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."

Murder and Mayhem in Brooklyn

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Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant): Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.

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In 1944, Cary Grant was one of the most popular movie stars in Hollywood.

He's been called "the best star actor there ever was in the movies," and, if he wasn't, he should have been. The American Film Institute agrees. When AFI named its top 50 male and female movie stars, it listed Grant as second only to Humphrey Bogart.

During his career, Grant must have co–starred with nearly all of the most beautiful leading ladies of his time, but I don't think he ever really had the same chemistry with any of them that he had with Priscilla Lane in "Arsenic and Old Lace," which made its big–screen debut 70 years ago today.

Grant seemed to have chemistry with everyone, but there was something special about his chemistry with Lane. She had a definite girl–next–door quality, not unlike Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island, that set her apart from Grant's other co–stars. That was a good quality for her to have because, in "Arsenic and Old Lace," she was the girl next door. The viewing audience knew her as Grant's new bride, but, before that, she had been the girl next door.

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Lane was young and vivacious — and not a star in the sense that Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Irene Dunne and many of Grant's usual co–stars were. Lane probably would have qualified for one of those "you know the face, but do you know the name?" contests — if such a thing existed in 1944.

Lane didn't upstage Grant, who was clearly the star (and, therefore, the primary attraction) of the movie — perhaps that was part of what made the movie so appealing. In reality, Grant was 11 years her senior, but they looked very natural together on screen. It worked in a way that Grant's other on–screen relationships did not.

Lane's character wasn't submissive, she was deferential. The thesaurus may tell you that those words are synonyms, but they don't really mean precisely the same thing.

Maybe a big part of the movie's success was the dialogue, which came from Joseph Kesselring's 1939 stage play. It was a huge hit, opening in January 1941 and moving to the Hudson Theatre in 1943 before finally wrapping up in 1944 after more than 1,400 performances.

That's an important fact to remember because the movie was made in 1941; but it couldn't be released until after the play had concluded its run on Broadway because of a mutual agreement between Warner Bros. and the producers of the play.

That led to some interesting quirks in the story. For example, the story itself took place in Brooklyn, and it was supposed to be set in the present day. When the movie was made, the then–Brooklyn Dodgers had won their first National League pennant in more than 20 years (they lost the World Series to the New York Yankees, four games to one), and the opening sequence shows the jubilation of Brooklyn baseball fans.

In the next three years, the Dodgers plummeted to 42 games out of first place, and, what with the war and everything, the '41 pennant was a distant memory by the time the movie made it to the theatres — so the references to Brooklyn's championship season had no real relevance to moviegoers in 1944.

One of my favorite lines in the movie was when Aunt Martha (Jean Adair) said she was anxious to leave Brooklyn because the community had changed since the Dodgers "won that old pennant thing." That certainly would have been a lot more amusing in 1941. Audiences in 1944 had to reach too far into their collective memory bank.

Aunt Martha and Aunt Abby (Josephine Hull) were delightful supporting characters who, as one of their charities, poisoned lonely old bachelors and widowers to end their suffering, then buried them in the cellar — with the assistance of their nephew Teddy, who believed himself to be Teddy Roosevelt.

(A nice touch was the way Teddy would run up the stairs and yell "Charge!" It was his re–enactment of Roosevelt's famed charge up San Juan Hill.)

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I don't think I ever saw Adair in any of her other film roles (there weren't that many of them; most of her career was spent on the stage) so I think of her performance as Aunt Martha when I think of her, but Hull is different. I always associate her with her Oscar–winning role in "Harvey." It was a similar kind of role, I guess — a peculiar, even eccentric, older lady — and she was awfully good at it.

It wouldn't be right to discuss the supporting characters without mentioning two other, more sinister characters — played by Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre.

Massey took the place of Boris Karloff, who was still appearing in the stage version on Broadway when the movie was being made. Adair and Hull were in the Broadway play, too, but they were given leaves of absence to make the movie. Karloff was the main attraction of the Broadway show, however, and couldn't be spared.

The movie retained a line that was written for Karloff. His stage character was supposed to have had facial surgery by his companion, who had been intoxicated and made the character of Jonathan look like Karloff. The resemblance was mentioned in the script and, presumably, it drew a huge laugh from theater audiences when Karloff was said to look like Karloff.

To support the story about the surgery, Massey was made up to look like he had scars on his face.

As a student of history, though, I have more appreciation for a line that Massey's character delivered.

To set the table, as it were ... there was a discussion about Massey's murder record stacked up against the record of his aunts in Brooklyn. One of the victims Massey claimed to have killed had died of pneumonia — but he had been shot first. Lorre's character insisted that it didn't count.

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"He wouldn't have died of pneumonia if I hadn't shot him," Massey replied.

I don't know if Americans of that time were as ignorant of the nuances of history as they are today, but that was an allusion to the death of President James Garfield in 1881.

