In Pursuit of Justice

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Even when he was dying from lung cancer, Paul Newman always looked younger than he really was.

Most of us would consider that a blessing in a culture that worships youth and beauty, but it can be a real hindrance for an actor. True, appearing to be forever young has helped some get roles that might otherwise have gone to others, but it seems to me that, at some point, a performer wants to play roles that more closely match his/her age, with the knowledge and experience that come with it.

I mean, it seems that it would be darn near impossible to be in your 40s and try to plausibly play a twentysomething. Too much happens in the interim.

"I always thought drinkin' men lost their looks," Elizabeth Taylor said to Newman in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Newman was 33 when he played the part of Brick, who was probably about that age in that story but obsessed with his glory days as a high school athlete. He still looked the part (to Maggie the Cat's chagrin) — and his character even tried to do some of the things he once did only to learn that time always has its way. So does gravity. Even if it doesn't yet show in one's face.

But that's an easier assignment than being, say, in your 60s and playing a character 15 or 20 years younger. So perhaps Newman's youthful appearance worked against him at times.

When Newman made "The Verdict," which premiered on this day in 1982, he wasn't quite 60 years old. I don't know how old his character was supposed to be, but he was a lawyer and a drunk, which is not a good combination, least of all for assessing one's age. Based on things that were mentioned in the movie — when he finished law school, when he became a partner, etc. — Newman's character was probably five or six years younger than the actor.

Not really a stretch, especially for someone who was graying but whose hair hadn't turned totally white. Newman faced greater challenges in his career.

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Newman's character's story was a cautionary tale. All the failures in his life — his career, his marriage, everything — could be traced to his struggle with the bottle. But he was still in there pitching. He was mostly an ambulance chaser but a successful one. He seldom lost his cases, and a good friend and ex–teacher (Jack Warden) threw some work his way so he could keep a roof over his head and food on the table.

"The Verdict" was about one such case, a medical malpractice case that appeared to be open and shut. It was a "moneymaker," Newman's friend told him — an enticing word for a down–on–his–luck lawyer. A young woman who was about to deliver a baby was given the wrong anesthetic and was rendered comatose after choking on her own vomit. The Catholic–run hospital was willing to settle out of court, but after a visit to the hospital where the woman was being treated, Newman was determined to take the case to trial.

It was no longer about winning. It was about justice, and it was about redemption.

And the movie wasn't just about professional redemption. Charlotte Rampling was his opportunity for romantic redemption.

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I advise the student newspaper at a local community college. Recently I was having a conversation with one of the other advisers about our favorite Paul Newman movies. We compiled a predictable list until I mentioned "The Verdict," and he replied, "Yes, I forgot about that one."

We spoke of the acting — and it received plenty of recognition at the Oscars. Newman was nominated for Best Actor, and James Mason as the lead defense attorney was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

The movie was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Sidney Lumet) and Best Screenplay Based on Material From Another Medium. But it didn't win any of those Oscars. It was the year of "Gandhi," and "Gandhi" claimed three of the Oscars for which "The Verdict" was nominated.

A little trivia for you now:

Warden and Edward Binns, who played a bishop, were reunited in a Lumet–directed movie. Twenty–five years earlier, they played jurors in Lumet's "12 Angry Men."

Also, the next time you see "The Verdict," watch for a young Bruce Willis. He was a courtroom observer in this, one of his first movie appearances. Look for him during Newman's closing argument.

(Side note: Whenever I watch "The Verdict," I think about my senior play in high school, Ayn Rand's "The Night of January 16th." I played the judge in that production, and everyone had to stand when I entered or left the room. I thought that was cool.)

The Unnatural

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General manager: Want to look at a pitcher?

Mouth McGarry (Jack Warden): At this point, I'll even look at you.

General manager: He's a lefty.

Mouth McGarry: Lefty, schmefty. What's the difference? If he's got more than one arm and less than four, he's for us.

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Twilight Zone is absolutely one of my favorite TV series of all time. But no series is perfect, and Twilight Zone certainly had its share of misfires. I have mentioned before how I always watch the Syfy Channel's semiannual Twilight Zone marathons on New Year's and the Fourth of July and how there are certain episodes I always make it a habit to watch, whenever they happen to be aired.

Likewise, there are episodes I avoid. Those are the episodes I loathed the first time I saw them. Oddly enough, those episodes often turn out to be the most popular among other Twilight Zone fans. (I've never been able to explain that. It's kind of like being in my own personal Twilight Zone episode.)

