It seems bad to say now, but I never liked Elizabeth Taylor. You know how sometimes in life you just meet someone and you don't know why, but you take an instant dislike to them? Elizabeth Taylor is the cinematic equivalent of that for me.
By the time I was born, Elizabeth Taylor was already a legend, having been in movies since she was a small child, the product of her mother's lost ambitions to be an actress. She somehow made the transition from child star to ingenue to leading lady to freaking movie boss, succeeding where so many other actresses got lost along the way. Indeed, I knew her more for her charitable works, eight marriages and perfume by the time I got around to knowing who she was.
The eight marriages gave me a reason to dislike her. By now, we all know of the Fisher-Taylor-Reynolds affair subsequently followed by the Taylor-Burton-Fisher affair. The first movie I seriously watched Elizabeth Taylor in was Cleopatra and it's easy to dislike her in that movie. I mean, every guy that likes her ends up dead by shanking. It's so easy to see her as a siren luring men to their downfall, certainly some of the evidence supports that. But take the marriage to her third husband, Mike Todd and his sudden death in an airplane accident during the making of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
When I realized there was a Paul Newman movie that I hadn't heard of that was brought to us by Irwin Allen, the producer behind that crapfest The Towering Inferno, I didn't hold out much hope for it. And I was right. Hooray for lowered expectations!
We start out with Jacqueline Bisset and William Holden on a plane. William proposes to Jacqueline, but turns out she's hung up on Paul. William says that Paul's not the marrying kind. Okay, really, dude, that's your argument? Simple question, people, would you rather be William Holden's wife or Paul Newman's long term girlfriend that he can't quite commit to? Thought so. The fact that this is the central character conflict that the film holds on to exemplifies what's wrong with this movie.
It's like this: it's Dallas in a Hawaii with a volcano. Paul Newman is even playing Ray Krebs. There's no life in his performance at all leaving me to stare at the damn cowboy hat he wears for the first part of the film. This is not his finest hour, it could be his worst hour. It feels like he keeps falling back on tricks in this one, like, hey, just trying to make a living here. Which, okay, but it's so much more disappointing when it's Paul Newman because he could do so much better. Obviously not with this craptacular story which he was contractually obligated to do, but you know, with a higher class of volcano movie. I would go on, saying how much is wrong with this movie, like Jacqueline Bisset's horrible haircut, but it's pointless because it's like trying to understand why the Dallas Mavericks don't have an NBA Championship, they were crap from the start.
So, am I wrong? Is this movie so awful it's good or is it just awful? Let me know in the comments section!
In a way, I like Biblical epics because I like epics. I like sitting there for three or four hours and immersing myself in a film. However, there begins to be a problem when those three or four hours are not done well. I'm not even talking about how in Cleopatra you can't help noticing Richard Burton is wearing a miniskirt or how it may confound you in The Ten Commandments when the Hebrews start making a golden cow to worship. I mean, God JUST saved them. How did they think that parting the Red Sea thing happened? Or Ben Hur, why is Charlton Heston not pissed off that his girlfriend let him think his wife and sister were dead when they were just lepers? I could go on for hours. The Silver Chalice is amazing in that everything from beginning to end is awful. I would say Paul Newman was good in a bad film, but that's like saying Kobe Bryant got forty points and the Lakers still lost. It's just pointless.
How did our boy get mixed up in this nonsense? Two words: studio system. Paul was a new contract player at Warner Bros and new contract players did not go around saying that they didn't want to be a party to a huge pile of crap. Anyway, guess we better get around to the story since we kind of have to. Paul is a sculptor who was like a slave, then he wasn't, then he was a slave again because Romans are bad. He gets commissioned to make a cover for the Holy Grail, which I never saw in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The grail gets lost, Paul has to go to Rome to look for it and at some point he marries Pier Angeli for reasons I don't get. I mean, I get why she's in it, that's obvious. Meanwhile, there's a crazy magician running around saying he's like Jesus. And that guy is played by Jack Palance. So, really you should be watching City Slickers instead of this crap. There's a baby cow in that movie.
What's bad? Just the costumes, the set design, the dialogue, the story, the pacing... Just everything. I mean, the artwork on that poster is bad. Is this a movie about the Holy Grail or a Harlequin novel? Much to his credit, when this movie was going to be on TV, Paul Newman took out an ad in Variety apologizing for it and telling people not to watch it. It's that bad. So, I mean if you have some time to waste and you and some friends want to mock this movie, you should do that, or you can take my advice and not watch this movie, okay? I'm just trying to save you some time.
