More Work Was Needed on Remake

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"I know now that the love we hold back is the only pain that follows us here."

Pete (Richard Dreyfuss)

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It's hard for me to think of "Always" (which debuted on this day in 1989) without comparing it to the movie upon which it was based, "A Guy Named Joe."

And, for the most part, I think the actors who were cast in the remake were pretty good choices, but the movie fell short of the mark.

Holly Hunter has been excellent in just about everything she has done, and she was a good choice to play Dorinda, the role originally played by Irene Dunne. Film critic Roger Ebert agreed. "The best casting in the movie is Hunter," Ebert declared, "bringing some of the same urgency and hard-bitten impatience that made her right for 'Broadcast News.'"

I like John Goodman. He's one of those guys who is funny no matter what he says or does. As far as I was concerned, he was much better than Ward Bond as Al, the colleague and best friend of the main character, Pete, who died early on and appeared as a spirit for the remainder of the film. But Goodman has been in better movies.

There were different characters who assisted Pete in his transition from the mortal world to the spiritual one. In "A Guy Named Joe," which was set in wartime, it was the spirit of a fellow pilot who had died in a fiery crash. He was played by Barry Nelson, who wasn't as good as the spirit Hap, played by Audrey Hepburn, who assisted Pete, a peacetime pilot who put out forest fires, in "Always."

Van Johnson played the guy who courted Dorinda after Pete died in "A Guy Named Joe," and it might seem like a no–brainer to prefer him to Brad Johnson, who played the role in "Always," but Van Johnson was appearing in his first movie. He wasn't as polished as he became. Brad Johnson was one up on him, having appeared in a low–budget production the year before "Always" was made, but, essentially, they were at the same point in their careers; over the long haul, it is safe to say that Van Johnson did more with his than Brad Johnson did.

It was pretty close, but I would give the nod to Van Johnson.

It was in the starring role where "A Guy Named Joe" had a decisive advantage, as far as I was concerned. Don't get me wrong. I like Richard Dreyfuss very much. I think he is quite talented, and I liked his performance in "Always."

But Spencer Tracy delivered what may have been the best performance of his career in "A Guy Named Joe."

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Don't let that take anything away from Dreyfuss' performance. He was very good. But there was only one Spencer Tracy, right?

Ebert struggled with many of the same issues when he reviewed the movie 25 years ago. His bottom line about "Always" was that it suffered from a "lack of urgency."

"Even though pilots are flying into the jaws of hell," Ebert wrote, "they have an insouciance, a devil–may–care attitude, that undermines the drama."

Hmmmm. I hadn't really thought about that, but it does explain some of my ambivalence about the movie. I mean, with all the advantages "Always" had in its cast and director (well, I guess that depends on how one feels about Spielberg as opposed to Victor Fleming, who directed "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With the Wind" before he directed "A Guy Named Joe"), why, I wondered, did I prefer "A Guy Named Joe"?

I think it was because there was a kind of nobility, an admirable sense of self–sacrifice in "A Guy Named Joe" that was missing from "Always." Maybe that was a by–product of the war backdrop. Tracy didn't like helping someone else win Dunne's love, but it was part of his mission to "give back" to the living. He seemed to fully grasp that fact after his conversation with the general (Lionel Barrymore).

Tracy's mission went farther than just helping Dunne love again and move on with her life. His mission involved passing along his expertise as a pilot and contribute to a greater cause.

Putting out fires is an important cause, too, and Dreyfuss' character was one of the best at it, but fires are more random than war. I'm not saying that firefighters don't put everything on the line because they do, but the pressure on a soldier during wartime is unrelenting whereas the pressure on a firefighter mostly exists (it seems to me, anyway) while the fire exists.

That was the impression I got from the characters in "Always." They were dedicated to their jobs, but they were relaxed when they weren't trying to control a fire. It went in waves.

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Of course, this is all speculation on my part. I was never a firefighter, and I never fought in a war.

I'm sure many of my beliefs about both have been influenced by things I have seen in movies — and movies, I will grant you, are not necessarily factual.

It just seems to me that the pressure on soldiers would be constant. Even if they are not in a battle, soldiers can't let their guard down for a second because an enemy attack could happen at any time.

The only comparable experience for pilots who fight forest fires would be during periods of extreme drought. In such times, pressure must be unceasing for those pilots.

A kind of sense of invincibility seemed to permeate the pilots in "Always."

Of course, one of the points of the story was that they were not invincible.

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And I would be remiss if I didn't say more about Hepburn's contribution to the story.

She was, as I have said, the spirit who helps Dreyfuss make his transition to the spiritual world. I've been a Hepburn fan for many years, and I was deeply saddened by her death at the age of 63.

She was the third–greatest movie actress, according to the American Film Institute.

And Hap's understated way of breaking the news to Pete — while she was cutting his hair in the woods — was really delightful.

"I don't want you to think that I'm doubting your good faith," Pete said. "I just want to get one thing clear, okay?"

"Okay," Hap relied.

"Am I dead?" Pete asked.

"That's right," Hap answered.

"I'm dead?" Pete asked again.

"Right," Hap replied again.

"Keep the sideburns," Pete said. "Boy, what a jerk I turned out to be. Dead! And now I'm sitting in the woods, getting my hair cut."

"Always" was only modestly successful commercially (unlike most Spielberg productions), which may be why Hepburn wasn't nominated for an Oscar. Of course, her part was really just a cameo appearance, but it was her final movie role. Seems a shame for a great actress like that to go out without even a nomination for her final performance.

Of course, at the time, no one knew it would be her last performance.

Actually, "Always" received no Oscar nominations so it isn't as if Hepburn was denied something her colleagues received.

So the Oscar shutout wasn't really a surprise. It wasn't an original story, and the cast, while good, didn't really make a major impression.

Ultimately, I had to agree with Ebert's conclusion: "The result is a curiosity: a remake that wasn't remade enough."

Portraying Progress in the South

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Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy): How are you?

Hoke (Morgan Freeman): I'm doing the best I can.

Miss Daisy: Me, too.

