A Testament to Faith

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"Read the newspaper. What does it say? All bad. It's all bad. People have forgotten what life is all about. They've forgotten what it is to be alive. They need to be reminded. They need to be reminded of what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the wonderment of life!"

Leonard (Robert De Niro)

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I have already written about a couple of Robin Williams' movies that premiered in December, but today is the 25th anniversary of the premiere of a movie that will always be among my favorites — "Awakenings."

It surprised me, though, how much attention was given — and continues to be given — to Robert De Niro's performance. He was good, as always, but so was Robin Williams — who gave a truly sensitive performance (one that was probably surprisingly sensitive for many people). De Niro got the Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Williams was passed over.

Williams played a doctor who discovered the benefits of using a drug that had shown promising results with Parkinson's patients on victims of an encephalitis epidemic that left many people catatonic for decades. De Niro played one of the victims who now had to adjust to life in a world that didn't exist when they became sick.

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The movie was an affirmation of life, both from those who portrayed the victims of the illness and those who sought to treat them.

Williams' character came to hospital with no experience working with patients. He worked with earthworms in his most recent project. It was tedious work, but he brought a rare, even for that time, dedication to his task.

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Dr. Sayer (Robin Williams): It was an immense project. I was to extract 1 decagram of myelin from four tons of earthworms.

Dr. Sullivan (John Christopher Jones): Really!

Dr. Sayer: Yes. I was on the project for five years. I was the only one who believed in it. Everyone else said it couldn't be done.

Dr. Kaufman (John Heard): It can't.

Dr. Sayer: I know that now. I proved it.

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But he quickly developed an empathy for his patients and a deep desire to restore a conscious life to them. When the use of L–Dopa had truly astonishing results with Leonard (De Niro), Williams' character was emboldened to seek the funding necessary to make the drug available to all of his catatonic patients.

As I say, the emphasis was on De Niro, but I really felt the heart of the story was Williams. So, too, apparently did Roger Ebert.

"Dr. Sayer, played by Williams, is at the center of almost every scene, and his personality becomes one of the touchstones of the movie," wrote Ebert. "He is shut off, too: by shyness and inexperience, and even the way he holds his arms, close to his sides, shows a man wary of contact. He really was happier working with those earthworms. This is one of Robin Williams' best performances, pure and uncluttered, without the ebullient distractions he sometimes adds — the schtick where none is called for. He is a lovable man here who experiences the extraordinary professional joy of seeing chronic, hopeless patients once again sing and dance and greet their loved ones."

This was no Mork from Ork or any of Williams' manic characters. It was a character with whom the audience could identify.

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Julie Kavner played another such character, a nurse and ardent supporter of Dr. Sayer's vision. The introverted Dr. Sayer never realized what the audience had known for a long time until the end of the movie — that she loved him.

I guess that was something of an awakening in Dr. Sayer.

Sadly, the benefits of L–Dopa turned out to be temporary, and the patients were soon restored to their catatonic states — not unlike the story of Charly, Cliff Robertson's Oscar–winning role.

The manic side of Robin Williams could only be contained so long, of course, and he had a memorable Robin Williams moment during the cast press conference. Director Penny Marshall, in attempting to describe the story, kept saying "menstrual" instead of "mental," prompting Williams to step to the microphone and deadpan, "It's a period piece."

It was also a testament to faith in the human spirit and its ability to overcome just about any obstacle.

"Awakenings" received three Oscar nominations — Best Picture, Best Actor (De Niro) and Best Adapted Screenplay. It lost all three.

Living in a Material World

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"Paulie may have moved slow, but it was only because Paulie didn't have to move for anybody."

Henry (Ray Liotta)

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So much has been said about "Goodfellas," which premiered on this date in 1990, that it almost seems redundant to go over the plot.

So I will content myself with making some general observations.

First of all, let's talk about its place among the great films of all time. The American Film Institute ranked it #92 of all time — only about one–tenth of the movies that were ranked ahead of "Goodfellas" were made after "Goodfellas" made its debut, and I can't really quibble about any of them except for "Titanic" — which I thought was good but not great.

The thing about "Goodfellas" was that the motivation was the desire to be treated like someone special. There have been other great movies about organized crime in my lifetime — the first two "Godfather" movies come to mind — but I never got the sense that the central characters were motivated by a yearning to be treated better than anyone else, although I suppose that was always implied. Those other movies have always seemed to me to be more about money and power, but "Goodfellas" was about a bunch of guys who grew up in underprivileged homes and wished to have the privileges they had been denied. Driving fancy cars and wearing fancy suits were ways of showing that one had risen above humble circumstances; so was having all the people around fall all over themselves to satisfy your every whim.

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster," said Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), whose life story inspired the movie. "To me, being a gangster was better than being president of the United States."

At the end of the movie, Hill was nostalgic about the old days. "We were treated like movie stars with muscle," he recalled. "Today, everything is different. There's no action. I have to wait around like everyone else."

Roger Ebert described this sense of entitlement in the context of "the most famous shot" in the movie: "[Henry] takes his future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to the Copacabana nightclub. There's a line in front, but he escorts her across the street, down stairs and service corridors, through the kitchen area and out into the showroom just as their table is being placed right in front of the stage. This unbroken shot, which lasts 184 seconds, is not simply a cameraman's stunt, but an inspired way to show how the whole world seems to unfold effortlessly before young Henry Hill."

