My memory is that there were a lot of gritty movies coming out in 1978.
"The Deer Hunter" came out that year; so did "Coming Home," each in its own way an indictment of the Vietnam experience.
And "Midnight Express" was released in 1978. It had to be one of the grittiest of them all.
"Midnight Express" wasn't about Vietnam. It was about a young American (Brad Davis) who was caught trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey on this day in 1970 and ended up doing hard time in a Turkish prison.
The movie got its name from the prison slang expression for an escape attempt.
And there was plenty from which an inmate might want to escape — disease, sadistic prison guards, a justice system that was biased against Americans and allowed prosecutors to appeal acquittals or what they saw as insufficient sentences.
It was a nightmare, and director Alan Parker did a great job of painting a grim picture for the audience.
There were moments in "Midnight Express" that would make anyone cringe. It was a brilliant examination of human frailties and shortcomings and how they were exploited and abused by those in power.
Those on the receiving end often snapped, and Davis' character did snap a couple of times.
On one such occasion, his girlfriend (Irene Miracle) — with whom he was traveling when he was busted in the movie — came to see him a few years after his incarceration, and she was shocked by what she saw.
She brought a photo album with her. Money was inside the photo album, and, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening to their conversation, she told him there were pictures inside of his old friend "Mr. Franklin from the bank," and she encouraged him to escape as soon as possible, whenever he saw an opportunity.
And he did.
The story seemed entirely plausible — and parts of it were legitimate — but it exaggerated some things to achieve a desired effect.
Big–screen audiences may have had their first real look at Davis in "Midnight Express," but I knew him from a couple of earlier TV productions — the TV movie "Sybil" and the smash hit mini–series "Roots."
I have always felt that Davis' life was a tragic one, more tragic even than many of the roles he played, and the role of Billy Hayes in "Midnight Express" was a tragic one in many ways.
He was diagnosed with AIDS in the mid–1980s and died of assisted suicide in 1991.
On this day in 1978, DNA and cloning were still futuristic concepts, little more than theories, really. I remember hearing my teachers speak of such things when I was in school and dismissing them as some sort of Jetsons things — totally unlikely to happen in my lifetime.
I was wrong, of course.
But director Franklin J. Schaffner had the vision and the courage to accept the challenge of explaining the theories in ways that were entertaining — and, consequently, unsettling when their relevance to the story was revealed.
The theme of Schaffner's "The Boys From Brazil," which premiered on this day in 1978, was that Josef Mengele (played by Gregory Peck) had taken some of Adolf Hitler's DNA with him when he fled Germany after World War II and had produced dozens of Hitler clones who had been distributed around the world. These baby Hitlers were adopted by couples who closely resembled Hitler's own parents in an attempt to duplicate as closely as possible the conditions that shaped the original Hitler.
At some point, it was necessary for Mengele to arrange for an adoptive father to be killed because Hitler's own father, who was more than 20 years older than Hitler's mother, died suddenly when Hitler was 13. Mengele left no stone unturned in his quest to re–create the circumstances of Hitler's life. No detail was too small.
I don't mean to suggest, of course, that the loss of a parent is a small detail. Far from it. That is a huge event in the lives of most people whatever their ages — but especially so for one so young. And I think Schaffner (and, for that matter, Ira Levin, who wrote the novel upon which the movie was based) was correct to believe that his father's death had a powerful influence on Hitler.
The movie took viewers around the globe as Laurence Olivier, a Nazi hunter, followed up on a tip from Steven Guttenberg, who stumbled on to the plot to resurrect the Third Reich and paid for it with his life.
In the movie, Mengele clearly wasn't wedded to the idea of a German fuehrer and placed Hitler clones all around the world. Olivier met four of the clones, each played unsettlingly by Jeremy Black, a teenager who, as nearly as I can tell, never appeared in a movie again.