Hoke: Well, I reckon that's about all there is to it.

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"Driving Miss Daisy," which was shown for the first time on this day in 1989, was a truly special movie about human relationships. Roger Ebert observed that it was "a film of great love and patience, telling a story that takes 25 years to unfold, exploring its characters as few films take the time to do."

Yep.

It reminded me in many ways of the South in which I grew up. My grandmother was a lot like Miss Daisy — not nearly as wealthy (in fact, you couldn't call my grandmother wealthy at all, but she lived comfortably) nor was she Jewish (she probably would have bristled at that comparison), but still I saw many similarities. My grandmother's generation came of age when the so–called "N word" wasn't used so much as a slur but more as a description. What made it disparaging was any other words that one might say with it, but I never got the sense from my grandmother or her contemporaries that they meant anything negative, not even by implication, when they used it.

I'm not a linguist, but I've noticed in my life that Southerners seem to be more prone than most to give words their own pronunciations that kind of sound like the original words ... but aren't. Not really. It doesn't really seem to be an inability to pronounce the words correctly. I'm not really sure why, but, in a Southerner's hands (or, rather, mouth), a word like nuclear is frequently pronounced nuke–U–ler (George W. Bush took a public beating when he said it that way, but he was hardly the first Southerner I heard pronounce that word that way). A word like Massachusetts becomes Massa–TOO–shetts (some people with whom I went to school and who I respect to this day pronounce that word that way). Theatre becomes thee–AY–ter. And so on.

Actually, I've always thought of it as more of a country dialect than a Southern one. Maybe that's because the town in which I grew up was more rural than urban. (Things have changed there, as I have mentioned here before.)

But as I've gotten older I've come to think of it as linguistically lazy.

Not all Southerners speak that way, of course, but many do — and you can point out to them that they are mispronouncing words, but they will be completely unconcerned about it — which drives me nuts.

I put words like the "N word" in that category, at least in regard to its origin and my grandmother's generation's use of it. They grew up at a time when the socially accepted word for black Americans was Negro. As I understand it, the word black was the "N word" of that time. I find that interesting because in at least one language (Portuguese), the word negro actually does mean black. It replaced the word colored as the preferred word. (For awhile there — and I mean a very short while for it seemed to fall from public favor rather quickly — the preferred term was Afro American, then black was in favor for a long time before African–American became fashionable.)

My grandmother and her friends used the "N word" the way Mark Twain used it in "Huck Finn" — neither good nor bad unless so designated by the use of additional words. While it probably always had a disparaging angle, it seems to me that the "N word" only became entirely derogatory sometime in the mid–20th century.

But, anyway, Southerners really do seem to have this tendency to shorten words. The word Indian, for example, was often pronounced Injun in the 19th– and 20th–century South, and I honestly believe that is how the word Negro evolved into the "N word." I know that, while my grandmother and her friends used the "N word" frequently, it was intended as a description, not a slur. It was an adjective much of the time, and even when it was a noun, it usually wasn't meant disparagingly.

Of course, that doesn't mean that they didn't believe that there was some sort of racial order in the world — in which whites occupied the highest rung and all the other races were beneath them. In fact, I'm quite sure they did. They didn't really articulate it; they just accepted it as the way things were (and probably with an unexpressed sense of gratitude that they had been born on that higher rung — but probably without any sense of indignation that such a caste system should exist at all in America).

I have often wondered what my grandmother and her friends — or Miss Daisy — would have thought of a world in which the American president was black. Would they have tried to change their language to fit a new world? Would they have resisted? Or would they have struck some sort of personal compromise, using politically correct language in public and language they were raised with in private?

I'm sure they would have become defensive if it was even hinted that they might be prejudiced — just as Miss Daisy did. But they lived in a South that really doesn't exist anymore. The blacks in the movie — Morgan Freeman and Esther Rolle — held positions in Southern society that were consistent with what I observed as a child. They drove cars, and they cleaned homes. Some cooked meals and others carried trays at restaurants and country clubs. Some carried bags at airports and train stations. Their children and grandchildren went to schools that were separate from the ones the white children attended.

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You might think from what I have written that the "N word" played a major role in "Driving Miss Daisy." In fact, it did not. I may be mistaken, but I really don't think the "N word" was ever used in "Driving Miss Daisy." But the initially segregated society and the evolving attitudes about race were clear to see without it.

Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) was an elderly, well–to–do woman when the story began, a widow who had a black woman (Rolle) doing the cooking and cleaning for her (Rolle made something of a career of playing a servant — as TV's Florida Evans). Miss Daisy's son (Dan Aykroyd) wanted to hire someone to drive her wherever she needed to go, and he offered the job to Freeman.

Miss Daisy didn't think she needed a driver, but that was beside the point.

"You'd be working for me," Aykroyd said. "She can say anything she likes, but she can't fire you."

And, while she didn't always say so directly, she made it clear that she didn't want Freeman around and that she had made up her mind that she didn't like him. But he hung around anyway and, eventually, won her over for trips around town. That evolved into longer trips. A bond had formed.

By the end of the movie, she told Freeman he was her best friend. In the context of their history, that was quite an admission for her to make. I have long thought it was symbolic of the genuine shift in racial attitudes that I have witnessed in the South in my lifetime. As enlightened as the rest of the country likes to think of itself and as backward as the rest of the country likes to tell itself that the South is, the truth is that the South has made remarkable strides in half a century.

And "Driving Miss Daisy" was mainly about a time that preceded that half–century. Seen in that context, the inescapable conclusion is that the South has far outpaced the rest of the country. It can be fairly argued that the South had farther to go than the rest of the country — but it still doesn't receive adequate credit for what it has achieved.

I remember watching the Oscars the following spring. "Driving Miss Daisy" had nine nominations, and it seemed likely to be a big night for the movie. It was — but not as big as you might expect.

Deservedly, Tandy won Best Actress for her performance, and the movie won Best Picture (but director Bruce Beresford wasn't even nominated). It also won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Makeup. Four wins ain't bad.