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Bracco's character was groundbreaking in that she was allowed to speak at length. Most of the time, even today, the women in gangster movies are occasionally seen (if they are lucky) but never heard.

Violence always comes with the territory in a gangster movie, and in trademark Martin Scorsese fashion, the violence in "Goodfellas" could be shocking and explicit. I guess it needs to be that way in a gangster movie to underscore how things are done in that universe.

The violence, Ebert wrote, "is a story of economic ambition. Henry and Karen come from backgrounds that could not easily lead to Cadillacs, vacations in Vegas and fur coats, and she justifies what he has to do to pay for the lifestyle."

Robert De Niro, of course, was great in his role as Jimmy the Gent — but, really, doesn't De Niro seem to belong in gangster movies?

One final observation, and this has to do with Joe Pesci.

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Pesci won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a psychopathic gangster. It is the same award for which he was nominated 10 years earlier but didn't win. Although he has given performances since "Goodfellas" that were worthy of Oscar consideration, I do not think he has been nominated again.

Perhaps that mistake will be corrected one of these days.

On Being Denied the Pleasure of Their Company

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Most of us — if we had our druthers, as the folks in the Li'l Abner comic strip liked to say — would prefer to die quickly and relatively painlessly when we were at the top of our respective games.

Not everyone is granted that wish, of course, just as it is true that not everyone lives to a ripe old age — but if one does live into old age, he/she is not likely to be as fit or as sharp as he/she was at a younger age. Such a person is hardly likely to go out on top of his or her game.

Most of us, I guess, would like to live long lives, but most people can't live long lives and be as vibrant as they were when they were young. Some can, I suppose, but not most of us. Everything in life, it seems, is a trade–off.

(In a way, I'm inclined to think that Spencer Tracy's character in "Inherit the Wind" was saying the same thing when he remarked, "Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, 'All right, you can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.'"

(Perhaps, when the subject is quality of life, it depends on what one considers progress — longevity or never having to contend with diminished abilities.)

My mother was denied the old age that my father has had. Mom was a schoolteacher who died in a flash flood 20 years ago. She and my father owned a duplex in Dallas and rented half of it as an additional source of income. The house had been in the family for decades. It originally belonged to my mother's parents, and she grew up there.

A week or so after my mother died, my brother and I crossed paths with the tenant, who remarked that Mom went out at the top of her game, and I couldn't argue with that.

A few hours before Mom died, she was at a carnival at her school. I've seen pictures that were taken that day. Perhaps there are home videos that were made as well in which I might be able to hear Mom chatting with her students or her students' parents. I can't get that from photographs, of course, but the look on Mom's face tells me she was in her element that day — and, for that matter, all the years she taught at that school. The tenant was right. Mom went out at the top of her game.

While I wish she had been with us longer, it is hard for me to imagine Mom in retirement. I know there were times when the job wore her out, but her work with children always seemed to energize her. I wonder where she would have found a source for that energy in retirement. My guess is that, if she couldn't be paid to mentor children, she would have found some way to do it for free — perhaps in a voluntary part–time capacity at a school or library.

There is a conundrum at play in every human life. See, I am grateful to have that mental image of my mother and not the one that my mother had of her mother in the final years of her life — but I still wish I had not been denied the pleasure of her company all these years.

Today would have been her birthday. It is also the 25th anniversary of the helicopter crash that claimed the life of another — and much more prominent — native of Dallas, Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was considerably younger than Mom, but it could also be said of him that he went out at the top of his game.

And I often wish we had not been denied the pleasure of his company.

Stevie Ray Vaughan struggled with substance abuse issues in the 1980s, but he had straightened up and was clearly on an upward trajectory when his helicopter crashed in southeast Wisconsin 25 years ago today. Each album was better than the one that preceded it, and his last album, "In Step," seemed to be the one that would earn him the acceptance of the mainstream audience.

His debut album with his band Double Trouble was called "Texas Flood," which was the name of one of the songs they played on the album — but it wasn't a Stevie Ray original. Matter of fact, it was a blues standard that had been covered by many artists over the years, but it came to be associated with Stevie Ray. Maybe he played it better than anyone else ever did. I don't know if that is true, but I do know that he played the hell out of that song.

I was in graduate school at the University of North Texas — about 35 or 40 miles north of Dallas — when Stevie Ray was killed, and I remember watching the news reports on the Dallas TV stations the night following Stevie Ray's funeral. The list of attendees read like a who's who of popular music — Eric Clapton, David Bowie, ZZ Top, Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne. Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many I have forgotten.

After Stevie Ray's death, the city of Austin, Texas, erected a statue in his memory, showing him wearing his trademark poncho and holding his guitar at his side standing by the river. Some folks didn't like it. I liked it well enough, I suppose, but I think I would have preferred for him to be holding his guitar in his classic pose on stage. To me, the guitar looked a little too much like a gun at his side — until you got close enough to examine it.

I thought it was ironic, in this the 25th anniversary of his death, that we got so much rain this past spring, and the river flooded the area around the statue. At the water's peak, Stevie Ray appeared to be standing on water.

