One Man's Life

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"We've become bored with watching actors give us phony emotions. We are tired of pyrotechnics and special effects. While the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there's nothing fake about Truman himself. No scripts, no cue cards. It isn't always Shakespeare, but it's genuine. It's a life."

Christof (Ed Harris)

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Imagine, if you will, that your life is actually a television show — a hit show, at that — and everyone knows it except you.

At least at first.

But slowly it dawned on Truman (Jim Carrey) that he was denied the free will that others enjoyed, that everything about his life was being manipulated beyond his control. He couldn't marry the girl he wanted to marry (Natascha McElhone). Instead he was paired with Laura Linney, a cast member on the show who, like everyone but Truman, was in on the story.

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The show was created by a fellow named Christof (Ed Harris), who also had to create the circumstances that inevitably kept Truman, an insurance sales executive, in a place called Seaside. It had millions of viewers, some of whom kept their televisions on all night to watch Truman as he slept.

"It's clever the way he's kept on his island by implanted traumas about travel and water," film critic Roger Ebert observed. That is certainly true, especially in the fact that Truman's true love was spirited away to Fiji — and he had been conditioned to fear water because Christof had manipulated the early scripts so Truman's father would drown in a storm.

In many ways, I believe no one but Carrey could plausibly portray Truman, especially since so many of us have become voyeurs in our viewing habits.

But the more one watches "The Truman Show," which premiered 20 years ago today, the less one can avoid the obvious question — how much of it is real?

The answer, I think, is all of it — but not in a way that viewers expect.

"The Truman Show" was an unassuming flick, thought provoking on many levels, well done and creative. Two decades later it is still worth seeing.

Salesmen Under Pressure -- Or Is That Redundant?

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"I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion. If everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way."

Ricky (Al Pacino)

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The Chicago-based real estate office in "Glengarry Glen Ross," which premiered on this day in 1992, probably could be any office in any business anywhere.

It certainly resembled offices in which I have worked (even though I have never worked in real estate) — a fairly small staff liberally laced with profanity (because the script did have so much profanity, I understand the cast jokingly referred to it as "Death of a Fuckin' Salesman").

The layout reminded me of the newsroom at a daily newspaper where I once worked. The editor had a little glassed–in office from which he could observe everything that went on in the newsroom — but nothing that went on in his office could be heard from outside when the door was closed (at least it couldn't be heard clearly). It was pretty much the same in this real estate office, where, in telephone conversations with prospective customers, the salesmen would pose as wealthy investors who were in town briefly but could juggle their commitments to allow for an in–house visit with a lead who had already proven to be hesitant or financially unable to invest in land.

It was a familiar ploy, but everything was familiar to the salesmen in "Glengarry Glen Ross." The salesmen had seen all these leads before and knew they were dead ends. It was frustrating. You could hear the frustration in their voices. You could see it in their eyes. I guess they continued to play the game in the hope that the outcome would change.

What did Einstein say? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The only reason that wouldn't apply in this case is the salesmen in "Glengarry Glen Ross" didn't think anything would change.

Why did they continue to play the game? Maybe they harbored an ill–defined hope that maybe a miracle would occur. Or maybe it was all they knew.

Profanity was about all the salesmen in "Glengarry Glen Ross" had left — the leads on which their livelihoods depended were worthless.

They were men under pressure, intense pressure, and it has been my experience that people who are under pressure are more apt to do things they might not do otherwise, like resort to profanity (if not worse). Such a situation is not improved when the people in charge look for ways to ratchet up the pressure.

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And the boys downtown found a way to do precisely that — in the person of Alec Baldwin, who was sent to announce to the salesmen the latest sales contest. The salesman with the top sales for the week would win a car. Second place would be a set of steak knives. Third place was a pink slip. Thus, the top two would be retained. The other two would be terminated.

The announcement caused considerable angst among the salesmen in the office. Jack Lemmon played a salesman who had once been the best but had fallen on hard times. He may have been under more pressure than anyone else with an ailing, hospitalized daughter. His character certainly elicited the audience's sympathy, but there were others — Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Al Pacino — who were fighting their own battles.

This was a period when Lemmon, who had already enjoyed a long and distinguished career, had some of his finest moments on the silver screen. His work in "Short Cuts," is often overlooked — and, to my great regret, I overlooked it when I wrote about that movie a few years ago (which was a mistake because his character's monologue on his infidelity must certainly rank among the best moments he ever had) — but "Glengarry Glen Ross" preceded it and contained some equally impressive performances.