That seems to be the case with the episode that first aired on this date in 1960 — "The Mighty Casey," a title that was inspired by Ernest Thayer's 1888 poem "Casey at the Bat." Now, I will admit that I have always liked baseball — more when I was a boy than now, I suppose — but I just never warmed up to this episode.

Others did, though.

The tale was about a fictional down–and–out baseball team called the Hoboken Zephyrs that was so bad it had to call a single victory a streak. The story opened with the team holding tryouts — and drawing a pretty motley crew.

Jack Warden played the beleaguered manager. He was convinced there were no — ahem — diamonds in the rough.

And then an older man came to the dugout. Warden thought it was a joke — a middle–aged man angling for a role as a rookie pitcher? No, he was a scientist who wanted to introduce Warden to the pitching prospect, s somber–faced fellow named Casey. The older man was Casey's creator. Casey, you see, was a robot.

Warden sent him out to the mound to throw a few pitches. His fastball scorched the catcher's mitt.

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His off–speed stuff bewildered batters who tried to hit it. Granted, they were Zephyrs — and wannabe Zephyrs. The real test would come when he faced legitimate big–league batters.

Warden figured he had nothing to lose — his club was already 31 games out of first place — so he put Casey on his roster.

And it really seemed to pay off. The mysterious Casey appeared unbeatable. He went on a shutout binge; he put together a real winning streak and had Warden dreaming of winning a pennant.

Then disaster struck. Casey got beaned in a game and was taken to the hospital for evaluation. While he was there, it was determined that he had no pulse, no heartbeat.

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Baseball rules clearly state that a lineup must be made up of nine men — and Casey didn't qualify, but his creator said he could give Casey a heart if that was what was necessary to earn the designation of human.

And that's what he did.

But, when Casey rejoined the club, there was a problem. The addition of a heart had given him something he had never had before — compassion.

It was obvious right away that something was different. He was smiling.

And when he took the mound, it was crystal clear that something was different. His pitches didn't baffle hitters. They were connecting — and frequently, spraying hits everywhere and driving in runs in bunches.

In the locker room, the scientist and Casey tried to explain to the manager that he no longer had the killer instinct that had served him so well before.

Casey said the scientist had urged him to go into social work, and that was what he was going to do. "I want to help people," he said as he left the locker room.

And the Zephyrs were back where they had been before Casey came along.

The scientist left Casey's blueprints with the manager — and it was strongly implied that those blueprints eventually were used to create a pitching staff that enjoyed great success.

As I say, I just never really cared for this episode. There were times during its run that Twilight Zone dabbled in stories about robots, and I never really liked them.

Coming Clean

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"Face it, they know we're always trying to nail 'em, and they don't like it. They like it, and they don't like it. It's got nothing to do with you, Lester. It just happened."

George (Warren Beatty)

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George, the in–demand hairdresser in "Shampoo," which premiered 40 years ago today, was cynical. I got that when I saw it — and I was young and perhaps not quite as in tune with my cynical side as I am today when I saw it.

But it wasn't until I read Roger Ebert's review several years later that I began to understand things about the symbolic nature of "Shampoo." For example, this is Ebert's opening paragraph from 40 years ago:

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"Beverly Hills, Nov. 4, 1968. In 24 hours, Nixon will be making his victory speech on television, pledging an open administration. In 40 hours, George, a hairdresser, will have negotiated the ruins of three affairs, bedded tentatively with a possible new recruit and seen the wreckage of his delusions. Shampoo never quite connects its images of national mediocrity and personal self–deception, but maybe it doesn't need to; maybe the message is that in a nation that doesn't connect, doesn't trust authenticity, what you get is a Nixon in the White House and a stranger in bed."

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I guess the timing, of both the presidential election in the movie and the movie's theatrical debut is worth keeping in mind. It never occurred to me when I first saw it, but perhaps the Nixon metaphor was too tempting at the time. Nixon, after all, resigned the presidency in August 1974. I was in junior high at the time, and I knew there was a lot of anger, a genuine sense of betrayal.

So setting the story in "Shampoo" against the hopeful backdrop of the immediate aftermath of a divisive presidential campaign — for an audience that knew only too well how soon those hopes were dashed — may have been appropriate. But it counted on the viewers to know how the Nixon presidency played out because the movie only showed news footage of Nixon and Agnew — and never showed footage that seemed to foreshadow what was to come.

Ebert was disappointed in "Shampoo." I wasn't. As I will explain later, my attitude when I saw it was simply to experience whatever the filmmaker wanted me to experience. I went into it with no expectations.

I guess that was the problem with the women in "Shampoo." They had too many expectations — about life, about love, about lifemates.