Talk about your Texas flood.

Yes, Stevie Ray Vaughan went out at the top of his game, but you can still feel the loss for the rest of us. He was 35 when he died. He would be 60 if he had been permitted to live. At the time of his death, he had been putting out several records/CDs that soared on the charts; one can only imagine what the future held for him. Hey, 60 is a whippersnapper compared to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, all still out there playing to packed houses in their 70s.

What else might Stevie Ray have done in the last quarter of a century? I don't know, but I'm sure he would have been an influence on popular music. "In Step" would have been his breakthrough album, I'm sure of it, and I'm equally sure it would not have been his last. The entire musical landscape might be different today if he had not died.

"After he cleaned himself up, by 1990, he was back to playing guitar in a ferocious way," Jason Hanley, senior director of education for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, told the Milwaukee (Wis.) Journal Sentinel. "Who knows what he would have done next?"

One thing I do know — if you like blues rock, then you owe Stevie Ray Vaughan a special debt of gratitude. Every day, really, but today in particular.

On the Run With Sailor and Lula

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"This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top."

Lula (Laura Dern)

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"There is something inside of me that resists the films of David Lynch," film critic Roger Ebert wrote after the debut of "Wild at Heart" 25 years ago today. "I am aware of it, I admit to it, but I cannot think my way around it. I sit and watch his films and am aware of his energy, his visual flair, his flashes of wit. But as the movie rolls along, something grows inside of me — an indignation, an unwillingness, a resistance."

I don't think a lot of people really remember just how hot (not in the physical sense but in the successful sense) David Lynch was when he wrote and directed "Wild at Heart." Among his many projects was his TV brainchild Twin Peaks, which had a meteoric ride that began in April 1990 and continued until June 1991. At the end, the ratings were tanking, but it lit up the sky there in 1990. Many said it had developed a cult following for Lynch.

It was while Lynch was working on the first episodes of Twin Peaks that he was approached about directing a movie based on a novel called "Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula," the tale of a couple of lovers on the road together. Lynch was the one who introduced the crime angle; in the movie adaptation, Sailor and Lula weren't on the road so much as they were on the run.

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I guess that was one of the movie themes of that time — people on the run from the law (or something). To an extent, I suppose, it is always a movie theme, but it isn't always as popular as it seemed to be in the late '80s and early '90s.

And, even when there is an unusually high number of such road movies in the theaters, few are as surrealistic — and I say that fully aware that "Thelma & Louise" premiered less than two years later — as "Wild at Heart."

Anyway, as I say, Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) were on the run — but it started out that they were running from Lula's overbearing mother (played by Dern's own mother, Diane Ladd), who got other folks involved — gangsters, for example, and a detective (played by Willem Dafoe).

Both of the leads were played by young but familiar actors. Cage was cast regularly in movies in the 1980s — "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "The Cotton Club," "Peggy Sue Got Married," "Raising Arizona," "Moonstruck." By the time he made "Wild at Heart," moviegoers were pretty accustomed to the idea of Cage as a leading man.

Things were different for Dern. "Wild at Heart" was hardly Dern's first appearance on the silver screen — that came nearly 20 years earlier, when, at the tender age of 6, Dern was cast in 1973's "White Lightning" — but many moviegoers probably didn't know that in 1990, and most probably were not aware of her resume. She was cast in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," which received three Academy Award nominations, in 1974. She had had many supporting roles (earning a reputation within the industry for earnest portrayals of virtuous but rather naive characters); she had worked with Lynch before, on 1986's "Blue Velvet," and some of her roles could be regarded as leading roles, but "Wild at Heart" was probably the first truly successful movie in which she was widely recognized as one of the stars.

A big part of the plot of "Wild at Heart" was sex, as one would expect with an oversexed, hot–blooded type like Lula — and Cage's character was always willing to oblige her, as just about any man in that age group probably would. It's been quite awhile since I've seen the movie, but it seems to me that Dern and Cage marked just about every event with a roll in the sack ...

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Even though that is — to an extent — the kind of behavior that is expected of people Sailor's and Lula's age, it was part of what made the movie so surreal. "You've got me hotter than Georgia asphalt," Dern said to Cage at one point. She must have spent her life in a constant state of arousal.

Part of it was Lynch himself, though. The structure of the road film freed Lynch to indulge himself in all sorts of ways, which led to mixed results. That part was probably predictable. But he also took viewers to some intriguing places — like the aftermath of a two–car collision in which a young woman, suffering from an obviously severe head injury, emerged from the wreckage, staggered around for a little while, asking what had happened and trying to find her wallet, and then died in front of the amorous couple. Sailor and Lula regarded it as a bad omen.

Which it was, I suppose, particularly for the girl who died.

Ebert dismissed "Wild at Heart" as "a film without the courage to declare its own darkest fantasies." There may be truth in that. I only saw it once, many years ago. Maybe I need to see it again.

"I've seen the movie twice now," Ebert told his readers. "I liked it less the second time."

My advice to you is to judge for yourself.

A Clear Case of Mental Stalking

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"The girl is certain she is going to die. She's praying. In her mind she's praying."

