Once Is Enough

Our theme this week
Actors who have directed one film only

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   Marlon Brando:  One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

Gary Oldman:  Nil by Mouth (1997)

Nil by Mouth is a raw, personal, powerful look at working-class life on the south side of London.  Gary Oldman wrote and directed the film, and it’s hard to say how much of his childhood growing up in public housing made it onto the screen, but it’s a relief to know he survived.  Oldman dedicated the movie to the memory of his father.

The father in the film is a desperate and brutal man named Ray, played by Ray Winstone.  The victim of much of Ray’s abuse is his wife, Valerie, a role for which Kathy Burke won Best Actress at Cannes.  Their young daughter, Michelle, is utterly neglected, not even a concern for the parents, as she witnesses endless streams of profanity and shocking violence.  Billy (Charlie Creed-Miles) is Valerie’s brother, who robs them to feed his drug habit, which leads Ray to seek retribution.  The cycle goes on.  The rage within the family hits a boiling point, with Valerie ending up in the hospital, Ray beaten and semi-conscious in a parking lot, and Billy in jail.

It ain’t a pretty story, but it feels real, too real at times.  Nil by Mouth is like a documentary.  We may not be entertained, in the usual sense of the word, but we get a view of life we don’t get to see very often:  humans living in desperate circumstances, doing desperate things, and like the best of movies, it’s not about them, it’s about us.

…58…59…60.

Once Is Enough

ONCE, adv.  Enough.

That’s Ambrose Bierce, not a man to waste words, in The Devil’s Dictionary.  Seems that more than a few actors-turned-directors have read the book.

Acting and directing are different professions offering different rewards.  Actors get the limelight, directors the clout, and that may be why they often trade places.  Who can blame them for wanting both?

The list of actor-directors goes on and on—Chaplin, Welles, Cassavetes, Allen, Eastwood, and many dozens more.  This week we feature a small subset from that roster:  actors who took the reins to direct a film once, but never again.

Note, a couple of this week’s filmmakers are still alive and may not be done yet—we’ll see—but I will skip the one-timers who either have second efforts on the way (e.g., Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp), have also directed television (e.g., Tommy Lee Jones, Zach Braff), or seem a good bet to get behind the camera again (e.g., Drew Barrymore, Edward Norton).

Our theme this week
Actors who have directed one film only

Marlon Brando:  One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

Marlon Brando’s production company owned the rights to a Charles Neider novel, a western based loosely on the story of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.  Brando hired and fired several writers (Rod Serling, Sam Peckinpaugh, and Calder Willingham) and the intended director (Stanley Kubrick) before getting Guy Trosper to work on the script and hiring himself for his first and only credit as director.

Brando teamed with Karl Malden, his costar in a couple of landmark films a decade earlier, A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, both directed by Elia Kazan.  Brando plays Rio and Malden, Dad Longworth, as bank robbers in an ill-fated heist in Sonora, Mexico.  The third partner, Doc, is killed, and as the two try to escape, Dad betrays his friend, adandoning him on a hilltop where Rio is surrounded by Mexican Rurales.  Rio serves five years in prison, then after his release tracks down Dad in Monterey, California, where he is now sheriff.  Rio plots revenge but falls in love with Dad’s stepdaughter, Louisa (Pina Pellicer, in the best known of the few film roles in her too-brief career).  Rio’s presence is more than Dad can bear, and the sheriff is merciless in inflicting justice on Rio, who is beaten and later jailed on false charges.  After Rio escapes, the two men have their final showdown.

One-Eyed Jacks is a revisionist western, and you can understand what attracted Brando to the material.  The good guys and bad guys are not easy to discern.   Who’s wearing the badge doesn’t tell you much.  In fact, as the title implies (in a deck of cards, one-eyed jacks are pictured in profile), the lead characters are two-faced, one side public and the other hidden.  (Think the Harvey Dent character in The Dark Knight.)  The film is not a simple morality tale.  It’s a swipe at the conventions of westerns, which by the sixties had nearly run their course.  Instead of mesas or Monument Valley, most of One-Eyed Jacks is set at the beach, as west as the West can go, along the white sands of Monterey.  Charles Lamb beautifully captured the scenes, earning an Oscar nomination for cinematography.  It was the last Paramount film to be shot in widescreen VistaVision.

The film runs nearly two-and-a-half hours.  It meanders, more interested in contemplating character than tightly plotted action.  But Brando’s version was much longer—four to five hours, apparently—and the studio cut it in half before releasing the film.  That experience may explain why Brando didn’t direct again, and why no one would hire him.

Opinion on the film is divided.  Some say it’s a classic, some say a mess.  I’d say it’s neither, but it is a well-done, involving tale, with plenty of good reasons to see it even if it weren’t the only movie that Brando ever directed.

…58…59…60.

“Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)”

from Beetlejuice

One more week of musical selections before we return to regular features.  This time around, a variety of songs that make for some memorable movie moments.

“Dream Lover”

from Chungking Express

One more week of musical selections before we return to regular features.  This time around, a variety of songs that make for some memorable movie moments.

“Old Time Rock and Roll”

from Risky Business

One more week of musical selections before we return to regular features.  This time around, a variety of songs that make for some memorable movie moments.

“Tiny Dancer”

from Almost Famous

One more week of musical selections before we return to regular features.  This time around, a variety of songs that make for some memorable movie moments.

“What a Wonderful World”

from Good Morning, Vietnam

One more week of musical selections before we return to regular features.  This time around, a variety of songs that make for some memorable movie moments.

“Caravan”

from The Last Waltz

This week, selections from concert films worth remembering.

1.  Fred Astaire and his sister, Adele, were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1971.  How many films did Fred and Adele make together?

a.  6
b.  2
c.  1
d.  0
e.  4

2.  Match the dance with the film in which it was performed.

Tango
Twist
Sirtaki
Jitterbug
Ballet
Street dance

Zorba the Greek (1964)
Step Up (2006)
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
The Red Shoes (1948)
Pulp Fiction (1994)

3.  Mick Jagger has acted in several movies.  Which one of the following roles was not a Jagger performance?

Ned Kelly in Ned Kelly (1970)
Turner in Performance (1970)
Vacendak in Freejack (1992)
Andy Warhol in Basquiat (1996)
Luther in The Man from Elysian Fields (2001)

4.  Casting for David Fincher’s English-language adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, due out at the end of 2011, has made news the past few weeks.  Daniel Craig will play the male lead, Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist.  Stellan Skarsgård and Robin Wright will co-star.  Little-known Rooney Mara will play the title character.  What is the name of “the girl with the dragon tattoo”?

5.  A recent article called “The Worst Movie Year Ever?” decried the woeful Hollywood films of 2010.  Who was the author?

a.  Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
b.  A.O. Scott, New York Times
c.  Joe Queenan, Wall Street Journal
d.  Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor
e.  J. Hoberman, Village Voice

Answers here.

…58…59…60.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

from The Concert for Bangladesh

This week, selections from concert films worth remembering.

“Once in a Lifetime”

from Stop Making Sense

This week, selections from concert films worth remembering.