At times, it seemed to me the script for "Shampoo" was written in some kind of code. The word great, for example, was thrown around in much the same way as the word awesome is today. In fact, every time a character (usually Beatty) says someone or something — or whatever — is "great," try mentally substituting the word "awesome."

It will work — grammatically, that is — every time. It might even make more sense.

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Carrie Fisher, the 18–year–old daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, made her film debut in "Shampoo" as the daughter of Lee Grant and Jack Warden. Julie Christie played Warden's latest love interest — and one of Beatty's previous bed partners.

And Beatty bedded all three women — as well as Goldie Hawn, who was trying to decide whether to accept an on–location acting job in Egypt or stay in the States with Beatty — whose lack of interest should have tipped her off. But Hawn was in the grip of love — and, well, we've all been there before, right?

(There's that "self–deception" Ebert mentioned. That was the story of the women in "Shampoo;" Beatty just wanted to get financial backing to open his own salon.)

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The movie "didn't quite work" for him, Ebert wrote. "Its timing wasn't confident enough to pull off its ambitious conception. It wasn't as funny as it could have been in the funny places ... It isn't as savage as it could have been in its satire ... And it's not as poignant as it could be in its moments of truth, because we can see the wheels turning. We can sense that the movie's providing obligatory scenes instead of engaging us in a series of discoveries about its characters."

Fair enough.

In a way, I guess I was disappointed in "Shampoo" as well — but not as much as Ebert. Maybe it was because I had already read some articles about it and had a pretty good idea what to expect, but, as I say, it was one of those movies that I went into with no expectations about what it should or should not be.

I just let it wash over me — so to speak.

A Case of White Privilege?

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"It's for sure a white man's world in America. Look here: I raised that boy since he was the size of a piss–ant. And I'll say right now, he never learned to read and write. No, sir. Had no brains at all. Was stuffed with rice pudding between th' ears. Shortchanged by the Lord and dumb as a jackass. Look at him now! Yes, sir, all you've gotta be is white in America to get whatever you want."

Louise (Ruth Attaway)

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I think "Being There," which premiered on this day in 1979, was Peter Sellers' next–to–last movie before his death by heart attack in July 1980.

For awhile, I believed it was his last movie — that designation actually went to "The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu" — and that thought appealed to my sense of order somehow, that he had died after giving what was arguably his finest performance as Chance the gardener.

I suppose, if I had been Peter Sellers, I would have wanted the public to remember me for "Being There," not "The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu" — nor the somewhat bizarre posthumous performance he gave via archival footage in the last of the Pink Panther movies a couple of years later.

People do have a way of remembering the last thing a writer, an actor, a musician, an artist of any kind does before he/she dies — as if there is some kind of cosmic significance to it. Sometimes there is a touch of irony, given whatever happened shortly thereafter; other than that, though, I think people attach far too much to last words or last movies or last songs or whatever. And I am just as guilty as anyone else is, I guess. I try not to be, but I'm human and I do fall into that trap occasionally.

If it had been his last movie, though, "Being There" would have been a great way for Sellers to go out.

"Being There" was a comedy that equaled nearly every comedy Sellers ever made — and surpassed most. I say nearly because, frankly, it's darn near impossible to match what Sellers did in "Dr. Strangelove." I will go to my grave believing that.

Take that one out of the equation, though, and "Being There," with its subtle and understated symbolism, is, at the very least, equal to any other comedy Sellers ever made. Why do you suppose that was so?

On the occasion of Sellers' death, film critic Roger Ebert observed, "If Mr. Sellers was correct in saying that he had no personality of his own to portray, then perhaps his performance in 'Being There' was his most autobiographical."

I think Ebert was on to something there.

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"It was a virtuoso performance," Ebert wrote, "made all the more difficult because Mr. Sellers had to sustain a single note throughout the movie."

That was pretty much what Ebert wrote when "Being There" hit the theaters.

"Being There," Ebert wrote in his review about seven months before Sellers' death, "begins with a cockamamie notion, it's basically one joke told for two hours, and it requires Peter Sellers to maintain an excruciatingly narrow tone of behavior in a role that has him onscreen almost constantly. It's a movie based on an idea, and all the conventional wisdom agrees that emotions, not ideas, are the best to make movies from. But 'Being There' pulls off its long shot and is one of the most confoundingly provocative movies of the year."

That sums it up pretty well.