Cayce (Ally Sheedy)

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I remember a time in 1991 when one of the premium movie channels — HBO or Cinemax or Showtime, I don't remember which one — was doing one of its periodic free weekends, when all the subscribers to the cable provider got the service for free for a few days. Presumably, it would show the subscribers what they were missing and convince some of them to add it to their service.

I suppose they still have those free weekends from time to time. I never seem to be aware of one, though, until it is too late.

Expanding my cable package was never an option for me in those days. I was in graduate school at the time and seldom had time to watch much TV when classes were in session. In fact, on that particular weekend, as I recall, I was busy with some sort of school–related project, probably the sort of thing that kept me in the library for hours, and I had to video tape things to watch later. Much later.

One of the things that I taped was a movie called "Fear," which actually made its debut on this day in 1990. Originally, I think the plan was to show it at theaters first, then move on to cable and then video distribution — but I don't think it ever made it to the theaters. For whatever reason, I think it made its debut on one of those premium movie channels and then was sold on video. That was why I had no memory at the time of it being in movie theaters. It never was.

In hindsight, I was glad I taped it — because I have never seen it again. It is possible that it was scheduled for broadcast a time or two in an area where I happened to be living, and I just didn't know it. But my experience has been that it is rarely, if ever, shown so, if you get the chance to see it, don't let it slip through your fingers.

Anyway, on this occasion, the movie wasn't going to be shown while I was in the library; it was going to be shown at a time when I would be in bed. So I set my VCR to record it, and I put the tape aside to watch later. I tried watching it piecemeal — you know, while I was getting ready to go to work in the morning, when I came home for lunch, etc. — but I discovered that did not work.

The movie put me under its spell. I had to watch it from start to finish. No interruptions.

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Ally Sheedy was the star of the show. Well, actually, she was at her peak in popularity a few years earlier as a member of Hollywood's heralded "Brat Pack" (Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald). By the time she made "Fear," she was probably on the downside of her career — even though she was only 28.

Sheedy played a psychic whose special skills included mentally seeing images or scenes from a distance and experiencing what another person experienced simply by being wherever whatever it was had happened or seeing photographs of the scene or touching clothing that had been worn by the victim — or touching an object at the scene. She often assisted the police in cracking murder cases — as she had the ability to mentally connect with murderers without their knowledge — and she used that skill to help the police catch them. It was her special advantage — or so she thought.

Sometimes she was able to prevent a terrible crime. Most of the time, she could only help the police find the person who committed a terrible crime — or a series of them.

Anyway, she was helping the police track another serial killer when she discovered that the suspect was a psychic, just like she was — and he was better at it than she was, too. He used that ability to terrorize Sheedy and Lauren Hutton — who, as I recall, played Sheedy's friend and agent.

The Shadow Man, as he was called, wanted to experience the fear of his victims, whatever scared them the most. He fed on it. And he seemed to have an almost orgasmic reaction to the knowledge that he and Sheedy could connect mentally. While it wasn't called this in the movie, I would label it mental stalking.

As I watched it unfold, it struck me that this would be an enormous invasion of privacy. Every thought a person might have would hold the potential to wreak tremendous havoc — for that individual and everyone who was close to him/her. Everything that was secret or personal or confidential would be an open book.

Through Sheedy, the Shadow Man learned that Hutton's character feared suffocation — so that is how he killed her, by holding a plastic bag over her face until she died. As I recall, Sheedy didn't even have the thought. Hutton's character confessed her phobia to Sheedy, and the Shadow Man heard the confession.

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Sheedy learned of what was happening to her agent/friend when she was powerless to do anything about it. The movie did a superb job of making the audience feel her helplessness as, in her mind's eye, she could only watch her friend die — and feel the terror that engulfed her.

With the help of a good Samaritan friend (played by Michael O'Keefe — lots of folks remember his performance in "Caddyshack" a decade earlier), Sheedy was able to foil the Shadow Man in a real battle of wills as the hunter became the hunted. It was nicely done.

Oh, I knew I was being manipulated. But it was one of those times when you enjoy being manipulated. The movie experience would be incomplete without it. You know what I mean?

As I say, I suggest you watch it if you can.

Going Back to the Future ... One More Time

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Marty (Michael J. Fox): I'm sorry, Doc. It's all my fault you're stuck back there. I never should have let Biff get to me.

Doc (Christopher Lloyd): Well, there are plenty worse places to be than the Old West. I could've ended up in the Dark Ages. They probably would have burned me at the stake as a heretic or something.

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The final installment of the "Back to the Future" trilogy premiered on this day in 1990.

Some people never thought there should be a sequel to the original, let alone a third movie. I didn't particularly mind, as I wrote last year on the 25th anniversary of the premiere of the sequel, mainly because I enjoyed the premise. But, in hindsight, I must admit that the concept had about run its course after three movies. I'm glad they didn't go all "Rocky" — or, God forbid, all "Star Wars" — on us. That could have been messy.

(Still, time travel does have certain things in common with space travel, does it not?)

Beyond that, there were a few things for which I was grateful when I saw the trilogy's final installment.