His performance was spooky, though, to say the least. I was convinced that any of the clones he played could have grown up to be a modern–day Hitler, fulfilling an almost Nostradamus–like prophecy.
But it was ambiguous. Each had personality traits that, if seen only on the surface by those unfamiliar with the futuristic plot, would appear to be typical teenage narcissism — not necessarily a clue of what to expect.
On closer inspection, they revealed truths that went to the core of the Hitler personality, but that brings us back to the old debate over nature vs. nurture. Because these clones possessed Hitler's DNA — and, remember, much of what was known about DNA in 1978 was theoretical — did that mean they would duplicate his life experiences?
In the movie, Mengele tried to manipulate events to guarantee that the Hitler clones would have the same experiences the original Hitler had, including losing his father at a young age. But other things were not so easily manipulated, like Hitler's rejection in art school or his experiences as a soldier in World War I.
At the end of the movie, Olivier's character destroyed the list of children around the world who had been part of Mengele's experiment rather than surrender it to American Nazi hunters who were determined to eliminate the clones.
They were only children, Olivier said. They weren't responsible for the experiment that had conceived them. It wouldn't be fair for them to pay with their lives for things others had done.
It was an uplifting, Hollywoodesque feel–good wrapup. Frankly, though, I thought the movie would have been more powerful if it had concluded the way the book did — by revealing that one of the surviving Hitler clones was developing delusions of grandeur.
Movie veterans Peck and Olivier gave brilliant performances as the story's nemeses — as did James Mason as Peck's benefactor.
To misquote Shakespeare, though, the story's the thing in "The Boys From Brazil." The acting was superb, but the story, like Black's performance, was spooky. I felt that way even at the time, when, as I say, DNA was known to exist but the applications of that knowledge were mostly theoretical.
I think it holds up just as well today although I am sure that, as commonplace as DNA application has become in modern society, the story may not have quite the impact with some viewers as it does with others.
Perhaps it was that considerable element of the unknown that made it so frightening.
I suppose many people think of Princess Diana and her death in 1997 when they hear "Candle in the Wind," even if they hear the version that was released on Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album 40 years ago today.
It just seemed so perfect for Diana, a remarkable yet fragile individual whose death truly shocked the world. All John had to do was rewrite a few lyrics, and the tribute was complete.
In fact, you really had to be familiar with John's recording history to know that it was a recycled song. I don't think "Candle in the Wind" was a hit on that album so who would remember it nearly a quarter of a century later — other than those who bought the album in the early '70s?
There were quite a few of those. It's possible that Diana was among them. The double album went gold within a month of its release — for a double album, that was no mean feat — and, in the intervening years, it has been certified platinum several times over.
But it did so mostly on the strength of three hit singles — "Bennie and the Jets," "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." Other songs on the album were modest hits, I guess, but those were the big three.
When most people think of that time in John's career, I guess they think most often of his version of "Pinball Wizard," which was featured in the 1975 movie based on The Who's rock opera, "Tommy."
The soundtrack for that movie was quite popular, and John's contribution was one of the hit singles from it. He didn't write it, of course, but he performed it. I remember hearing it on the radio practically constantly for weeks.
But that album was still two years in the future when John released "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."
Or maybe they think of "Rocket Man," which was on a different album.
My initial memory of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" is different than it is for most people, I am sure.
I was a child when it came out and hadn't even heard of it until one night when I went with my mother to visit a family friend, the son of one of her best friends. He was suffering from a brain tumor (his cancer later went into remission, then returned and, eventually, killed him). Anyway, he was at home, apparently between stays in the hospital, and we went by for a visit.
Mom instructed me to get him alone while she chatted with her friend and find out what we could give him as a get–well present so that is what I set out to do.
I knew I couldn't ask him straight out, that I had to be sneaky so I just started chatting with him. He had a lot of records in his room, and I asked him if there was a record he didn't have that he wanted — and he mentioned "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."
As I say, I had never heard of it, knew nothing about it — but, before I could ask any questions, he told me it was a double album.