Garfield was shot in early July 1881 and lingered for weeks, at times appearing to improve only to get worse. Eventually, he died more than two months after being shot. Officially, he died of a heart attack and pneumonia, neither of which probably would have occurred if not for the facts that he had been shot earlier and the inadequate medical treatment he received had taken a toll on his system.

So Massey's assertion that a victim wouldn't have died of pneumonia if he hadn't been shot was a reference to the manner of the president's death.

I wonder how many people knew that in 1941 or 1944.

'Birthday Girl' Suffered From Bad Timing

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If a movie made its debut at the theaters 10 years ago today, such scheduling probably could be seen — in hindsight — as bad (but not intentionally so) timing, to say the least.

The promoters couldn't possibly have known about it ahead of time, but 10 years ago, of course, Muslim extremists hijacked and crashed four commercial airplanes, killing some 3,000 people in the process, and my memory is that Americans weren't doing much in the aftermath of that event — beyond going to work and coming home afterward.

At least, that would describe my daily routine for several months after the attacks.

I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but I know I wasn't going to see any movies in September 2001 — or in the following months — and my guess is that a lot of other people weren't going to the movies in the autumn of 2001, either.

That's just a gut feeling. But I remember that tourism in general was struggling (in fact, things got so bad that George W. Bush actually made a televised appeal for people to go back to amusement parks and other tourist attractions), and so were other forms of entertainment.

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"Birthday Girl" may have gotten lost in the shuffle.

It hadn't started showing in theaters when the planes crashed into buildings in New York and Washington.

It did make its debut on this day in 2001 — but at the Venice Film Festival. It started showing in U.S. theaters in February, when much of the shock had worn off — but consumers were still somewhat wary.

The movie was made on a budget of about $13 million. To date, its revenue has been a little more than $16 million worldwide. That is comparable to the box–office performances I have seen from other films that were released around that time.

In early 2002, a lot of people still weren't comfortable in many public settings.

While it tried to be a crime thriller, "Birthday Girl" was also a love story and a comedy — which tells you most of what you need to know. I felt it tried to be too many things, that it needed to focus on doing one thing really well.

It was a modern twist on the old "mail order bride" theme — the man who was looking for love (Ben Chaplin) made the arrangements for his Russian bride on the internet. His bride (Nicole Kidman) was very beautiful, but she had a dark and mysterious side that led to some rather serious problems.

I guess that was the biggest problem for "Birthday Girl" — the fact that, at its core, it was a romantic comedy that leaned to dark comedy — and tried, too often, to be a thriller.

Consequently, it always struck me as being out of balance — too much comedy in the first half of the movie, too much of a thriller in the second half.

If the writers had settled on which kind of movie they wanted, it probably would have been much more effective.

Faithless

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It's probably safe to say that, when Cher and Ryan O'Neal die, their appearances in the 1996 movie "Faithful" probably won't be mentioned in the lead paragraphs of their obituaries.

Neither, I'm sure, would object to that.

If Cher, for instance, is going to be remembered for her work in films, it almost certainly goes without saying that she would prefer that people remember her Oscar–winning performance in "Moonstruck" — or her parts in "Mask" or "Mermaids" or "The Witches of Eastwick" — and not her role as Maggie in "Faithful."

For that matter, O'Neal would surely prefer to be remembered for "Love Story" or "Paper Moon" — or even "What's Up, Doc?" — and not for playing Jack, Maggie's philandering husband who hires a hit man to kill her.

It was billed as a comedy, but, frankly, I found little amusing about it. Neither did audiences or critics, apparently.

The premise was that Maggie, on the occasion of her 20th anniversary, was depressed and seriously contemplating suicide. Meanwhile, Jack had hired this hit man to kill her, and the hit man kept his appointment.

But a funny thing (not "funny ... ha ha" but more like "funny ... strange") happened. The two started to bond while they waited for the all–clear signal from Jack.

(That's actually some sort of syndrome, I believe — in which a person who has been abducted forms an attachment to the abductor. If I remember correctly, it is what happened to newspaper heiress Patty Hearst when she was being held by the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s.)

There was something else that was funny (again, not "funny ... ha ha" but more like "funny ... strange") about what unfolded.

Nobody cared.

Well, I didn't. I can't really speak for the others who saw it, but I can reach some conclusions — and one is that nobody cared. Literally. The film's opening weekend produced nearly half of its total gross revenue.

I didn't see it at the theater. I saw it years later on TV.

And I decided, as I watched it, that too many things just didn't add up. For instance, Cher and O'Neal were supposed to be playing a childless couple marking their 20th wedding anniversary. The childless thing was clearly a sore point between them, and most people would figure that, logically, they must be in their early to mid–40s in order for the failure to conceive to still be such an issue.