For one, I was glad the producers of the movie didn't try to return to the future. I think they explored that concept about as much as they could — without actually knowing what the future held, which, of course, was the point of "Back to the Future Part II." Other than that, I can't think of too much in the way of other themes about the future that could be plausibly explored.

It is that very knowledge that we do have about the past that makes the concept of traveling back in history, not forward, so appealing. And the temptation always seems to be to go back to a time when a major event occurred, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, and use the knowledge one brings from the future to change that past.

(It is a theme that was explored in what is probably my favorite episode from the second generation of the Twilight Zone TV series. It was about a visitor from the future who returned to Dallas in November 1963 and altered history by preventing the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Turned out, though, that history requires something of equal value when its predetermined course is altered. Because the assassination had not happened as it was intended, serious storms erupted around the globe and the Soviet premier was assassinated.)

No, I don't think there was any more fertile ground to be plowed in the future. But the past is a different matter. The past is as vast as space, offering countless opportunities. The stuff about the '50s was pretty much exhausted, though, so it was essential to pick a different time, and the old West was as good as any. Marty could interact with his ancestors, Irish immigrants, and the always present inventor of the Time Machine, Doc Brown.

I thought it was good, for example, that Lea Thompson could continue her fine work in the third movie, playing Michael J. Fox's great–great–grandmother after playing his mother in the first two movies. And that lent itself nicely to some clashing–centuries humor. For example:

At one point, at a fund–raising party in the town square, Marty held up a plate that had the word Frisbee written on it. Frisbee, apparently, was the name of the maker of the plate or the business that served whatever had been on the plate, but Marty, of course, associated it with the plastic disc that was such a popular toy in the '70s and '80s. Marty said to his great–great–grandparents, "Hey, Frisbee! Far out!"

"What was the meanin' of that?" Fox, playing his great–great–grandfather, asked after the latter–day Marty had sauntered off.

"It was right in front of him," Thompson's character remarked.

Another thing I liked about the casting was that it featured Mary Steenburgen, an actress with whom I was familiar long before she started appearing on America's movie screens. For a time, she was a student at the central Arkansas college where my father was a religion professor, and she appeared in some campus productions. I think I even saw one once. Hard to remember now. But I knew her name. It was distinctive.

Ten years before she appeared in the final "Back to the Future" movie, Steenburgen won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Melvin and Howard." As far as I know, she is the only former student of that college to win an Oscar — probably the only one ever to be nominated for an Oscar.

Personally, I have always thought she was a good actress — even though she hasn't been nominated for an Oscar for any of her performances since.

Film critic Roger Ebert complained that the "looking-glass quality" from the first two movies was absent in the third, and there is something to that. There is also something to his characterization of the pace of the first two movies as "dizzying," a pace that, it seems to me, is inappropriate for a tale set mostly in the Old West — even if it did involve time travel as well.

Ebert didn't care for the sitcom quality of the Old West as presented in "Back to the Future Part III," but he did find one part of it endearing — the romance between Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and Clara (Steenburgen).

He found one constant in all three movies: "a sort of bittersweet, elegiac quality involving romance and time."

"In the first movie," Ebert wrote, "McFly went back in time to be certain his parents had their first date. The second involved his own romance. The third involves Doc Brown and Clara. In all of these stories, there is the realization that love depends entirely on time. Lovers like to think their love is eternal.

"But do they ever realize it depends entirely on temporal coincidence, since, if they were not alive at the same time, romance hardly would be feasible?"

Hmmm. The relationship between romance and time travel. Something to ponder on the 25th anniversary of Part III's debut.

Loving Someone to Death

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"When somebody shoot you in the head, it make you think."

Joey (Kevin Kline)

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The basic plot of "I Love You to Death" — which premiered 25 years ago today — was that Joey (Kevin Kline), a successful pizzeria operator, was cheating on his wife Rosalie (Tracey Ullman), and Rosalie decided that Joey didn't deserve to live. Her mother (Joan Plowright) already felt that way.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the story was like "an acting class in which the students are presented with impossible situations and asked how they would handle them." But this one wasn't hypothetical. The movie was inspired by the true story of a woman from Allentown, Pennsylvania, who tried to kill her husband for cheating on her. "After the murder attempt failed," Ebert recalled, "the husband refused to press charges against his wife because he felt she had done the right thing."

That was pretty much what happened in the movie, demonstrating that truth really is stranger than fiction. Well, except for where it happened. The movie took place in the state of Washington. (I guess it could have been set in Fate, Texas.)

Rosalie, who had been convinced that Joey was faithful to her, was crushed when she learned that he was really a womanizer who had been cheating on her for years, but she didn't want to divorce him and give him the freedom to run around with anyone at any time. She recruited the help of her mother, who, as I say, had concluded that Joey didn't deserve to live, and a young co–worker who was infatuated with her (River Phoenix). And they began to discuss the ways and means of doing Joey in.

"In the movie version," wrote Ebert, "this story is developed into a domestic black comedy of droll and macabre dimensions. And it is told in a series of scenes in which most of the characters are either lying to each other, lying to themselves or incapable of coherent thought. The few moments of honesty and lucidity have a fascination all their own since under those conditions the characters tend to become tongue–tied with embarrassment."

