1980 Week: Nine to Five

          Throughout the late ’70s, Jane Fonda performed a remarkable feat of synthesizing her acting and her activism, serving as producer (sometimes uncredited) for the Vietnam-vet drama Coming Home (1978), the nuclear-meltdown thriller The China Syndrome (1979), and this comedy, which brought to light the gender inequity plaguing American workplaces. At first glance, Nine to Five might seem lightweight compared to its predecessors in Fonda’s producing oeuvre, but treating the theme with humor proved a savvy move because it attracted a wide audience. The picture earned more than $100 million at the domestic box office at a time when that was still a rare achievement, and now Nine to Five is considered something of a modern classic. The picture even inspired a TV series, which ran sporadically from 1982 to 1988, as well as a 2009 Broadway musical.

          Cowritten and directed by Colin Higgins, who embellished a previous script by Patricia Resnick, the picture takes place in a midlevel department of fictional firm Consolidated Companies. The department’s boss is Franklin Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman), whom female employees rightly characterize as a “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot.” Throughout the picture’s first act, Hart earns the enmity of protagonists Judy Bernly (Fonda), Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), and Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton). Franklin berates new employee Judy for incompetence, showing no sympathy for the fact that her post at Consolidated is the recent divorcée’s first job. He steals work product from Violet and blocks her well-deserved promotion. And he sexually harasses the buxom Doralee, bolstering his macho reputation by fomenting bogus rumors that they’re sleeping together. One evening, the women drown their sorrows and share revenge fantasies, which Higgins stages as elaborate dream sequences. Then a farcical showdown occurs during which Violent (mistakenly) believes that she’s poisoned Franklin.

          A few plot twists later, the women find themselves holding Franklin hostage in his own home while trying to gather evidence that will entrap him and therefore free the women from suspicion.

          As he demonstrated with ’70s hits Foul Play and Silver Streak, Higgins had a unique gift for orchestrating comedies with Swiss-watch storylines. Nine to Five is far-fetched and silly, but everything in the plot is worked out neatly. Ultimately, however, the narrative is merely a vessel for the theme: Nine to Five is a fairy tale for female professionals. Fonda, drifting back to the sort of light comedy she did in many of her earliest films, uses her performance to tell a story about self-actualization, letting her costars take the showier roles. Parton nearly steals the picture with her down-home charm, Tomlin grounds the film with a deadpan approach to jokes, and Coleman makes a great cartoonish villain. Despite its sociopolitical heft Nine to Five is consistently gentle and undemanding. Like the theme song that Parton wrote and recorded during production, which subsequently became a No. 1 pop hit, Nine to Five is a sugar-coated rallying cry.

Nine to Five: GROOVY

Harold and Maude (1971)

          Today, Harold and Maude is so widely regarded as one of the quintessential New Hollywood films that it’s surprising to learn the movie didn’t have an easy path to immortality—especially since the early life of the project seemed charmed. Writer and co-producer Colin Higgins developed the project during his graduate studies at UCLA’s film school and won a major prize for the script. Then, while working as a pool cleaner in L.A. to stay solvent, Higgins met the film’s other producer, Mildred Lewis. The pair tried to set up the project with Higgins directing, but Paramount nixed that plan and hired editor-turned-filmmaker Hal Ashby. Good move. In addition to hitting just the right mix of satire and sweetness, Ashby shot the picture on such a modest budget that the story reached theaters with its darkness and humanism intact.

          Yet Harold and Maude did not catch on during its original release; rather, it took years of home-video exhibition, theatrical reissues, and TV broadcasts for the movie to find its well-deserved status as a minor classic. That said, it’s not difficult to see why the film alienates as many people as it enchants. The premise is perverse, the humor is morbid, and the May-December romance at the heart of the story skirts the limits of good taste. After all, the actors playing the lovers in the movie’s title—Bud Cort (Harold) and Ruth Gordon (Maude)—were in their 20s and 70s, respectively, at the time of filming.

          Higgins’ bold script begins by introducing Harold Chasen, a rich kid so bored with the trappings of everyday life that he spends most of his energy staging outrageous suicide scenes for the kinky thrill of shocking his mother, Mrs. Chasen (Vivian Pickles). Since Harold never actually kills himself, however, it’s unclear whether his activities represent a genuine cry for help or just bizarre frivolity. Undaunted, Mrs. Chasen tries to match Harold with various potential brides, but Harold’s eerie theatrics spook all of them. Meanwhile, Harold amuses himself by visiting funerals, which brings him into contact with Maude Chardin, who also digs watching final farewells to the deceased. Maude is as free and open as Harold is repressed and quiet, so as they spend time together, Maude teaches Harold surprising lessons about making the most of every day; she’s also the only person who encourages Harold to embrace his oddness.

          The evolution of this relationship involves a series of touching revelations and surprises that won’t be spoiled here, but suffice to say that Harold and Maude has boundless integrity—the film is never less than true to its offbeat self, which is, of course, why the picture has become a source of inspiration for generations of independent-minded filmmakers. Each of the major elements in the movie approaches a kind of poetry, from Cort’s hangdog quirkiness to Gordon’s ebullient outrageousness, while Ashby consistently handles the material with sensitivity and style.