Freeman was nominated for Best Actor but lost to Daniel Day–Lewis ("My Left Foot"). Aykroyd was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost to Denzel Washington (for "Glory"). Bruno Rubeo and Crispian Sallis were nominated for Best Art Direction (but lost to Anton Furst and Peter Young for "Batman"). Elizabeth McBride was nominated for Best Costume Design (but lost to Phyllis Dalton for "Henry V"). Mark Warner was nominated for Best Film Editing (but lost to David Brenner and Joe Hutshing for "Born on the Fourth of July").

I suppose it's a matter of opinion whether the awards that went to others were the right choices or not. Awards are like Top 10 lists — they were made to spark heated discussions, and the Oscars have a history of rewarding some and ignoring others that most critics and moviegoers would not.

I just felt "Driving Miss Daisy" deserved more than it received.

Telling the Tale of a Trip Through Time

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1955 Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd): It was nice talking to you. Maybe we'll bump into each other sometime in the future.

1985 Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd): Or the past.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the original "Back to the Future."

When I saw it, it was pretty obvious that a sequel was planned — if not already in the works — and that was OK with me.

But I was disappointed.

See, I already knew "Back to the Future" was going to end up being a trilogy; consequently, I knew that the second installation would be incomplete, as second chapters in trilogies always are. They are extensions of the original — and promises that conclusions will be forthcoming — but they do not provide satisfactory resolutions. After all, gotta save something for Part III, right?

But there were other problems with this sequel.

In many ways, I thought Derek Armstrong of Allmovie.com made a good point when he wrote, "A successful sequel duplicates the characteristics that drew audiences to the original, but [director Robert] Zemeckis saps the buoyant spirit from the series by presenting a world dominated by the pimp–like, unimaginably wealthy and vulgar Biff."

The dark vision of the future in "Back to the Future Part II" offered little of the joy of the original — only most of the original cast.

I must say, though, that I appreciated the detail of the research. In the scene where young Biff was driving along and listening to the football scores on the radio, I can say that the scores are accurate from Saturday, Nov. 12, 1955. I checked on this once when the movie was showing on TV and was able to quickly confirm the authenticity of the scores in the sports almanac.

UCLA really did kick a late field goal to beat Washington, as Old Biff bet a skeptical Young Biff would happen while they sat in Young Biff's car and they listened to the final minute of the game on the car radio — and all those other scores that were mentioned by the radio announcer were accurate, too — but Biff shouldn't have been so surprised that UCLA pulled off a come–from–behind win.

UCLA was ranked fourth in the nation and ended up going to the Rose Bowl. Washington hadn't won a game in a month. As any sports fan can tell you, near upsets happen all the time; truly talented teams frequently find ways to overcome.

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Of course, Biff confirmed that the scores matched the scores in the almanac — something he shouldn't have been doing while operating a vehicle, but perfectly in keeping with his character.

(Considering the size of the almanac and the movies' attention to detail, I — as a former sports copy editor — found it difficult to believe that every score of every sports event over half a century could be contained within its covers.)

There was a dark side to "Back to the Future Part II" that was more personal for Marty McFly, as answers.com observed.

I guess the point that the "Back to the Future" series made so well was Doc Brown's repeated admonition not to meddle in future (or past) events. His intention was to use the time machine only for research purposes, to observe and learn, not to become involved.

It isn't a new theme, this idea that history cannot be altered, and it would be a wise rule — if time travel were possible. But it isn't, and so the influence of the insertion of a visitor from another time remains theoretical.

Still, it makes sense, doesn't it? I'm a Southern boy so I liken it to something I saw all around me when I was growing up — dominoes. If you look at time like a row of dominoes — I don't know what the dominoes would represent; increments in time (days, weeks, months, years), I suppose — and if you further assume that one at the end of the line is not permitted to remain standing, its fall will affect the next domino, and that effect will continue until there are no more dominoes standing.

If you apply the domino analogy to the context of the "Back to the Future" movies, especially Part II, you do get to see an apocalyptic vision of a radically altered future.

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And that seems to have been what Zemeckis was aiming for.

There really was a lot going on.

"I should have brought a big yellow legal pad to the screening," Roger Ebert wrote, "so I could take detailed notes just to keep the time–lines straight."

Ebert wrote of the "paradoxes" of time travel. That's probably the best word for it. I have to admit it was not what I was expecting. Given the nature of the first movie in the franchise, I expected something similar. Zemeckis threw me a curve.

But it intrigued me. What did the final installment in the trilogy have in store? We only had to wait six months to find out.

Uncle Buck's in the House

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I really miss John Candy.

He's been gone 20 years now, and, while I didn't care for most of the movies he made in his last years, he did make some movies that I enjoyed, movies that made me laugh.

One of them was John Hughes' "Uncle Buck," which premiered 25 years ago today.

Buck was the black sheep of the family, I guess. He was jobless, living in an apartment and making a living by wagering on fixed horse races. But, when his sister–in–law's father had a heart attack, he was the only one to whom they could turn since they were in a new city. They had three children who needed someone to look after them while their parents were with their grandfather in another state.

"He's crude. He's crass. He's family," the movie posters declared. What the heck? It was an emergency.

Jean Louisa Kelly played the oldest daughter, Tia, a teen who did not like having to answer to her uncle — mostly, I suppose, because he didn't get along with her boyfriend, Bug.

"First or last?" Buck asked when he heard the boy's name.

"First," Tia replied.

"What's his last name?" Buck asked. "Spray?"

If you think you've seen Kelly before, you probably have. She played Rowena, the gifted high school singer, in "Mr. Holland's Opus," and she has made quite a few TV appearances.

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You're more likely, though, to be familiar with the work of Macaulay Culkin, the actor who played her younger brother. Culkin became famous when "Home Alone" hit the theaters the next year.

Their younger sister was played by Gaby Hoffmann. She probably wasn't familiar yet to audiences in 1989. "Uncle Buck" was her second movie. She made her movie debut four months earlier as Kevin Costner's daughter in "Field of Dreams." She had a part in "Sleepless in Seattle," and she's been involved in more projects as she's gotten older.

