More Work Was Needed on Remake

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

Pete (Richard Dreyfuss)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Okay," Hap relied.

"Am I dead?" Pete asked.

"That's right," Hap answered.

"I'm dead?" Pete asked again.

"Right," Hap replied again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Young Stars Left Their Mark in 'American Graffiti'

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As I have mentioned here before, my father was a college professor when I was growing up.

He was rather young compared to others on the faculty, and I guess he always had a more informal relationship with his students than many of his colleagues did. I never really stopped to think about it. All I knew was that many of his students came to our house when I was a child.

The young men in my father's classes frequently came to help with the landscaping that my father often did around our property. Their girlfriends — well, I guess I assumed that was what they were — chatted with my mother and helped her make lemonade for the men to drink when they took breaks from their labor.

Other occasions appeared to be extensions of my father's classes. I remember times when many students came to our house, apparently for prearranged group discussions. My point is that my father had a friendly relationship with his students.

Anyway, we were kind of in a hurry in August of 1973. My family had spent about six or eight weeks in Austria that summer, and not long after our return, we had to move to Nashville where my father was going to be on sabbatical for the rest of the calendar year.

When "American Graffiti" premiered on this day 40 years ago, we probably hadn't returned to the United States yet, and, when we did, we didn't have time for movies. Fact is, I don't think we went to a single movie while we were in Nashville.

After Dad's sabbatical was over, my family returned to my hometown, and Dad resumed his teaching duties at the college where he had been employed for as long as I could remember. And not long after classes resumed following the Christmas break, I remember being in his office one afternoon, and a group of his students were there.

They were all chatting about a movie that had been in the theaters for some six months but was just getting to my hometown theater, and they were all excited about it.

(Actually, that was pretty quick for my hometown. As I have mentioned here before, it typically took movies a year or more to come to my hometown when I was a child.)

The movie was "American Graffiti," and its advertisements asked a simple question: "Where were you in '62?"

One of the students had seen the movie while she was home for Christmas, and she told the other students, "If you can remember the '60s, you'll love this movie."

And on the basis of that remark, my father decided to take my mother to see it. They were reasonably young, younger than most of my father's faculty colleagues, and I guess my father figured they could relate to the same things his students could.

But the truth was that my parents were a bit older than the characters played in the movie by Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford and Cindy Williams. My father's students were a bit younger, but they were influenced by the same things.

So they could relate to what they saw in "American Graffiti," but my parents really couldn't. They had already been shaped by other experiences by 1962, and I think that was when they realized that their lives were at a different point than my father's students.

I couldn't really relate to it, either. It was before my time. Wolfman Jack, an important albeit minor character in the movie, was a pioneer D.J. to my father's students; to me, he was an occasional host of The Midnight Special on Friday nights in the '70s.

And, while I can't speak for my father's students or anyone else, I remember the night before I started my college years, and it was nothing like what was depicted in "American Graffiti."

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Well, it was a different time.

What's really interesting for me today when I watch "American Graffiti" is to think about where all these people are now and what they've done with their lives in the last 40 years. "American Graffiti" was a big break for many of them.

Howard, of course, needed no break. He started out as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show, and he starred in another hit sitcom, Happy Days, not long after appearing in "American Graffiti." Then he moved on to directing.

Dreyfuss has had a distinguished career, which included an uncredited part in "The Graduate" several years before he was in "American Graffiti," but his best, most successful — and, in one case, Oscar–winning — roles came after he was in "American Graffiti."

(In hindsight, success may have come a bit too quickly for Dreyfuss. He was, at 29, the youngest Best Actor winner, and he struggled for awhile with drug issues.)

Ford was in several movies before he made "American Graffiti," but it seemed to open a lot of doors for him. He's made a lot of movies in his life, but he is probably best known for playing Han Solo in the first "Star Wars" trilogy, and Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the other Indiana Jones movies, all of which came along after "American Graffiti."

Williams is probably best known for starring in a TV series that was a spinoff from Happy Days — although she also appeared with Ford and Gene Hackman in "The Conversation" the next year. She had mostly forgotten TV roles in the years before "American Graffiti;" people remembered her after the movie was a hit.

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Even Suzanne Somers, who played the mysterious (and silent) girl in the white T–bird, enjoyed success that may have been due, at least in part, to her role in "American Graffiti." A few years later, she was a co–star on a smash hit TV sitcom, Three's Company.

A Slice-of-Life Movie

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When I was growing up, Neil Simon was probably the biggest name in the playwrights' world universe.

I admired many writers as a young man. Most were writers of nonfiction, but among the fiction writers, Simon was in a league by himself. Even those who did not read much — and there were (and are) many of those — Simon was known for his many works that were brought to the big and small screens.

Like anyone, Simon has missed the target on occasion — but he's had more hits than misses. He may have been hitting his stride 35 years ago today when "The Goodbye Girl," made its theatrical debut.

