Variety (1983)

A young white woman sitting in a ticket booth for a porno theatre. The key image to Variety (1983) that I had in my head before watching it. New York city in its grimy, sleazy prime. “The old New York” is an idea that has been mythologised into nostalgia, often calcified (HBO’s The Deuce, for example). Going back to independent movies from this era function like documentaries – from The Driller Killer to Smithereens – and seeing NYC for what it is, the crummy looking apartments and working class in the meat packing districts, balancing out the punk scene and bohemian vibes. Bette Gordon’s film, Variety, exists at a cultural flashpoint with writer Kathy Acker contributing the screenplay, John Lurie making the score, and future indie film figures like Tom DiCillo and Christine Vachon involved in the production. Early roles for beloved character actors like Will Patton, Luis Guzman, and Mark Boone Junior. Even discovering in the closing credits that monologuist Spalding Gray was the voice of an obscene answering phone machine. A production budget combined from West German TV, Channel 4 UK and the New York State Council.

What struck me about Variety was that even if it is in the same milieu of something like Taxi Driver, it offers a counterpoint to the macho catholic mix of desire and repression when it comes to the sex industry. There’s something more ambivalent and ambiguous here. A transplant from the midwest, Christine (Sandy McLeod), hoping to be a writer but who needs money to get by. Her bartender friend Nan (photographer Nan Goldin) knows of a job, working the ticket booth in the porno theatre, Variety. There, Christine is accompanied by the upbeat theatre barker Jose (Guzman, so great), and finds herself killing time in the lobby on her breaks. While there is an aspect where Christine is affected by the adult movies and the furtive male customers walking in to watch, her desires are displaced into intrigue around a regular customer, Louie (Richard M. Davidson, almost has an Art Garfunkel vibe), a middle-aged man who dresses in a suit and speaks with a business-like reserve. As Christine’s reporter boyfriend Mark (Patton) talks mostly about his own investigative journalism, Christine begins to compulsively tell erotic stories, and in her off-hours, she secretly follows Louie on his business deals.

Despite the grimy atmosphere, there’s a playful quality to how director Bette Gordon uses montage, such as in a sequence cataloguing the porno theatre marquees, or editing together scenes of men shaking hands. There are creepy customers and the occasional seedy come-ons, but often the men stand silently and withdraw when Christine takes a smoke break in the theatre lobby, or wanders through an adult book shop. Variety connects to feminist debates around pornography and sexuality from the time, and on release was controversial in some circles, looking back at writing from Gordon around its release. McLeod is very good in the lead role, articulating a growing confidence as well as a loss of self, finding herself drawn into mysteries and role-playing. A neo-noir vibe permeates this slice-of-life character study of both an individual and a place, and the ambiguity around Christine’s descent into this world is liberating or totalising.

Available to stream on Kanopy. Recommended.

Special Effects (1984)

What I enjoy about Larry Cohen is how he approaches things as a writer: the story’s gotta have a hook! Released in the same year as Brian De Palma’s Body Double, Cohen’s film Special Effects (1984) is a comparable twist on a Hitchcockian thriller. The hook: What if a movie director was a murderer? (A plot idea conceived in the late 1960s, yet released one year after the Twilight Zone: The Movie tragedy). The title is a misdirect: it’s not really about special effects or using special effects to kill or to get away with killing. The special effect is “turning reality into make believe.”

“Who’s your favourite director?” “Abraham Zapruder. Honest Abe.” That’s what we hear over the opening credits in an interview with film director Chris Neville (a pre-Talk Radio Eric Bogosian). He’s back in New York after getting fired from a multi-million production in Hollywood, and recovering from a subsequent mental breakdown. When a model and actor, Andrea (a post-Ms. 45 Zoe Lund) shows up at his incredible loft apartment, wanting to become a star (she works as a nude dancer and model), he employs the casting couch (actually his bedroom with red walls and satin bedsheets). After being exposed secretly filming their tryst, and insulted for his career failures, Neville murders Andrea in a fit of rage. When Andrea’s husband Keefe (Brad Rijn) shows up – a hayseed who wants to take her back to the mid-western town they grew up in (and the baby son they have together) and away from the NYC lifestyle that has corrupted her – he is suspected of Andrea’s murder. The director character comes up with another angle worthy of a Columbo villain: he’ll make a film based on Andrea’s life, cast the husband to play himself, and eventually frame him for the murder, using the footage of her death that he has inadvertently recorded and privately fetishises.