Uncle Buck wasn't perfect. He made his share of mistakes, but he had a heart of gold.

I wish I had had an Uncle Buck when I was little. Uncle Buck was the kind of guy who made a kid feel special on his birthday. He made a huge stack of pancakes — and punched out a clown for showing up drunk.

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He cared. He might have had an unorthodox way of showing it, but he did care.

Buck's brother and sister–in–law really weren't important characters in the story. They were necessary as props for the story, but, once the audience had seen them and knew they existed, it really wasn't important for them to be around much anymore — and they weren't. Buck's girlfriend (Amy Madigan) and his brother's neighbor (Laurie Metcalf), on the other hand, were important to the story.

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"Marcie Dahlgren–Frost. Dahlgren is my maiden name, Frost is my married name. I'm single again, but I never bothered to remove the Frost. And I get compliments on the hyphen."

Marcie (Laurie Metcalf)

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Kelly's character, who already resented her parents for uprooting the family, tried to cause problems for her uncle by making Madigan believe he was having an affair with Metcalf.

But everything was resolved in the end. The younger kids loved their Uncle Buck almost from the start, and the teen gave him her grudging respect.

The audience did, too, and I have to think Hughes had a lot to do with that. He worked with Candy maybe half a dozen times and always seemed to bring out a sympathetic side to his characters. Through the course of his career, Candy always seemed to be better suited for supporting roles where he could be lovable. When cast in leading roles, inevitably he seemed to be the joker.

Except when Hughes was directing.

Other than "JFK," which gave Candy a chance to showcase his versatility as an actor within an ensemble cast, I don't think I was especially fond of any of the movies he made in the last five years of his life.

With the exception of "Uncle Buck."

Plunging into 'The Abyss'

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"It's not easy being a cast–iron bitch. It takes discipline and years of training. A lot of people don't appreciate that."

Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio)

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In 1989, James Cameron was still about a decade away from unimaginable fame and fortune as the Oscar–winning director of "Titanic."

Several years earlier, he had worked on special effects for an eminently forgettable movie called "Piranha II: The Spawning" — which, I suppose, was his first foray into aquatic cinema.

But 25 years ago today, his first directorial exploration of the sea — "The Abyss" — hit the big screen. (OK, he might have been inspired by the relatively recent discovery of the Titanic's remains.)

I do not use the word exploration lightly. It was truly a deep–sea adventure, a journey into the inky depths of the ocean. In fact, it went deeper than "Titanic" ever did — and introduced moviegoers to a Steven Spielberg–esque world far below the surface.

Actually, the inhabitants of that underwater world rivaled, in many ways, the extraterrestrial characters Spielberg cooked up for audiences over the years. That was appropriate because the premise of the movie was that the crew of a still–experimental underwater oil drilling platform (led by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, whose character designed the platform) was called in to investigate a suspicious nuclear submarine crash. The suspicion was that the crash was caused by extraterrestrials.

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To contact these extraterrestrials, they had to explore a deep underwater canyon.

Meanwhile, they had another set of problems with one of the crew members who was growing increasingly paranoid. And, to top it off, Mastrantonio's character was paired with her ex (Ed Harris), the rig's foreman. All of that gave the story a suitably soap opera atmosphere — as well some underwater intrigue.

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Virgil (Ed Harris): Hippy, you think everything is a conspiracy.

Hippy (Todd Graff): Everything is.

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Still, I thought it was an absorbing movie with a story that was accessible even to those who were not sci–fi inclined.

I've heard that Harris nearly drowned while making "The Abyss."

Apparently, he ran out of oxygen when he was filming a scene where he had to hold his breath underwater for an extended period of time. He signaled that he needed oxygen, but the safety diver was hung up on some cable and couldn't get to him. Another crew member gave Harris a regulator, but it was upside down, and Harris got water instead of air. Finally, he got a regulator in the right position and was able to breathe again.

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I've heard he broke down in tears later.

My understanding is that "The Abyss" did not use many stunt people. The actors were certified to dive before filming started and did their own diving. That accounts for the sense of realism — as well as, perhaps, stories I have heard of how raw emotions became during filming.

Mastrantonio has refused to talk about "The Abyss" in interviews. "'The Abyss' was a lot of things," she reportedly said. "Fun to make was not one of them."

"The Abyss" received four Oscar nominations and won one (Best Visual Effects).

Introducing the All-Starr Band

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This was filmed in Los Angeles at the end of the 1989 tour, but Joe Walsh
also played "Rocky Mountain Way" when I saw the All–Starr Band in July.

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Twenty–five years ago today, former Beatle Ringo Starr and his recently formed All–Starr Band opened their first–ever tour — 30 cities in six weeks.

That first show took place here in Dallas at an outdoor arena, and I was there. So were about 10,000 other people, including two friends with whom I rode from Denton, about 35 miles north of Dallas.

Apparently there was some anxiety backstage. I couldn't tell from the audience.

"I was real nervous before I went on," Ringo told the New York Times. "I kept thinking, What's it like? What do you do? All those madnesses go through your brain. But once you're out there, you see that people haven't come to see you get nervous. They've come to have a good time. And we're having a good time, too."

Accompanying Starr on that visit to Dallas were Joe Walsh, Levon Helm, Billy Preston, Nils Lofgren, Clarence Clemons, Jim Keltner and Dr. John. I heard that Bruce Springsteen was a guest at one stop during that tour. Paul Shaffer and John Candy were guests, too.

I don't recall any special guests when I saw the band, but that was OK with me. The band by itself was enough.

When I was younger, I hoped that, if I ever saw any of the Beatles in person, I would get to see John Lennon, but Ringo is the only Beatle I have ever seen to date.

I got to hear all the songs I wanted to hear him sing ("It Don't Come Easy," "Yellow Submarine," "Act Naturally," "With A Little Help From My Friends") — as well as the songs the others played.

The rest of the band members performed what were probably their best–known songs. It was like getting to see a string of mini–concerts.

Along with "Rocky Mountain Way," I heard Joe Walsh sing "Desperado" and "Life in the Fast Lane." Never got to see the Eagles in concert so that kind of filled that gap for me.