And I was convinced that Mom would never buy it. Double albums were a really big deal in those days. I was convinced that Mom wouldn't spend what I thought was a small fortune on a double album.
But she did.
In hindsight, that probably should have been a hint as to just how serious his condition really was. But I was a child, and my exposure to death was still limited. I guess I didn't believe anyone close to my age could die. I know, it's ridiculous.
When you're young, I guess, you really don't understand these things.
"Short Cuts," which premiered 20 years ago today, is one of my favorite movies of the 1990s, in large part because it combines the work of two people (writer Raymond Carver and filmmaker Robert Altman) I admire — not to mention the talents of an all–star cast.
Several of Carver's short stories were woven together in a narrative about roughly two dozen southern Californians whose lives intersect in often random ways before, during and after an earthquake.
As I say, the links between the stories are often random — and maintaining them is tenuous at best — but they are plausible enough to give some credibility to some already credible (if selfish) human foibles.
In one subplot, Andie MacDowell and Bruce Davison play the parents of a young boy who is about to have a birthday. His mother orders a special cake that requires a lot of extra work on the part of the baker (Lyle Lovett).
But the cake isn't picked up, and the baker, seething with rage, begins making harassing phone calls to the home. He doesn't realize that the reason the cake wasn't picked up is that the young boy for whom it was intended was hit by a car and lapsed into a coma.
He also doesn't know that Lily Tomlin, distracted by her problems with husband Tom Waits, was the one who struck the boy. She offered to take him for treatment, but, having been instructed by his mother not to take rides from strangers, he declined, insisting that he wasn't hurt, and walked home, unaware of how seriously injured he really was.
The boy eventually dies, and the drama in the hospital set the stage for grandfather Jack Lemmon's monologue on fidelity, which just might have been the greatest dramatic performance in a career that included "Days of Wine and Roses."
In another subplot, three friends (Fred Ward, Buck Henry and Huey Lewis) go on a fishing trip and discover the body of a woman in the creek. They decide not to report their finding until the weekend is over — so as not to disrupt their plans.
In yet another, a new mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) earns money by performing phone sex. Her husband, Chris Penn, doesn't like it, but he knows they can use the money.
Sex, of course, is a recurring theme. Amateur painter Julianne Moore and and her husband, played by Matthew Modine, prior to the arrival of some dinner guests, discuss for the first time her infidelity with another guest at a party a few years earlier.
The audience can only imagine, from what the two say to each other, what happened. Moore and the other guest were chosen to go get more liquor for the party but found that it was too late at night and most of the stores were closed. Modine's suspicions were aroused when the two were gone so long. Turned out the guest had propositioned Moore and, in an inebriated state, she accepted.
Apparently a simmering yet previously unexpressed issue for Modine, Moore is startled when he brings it up and spills her drink on her skirt. She takes off the skirt and tries to remove the stain, exposing the fact that she is wearing no underwear.
The husband observes it and, introducing yet another previously unexpressed (and unresolved) issue into the conversation, accuses her of trying to be like the subjects in her paintings, who always seem to be naked.
She ultimately confesses to him, but she attempts to excuse her infidelity by pointing out that she was intoxicated — and the man did not ejaculate.
These were short stories originally, not one long novel, but I often wondered if Carver regarded them as parts of a whole. He died about five years before "Short Cuts" was released, and I don't know if he ever had a hand in the planning of the movie — or if that really began after he died.
It's just one of those things I wonder about, and there is no — excuse the pun — short cut to the answer.
Frasier:Every time my reunion comes around, it coincides with a severe downturn in my life. Five years ago Lilith divorced me; five years before that I was left at the altar; five years before that I fell face first into the poison ivy! And here we are right on schedule, I'm freshly fired!
OK, I am a fan of the Frasier series. That must be obvious to longtime readers of this blog.