The title was an example, I think, of what made Simon so popular. His characters always seemed to have occupations that were exotic — when compared to most humdrum, routine jobs — and sometimes it seemed that the common man could have very little in common with them.

But those characters weren't seen as distant because they were always facing very human predicaments, things to which anyone could relate. They were multi–dimensional.

In "The Goodbye Girl," Marsha Mason played a former Broadway dancer who became known as the Goodbye Girl because of all her failed relationships. The story found her living in the apartment of her latest ex (who had skipped out) with her precocious 10–year–old daughter, Lucy (Quinn Cummings).

Younger viewers may only know Mason as Martin Crane's love interest on Frasier in the late '90s. Similarly, they may only know Dreyfuss as Mr. Holland. And they probably don't know Cummings at all.

But, in "The Goodbye Girl," they played people with whom audiences could sympathize. Dreyfuss played his role so well he was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Actor.

Mason, Cummings and Simon were all nominated for Oscars, and the movie was nominated for Best Picture, but only Dreyfuss won.

And it really wasn't hard to understand why. Dreyfuss had been showing up on TV and in movies for about a decade, but he had rarely been the featured star (exceptions had been 1975's "Jaws," 1977's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and a few others).

Cummings, of course, was a bit of a newcomer. If she had won for Best Supporting Actress, she would have been in exclusive company — a few years older than Tatum O–Neal was when she won the Oscar for "Paper Moon," and she was a couple of years older than Anna Paquin was when she won Best Supporting Actress for "The Piano."

But all that is irrelevant because, of course, Cummings did not win. I suppose there is an argument to be made that, if Cummings had won the Oscar, she might have become more of a presence in movies than she became. Most Oscar winners do.

But, as I say, Cummings did not win, and she hasn't appeared in a movie in more than 20 years.

Dreyfuss, who did win, has appeared in many movies since then, and he has become a familiar face to moviegoers in the process.

It wasn't just the acting that drew me to this movie, however. As is true with most of the movies that I really like, a lot of its appeal is in its witty dialogue. We can thank Simon for that. He put some great lines in the characters' mouths.

For example, early in the movie, when Mason and Dreyfuss are still testy with each other, Dreyfuss's character says, "I love listening to you talk. I hate living with you, but your conversation is first rate."

Dreyfuss had the most immediately memorable lines — or perhaps he made them memorable with the quality of his acting — but I discovered, upon reflection, that many of Mason's lines had a staying power of their own.

For instance ...

When Mason's character tells her daughter to be tactful in her interaction with Dreyfuss.

"What's that?" Lucy asked.

Without batting an eye, Mason replied, "Lie!"

Or when Dreyfuss — in what could only be charitably referred to as his first negotiation with Mason — suggested that she was a "sharp New York girl."

"No a dull Cincinnati kid," Mason replied, "but you get dumped on enough and you start to develop an edge."

"The Goodbye Girl" was a real slice of life.

A Close Encounter

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When I was growing up in Arkansas, there was a domed movie theater in a shopping center in the nearby city of Little Rock that always seemed to have the latest hit movies.

It was in the era before the multiplex theaters with a dozen or more screens. In those days, most theaters only showed one movie at a time.

And if anyone had asked me where I would like to see any movie, that was the place I would have chosen.

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This theater had a very futuristic name to go with its futuristic look — Cinema 150. And it was such a great place to see a movie — it was designed so virtually no one's view of the screen could be obscured by a person sitting in front and with a state–of–the–art sound system that could make anything sound good.

I'm told the Cinema 150 went out of business many years ago. That both saddened and surprised me. We live in the age of, as I mentioned before, multiplex theaters, and Cinema 150 was not designed for that — so the fact that it went out of business didn't particularly surprise me because I never figured that a single–screen theater could survive in the modern environment.

But I was still surprised because, frankly, I just never imagined Cinema 150 not being there.

And I was saddened because so many of the movies that I still love today were movies I saw for the first time at Cinema 150 — even if they weren't always recent releases (and many of them weren't).

Some of those movies are regarded as classics; others, I suppose, would fall under the heading of guilty pleasures. Most fall somewhere in between, I guess. But when I see them now, those films always bring back warm memories of afternoons and evenings spent with friends and family.

On this occasion, I have been thinking of the time I first saw "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," which premiered on this date in 1977.

I saw "Close Encounters" at Cinema 150 — the perfect place, I remember thinking at the time, to see a sci–fi flick like that — a few weeks after it premiered.

And I saw it with Karen, my girlfriend. At that time in my life, I judged whether a day was good by how much of it I spent with Karen.

That was — indisputably — a good day. In my mind at the time, nothin' could be finer.