Levon Helm performed "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek." Likewise, I never saw the Band in concert, either. Check off another one.

Billy Preston sang "Nothing From Nothing" (I've heard he sang "Will It Go Round in Circles" when the band played in Japan). Dr. John sang "Right Place, Wrong Time."

It was a great evening — the All–Starr Band under the stars.

'Batman' Was Entertaining, and That's What Mattered

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"You ever danced with the Devil by the pale moonlight?"

The Joker (Jack Nicholson)

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I can remember the first time I saw Tim Burton's "Batman," which premiered 25 years ago today.

I was on my way to St. Louis to visit some friends, and, en route, I stopped off in Little Rock for a few days to visit some other friends. While I was there, they suggested that we all go see "Batman," which had been in the theaters for about a week.

So we did.

My friend Steve was eager to hear Jack Nicholson deliver — in context — the line we had been hearing in trailers: "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" I was just eager to see the movie. It had been getting a lot of press, and it was shaping up to be the summer blockbuster that year.

And I liked it.

Roger Ebert didn't. He said the movie was "a triumph of design over story, style over substance — a great–looking movie with a plot you can't care much about."

Well, see, that's where we come to a parting of the ways. My friends and I enjoyed it — maybe because we didn't bring such lofty expectations to the experience.

I thought Nicholson had a blast playing the Joker. Maybe he didn't, but he certainly seemed to be having a blast. (Considering the reported terms of his contract, which insisted on a high salary and a chunk of the box office receipts — which must have been considerable, given that the movie made more than $400 million — he had every reason to enjoy himself.)

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"Batman? Batman? Can somebody tell me what kind of a world we live in where a man dressed up as a bat gets all of my press?"

The Joker (Jack Nicholson)

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I don't know if Michael Keaton had a blast playing Batman — but he must have had fun and a certain sense of satisfaction, since my understanding is that he was primarily pigeonholed as a comedic actor before "Batman" was released. He put that reputation to rest and started landing some more dramatic roles, presumably as a result.

(Ebert wrote that Keaton's performance as Batman and Bruce Wayne was "so monosyllabic and impenetrable that we have to remind ourselves to cheer for them.")

As for Kim Basinger, well, she was 35 and a darned good distraction. I don't think her performance as Vicki Vale was her best — that would probably be her Oscar–winning turn in 1997's "L.A. Confidential" — or, for that matter, her most demanding.

Basinger wasn't the first choice for the role; Sean Young was. But Young fell from a horse and broke her arm during rehearsals. Burton chose to drop the horseback scene entirely — and go with Basinger instead.

"[A]lthough [Basinger] and Wayne carry on a courtship and Batman rescues her from certain death more than once," Ebert wrote, "there's no chemistry and little eroticism."

I'm not sure I would go that far, but I must concede that Ebert had a valid point when he wrote, "The strangest scene in the movie may be the one where Vicki is brought into the Batcave by Alfred, the faithful valet, and realizes for the first time that Bruce Wayne and Batman are the same person. How does she react? She doesn't react. The movie forgets to allow her to be astonished."

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Or a photojournalist.

To me, that may have been the most blatant false note. The true identity of a masked superhero is always a huge mystery, whether in a comic book or a movie — and the source of endless speculation among both those who wish him well and those who wish him ill. As much as I enjoyed "Batman," it was impossible for me to believe that Basinger, playing a photographer working with a newspaper that was eager for scoops, had zero interest in the subject, even when she figured it out.

Which she must have done. Vicki Vale was simply too sharp to miss something like that.

I saw the sequel to "Batman" — "Batman Returns" — and Basinger's character wasn't in it (except in conversation). Her almost casual discovery of Bruce Wayne's other identity was never addressed.

Maybe my friends and I didn't particularly care about the plot — but we were entertained by it.

And maybe that is all that mattered.

The Debut of Nirvana

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Twenty–five years ago today, Nirvana's debut album, "Bleach," hit the music stores.

Nirvana was part of the early grunge scene in Seattle — in fact, it can be said (and has) that Nirvana gave birth to grunge — and the band's second album, "Nevermind," was a major influence on the grunge style when it was released in 1991.

Considering what was to come, it may be surprising to realize that "Bleach" didn't even register on the charts — although it was pretty well received by critics. The absence of recognition was understandable. Nirvana was a new band to most people. There was no fanfare when "Bleach" was released; heck, the album was recorded on a shoestring budget — for about 600 bucks.

In fact, "Bleach" didn't even make much of a ripple with the public until "Nevermind" was a hit — although "Bleach" did sell 1.6 million copies. When "Nevermind" was a hit, then people really began to listen to "Bleach."

Probably the most well–received song on the album was "About a Girl," which band founder Kurt Cobain wrote about the girl he was dating at the time. It had a catchy sound that was good for radio and more mainstream listeners, but I don't remember hearing it on the radio much until after "Nevermind" was released — and "Bleach" was re–released to capitalize on the band's popularity.

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In general, Cobain had a disdain for the lyrics of most of the songs on the album. He claimed to have been under pressure from the record label to produce grunge songs that were like the ones in the band's existing catalog, and he said he wrote most of the song lyrics on "Bleach" the night before recording them.

Critics spoke of the influences on Nirvana's music — Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, the Smithereens — in their articles about the album, and that influence isn't hard to find. Indeed, at times it practically leaps out of the CD, grabs the listener by the collar and slaps him a couple of times.

But mostly what jumped out was Nirvana's emerging sound — uniquely its own, even with the influences of those who came before.

"School," for instance, had a very late '60s, early '70s quality — an almost Black Sabbath sound — to it.

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"Love Buzz," too, had the sound of that era.

It had all the trademarks of a psychedelic song, but then, at the end, things went in — shall we say? — a different direction.

Actually, I thought it had kind of an ominous, perilous sound to it. The fact that it was the only song on the album that was not written by Cobain may or may not have had anything to do with that.

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"Negative Creep" was probably the most blatantly grunge song on the album — a song Cobain admittedly wrote about himself. In hindsight, it was courageous of him to write a song about himself that was so honest.