In one scene Lemmon spent an evening at the home of a reluctant client who clearly did not want to invest. Lemmon knew it was a dead end, but he persisted until the man physically ejected Lemmon from his home. Desperation had driven both men to the inevitable.

In another scene, Lemmon tried to buy the new premium leads from office manager Kevin Spacey but ultimately could not because Spacey demanded payment up front.

The new leads were on everyone's minds. They were the leads that promised deals that could be closed — and Lemmon, under pressure, stole the leads and sold them to a rival. That led to another great scene between Lemmon and Spacey — in which Lemmon's role in the mysterious disappearance of the leads was revealed.

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Lemmon deserved more recognition for his work. He did win Best Actor in the National Board of Review's D.W. Griffith Awards, but Pacino received the movie's only Oscar nomination, losing Best Supporting Actor to Gene Hackman in "Unforgiven" — but winning Best Actor for "Scent of a Woman."

Perhaps Lemmon got the last laugh. His character was the inspiration for Ol' Gil Gunderson, the real estate agent on The Simpsons.

And that may be the more lasting legacy.

The Legends in a Mind

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"Imagine if you suddenly learned that the people, the places, the moments most important to you were not gone, not dead, but worse, had never been. What kind of hell would that be?"

Dr. Rosen (Christopher Plummer)

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As is so often the case with biographical movies, "A Beautiful Mind," which premiered 15 years ago today, was not a literal telling of the life — and mind — of John Forbes Nash Jr., who was played by Russell Crowe. Director Ron Howard and others who were behind the production readily conceded that point. Those who criticized it for being inaccurate in its portrayal of the Nobel Laureate in Economics needn't have bothered.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend the movie as source material for someone writing a term paper on schizophrenia. I haven't read the book upon which it was based so I don't know how accurate it might be — but books are almost always better (and, in the case of biographies, more accurate) than the movies that are inspired by them, anyway.

But I would recommend it for several other reasons.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you must be aware of my fondness for history and biography. And I do prefer that movie biographies not embellish the facts — but I realize that is almost impossible, even though I have long believed that if a life's story is compelling enough to be written about, it is compelling enough to be presented on its own merits without having to add to it in print or on the screen.

So I cut biopics some slack on the accuracy part if — and this is an important distinction for me — such discrepancies do not make significant differences to the story. I know that, as far as most filmmakers are concerned, these revisions are judged by their dramatic effect. I like to be entertained as much as the next guy, but the dramatic element really isn't important to me.

And, from what I know of the life of John Forbes Nash Jr., his schizophrenic episodes did involve the delusion that he was working on top secret assignments from the U.S. government. That's not the kind of detail I mean.

Let's say, for example, that the person being portrayed was, in real life, a lefthander — but the actor/actress doing the portrayal is right–handed. Unless the fact that the person was left–handed in life is a crucial point in that person's story — Babe Ruth, for example, was left–handed — I won't quibble over such a small detail. Well, not much, anyway.

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But suppose the detail in question has more significance than that. Suppose it locates a character in a place and time that had no meaning for that character's life — and presents that detail as being critical in the character's timeline. Suppose the character is portrayed as having played a decisive role in an event when, in fact, that character played no role in it at all.

That is the kind of thing to which I object.

I don't think "A Beautiful Mind" was guilty of that — although, ironically I suppose, "A Beautiful Mind" was the story of a man who believed he had played roles in events in which he really had played no role at all. The events themselves may have occurred only in that beautiful mind, which clearly was brilliant but also disturbed.

It was no surprise, really, when "A Beautiful Mind" won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. I thought Crowe deserved Best Actor (Denzel Washington won for "Training Day"), and Jennifer Connelly received Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Forbes' wife (I thought she should have been nominated for Best Actress). The movie also won Best Adapted Screenplay.

Christopher Plummer, who played the doctor who diagnosed Forbes' schizophrenia, was not nominated at all. Nor was Ed Harris, who played one of Forbes' hallucinations.

Oversights. Severe oversights.

A Trip to the Moon on Gossamer Wings

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"If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it."