But they were about 10 years older than they needed to be. O'Neal turned 55 the weekend the film was released, and Cher was about to turn 50. Cher was well past her childbearing years, and O'Neal should have been over the disappointment of having no children.

If closeups hadn't betrayed those facts from time to time, the audience must have been influenced by its knowledge of just how long both had been in the public eye.

I know I was.

In 1996, Cher had been familiar to audiences for more than 30 years, going back to her 1965 hit with Sonny, "I Got You Babe." O'Neal's TV credits went back farther than that, but movie audiences had been aware of him for more than a quarter of a century — since 1970's "Love Story."

If the faces hadn't been so familiar, the story might have been more effective. But, as it was, I simply couldn't buy it.

For that matter, I couldn't work up much empathy for any of the characters, either. And, as I say, it appears I wasn't alone. Judging from the box office receipts, not many people paid to see it.

They didn't miss much.

Overlooked and Forgotten

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This month would have been actor Walter Matthau's 90th birthday.

I suppose, when most people think of Matthau, they think of the work he did with Jack Lemmon in "The Odd Couple" movies and "The Fortune Cookie." I certainly do.

Or perhaps they think of "The Sunshine Boys," the movie in which Matthau's co–star was the legendary George Burns. That's another one that I think of frequently.

But, lately, my thoughts have been drawn to a film that got a warm reception from critics and audiences when it was released nearly 40 years ago but has been largely overlooked and forgotten since — "A New Leaf."

It is rarely seen on TV anymore, and I simply can't understand why. Matthau's performance as playboy Henry Graham (an "aging youth," in his uncle's words, who is unskilled at anything except being one of the idle rich) is nothing short of brilliant.

But he is matched with the deliciously dry, deadpan delivery of Elaine May, a talented writer and director who is seldom recognized for what she has accomplished. Perhaps she stole some of his thunder.

May wore many hats for "A New Leaf." She was writer and director as well as co–star, adapting a short story into a dark comedy that managed to work in some timeless truths at the same time. Matthau's Henry was self–absorbed; May's Henrietta was the opposite, and together they proved that opposites really do attract — sometimes in spite of themselves.

It's hard to discuss the plot in much detail because so much of the humor of the film has to be experienced. The attached clips are funny — and even presented in a kind of chronological context — but you can't appreciate the film until you see it.

And I encourage you to see it whenever you can.

In a nutshell, though, Matthau plays an aging playboy who has spent his inheritance and is not equipped, by training or temperament, to support himself through labor. His options seem limited and, aside from the step that he can't quite bring himself to take — suicide — he decides to ask his uncle, who was his childhood guardian, for some money.

His uncle refuses so Henry makes a deal with him. His uncle will loan him enough money to keep up appearances for six weeks, during which time he will try to find a wealthy bride, court her and marry her. After the wedding, with his newly acquired fortune, he will repay his uncle.

In the event that he fails to find a bride by the end of the six weeks, he will give all his possessions to his uncle.

Henry's situation looks bleak when the days go by, and all his attempts to woo rich single girls fail. It looks like his uncle (delightfully played by James Coco) will win their wager.

But fate intervenes, and Henry happens to meet Henrietta. She is the heir to a huge fortune, shy (painfully so), naive, klutzy, a botanist.

Upon meeting her and learning of all her shortcomings, Henry, feeling the pressure of the deadline looming only days away, mutters, "She's perfect."

So Henry sets about courting Henrietta and wins his wager with his uncle. But there are complications.

For one, Henrietta's lawyer and her domestic staff have been taking advantage of her trusting nature for years and aren't happy about having to share their gravy train with the new husband. Henry, on the other hand, has no intention of sharing anything with anyone and dismisses them all.

The marriage also encounters opposition from Henry's uncle, who doesn't want to lose his bet.

And the couple's greatest obstacle to wedded bliss is Henry's own self–centered nature. At heart, you see, he is a confirmed bachelor. There is no room for a significant other in his world. He needs Henrietta's money to live the lifestyle to which he is accustomed, but he doesn't need her, and he tries to find a way to do away with her so he can have it all.

But, in the end, he realizes that he really does love her, and the movie ends with the two of them walking away together. "I'll always be able to count on you, won't I?" the hopelessly naive Henrietta says to Henry, and he replies, resignedly, "I'm afraid so."

In many ways, I have come to see it as the triumph of Matthau's career. The character of Henry required him to walk a fine line. Contrary to what some would have you believe, comedy is not always comedy.

In this film, Matthau had to alternate between screwball comedy and a comedy that was sometimes understated and cynical. His role sometimes veered into dramatic territory — but anyone who ever saw his performance in "Fail–Safe" knows he was capable of dramatic turns, even if he was known for his comedy.

But movie viewers who are only old enough to remember his latter years may not realize that Matthau got his start in dramatic roles, and he was equally skilled at both drama and comedy.

Walking the tightrope that he did in "A New Leaf" proved it.