Still, for all its rebellious attitude, grunge music hasn't been immune to hype. I've heard some people call "About a Girl" and "Negative Creep" grunge classics.

The word classic is, it seems to me, overused. There should be a generally agreed upon standard for how old something should be before it is regarded a classic. Perhaps having the word grunge as a modifier makes it acceptable — although I still wonder how any art style can have a classic form if the style itself is only 25 years old.

(In one of my classes, I heard two students discussing rap classics. Aren't those two words mutually exclusive?)

Throughout "Bleach," one could hear the roots of grunge in Nirvana's music. As songwriters, the members of the group, especially Cobain, were trying to find themselves — which ultimately led Nirvana to its own particular style.

They were nearly there when "Bleach" hit the shelves.

There was plenty of original material on "Bleach," but mostly what it did was whet the listener's appetite for what was to come.

Diamond Dreams

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"If you build it, he will come."

The Voice in "Field of Dreams"

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I know men of all ages who get emotional over the ending of "Field of Dreams." Even today, 25 years after its premiere — and after countless viewings.

I agree it's a good movie, but I guess I'm an exception because I have never become teary–eyed about it.

The performances are great. I especially liked Burt Lancaster, in one of his last movie appearances, as Doc Moonlight Graham.

While I'm on the subject, there really was a Moonlight Graham, and, apparently, relatively few liberties were taken with the facts of his life. The most noteworthy liberty was that the real Moonlight Graham made his only major–league appearance nearly two decades earlier than the one in the movie — and it came in the middle of the season rather than the final day of the season.

Moonlight Graham really did go into medicine, really did live in Chisholm, Minn., really did all those selfless things of which they spoke in the movie. I don't think the movie ever mentioned it, but Graham was born in North Carolina. Most viewers probably assumed he was a native of Minnesota.

So ...

Maybe Graham should have spoken in a more pronounced Southern accent when he was portrayed as a younger man, but Lancaster's accent was not a problem for me. After all, he was portraying Moonlight Graham after he had lived in Minnesota for half a century. His speech patterns had to have been affected by what he heard every day.

(I grew up in the South, but I have been told by many people that I don't have much of an accent. I'm really not sure how to account for that — except that my parents lived many places, including overseas, and I never really thought they had much of an accent, either, other than their use of the second–person y'all. I always assumed that was because of their exposure to other accents, and I picked up their speech patterns.)

In real life, Graham died in 1965. The shift in the timeline made it necessary for his death to be in 1972 in the movie.

Otherwise, it seems to have been true to the facts.

Doc Graham was a minor character in "Field of Dreams," though. Audiences discovered that the story really was about Kevin Costner's character, the one through whom the audience first heard the cryptic murmur, "If you build it, he will come."

It turned out to be about Costner and his father, but, for awhile there, most first–time viewers probably thought Doc Graham would be the mysterious he.

After all, Costner was the one who built the baseball field in the middle of his cornfield (and, really, I had to wonder just how many spouses would have been as easygoing about that as Amy Madigan). Costner went on an inexplicable trip to the East where he hijacked a reclusive writer (James Earl Jones) in an apparently vain attempt to make sense of the Voice's one–liners.

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The hints that the perplexing comment would turn out to be about Costner and his relationship with his father were all around, and some viewers probably picked up on it, but I didn't.

So the finish came as a surprise to me — but I don't get all blubbery about it whenever I see it.

Maybe I should. After all, the finish is about the symbolic ritual of the son (Costner) playing catch with his father, the bonding experience between father and son. I think many men get emotional because it reminds them of their experiences of bonding with their own fathers.

Not me.

When I was a child, my father was a college professor, and he spent most of the daylight hours on campus. Usually, I was still in bed when he left in the morning, and I was back in bed when he came home at night. When he wasn't in the classroom, he was in his office or the library.

Anyway, we never played catch, as far as I can recall. Maybe once or twice, but it wasn't a big bonding experience. My father preferred to play chess.

Maybe if we had played catch more, the ending of "Field of Dreams" would have had more relevance for me.

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But, you know, if bonding really is the point of "Field of Dreams," then it isn't just about a ritual, but it's also about the links that live on from one generation to the next.

Costner's character had a falling out with his father when he was a teenager, but they shared a love of baseball that survived his father's death.

My father and I bonded over other things.

He even taught me how to play chess.

The Calm Before the Storm

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I liked Roger Ebert's lead paragraph in his "Dead Calm" review: "The key image of 'Dead Calm' is of two ships drawing near each other in the middle of a vast, empty expanse of ocean. The emotions generated by this shot, near the beginning of the film, underlie everything that follows, making us acutely aware that help is not going to arrive from anywhere, that the built–in protections of civilization are irrelevant and that the characters will have to settle their own destinies."

That really summarizes things well. The ocean was a player in the movie — at times a barrier from both good and evil, at other times completely neutral, but always there. The lesson was clear — the rules of dry land do not apply on the high seas.

(Actually, in these days of the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 and the speculation that it may have crashed in the Indian Ocean, "Dead Calm" is not a bad metaphor. When it is said the plane apparently ran out of fuel in a remote portion of that ocean, it's worth remembering that scene to which Ebert referred.

(Technology has changed many things in the lifetimes of most of us, but it still has not overcome things like time and space. In an era when technology seems to bring everyone in the world closer together and that it really does seem to be a small world after all, it is folly to forget that there are still places in this world that are as unknown to us as the surfaces of distant planets — or that we humans are mere specks occupying this blue–green ball floating in space.)

I had never heard of Nicole Kidman before "Dead Calm" premiered 25 years ago today.

She had been in several movie and TV projects, but they, like "Dead Calm," were Australian projects. I don't recall many Australian movies that made it to the American market in the '80s.

Her co–star, Billy Zane, had had a few small roles in movies like "Back to the Future," but he hadn't received a lot of attention.

After I saw "Dead Calm," I knew who both were. Each received international acclaim. Deservedly so.

That was appropriate, I suppose, because their characters really didn't like each other. At all. It seemed to come so naturally from them that it didn't seem as if it could be acting.