There are only a handful of Frasier episodes that I don't care to watch again — a tiny fraction, really, of all the episodes that were shown during its 11–year run — and roughly the same number of episodes that I try never to miss when I know they will be shown.
The episode that was first broadcast 15 years ago tonight is one of the latter.
Frasier was trying to cope with joblessness at the same time his high school reunion was scheduled, and he was convinced that he was cursed, that the fates had been conspiring for years to afflict him with something to make him look bad in front of his ex–classmates ...
... And, ultimately, to relegate him to the losers' table where he would have to sing "Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby" with the Chess Club's barbershop quartet, The Checkmates.
Frasier had his activities all planned out for Reunion Day, and his agenda definitely did not include making an appearance at the gathering.
But then, while running an errand for his father at the grocery store across the street, Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) was mistaken for a homeless person by one of his former classmates, and he decided he would have to attend the reunion after all to discredit the story, which he was sure would spread like wildfire.
Nevertheless, he continued to vacillate. He recruited Roz (Peri Gilpin) to be his date, then canceled plans to attend the reunion, then decided to go, then decided not to.
Understandably, Roz was irked about being asked to be his date twice and going to all the trouble of preparing for the occasion twice only to be stood up twice.
In what I thought was one of Roz's best dialogue exchanges — and she had some good ones during the series' run — she told Frasier, "You know, some day you're gonna need another favor from me, buddy, and when that day comes, I hope you know what you can do with it."
"I have a pretty good idea," Frasier replied.
"Well, do it twice!" Roz said.
In the end, Frasier wound up attending the reunion after all. After Roz stormed out of his apartment, Frasier's father (John Mahoney) made up a story about getting a call from Frasier's agent about a job at another radio station in town, and Frasier, his confidence restored, suddenly was eager to attend the reunion to gloat about his good fortune.
When Frasier had departed, Martin told Niles (David Hyde Pierce) that it was really a made–up story, and Niles chastised him. Wasn't that risky? he asked. What if someone at the reunion knows the story isn't true?
Martin insisted he only meant to give Frasier a shot of confidence. There was little chance that Frasier would run into anyone who would know he hadn't been offered a job.
With Daphne (Jane Leeves) reading items from the class newsletter, though, they determined that the manager of the station where Frasier was supposed to have this new job was also the organizer of the reunion.
It was inevitable that the two would run into each other — and that the station manager would know the truth. So, too, would Frasier.
Viewers never saw the moment of truth. The last they saw of Frasier was his rather tortured walk through the class reunion to the table of The Checkmates — where they broke into a rendition of "Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby."
Simms Reeves (Hank Worden):Plantin' and readin', plantin' and readin'. Fill a man full o' lead, stick him in the ground an' then read words on him. Why, when you've killed a man, why try to read the Lord in as a partner on the job?
For the most part, John Wayne was an heroic figure.
But, occasionally, he lapsed into a darker character. He didn't explore that side of his movie persona too often, which is too bad, really, because it was an opportunity to see him as a flawed and imperfect man. Far too frequently, his movie roles portrayed him as some kind of western Superman.
He was far from that in the movie that premiered 65 years ago today — Howard Hawks' "Red River." Unlike the sort of character he was known for playing, Wayne's character in "Red River" was an unsympathetic one, clinging to old ways in spite of changing dynamics.
Set in the mid–19th century, Wayne played a frontiersman who craved the life of a Texas cattleman, and he abandoned a wagon train to pursue his dream, accompanied by Walter Brennan. His fiancee was part of the wagon train, which was targeted in an Indian raid shortly thereafter. The only survivor of the raid was a young boy who was informally adopted by Wayne.
Together, they built one of the wealthiest cattle ranches in Texas — only to see its value reduced to nothing following the Civil War.
His fiancee's death had left Wayne's character embittered and destroyed any hope that he could find happiness in his new life.
Most westerns up to this time — and, certainly, most of Wayne's movies — had an inspirational quality to them. "Red River" had a sharp edge, a gritty quality to it.