This is going to sound bad. Hud is a really good movie and I don't like it, so this entry will be shorter than others. Can you guess why I don't like it? One, a lot of bad things happen to cows, none of whom are turned into steaks or brisket, which I feel is the highest calling of a cow, not that I want to see it happen because, well, I'm a coward. Bad things also happen to some Texas Longhorns and I don't want to see that happen because that's my school mascot. Hook 'em! Then very closely is the fact that in this film Paul Newman plays the titular bad guy and he is damn good at it.
So, there's Hud, his dad, Homer, his nephew, Lonnie and the maid Alma. Basically, Hud butts heads with his dad over his dead brother and some diseased cattle and the fact that Hud is a jerk. No, really. He wants to sell the diseased cattle to someone else and tries to rape the maid, who is later like, "You should have just asked." Okay then.Your Oscar trivia for the day is that Patricia Neal actually won an Oscar for the part of Alma and oh, yeah, Paul lost again. Lonnie is constantly torn between his grandfather's ethics and Hud's charm. Eventually he chooses ethics. Oh, well.
So, here is the classic example of Paul Newman being a character actor trapped in a leading man's body. He is such a jerk in this movie, but audiences still loved him, despite his desire to break the conventions of cinema and leading man roles, which he did get to do, but it was like it never got acknowledged. The film takes no detours to having Hud become a good guy, he just doesn't. The likeability factor could not have been really surprising to the filmmakers, take a look at the poster, they had to know people were coming to see Paul Newman and they probably didn't care what he did. Oh, well, Paul, I guess you can't get everything.
I came to a conclusion last night. The 1970s were full of fantastic films about losers. The Sting is basically about a couple of losers, as much as Robert Redford and Paul Newman can be losers. Animal House, huge bunch of losers. The Jerk for crying out loud! Here we have another such film, about a serious group of losers, again directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman called Slap Shot.
Take the premise: a down and out minor league hockey team. The loser league of the loser of American sports. Sorry, hockey fans, but you know it. Paul plays Reggie Dunlop, the aging captain and coach of the Charlestown Chiefs. Reggie is the ultimate loser, we have the standard estranged wife thing (which of course confounds the brain), but more importantly all that Reggie knows is hockey and he doesn't seem to be very good at it.
Problems arise when the Charlestown mill announces it's closing and soon the team will fold. Desperate to hang on to the only life he's ever known, Reggie spins a yarn about the team being sold to a town in Florida. At the time, he starts a strategy that is basically beating people up and inciting opponents to violence, which is, let's face it, the best part of hockey. Inspired by this film, I've tried to get the San Antonio Spurs to implement a similar strategy in the NBA Playoffs to no avail. They have talent and standards which the Chiefs certainly do not. The new strategy and lies breathe life into the team and their fan base grows as they inspire vitriol in every city they travel to. The Chiefs make it all the way to the finals or some sort of minor league championship. Armed with this news, Reggie goes and seeks out the team's owner to find it is a woman who could sell the team, but would rather fold the team in order to get a tax break. He returns to the game, knowing he's doomed, ready to play it straight which is a miscalculation because the other team has a roster made up of the felons of minor league hockey. They get beaten up and suffer, then go in during half time and the manager of the team reveals that the stands are full of NHL scouts, ready to give them contracts. So, they quickly decide to revert to the strategy of beating people up. I really don't want to ruin the ending for you on this one. It does hold with my theory of loser endings.
Anyway, this film has some incredible use of profanity, not that it's shocking, it's just so profuse that it borders on absurd. The supporting cast is incredible, each managing to shine in their own moments throughout the film. The only actor who doesn't take my interest is Michael Ontkean as Ned Braden, who for most of the film has the thankless job of playing the straight man. He pales in comparison to the rest of the motley crew. Take the Hanson brothers, who must be some of the most bizarre characters in the history of cinema.
Slap Shot isn't a film that feels driven by Dunlop. He seems to be sailing with no direction, tossed from side to side by the events of his world. He tries to get ahead but never quite manages it, which makes the film all the more charming. Newman is somehow perfect as a hockey loser, even though that right off the bat doesn't inspire confidence. I've said before that he's not comfortable in light comedy, but he was perfect for this sort of absurdist cynical comedy. He does so well saying so little in this film, not getting all the comic highlights of the film, but somehow is its soul. I think it's not a film you can quite get on the first try, which immediately makes it a hard sell and to some extent you do need a working knowledge of seventies comedy. It's a great sports movie, it's got to be the best hockey movie ever, although I have to admit, I don't really seek out a lot of hockey movies.
So, what do you think of the 1970s being the era of the loser? In the mean time, you should just watch this clip of cars playing hockey from Top Gear. Please note the subtle tribute to this film.