Well, Kidman's character was sympathetic at first, but that didn't last. And Zane's character, well, he was psychopathic.

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Even though she was a familiar face in Australia, Kidman was still young (21) and virtually unknown. Zane wasn't much older (23). Their ages really weren't important to the story.

They had to be that young, I suppose. Most older characters probably wouldn't be as plausibly hostile to each other. Oh, I suppose a few might be, but most older characters seem to have a kind of grandparent quality. They're more likely to bake cookies for you or take you fishing than to attack you.

Kidman had to be young to be a believable mother, I suppose — although women don't always become mothers when they are truly young, do they? I was the first child in my family, and my mother was nearly 30 when I was born. So Kidman's character could, conceivably, have been older — but I doubt that Zane's could have. And he would have gotten the best of most of the 30–something women I have known (none of whom had the energy to keep up with a toddler).

When the story began, Kidman's character and her husband (an Australian naval officer played by Sam Neill) lost their young son in a car crash. To help them recover from their loss, they took their yacht on a vacation to the Pacific, where, just when it seemed they were beginning to mend, they encountered a drifting schooner that was taking on water.

A man (Zane) rowed over to the yacht in a dinghy, explained that his boat was taking on water and that everyone on board had died of food poisoning. Neill's character was suspicious so he decided to go over to the boat and check out the situation. He left Zane with Kidman — when I first saw the movie, I thought at the time that was his biggest mistake even though everything seemed to be under control. Zane, apparently exhausted from his ordeal, was asleep, and the door to his cabin was locked from the outside. (I remember wondering at the time why the door locked from the outside.) My fear was confirmed as the movie played out.

Neill found the corpses of Zane's companions — and a video tape that suggested Zane had killed them all in some kind of maniacal frenzy. He tried to return to his yacht, but, by the time he got there, Zane had awakened, knocked out Kidman and sailed away. Neill really had no choice but to return to the ship and try to repair it.

He would spend most of the rest of the movie repairing the schooner and then trying to catch up to his yacht.

In the meantime, the still emotionally fragile Kidman tried everything to persuade Zane to turn around and go back for her husband. She even pretended, at one point, to be attracted to him (after she had exhausted her bag of tricks) and yielded to his advances.

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But she hated him — and he hated her, too — and she was constantly trying to contact her husband by radio and figure out a way to get the yacht back to where he was.

Actually, I think the movie would have been a first–rate thriller if not for a few things that I just never could work my way around.

It could have been a great story about the resourcefulness of a woman who apparently knew little about sailing before the trip but managed to learn a great deal about it — mostly on her own (perhaps recalling instructions her husband once gave her but of which the audience knew nothing) — when her husband's life was on the line.

To make her way back to the schooner (the radar equipment indicated the distance between them was more than 40 miles), Kidman had to overcome Zane, tie him up and lock two doors that he would have to get through to reach her. Of course, he did, and she had to fend him off again, this time using a speargun.

Then, with no fuel left and daylight fading, Kidman managed to use the sails to maneuver the yacht to where Neill had set fire to the rapidly sinking schooner, watching it sink from some debris, and then fired a flare into the sky, all to signal his wife. He hoped — but couldn't know — she had seen it.

I found it a little implausible — but then I realized that, being the novice at sailing that she was and probably having been raised with a moral code that prevented her from killing another human, even in the extreme circumstance of oceanic isolation, it was an understandable response to the situation.

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The first time I watched the movie, I asked myself, "Why didn't he take the dinghy?" As far as I knew, there was nothing wrong with it.

And I had to agree with Ebert. Kidman's character should have killed Zane instead of tying him up. She knew what he was. She knew he had left her husband to die, and he would probably do the same to her eventually.

I understood that she played along with his naive fantasy that they were a couple on vacation in the Pacific in order to survive. But, when she had seized control of the yacht and had the upper hand, she kept him as a prisoner. How long did she intend to maintain that? After she picked up her husband, would they make a beeline for the nearest port to turn him over to the authorities? You couldn't tell from the movie. Perhaps it was explained in the book upon which the movie was based.

At sea, as in space, no one can hear you scream. And every minute Kidman wasted fending off Zane cost her precious time. Still, she tied him up.

So that part didn't make sense to me.

But neither did the ending, when it appeared that Zane was out of their lives forever — only to pop up suddenly like the hand that comes out of the dirt at the end of "Carrie."

There were other inconsistencies, much more modest and easier to explain. And, in the end, I had to say the performances were genuine.

But I still felt it was a flawed movie in many ways, and not the least of its flaws was its over–the–top conclusion.

I had to agree with Washington Post critic Desson Howe, who wrote, "For much of the movie, you're enthralled. By the end, you're laughing."

The Return of the Thinking Man's Western

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"It's not dying I'm talking about, it's living."

Gus McCrae (Robert Duvall)

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I remember vividly when "Lonesome Dove" made its first appearance on American television 25 years ago tonight.

I was a graduate journalism student at the University of North Texas working at the local newspaper to help with my expenses. On Saturday night, Feb. 4, there was plenty of excitement around the paste–up board for the front page of the entertainment section in the next morning's paper. The entire front page was devoted to the scheduled broadcast of the first installment of "Lonesome Dove" that night.

Believe me, in those days it was rare to see the front page of any section of that paper devoted to a single topic. It was also rare for the entertainment section to require any work on Saturday night — usually, that sort of thing was done during the week. But it reflected the general enthusiasm for the subject — an enthusiasm I had not anticipated. I knew Larry McMurtry's novel had been very successful a few years earlier and had won the Pulitzer Prize, but I had not read it yet so I didn't understand what was happening.

What was happening? Well, I guess the best way to describe it would be that the book was the barely perceptible start of a cultural seismic shift and the miniseries was its inevitable result, a transition to a renaissance for the western enjoyed on TV and the big screen.

(It also led to a revival of the TV miniseries, but the western genre really is the focus of my attention today. Still, a pretty good argument can be made that the boost for the miniseries has been the longer lasting of the two.)