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I guess my favorite such scene came near the end, when the investigating police officers, who had been told that Joey was sick with a virus, discovered he was bleeding in bed from a head wound. Rosalie, her mother and her co–worker stumbled all over each other to explain that they had "found" Joey in the yard, bleeding from an apparent gunshot wound. Rather than call for an ambulance, as innocent people in such a situation would be expected to do, they said they carried Joey inside and put him in his bed.

They also recruited a couple of constantly stoned hit men (William Hurt and Keanu Reeves), whose efforts to kill Joey were clumsy and ham–handed — at best.

But then it appeared that they had, indeed, killed Joey, and Rosalie experienced a case of buyer's remorse, I guess you could say.

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Joey, though, turned out to be extraordinarily difficult to kill and came walking up behind his wife, who was weeping and praying before the religious artifacts in her home.

At that point, the movie became an outrageous dark comedy. It had its moments up to that point, but it really took off in the last 30 minutes or so.

Describing the guilty trio, Ebert said their confrontation with the police was "the movie's most difficult and intriguing scene." Ebert wrote. "It takes place almost entirely in the eyes of the actors, and in their pauses and silences and is an exquisite exercise in guilty embarrassment. It is an almost impossible scene to pull off, but somehow they accomplish it."

The whole story was almost impossible to pull it off, but, in Ebert's own words, "somehow they accomplish[ed] it."

In Defense of Godfather III

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Twenty years ago today, the third and final installment of Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather" trilogy hit America's movie screens.

Movie fans had been waiting long enough. The first "Godfather" came out in 1972; the second came out in 1974. By the time "Godfather III" was released, it had been 16 years.

I observed the hype for this film — followed by a rather dismal reception from both audiences and critics — mostly from a distance. It wasn't in the same category with the first two in the trilogy, moviegoers were told, and I decided to wait and see it when it was released on video.

It was compared unfavorably — if such a thing was possible — to the third film in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, "Return of the Jedi," but even "Jedi" had some good things said about it by its detractors. "Godfather III," it seemed, did not — or, at least, not much.

And I have come to the conclusion that that isn't really fair.

Perhaps part of that was due to the fact that 1990 really seemed to be a year of sequels — "Back to the Future III," "The Exorcist III" and "Die Hard 2" probably were the most prominent ones, but every time one turned around, it seemed, there was another, lesser sequel, like "American Ninja 4," "Child's Play 2," "Gremlins 2," "Predator 2," "RoboCop 2."

In hindsight, "Godfather III" may have faced impossible expectations.

Was it the weakest of the three films? Of that, I think there is no doubt. And I agree with some of the main arguments — to an extent.

But, remember, this is a Francis Ford Coppola film we're talking about. His screenwriting/directing/producing resume includes such films as "Patton," "American Graffiti," "The Conversation," "The Great Gatsby" and "Apocalypse Now" before he directed "Godfather III."

As I wrote recently about Alfred Hitchcock, there are many film directors who wish their best efforts were as good as his mediocre ones.

In those 16 years, the first two "Godfather" flicks worked their way into just about everyone's Top 10 list of the greatest films ever made. "Godfather II" has frequently received a rare distinction for a sequel — that it was actually better than the original.

The bar was always set at impossible heights.

Between them, the first two "Godfather" movies won nine Oscars, and, from the perspective of the budget, things could hardly have been much better. The first film had a budget of $6.5 million and made about $245 million. The sequel two years later was made for about $13 million and earned $190 million.

In that sense, I suppose, "Godfather III" did not disappoint. Well, not entirely. It did make more than $130 million — but making it cost more than 2½ times what it cost to make the first two movies.

But it wasn't surprising that "Godfather III" cost more to make. The first two movies were made under much different economic circumstances; when you allow for inflation, production costs in 1990 were comparable to those in 1974.

Movie ticket prices went up in those 16 years, too, so box office receipts that came in below the numbers from the second sequel were seen as a failure.

It didn't help that critics were, well, critical. Assessments were decidedly mixed, although, in fairness, it ought to be noted that Coppola really wanted the film to be the epilogue of a story that he believed was told in its entirety in the first two films.

Coppola wanted the movie to be called "The Death of Michael Corleone," but Paramount Pictures demanded (probably for marketing purposes) that it be called "Godfather III."

That alone probably raised the bar to unreachable heights — and may explain some things.

As the 20th anniversary of its release approached, I decided to revisit "Godfather III," and here are my observations:

• Considering that "Godfather II" was regarded as both a sequel and a prequel to the original, I tend to think Coppola was right to consider "Godfather III" an epilogue to the story.
  
  I think it tells elements of the story that needed to be told, but they couldn't be told with the same familiar all–star cast. Some of those stars — Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Talia Shire — did come back, but there was no Marlon Brando, no Robert De Niro, no Robert Duvall. Most of the established box office draws were missing.
  
  Perhaps there were too many fresh faces — Bridget Fonda (in what was seen as her breakthrough role), Sofia Coppola, Andy Garcia, Joe Mantegna, George Hamilton. OK, so some of them weren't so "fresh," but their characters were new to this film series.
  
  And you could play the familiar music and you could show familiar settings, and you could open the film with another party that sugar–coated the Corleone family, but without enough familiar characters, with too many new characters, a sequel loses much of its sense of familiarity while the audience struggles to get up to speed on who everyone is.