          The storytelling is a bit on the schematic side, and some of Harold’s suicide scenes are absurdly grandiose, but the soul of this movie is so utterly unique that asking it to meet normal expectations is foolhardy. Especially with the jubilant soundtrack of Cat Stevens songs giving the piece a gentle heartbeat, Harold and Maude easily ranks among the most unconventional love stories ever filmed. It is also, not unimportantly, a perfect snapshot of the historical moment when mainstream Hollywood studios let young filmmakers run wild so long as they kept costs low. Harold and Maude isn’t perfect, but learning to accept the imperfections of life—no matter how horrific they might be—is a key component of the picture’s inspirational theme.

Harold and Maude: RIGHT ON

Silver Streak (1976)

          A box-office hit that gave birth to the on-again/off-again screen duo of funnymen Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, Silver Streak is impossible to take seriously for the same reason it’s impossible to dislike: The movie forgoes credibility in order to entertain viewers by any means possible. Essentially a Hitchcock-type thriller played for laughs, the movie follows an unassuming book editor (Wilder) during a cross-country train trip filled with unexpected danger, intrigue, and romance. As the tale grows more and more absurd, George stumbles into a dalliance with a sexy secretary (Jill Clayburgh), gets caught in the crosshairs of an evil conspirator (Patrick McGoohan), befriends a jive-talkin’ thief (Pryor), and survives accidents and near-misses in airplanes, cars, and trains. He gets arrested, chased, framed, shot at, thrown off a moving train, and targeted for murder, and yet he displays great moral character by striving to save his new lover and triumph over the bad guys.

          It’s all very silly, especially with the contrived McGuffin plot device relating to priceless letters written by Rembrant, but everyone involved in Silver Streak approaches their work with the same lighthearted attitude. Director Arthur Hiller keeps things moving briskly, creating comfortable spaces in which his actors can showcase their likeable personalities, and writer-producer Colin Higgins, whose gift for character-driven comedy distinguished ’70s movies like the great Harold and Maude (1971) and the effervescent Foul Play (1978), pumps the movie full of amusing one-liners. So, even though the picture drags on far too long and gets mired in bland action sequences like the elaborate shootout during the climax, Silver Streak is consistently watchable.

          Much of the credit goes to Wilder, who mostly eschews his signature hysterics while playing a straightforward romantic lead; he’s surprisingly believable as a dashing man of the world sharing flirtatious banter with Clayburgh, and his reaction shots whenever things get wild are priceless. Clayburgh is appealing in her mostly decorative role, while Pryor slides into an easy buddy-movie rapport with Wilder. Their obvious shtick, predicated on the differences between a streetwise African-American and an uptight honky, is epitomized in the famous scene of Pryor covering Wilder’s face with shoe polish and teaching Wilder to act like a “brother.” There’s no denying the humor of Wilder emulating urban swagger, but there’s also no denying the way the scene perpetuates demeaning stereotypes. Still, Silver Streak is too milquetoast to seem offensive: The racially insensitive gags are just tools the movie uses to elicit cheap laughs, and it’s hard to get angry at a picture whose only goal is making viewers happy.

Silver Streak: GROOVY

Foul Play (1978)

          Easily the best-fitting star vehicle that Goldie Hawn made in the ’70s, comic thriller Foul Play is also the first movie that Chevy Chase made after bailing on Saturday Night Live to pursue a big-screen career. The actors’ enjoyable chemistry and the breezily entertaining machinations of writer-director Colin Higgins’ deeply silly script helped make Foul Play one of 1978’s biggest hits. A lighthearted riff on the Alfred Hitchcock formula featuring an innocent character who gets embroiled in a conspiracy, the picture is lavishly produced but so insubstantial that it sometimes threatens to float away. Yet for those who set their expectations appropriately, it’s a tasty serving of empty calories.

          Hawn stars as a San Francisco librarian who stumbles upon plans for an assassination attempt, and Chase plays a smart-aleck police detective who slowly discovers the scheme based on sketchy evidence she brings to his attention. The two fall in love, naturally, to the tune of Barry Manilow’s bombastic theme song “Ready to Take a Chance Again”—which is to say that Foul Play is a loving throwback to old-school Hollywood romance. And while Higgins falls short in terms of visual style, evincing no special gift for camerawork in his directorial debut, he compensates with a imaginative and playful storyline. After all, he earned the opportunity to helm this project after scoring as the screenwriter of Harold and Maude (1971) and Silver Streak (1976), the latter of which provided something like a template for Foul Play.

          From the smoothly handled opening scene to various comic setpieces, some of which land more effectively than others, Higgins serves his script well with brisk pacing and the good sense to keep his actors from playing the material too broadly, notwithstanding some over-the-top villainy toward the end. Unsurprisingly, special care was taken to ensure delightful leading performances. Hawn achieves a winning transition by playing a grown-up intellectual instead of the airhead stereotype that made her famous, and Chase is uncharacteristically warm even though his signature cockiness bubbles beneath the surface. Key supporting player Dudley Moore nearly steals the movie as a diminutive lothario who keeps crossing paths with Hawn, and the long scene in which he unveils his tricked-out bachelor pad is a great example of a comedian humiliating himself for the sake of a joke. Burgess Meredith is lively as Hawn’s eccentric landlord, and ace character players including Billy Barty, Don Calfa, and Brian Dennehy pop up in smaller roles.

          Though it gets a bit windy at 116 minutes (the climax in particular gets draggy), Foul Play is both a respectable homage to classic Hollywood piffles a fine maiden voyage for a promising screen duo. Alas, Chase and Hawn only did one more movie together, the intermittently wonderful Neil Simon romp Seems Like Old Times (1980), which is reviewed here.

Foul Play: GROOVY