If I had read the book before the miniseries, I'm sure I would have recognized the phenomenon. It was the same thing that happened when "Jaws" was a bestseller — everywhere you looked, people were carrying copies under their arms, in their backpacks and purses. They could be seen reading the book at bus stops, in waiting rooms, everywhere.

Then, when the movie came out, there were lines at theaters everywhere for weeks.

My mother read "Lonesome Dove" before the TV miniseries, and I found myself asking her questions after each installment. Did it happen that way in the book? I asked her repeatedly. Or did the screenwriters make that up?

Mom insisted the series was true to the novel. I remember that she was particularly impressed with the scene in which Jake (Robert Urich) was hanged by his old buddies for being a horse thief.

(I was inspired to read the book by what Mom told me, and I had to admit that the miniseries was, indeed, true to the story.)

I guess Jake wasn't really a horse thief, but he was a shiftless and unreliable sort, and he fell in with horse thieves — for protection, he insisted, when he was trying to get through Indian country. The code of the West held, however, that any man who would steal a horse was no better than a murderer because people needed their horses to do things and get around — and most likely would die if their horses were taken from them.

In the story, the men with whom Jake was riding had killed the owners of the horses and then taken them — so, technically, they were both killers and horse thieves. But that was neither significant nor a mitigating factor. Jake's buddies (Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Danny Glover) didn't want to hang him. It was a real crisis for everyone, and the book made that clear.

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Such moral dilemmas are the trademarks of extraordinary westerns. I know some people who only want to see gunfights when they watch westerns, but the truly great westerns are the ones that are more than mere 19th–century turf wars.

They are thinking man's movies — like "High Noon" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" — and "Lonesome Dove" deserves credit for reviving the popularity of the western genre. Of course, you've got to take the bad with the good. For every "Unforgiven" that came along in the wake of "Lonesome Dove," a purely shoot–'em–up flick or two would pop up.

I like a good western that makes me think, and, while I celebrated the revival of the genre, I lamented the fact that quantity often trumped quality.

In the coming years, movies like "Dances With Wolves" and "Unforgiven" achieved considerable followings. It can be argued that "Back to the Future III," which was set in the Old West, and the "City Slickers" movies were beneficiaries as well.

Westerns haven't been as prominent in the last decade or so. But if there were more TV westerns like "Lonesome Dove," maybe there would be more westerns in the theaters. Maybe it is time for a renewal of the genre.

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I really thought we would see a longer revival period than we saw 25 years ago.

In those days, as I have said, I was kind of busy — working on my master's degree and working full time at the local newspaper. I didn't watch TV much — well, except for the occasional sports event, maybe a movie now and then. Maybe there was talk at the time of how "Lonesome Dove" originally had been developed in 1972 as a feature film idea with Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne and Henry Fonda imagined in the roles that eventually were played by Duvall, Jones and Urich, respectively. The original project never materialized. I don't know the reason. Probably contractual issues.

If there was such talk at the time, I didn't hear it. I heard it after the fact — and rather piecemeal at that.

And I couldn't help wondering how the same story would have worked with Stewart, Wayne and Fonda cast in those roles. To be honest, I simply don't know.

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I never heard who was considered for the roles that were played by Anjelica Huston and Diane Lane.

Huston, of course, was the one who got away as far as Duvall's character was concerned, and Lane was the one who started out attaching herself to Urich's character but then gravitated to Duvall when Urich abandoned her on the trail.

It's hard for me to imagine those legends — Stewart, Wayne and Fonda — playing the three male leads instead of the ones who did. I guess that's a clear indication of how well the ones who appeared in "Lonesome Dove" played their parts.

The Holiday Season Begins

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Thanksgiving dinner is behind us now, and the countdown to Christmas is under way.

Which brings me to today's topic. It was 20 years ago today that "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" was released.

There are many movies and TV specials that are holiday favorites. For some people, it wouldn't be Christmas if they didn't watch "Rudolph the Red–Nosed Reindeer" or "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "It's a Wonderful Life."

Traditionalists will tell you their favorite holiday movies are "Holiday Inn" or "Miracle on 34th Street" or "White Christmas." In recent years, it seems the trendy holiday movie has been "A Christmas Story," but you will find devotees to "Elf" and "The Santa Clause."

For my mother, "We're No Angels," featuring Humphrey Bogart and Peter Ustinov in the mid–1950s, was what put her in a holiday frame of mind. I guess that is a little ironic because another movie by that name (but with a completely different story line and starring Sean Penn and Robert De Niro) came out two weeks after "Christmas Vacation."

(Actually, as anyone who knew her would tell you, it took very little to put Mom in the holiday spirit.)

But, for me, my favorite holiday film has been "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" for the last two decades.

Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo returned as Clark and Ellen Griswold for the third installment in the "Vacation" series of films, but they were paired with their third different son and daughter (the children also were recast in the 1985 sequel, "European Vacation"). Randy Quaid reprised his role as Cousin Eddie from the original 1983 film, and so did Miriam Flynn as his wife Catherine.

No matter how many times I see it, the segment in which Clark tries to illuminate his house with Christmas lights always makes me laugh. It's an exaggeration, of course, but, like any good exaggeration, it is based in truth.

Well, exaggeration has always been the specialty of National Lampoon movies. And Chevy Chase's rant about his boss probably hasn't been much of an exaggeration for some folks.

But mixed in with the exaggeration is some real truth.

I can think of few scenes in any holiday movies that capture the feeling of safety and security that comes with Christmas — along with that wistful feeling of missing those who were integral parts of Christmases past and are no longer with us — quite as well as the attic scene from "Christmas Vacation."

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When I see Chevy Chase prowling around in the attic, looking for a place to stash Christmas presents, it reminds me of my mother. And when he watches the holiday films he discovers, I am transported back to the Christmases of my childhood, when my mother and my grandparents and our family's closest friends were still with us.

It may be hard to remember at times, but Christmas is about more than commercialism. It's about being with those we love — and remembering those who are gone.

Mixed with the laughter, "Christmas Vacation" does a splendid job of reminding us what's really important at this time of year.