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• For some reason, Sofia Coppola seemed to take the brunt of the criticism for the new characters who represented the next generation in the Corleone family. She was a last–minute substitution for Winona Ryder in a small but vital part, and, to some, her elevation with a modest acting track record smacked of nepotism.
  
  Her father was the director, after all.
  
  Critics said she was "wooden" and "hopelessly amateurish," but I thought she was better than many said she was. She was a teenager, after all.
  
  The role of Mary Corleone seems to have been star–crossed from the start. First, Julia Roberts (who may have been Hollywood's hottest actress at the time) was slated to play it, but she dropped out. Madonna, I have been told, was interested, but she was deemed to be too old. A rising young actress named Rebecca Schaeffer was going to audition for the part, but she was killed by a stalker. Then Ryder withdrew.
  
  Anyway, Sofia seems to have gotten the message that acting isn't her thing. It is no coincidence, I think, that she has made few appearances in front of the camera since she made "Godfather III," and she has increasingly followed in her father's directing/screenwriting footsteps.
• And some people — including Francis Ford Coppola — felt the movie was incomplete without Duvall's Tom Hagen, the "adopted" German–Irish son of Don Corleone and family legal advisor.
  
  Duvall, however, quit the project over a salary dispute, and his character written out of the story. In the movie, it was said that Hagen had died a few years earlier.
  
  Duvall's departure certainly changed things dramatically for everyone involved. Originally, the script called for a falling–out between Pacino and Duvall. It was, I am told, at the heart of the plot so, when Duvall pulled out, that meant practically the entire story had to be rewritten.
  
  I get the feeling that Coppola was particularly bitter about the matter, alleging that Duvall insisted on being paid the same as Pacino. Duvall, on the other hand, said that he understood Pacino was the film's star, and he didn't mind if Pacino was paid twice what he was paid, but Duvall claimed that Pacino's salary actually was three or four times greater than his and that he could not accept.
• I'm inclined to think the movie would have been better if Duvall had participated. No matter what his demands were, Coppola probably would have been wise to give in.
  
  Having to rewrite the story led to some pretty contrived dialogue, such as the time Michael advises the illegitimate son of his brother Sonny, "Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment."
  
  Or the "kissing cousins" relationship between Michael's nephew and daughter.

It all seemed, shall we say, a little heavy handed? But at least they had logical — albeit unlikely — explanations. Some things, of course, are beyond a logical explanation. It is jarring, to say the least, to see the Twin Towers in the opening segments of the film while the voice of Michael Corleone recites his letter to his estranged children, asking them to come to a papal ceremony honoring him for his charitable work — unplanned foreshadowing, perhaps, of the fall of the once–powerful Michael Corleone? Wow. Talk about heavy handed.

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Well, I guess it isn't as heavy handed as the climactic scene in "Godfather III" — which, by the way, I heard described by some reviewers at the time as one of the most powerful in filmmaking history. It isn't really possible, I suppose, that Coppola predicted the attack on the World Trade Center 11 years before it happened. I am not aware of any time when he has claimed to have the gift of prophecy. And yet he was telling the Corleone story from some time in the future, and we knew, in the context of that story, that "Godfather III" began in 1979. But I do not recall ever being aware of when the story was being told. Admit it. On Christmas Day, isn't it sort of fun to play around with the prophecy possibilities?

The Late, Great Stevie Ray Vaughan

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I was driving along in northeastern Oklahoma one spring night in the mid–1990s.

The sun had gone down, and I was listening to the radio. Fortunately, I had found a classic rock station nestled in among all the country stations in that neck of the woods, but it kept fading in and out on me, and I had to keep adjusting the station to keep the music playing in my car.

I remember listening for about an hour, and the music that was played was your standard issue classic rock. They were all songs I recognized from my youth, which is now more remote than I ever dreamed it would be, but I couldn't tell you exactly what they were.

Anyway, the songs played, one after another. As I say, it was the kind of stuff you usually hear on a classic rock station — I think they played some Dylan and some Who and probably a Beatles song or two, and a whole bunch of what I would consider the lesser lights of the classic rock era — recognizable but not necessarily legendary.

Then one song ended (I don't remember now what it was), and there was something like a couple of seconds of silence before the DJ came on the air and, in solemn tones, simply said, "The late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan."

And the next thing I heard was the opening riffs of "Crossfire."

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The date wasn't an anniversary of anything special (that I know of) from Stevie Ray's career, but, when "Crossfire" was finished, the DJ played "Little Wing," Stevie Ray's spine–tingling cover of the Jimi Hendrix classic.

And he capped that with "Texas Flood." I don't think the song was written specifically for Vaughan, but it sure gave him a great opportunity to show off his Texas blues style.

Well, for whatever reason, the DJ played a three–song tribute to Stevie Ray that night. He never said why. He just went on to whatever his next song was after his triple shot was finished.

But it was clearly a deviation. I listened to that station for a couple of hours that night. Sometimes the reception was better than at other times, but I never heard so much as two consecutive songs by another performer — let alone three.