There’s a low budget sleazy New York vibe to Special Effects, stylish at times with memorable shots like the one of Chris standing on the actress headshots covering the floor, or characters filmed in shadow against a doorway looking out at the neon NYC streetscape. It’s a scrappy B-movie that doesn’t reach the showmanship of De Palma or the arty grit of Abel Ferrara, but has a cynical, self-referential take on movie-making with Bogosian’s egotistical director character. Often, it feels like Cohen is commenting on the failure of the New Hollywood filmmakers (Cimino, Bogdanovich, etc), early successes leading to expensive flops and associated tragedies (Dorothy Stratton is even mentioned). This allure of the movies is insidious enough to make the lead detective on the case (Kevin J. O’Connor) become a consultant and producer on the movie-within-a-movie, unknowing helping the director on his secret, sinister plotting.

Alongside the New York location shooting (some of which shot without permits, one can assume from Cohen’s guerrilla tactics), the grind-house style sex and violence, and the psychological mind-games that the director-within-the-movie is playing on his cast, the film is also powered by Bogosian’s haughty intensity and Lund’s off-kilter energy. Lund provides a two-part performance, the first part clearly dubbed, yet thankfully the remainder allows her to shine with her own voice. Even if it’s not completely successful as a thriller or reaches the heights of Body Double, Special Effects is a lurid, entertaining B-movie that has reflexive ideas about power dynamics in cinema, both making them and watching them. Recommended.

The Yards (2000)

The Yards (2000) has been one of those movies that has always sat there on my “Must watch” lists, and I’ve never felt strongly compelled to watch it, thinking to myself, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get around to it.” After seeing Armageddon Time and watching Two Lovers for the first time, I was more inclined to see director James Gray’s earlier work, and I was pleasantly surprised to find how much I really liked The Yards. Like, I knew it would be good and a solid New York crime drama about corruption. An update of On The Waterfront but indebted to the 1970s approach of Francis Ford Coppola and Sidney Lumet, mumbled conversations in hallways, character actors in suits holding backroom meetings, and hard moral choices between keeping your mouth shut or taking a stand. What defines Gray’s filmmaking is the sense of place – the way in which apartment rooms feel lived in and real – and the characterisation shading in all of these archetypes into believable people, delivered by a great cast giving excellent performances.

Leo Handler (Mark Wahlberg) arrives home from a stint in prison, taking the blame for a car theft that he and his friends were involved in, and in the opening sequence, he is welcomed by his single mother Val (Ellen Burstyn), his aunt Kitty (Faye Dunaway), his cousin Erica (Charlize Theron) and her boyfriend and Leo’s friend Willie (Joaquin Phoenix). Leo is looking for work at his uncle’s company, Frank (played by James Caan), who provide engineering and maintenance to the city’s rail system; Phoenix’s character also works there in management, but fundamentally greasing the wheels and making under-the-table deals to get city contracts. It doesn’t take long for the extra money that Leo is earning to go bad, and when a mission to sabotage a competitor’s trains goes wrong, Leo is once again left holding the bag and tasked to make a hard choice to keep a wider investigation from happening.

On one hand, the movie goes where you expect it, but on the other hand, it’s the weight that Gray and his collaborators give to the scenes which makes them grounded and full of tension. Adding considerably to the neo-noir atmosphere is the cinematography by Harris Savides and the brilliant use of lighting and shadows; the use of constant black-outs in the neighbourhood is a masterstroke for how darkness and deep shadows are used in key scenes. All of this is also complemented by a stirring, strong score by composer Howard Shore. Everyone in the cast is great, and it’s wonderful to see familiar character actors in the supporting cast like Tony Mustante, Victor Argo, Tomas Millan, and Steve Lawrence. An underrated New York crime melodrama that feels of a piece with Gray’s understanding of the city, like his next film, We Own The Night also starring Wahlberg and Phoenix. I appreciate how Gray invests in a classic approach to narrative, hitting points you might expect, but finding a deeper register, taking you through the character’s struggle in the face of a difficult choice. There is tragedy to The Yards but also a feeling of inevitability and rather than wrapping things up with a cathartic gun-fight, knows that things are usually resolved in a back-room deal where money sets the agenda. Recommended.

The Ambulance (1990)

I distinctly remember reading Marvel comics when I was a kid, Spider-Man or Captain America, and they always included a little editorial from Stan Lee, and there were a few issues of him promoting The Ambulance (1990), a thriller starring Eric Roberts that was written and directed by Larry Cohen (Q – The Winged Serpent, The Stuff). Why was Stan Lee promoting The Ambulance? Well, because Stan Lee is in it! As himself, playing the boss of Eric Roberts’ character who works at Marvel Comics as an illustrator; there are a couple of scenes set at his workplace. This is only tangentially related to the story: when Roberts talks about his job to cop James Earl Jones, he is dismissed as a weirdo, prone to making stuff up, and then Roberts also uses his illustrator skills to mock up a drawing of a missing woman (who looks more like Duran Duran cover art than a police ID sketch).

