesn’t work cinematically would take a while—for instance, Converse departs the narrative for long stretches, and the quasi-romance between Hicks and Marge feels both contrived and needlessly downbeat. But none of these problems diminish the texture of Who’ll Stop the Rain. The movie’s acting is amazing, with Nolte at his animalistic best, Weld capturing a queasy sort of bewilderment, and Moriarty sweating his way through a vivid turn as a pathetic striver. Zerbe is memorably insidious, while the actors playing his low-rent henchmen—Richard Masur and Ray Sharkey—add surprising elements of humor and terror. Director Karel Reisz, always stronger with atmosphere and character than with story, generates tremendous realism even in the most outrageous scenes (e.g., the final shootout), and his filmmaking soars at periodic intervals. Ultimately, the power of Who’ll Stop the Rain stems from the cumulative mood of despair that the filmmakers generate—if nothing else, Who’ll Stop the Rain captures something profound about how it felt to sort through the mess of Vietnam while history was still unfolding.

Who’ll Stop the Rain: GROOVY