Mrs. Lovell (Jean Speegle Howard)

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The day that I saw "Apollo 13" (which premiered on this day in 1995) at a movie theater is crystal clear in my memory. Not much else from that time is vivid in my memory — except for the fact that my mother died in a flash flood two months earlier. I spent that summer with my father. He had been injured in the flood and needed someone's assistance every day.

That summer is a blur to me now. I guess it was the routine nature of most days. I didn't take Dad to physical therapy every day, but I took him often enough that it took on a routine quality. Cooking his meals were daily events for me. I did the laundry and the housework — not every day but most days. Cutting the grass was once a week. A very routine quality.

But I remember the day I saw Ron Howard's "Apollo 13." Some friends of my parents called us up and asked if we wanted to go see it. We jumped at the offer.

There are always a few movie directors whose work I want to see — regardless of the topic. Ron Howard is one of them. And there are a handful of actors whose work I always want to see — regardless of the topic. Tom Hanks is one of them. A movie directed by Howard and starring Hanks was made to order.

I wasn't much on the space theme when I was a child — and I was a child during the space race. I got caught up in it when most people did, like when Apollo 11 went to the moon, but I really didn't pay much attention to it a lot of the time. I don't know why. It seemed to be a pretty big thing with most of the kids I knew.

But I do remember Apollo 13 and how the world seemed to hold its breath during the effort to bring that crippled spacecraft back to earth.

Ron Howard reminds me of Steven Spielberg in so many ways. They both love technology that gives them new options for special effects, and they love using that technology to get the kind of response from their audiences that they desire. Camera angles are important, but those computer–enhanced special effects are hard to beat — and almost impossible to resist if you're making a movie about America's space program.

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Even the actual footage of blastoffs couldn't provide the kind of angles viewers could see in "Apollo 13." After watching that movie, I, for one, had a much greater appreciation for the risks those astronauts took, strapping themselves into the nose of a rocket that went hurtling into the sky at hundreds of miles an hour and out into the unknown realm of space.

There were no guarantees of anyone's safety — yet the only astronaut fatalities in the first 25 years or so of NASA space travel were the three fire–related deaths on the ground in 1967.

That event provided one of the best moments in the movie, in my opinion. Hanks' character got moved up from backup crew to primary crew when the assignments were changed for medical reasons, and Apollo 13 was scheduled to lift off slightly more than three years after those other astronauts died in the fire.

Hanks' son in the movie — Jim Lovell's real son was only about 4 when Apollo 13 made its aborted moon flight — expressed his concerns about his father going into space (even though Lovell had been on a Gemini mission the year before the boy was born), and Hanks tried to explain to him about the lessons that had been learned from that fire and the improvements that had been made to spaceships because of it.

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Hanks explained to his son that a problem during the fire had been the hatch — the "door," he told his son. The astronauts were unable to open it when the fire broke out. NASA, he explained, had fixed that problem. "It's not a problem anymore," he assured his son.

Later in the movie, when the astronaut's wife (Kathleen Quinlan) told the boy that "something broke on your daddy's spaceship," the boy asked in a hushed tone, "Was it the door?"

Most of the time, Hollywood can't resist adding drama to a story that really doesn't need it, and "Apollo 13" didn't need it.

"Ron Howard's film of this mission is directed with a single–mindedness and attention to detail that makes it riveting," film critic Roger Ebert wrote. "He doesn't make the mistake of adding cornball little subplots to popularize the material; he knows he has a great story, and he tells it in a docudrama that feels like it was filmed on location in outer space."

As astonishing as the re–creation of the event in space was, it was hard pressed at times to match the scenes from earth. That is one of the things I remember from that time — how the newscasts focused on the astronauts' families and how they were coping with the situation. At the time, I felt torn between wanting to know everything I could possibly know — and wishing people would respect the families' privacy.

The nice thing about a movie, though, is that somewhere deep down you realize that the families' privacy really isn't being invaded, that these are actors. But the dramatization of Hanks' on–screen family watching the news coverage of Apollo 13's attempt to re–enter earth's atmosphere was as intense as if the viewer was watching the real thing.

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I'll grant you, it's hard to draw a distinction sometimes.

Howard's movie would have been incomplete if it focused only on what the astronauts — Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton — were facing. Much of the drama occurred on the ground — and not just on the home front. NASA's technicians, including Gary Sinise (whose character would have been on board if not for apparently needless worries that he might be sick with the German measles during the flight), performed heroically under pressure to come up with an ingenious device made from things on board the ship that would resolve problems with a damaged oxygen tank.