We drove to Little Rock one Saturday evening — as we often did — and went to Cinema 150 to see the movie. When we emerged after the movie was over, we walked from the theater to my car, which was parked about midway through the parking lot.

On our way, there was a sudden clap of thunder. Karen and I looked at each other, and, wordlessly, we made a mad dash for the car, arriving and unlocking the doors only a few seconds too late to avoid getting drenched in the downpour.

We sat in my car for a few seconds, staring at each other, our mouths hanging open, and then we both began laughing simultaneously. And we hugged each other.

And then we drove home, talking all the way about the movie and our eerie trek from the theater to the car when it was over.

I don't remember now what we talked about. Points of the plot, I suppose. Maybe we spoke of lines of dialogue from the movie. Steven Spielberg's movies always have lines that I remember long after I've forgotten points from the movie.

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One of my favorites at the time (and still today) was when Richard Dreyfuss' long–suffering wife, Teri Garr, said to him, after being dragged from her bed at 4 in the morning to stand in the middle of nowhere waiting for whatever it was (and, at that point, only the audience really seemed to know what was going on) to return, "I remember when we used to come to places like this just to look at each other ... and snuggle."

At the time, I was a teenager in love, and I couldn't imagine being so obsessed with anything that it would distract my attention from my love interest — yet that was precisely the case with Dreyfuss when Garr made that remark. And I remember pondering that in the theater, temporarily losing track of the story.

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(Karen had her own distractions, particularly her weakness for "little ones," and there was none cuter in any of the movies we saw together than the young feller who played Melinda Dillon's son.

(He wasn't a distraction for much of the movie, though. The aliens abducted him early, and he wasn't seen again until near the end.)

Ah, yes, the end of the movie. Spielberg has this knack you may have noticed. Although he is revered in an almost godlike way by many, Spielberg does make a movie now and then that is mostly ordinary — but there is always a segment in his movies that is unique, something that elevates them and gives other movies of that genre something for which to shoot.

Few, if any, manage to hit that target, but that is Spielberg's role, I guess, to provide the target — even where one may not have existed before.

In "Close Encounters," that segment came at the end, when the aliens returned, and people who had been missing for decades emerged from their spaceship.

It was a breathtakingly fantastic sequence for which I can provide no insights that haven't already been offered repeatedly in the last 35 years.

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And, if you've seen it, you'll understand why the memory of that jog across a Little Rock parking lot in a cloudburst is still so vivid in my mind.

In Praise of Teachers

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As I wrote last week, there are whole portions of 1995 that I simply do not remember.

That's true. At the time, I was very focused on my father, who was recovering from his injuries (both physical and mental) from the flood that took my mother's life in May of that year.

But, by the end of December in 1995, my father was recovering and I was emerging from my own fog of grief, and I started doing normal, everyday things again, like going to the movies.

I didn't see "Mr. Holland's Opus," which made its debut on this day in 1995, until the next calendar year, but I had heard a lot about it and I had eagerly anticipated it — and it lived up to my expectations when I finally saw it.

(By the way, you can see it a week from tonight, at 7 Central on Turner Classic Movies.)

It was the biography of a music teacher, and it reminded me a lot of my mother, who was a teacher during her life. It also served as an inspiration for me a few months ago when I was writing about the memorial service for one of my closest friends, who was as musically gifted as anyone I have ever known or ever expect to know.

A fictional story, the movie told a tale most people could probably tell — of the teacher (or coach or church leader or some adult figure) who made a difference in their lives.

Michael Costello of AllMovie.com observed that it was a throwback to the days of "the tribute to a life of selfless dedication" theme. It was, he wrote, a genre in which the great John Ford excelled, but it seems to have fallen on hard times.

Costello had praise for the acting, especially that of the star, Richard Dreyfuss, but he had several complaints about the story, writing that the subplot was "underdeveloped" and "heavy handed."

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I suppose the criticism was warranted, but I guess most teachers would tell you that they get a charge from witnessing the moments when the light bulb comes on for their students, the way it did for young Gertrude Lang in this clip.

There was nothing false about the depiction of that experience in the movie. It is an exciting moment.

Perhaps I feel that way because my parents were teachers and so were my father's parents. I myself have been a teacher of journalism at times in my life — currently, in fact, on an adjunct basis at the local community college — and I have known that feeling.

The problem with being a teacher, though, is that you can't always be sure you're having that kind of impact on the people in your classroom. And, to be fair, most people would probably tell you that few, if any, of their teachers truly inspired them.

I know that most of mine did not.

But there were a few who did — a few Mr. Hollands along the way. They may have been the exceptions, but they more than made up for it with their devotion to their subject, whether it was music or art or science or math.

"Mr. Holland's Opus" was an homage to all of them.

And, in her own way, Glenne Headly, as Mr. Holland's supportive spouse, contributed much to Mr. Holland's approach to his students.