I've heard "Red River" described as a "Mutiny on the Bounty" set in Big Sky country, and that isn't a bad comparison.
Upon the return of his adopted son, played by Montgomery Clift, from the war, Wayne's character decided to move his cattle about 1,000 miles to the north, to Missouri where beef markets could be found, but en route to Missouri there were gangs and Indians.
Wayne was able to keep his men in line as long as Clift backed him up, but there came a time when Wayne stepped over the line and Clift challenged him.
It was the familiar clash between the old generation and the new. Clift represented a willingness to embrace change while Wayne resisted.
It's a conflict that has been played out countless times on the big screen and in real life.
Clift seized the herd and made for Kansas, where there was a new railroad to Missouri.
If it wasn't the first time Wayne played against type, it was one of the first times — and it wouldn't be the last. I'm sure it must have been a bit of a shock for moviegoers who weren't accustomed to seeing Wayne in that kind of role.
In many ways, though, the role Wayne played in "Red River" was the perfect preparation for the role he would play in John Ford's "The Searchers" eight years later.
Dr. Michael Anthony Brace (Christopher Walken):Why do you have to die to let go?
Natalie Wood was finishing the movie "Brainstorm" when she died in November 1981.
As a result, much of the movie had to be rewritten and earlier footage had to be used.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that "Brainstorm" would be promoted in the media, when it was finally released 30 years ago today, as Natalie Wood's last film — even though the character she played was, at best, a supporting character.
The star was actually Christopher Walken, who was a hot box–office draw by that time, having appeared in some of the best movies of the '70s and early '80s ("Annie Hall," "The Deer Hunter," "Pennies From Heaven"). Walken was a scientist who experimented with a device that could read a person's thoughts and transfer them to video tape.
One of Walken's colleagues, Louise Fletcher, had a heart attack while by herself. Figuring (apparently correctly) that help could not reach her in time, she put the device on her head and allowed it to record the experience of her death.
When he tried to play back the recording of Fletcher's character's death, Walken's character nearly died as he realized that not only could the device record experiences visually but it could also make the viewer have the same physical experience the wearer had.
Kind of a twist on the old 3–D effect, wouldn't you say?
In the case of Fletcher's tape, that meant the viewer would experience the physical sensation of a heart attack.
Of course, there were other kinds of experiences that were candidates for abuse when committed to this futuristic tape. What was a brave new world in the early '80s has, in many ways, come to pass today.
In fact, I have often thought in recent years that it was practically prescient the way "Brainstorm" anticipated things like artificial intelligence and virtual experiences.
In the movie, one member of the research team had sex with his girlfriend while wearing the device. An older team member, seeking to re–capture his youth, got the tape that had been made and spliced the lovemaking segment to run continuously, nearly killing him.
Thus the potential for misuse/abuse of this technology was established.
I've been an admirer of Natalie Wood for a long time, and I was kind of sorry that this was her final movie. It isn't that I didn't care for the subject matter. On the contrary, I thought it was almost visionary, even at the time but certainly as the years have passed.
No, the thing I regretted was that Wood was a supporting character. Nothing wrong with that. I've known of many great actors and actresses who were supporting actors. But Wood was a leading lady. She always gave great performances, and sometimes they were in supporting roles, but she was mostly a star as an adult, yet she played Walken's estranged wife. Fletcher, as Walken's like–minded research colleague, had more of a presence in the film, as did Cliff Robertson as CEO of the research team.
Otherwise, it probably was an appropriate capper to Wood's career. She was too young to die, and the circumstances surrounding her death were as baffling as they come, but that fed into the plotline pretty well.
Of course, some of it had to be redone after Wood died, but I felt the writers deserved credit for, as they say in this part of the country, "making chicken salad out of chicken s**t."
Mr. Ed was aired before my time, really, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy watching reruns of those shows.