The story was simple, really. A mentally handicapped individual, Chance (Sellers), had been living in the Washington, D.C., home of an older man who died — Chance grew up there, actually, but I don't recall that his relationship with the old man was ever explained — and Chance had to find a new place to live so he found himself outside in the world, which created plenty of fish–out–of–water scenarios — perhaps the best of which came when Chance was approached by a group of young thugs, apparently intent on causing trouble for someone. Chance, who had a TV remote control with him (everything he had learned, other than how to tend a garden, he had learned from watching TV), repeatedly clicked the remote while aiming it at the leader of the gang.

Not surprisingly, neither the gang leader nor any of his associates disappeared when Chance did that.

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Chance was rescued from the streets of Washington by the wife (Shirley MacLaine) of an elderly, wealthy and ailing industrialist (an Oscar–winning performance by Melvyn Douglas) who also happened to be a friend and confidant of the incumbent president (Jack Warden).

Ebert was spot on when he wrote that "Being There" was based on the premise that Chance didn't understand that the world wasn't like the comfortable and predictable existence he had led before the old man's death. As Ebert observed, "life isn't television," and the only thing that Chance knew, besides television, was gardening. Listening to him talk was an exercise in doublespeak — actually, that should be doubleperception. When he spoke, people heard what they wanted to hear. "[H]is simple truisms from the garden," wrote Ebert, "are taken as audaciously simple metaphors."

Presto! A movement to nominate him for president was under way — and he hadn't even had to lift a finger. (I thought of Chance and "Being There" a lot when Ross Perot's nascent presidential campaign was being launched in 1992.)

"There are wonderful comic moments," Ebert wrote, "but they're never pushed so far that they strain the story's premise."

A satire that poked fun at all sorts of things, it rose to an entirely different level near the end when, after viewers had seen the political kingmakers promoting his candidacy while serving as pallbearers for Douglas, Chance was elevated to an altogether different — but clearly recognizable — realm.

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Sellers received a Best Actor nomination for his performance. He lost, in the "Kramer vs. Kramer" wave, to Dustin Hoffman.

When the Inmates Ran the Asylum

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Ralph (Robert Christian): I was in that taxi cab, but I didn't rob it. It was my cousin. He's crazy.

Arthur (Al Pacino): What's his name?

Ralph: I don't know. I mean he lives out in Hillsberry.

Arthur: You don't know your cousin's name?

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In many ways, Norman Jewison's "... And Justice For All," which debuted on this day in 1979, was better suited for current times, given its focus on corruption and injustice.

There is always an audience for that sort of theme, I suppose, because some people are predisposed to believe they have been victimized in some way, and I don't really see that changing. No matter how much we may reach for what we believe is a utopian society, human nature (being what it is) will pull in the opposite direction.

The story of "... And Justice For All" could have been written in the early 21st century. A longtime judge (played by John Forsythe, who really did look like a judge), the very picture of establishment privilege, was accused of rape. And the fact was that he was guilty, although he didn't say so to anyone.

He was already loathed by just about every lawyer who worked in his courtroom, including Al Pacino's character, a defense attorney. The judge asked for Pacino to defend him because he thought it would be good public relations. He believed he would be acquitted if the attorney who was defending him in court was also known to hate him.

"Inevitably, it's going to look as if the fix is in," Roger Ebert wrote, "unless the defense is conducted by a lawyer who's clearly on record as despising Forsythe."

That's a pretty cynical way of looking at things — unless you happen to be the product of a corrupt system.

It's also kind of daring for director Norman Jewison, given the many characters and subplots competing for the audience's attention.

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As Ebert observed, the movie "has so many characters doing so many things to, with and against Pacino that it's a triumph of film making when all the stories end in the same movie."

When I say there was a lot going on, you can take that to the bank.

Perhaps the wildest character was played by Jack Warden. Warden played another judge who was as crazy as any character you'll find in the movies. He was a bit of a thrill seeker, spending his lunch breaks sitting on the ledge of the courthouse's fifth floor and flying helicopters, carefully calculating how far he could travel and return safely on the fuel he had — and then flying a little farther than that, just to see if he could make it back.

He took Pacino on such a ride — and, on at least one occasion, he fired a gun in his courtroom.

"Gentlemen," he said, "need I remind you you're in a court of law?"

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I never have figured out the purpose of Warden's character in that movie. His helicopter flight with Pacino may have been good for a little comic relief, but, otherwise, I saw little relevance to the story.

Unless the point was that the lunatics were (and still are) running the asylum. Of course, that could have been it — or there could have been more to it, and I just didn't notice with all the competing subplots.

"... And Justice For All" received two Oscar nominations — Pacino for Best Actor and Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson for Best Original Screenplay — and lost both.