Now, I've never objected when someone wanted to play some Stevie Ray Vaughan — especially in the last 20 years. In case you didn't realize it, it was 20 years ago today that Stevie Ray died in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin.

I remember that day very well. I was working for a newspaper in north Texas (a comparatively short drive — by Texas standards — from Oak Cliff, the section of Dallas where Stevie Ray was born in 1954). I was working for an afternoon paper, so it was necessary to come to the office early in the morning in order to get the paper done in time.

In those days, I didn't usually work on Mondays, but that day, for whatever reason, I did.

On Sunday, Aug. 26, 1990, Stevie Ray played for a sold–out audience in Wisconsin, then boarded a helicopter that was supposed to transport him to Chicago. But it crashed shortly after takeoff.

I slept later than I planned to that Monday morning so I didn't switch on the TV while I was rushing around, getting ready for work. And I don't remember why, but I didn't switch on my radio in my car. So I didn't know what had happened.

But I knew, when I walked into the newsroom, that something had happened. My co–workers were gathered around a small TV in the corner of the newsroom, watching reports from Wisconsin. No one said a word.

As I walked through the door and crossed the newsroom, I could clearly hear the TV reporter recounting how Vaughan's helicopter had crashed some four or five hours earlier. By the time I arrived at the TV, I already knew what had happened.

They had a big funeral for him in Oak Cliff later that week.

Nearly 30 years earlier, Oak Cliff achieved a certain amount of national notoriety for being the home of accused JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. And 30 years before that, criminal couple Bonnie and Clyde met in Oak Cliff.

But Oak Cliff probably never had as many famous people walking its streets as it did that day in 1990. Among those who attended Stevie Ray's funeral were Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton (who had participated in an all–star jam in Vaughan's final show a few days earlier), Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, the members of ZZ Top and many more.

In all, it was estimated that more than 1,500 people were crammed into the church where the service was held, and more than 3,000 stood outside in the heat of a late August day in Texas. All to pay tribute to a boy who, it could probably be said, came from the wrong side of the tracks.

He was 35 when he died.

It's hard to believe he's been gone as long as he has. It's even harder to imagine what he might look like at the age of 55 or what he might be doing today.

But the one thing I don't have trouble imagining is that Stevie Ray would be doing something musically. He might have gone in unexpected directions if he had been alive for the last two decades, but, unless he had to have his arms amputated for one reason or another, I have no doubt he would be playing his guitar.

Like John Lennon 10 years earlier, Stevie Ray Vaughan was taken much too soon, and the world was deprived of the unique contributions he would have made.

As a result, we have all been poorer since that helicopter crashed in Wisconsin 20 years ago today.

It Ghost To Show You

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It hasn't been a full year since Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer. That anniversary is still two months away.

While it was truly tragic that he died at the age of 57, it would have been nice if he could have survived for another 10 months.

Because today is the 20th anniversary of the theatrical release of what is arguably his most memorable performance. Sure, some people will tell you that they think of Johnny Castle in "Dirty Dancing" or Orry Main in the TV miniseries North and South when they think of Swayze, and those were both solid performances.

But I tend to think of "Ghost" — which was released on this date 20 years ago.

And I do so for reasons that really have nothing to do with Swayze or anyone else connected with the movie.

Actually, I thought the story was good but not great — certainly not, at least in my opinion, worthy of the Oscar it won for Best Original Screenplay. The acting, I thought, was rather pedestrian. In fact, I thought there were minor supporting actors and actresses in the cast who did more with less.

And then, lo and behold, Whoopi Goldberg up and won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.

But that isn't what I remember about "Ghost."

What I remember is that I never saw it at the theater. I saw it about 15 months later. I was wrapping up my work on my master's degree in journalism, and I had taken a few days off from work to study for and take my comprehensive exams.

From time to time, I would take a break from my studying, which usually included switching on the TV. And "Ghost" was playing a lot on cable at that time — seemed like it was on every time I switched on my set.

Anyway, I watched it in pieces and out of sequence that week. I don't think I ever saw it from start to finish — and that, I suppose, is why, to this day, I still think of various parts of "Ghost" when I think of topics from my comprehensive exam — and vice versa.

Even when I was taking a break, I suppose, my mind was still going over the material I had been studying.

Of course, there is more to remember.

Like, for example, the fact that it was directed by Jerry Zucker, who participated in the production of "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun." With that kind of background, you might expect more of a slapstick kind of a movie. But, while it had its humorous moments, "Ghost" was astonishingly restrained. Therefore, I guess you would have to say that the virtual absence of that sort of thing was a welcome surprise.

And I would say that Swayze was something of a surprise, too. I wouldn't exactly call "Ghost" the swan song of his career — he was involved in film and television projects for the next couple of decades — and I'm not sure you could call it his masterpiece, but it was certainly an improvement over the two films he made the year before — "Next of Kin" and "Road House," both of which earned Swayze "Worst Actor" nominations from the Razzy Awards.

I guess it goes without saying that, before "Ghost," the expectations for Swayze were not terribly high.

But he was back on the map after "Ghost." A few months after it was released at the theaters — and was well on its way to earning more than half a billion dollars — Swayze hosted Saturday Night Live and joined Chris Farley in a memorable sketch in which the two auditioned for the Chippendales.