Television news did report that at the time, but my memory is that, when the astronauts were safely back on earth, the spotlight fell entirely on them. That probably suited the ground crew just fine. It was, after all, a team effort.

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Ed Harris played Gene Kranz, the captain of the team. In the movie, he was credited with saying, "Failure is not an option," although I have heard that Kranz did not actually say it, that it was created by screen writers.

That doesn't take anything away from what NASA achieved 45 years ago, and it took nothing from Ebert's admiration.

"The space program was a really extraordinary thing, something to be proud of," he wrote, "and those who went into space were not just 'heroes,' which is a cliché, but brave and resourceful."

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).

Telling the Tale of Special Kind of Men

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"There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, 750 miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it: The sound barrier. Then, they built a small plane, the X–1, to try and break the sound barrier. And men came to the High Desert in California to ride it. They were called test pilots. And no one knew their names."

Opening narration (by Levon Helm)

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With the recent death of Scott Carpenter, John Glenn is the last of the Mercury Seven astronauts who is still standing.

Their adventures are part of American history now. It is easy enough to read their stories, to learn of their accomplishments, to see how space travel came to be seen as routine by ordinary folks because a handful of extraordinary men had the courage to explore the unknown.

A lot of folks living today simply don't appreciate how hazardous it all was when it was still new to everyone. There were no guarantees of success.

Those early, tentative steps outside Earth's atmosphere seem quaint to 21st–century eyes, I suppose. The first couple of flights lasted less than half an hour, the next three only a matter of hours. It wasn't until the sixth flight that a man spent more than a day in space.

That was also the last one–man mission.

All that was before my time, but my grandmother told me stories of how seemingly everyone was caught up in what was happening, and people held their breath as the rockets lifted off, uncertain what would happen when a huge vehicle was thrust into the sky with enough force to burst through the atmosphere — and one lone man sitting at the top, hurtling into the heavens.

There was so much that people didn't know then. I guess that is hard for people of this century to comprehend. But those astronauts were latter–day pioneers, daring to run into the darkness.

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As a student of history, I found the story that was told in "The Right Stuff," which was released as a movie on this day in 1983, rang true to what I had been told and what I had read. In fact, I read much of it in Tom Wolfe's book, upon which the movie was based.

"The Right Stuff" never needed to create dramatic moments. There were many human dramas in the lives of the Mercury Seven.

Scott Glenn played Alan Shepard, the first man in space whose historic journey lasted only 15 minutes. That mission would seem laughably short to folks today, almost like a Saturday Night Live parody, but it was met with a hero's welcome, a ticker–tape parade and a visit to the White House to dine with President and Mrs. Kennedy.

The astronauts' wives, who felt they had made a deal with NASA to be supportive of the program and to make sacrifices in its name, believed they would be repaid for their loyalty the way Shepard's wife had been. But when the mission of Gus Grissom (Fred Ward) was regarded as a failure because the capsule sank, Grissom's wife (Veronica Cartwright) bitterly complained about the unfair treatment they received.

"I thought I was going to be Honorable Mrs. Astronaut," she said, "and I ended up being Honorable Mrs. Squirming Hatchblower."

Perhaps it was inevitable that the mission of John Glenn (Ed Harris) got the most attention in the movie. He was the first to orbit the Earth and, consequently, witnessed things no man had seen before.

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"It takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially when it's on national TV."

Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard)

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But the movie was really a salute to Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier and, although not one of the Mercury Seven, the test pilot against whom all other test pilots were judged.

When it comes to heroic figures, it's hard to beat Yeager. He withheld the fact that he had broken his ribs while on a horseback ride with his wife (played in the movie by Barbara Hershey) so he could fly the experimental X–1 — and, in the process, he became the first man to break the sound barrier, to conquer "the demon."

Yeager was a persistent presence in a true story that read like a novel and had the same feeling in the movie. It was funny, poignant and thrilling to watch a dramatization of the by–the–seat–of–our–pants approach to space travel that was taken by people who really had no idea how to do what they were doing.

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The risks were many, and the rewards, by comparison, were few.

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Girl at Pancho's (O–Lan Jones): I just noticed that a fancy pilot like Slick over there doesn't have his picture on your wall. What do you have to do to get your picture up there anyway?

Pancho Barnes (Kim Stanley): You have to die, sweetie.

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