Larry Cohen’s main high concept hook for The Ambulance is a twist on his Maniac Cop formula: “What if a cop was a psycho murderer?” Here, it’s “What if an ambulance was run by psycho murderers?” In the opening scene, Roberts tries to pick up a woman on the street (Janine Turner) who then falls ill and is taken away by an ambulance. Roberts tries to track her down and find out if she’s okay, but begins to stumble across a murderous conspiracy. All of which builds up to a recurring scene of him getting ill or knocked out and freaking out when a gurney arrives (“Don’t let them take me!!!”).

I had lots of fun with this 95 minute thriller. More Hitchcockian New York exploitation thrillers should have an unhinged protagonist as their hero like with Eric Roberts’ full-bodied performance, all sweaty and fast-talking, and charming me with his complete commitment, that and his lion mane of a mullet (circa Best Of The Best style). Cohen is from an older generation of movie-making, and makes sure the dialogue is snappy and cute, and provides great supporting roles for old pros like James Earl Jones and Red Buttons as a wisecracking journalist. Megan Gallagher also plays a cop who becomes involved in the mystery. And what a twist to see in the credits, “And introducing Nick Chinlund”, the first feature film for one of my favourite bad guy character actors! The Ambulance features plenty of New York street locations and neo-noir style to the cinematography; the idea to illuminate the interior of the sinister ambulance with green lighting is a brilliant visual. And there are lots of hectic stunts including car chases and a runaway gurney gag well before Hudson Hawk. More goofy and whacked out than scary or suspenseful, The Ambulance is still very entertaining, even when it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Just surrender to the momentum and the brio of Eric Roberts. Recommended.

Vanya On 42nd Street (1994)

My main knowledge of the Anton Chekov play Uncle Vanya is through its rehearsal and performance in the Japanese film, Drive My Car, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. I have always been aware of Vanya On 42nd Street (1994), a film adaptation of Vanya that reunited actors and playwrights Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, with the French director Louis Malle, all of whom worked together on the film, My Dinner With Andre.

From what I’ve read, Gregory hosted and directed private rehearsals of Vanya with a group of actors as a way to understand the text, squatting in an abandoned theatre on 42nd Street, New York. The rehearsals were never opened to public audiences, and eventually Gregory asked Malle to make a film of their performances. In the opening sequence, the camera stands on 42nd Street and follows the actors as they arrive through the daytime New York crowds. A few people are brought into the theatre as audience members, we observe the actors talking, chatting about their work and lives, specifically Phoebe Brand and Larry Pine. Slowly the discussion segues into the text of Vanya, the actors remain the same, dressed in their contemporary outfits, but then they begin to refer to Russian names and “the estate” and “the woods”. There’s a cut and we see the audience seated in the background watching; we are already in the play. It’s a simple magic trick that speaks to the intimate yet casual approach of the movie.

The actors mainly sit around tables, or chairs and couches set up on the stage, and we often hear sirens in the distance from the street. Yet I was pulled into the text through the performances and the cinematography, the use of close-ups and lighting drawing on the shadows of the empty theatre. Recognisable faces from movies demonstrate their theatre bona fides like George Gaynes (from the Police Academy series) and Wallace Shawn as Vanya (whose voice and likeness always echoes the comedy mainstream recognition of his parts in the Princess Bride or the Toy Story movies). The character of Vanya exists as a kind of cynical clown on the side-lines in the middle of the drama, based on the sickly, older academic Professor Serebryakov (Gaynes), his younger second wife Yelena (Julianne Moore), his daughter from the first marriage Sonya (Brooke Smith, Silence of the Lambs), and the visiting Dr. Astrov (Pine, Sandy from Succession). Vanya was the brother to Serebryakov’s first wife who passed away, and he and his niece Sonya maintain the country estate for the distinguished professor, who is plagued by health issues, and his younger, bored wife. There is a love triangle between Dr. Astrov, Sonya and Yelena, and multiple disappointments are aired in this site of decay and slow ruin. The sense of regret and frustration is everywhere, particularly reckoning with getting older and being frustrated with your fruitless position in the scheme of things.

Great performances from all, particularly Shawn who subtly transforms at moments; from the close-up where he talks alone about his regrets to his eventually rage at the academic’s decision about the estate, his character deepens from our initial perception. David Mamet adapted the text and adds his recognisable staccato delivery here and there. The old text finds new life in its references to the environment and to financial matters, particularly when bonds are discussed with a “I Love NY” paper cup on the table, bringing to mind gentrification, real estate and political/powerful figures of the time and location. Available to stream on SBS On Demand at the moment. Recommended.