One of my favorites was first broadcast 50 years ago tonight — perhaps it is one of my favorites because I am a Dodgers fan, and Mr. Ed was a Dodgers fan, too. Anyway, in the episode that aired 50 years ago tonight, he paid a visit to the Dodgers and their then–manager Leo Durocher, who is often credited with saying "Nice guys finish last."
(I don't know if Durocher ever actually said it — or if he was the first to say it. I just know that I often hear it said that he said it, and sometimes I hear it said that he was the first to say it.)
Alan Young, who played Wilbur Post, was about the only series regular — other than Mister Ed himself — who was featured in the episode. I don't think Connie Hines, who played Carol Post, was in that episode. If she was, she didn't have much of a presence in it.
But she never did have much of a presence in the series, to be honest. Ed only spoke face to face to Wilbur — sometimes, he spoke to people on the phone or when there was some kind of barrier between them, like a wall — and their conversations were the foundation for the show.
The actor who played Wilbur's neighbor died a month earlier, and his character had not been replaced. His wife was still on the show for awhile, but she had a diminished role. She usually only showed up when Carol was around, but if Carol wasn't featured in this episode, there probably wouldn't have been much of a reason for her to be seen, either.
The episode was the revival of a dormant theme in the series. In the second season (1961–1962), Mister Ed "met" George Burns and Clint Eastwood. Then, in the 1963–1964 season premiere, he got to meet Durocher and some of the players for his favorite baseball team.
It's been awhile since I've seen the episode, but, as I recall, Ed was watching a Dodgers game on TV, and he noticed some things that the Dodgers were doing wrong — on the mound, at the plate, in the field — and placed a phone call to the Dodgers to offer some tips (giving his name as Wilbur Post). Come to think of it, I think he made a series of such calls.
Durocher took his advice, it worked, and the Dodgers (who actually did win the National League pennant and swept the New York Yankees in the World Series that year) went on a wild winning streak. In gratitude, Durocher invited Wilbur to visit the team — and maybe provide a few more helpful pointers.
Wilbur, accompanied by Ed, who was his "good luck charm," went to Dodger Stadium. He even got to take a little batting practice.
Really, I believe it's one of the truly funny scenes in American sitcom history. Holding the bat handle in his teeth, Ed stood (on the right side of the plate) while Sandy Koufax delivered the pitch, and Ed drove it into the outfield.
Ed went charging around the bases; none of the infielders challenged him. He turned the corner at third base and headed for home.
"Slide, Ed, slide!" Wilbur shouted out — and, by golly, Mister Ed slid. The terrified catcher climbed halfway up the backstop.
An astonished Durocher said, "That's the smartest horse I ever saw."
"He's not so smart," Wilbur replied. "He forgot to touch second base."
As I say, it's been awhile since I have seen this episode, but, whenever I have seen it, it's been the same for me as it is with a movie I've seen many times before.
I know that scene is coming. But it always makes me laugh, anyway. It makes me laugh in anticipation of it. It makes me laugh when I see it. And I continue to laugh after I've seen it.
It even makes me laugh to think about it when I'm not watching it and I haven't seen it for awhile. Now, that's funny!
Michael (Jeff Goldblum):Amazing tradition. They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can't come.
It's a funny thing about "The Big Chill" — which made its theatrical debut 30 years ago today.
I can't remember seeing it at a theater, although I am certain that is where I first saw it. And I can't remember watching it when it came to cable about a year later, although I know I did — several times.
What I remember about "The Big Chill" is not an occasion when I saw it. It is an occasion when I thought about it a great deal.
It was sometime in the spring of 1991, about 7½ years after the movie made its theatrical debut. The occasion was a phone conversation I had with someone back in my home state of Arkansas. Funny, but I can't remember with whom I had the conversation. I can only remember the subject — a mutual friend had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
My thoughts were drawn to "The Big Chill" and its tale of friends who came together for the funeral of a mutual friend from college, the most talented of the bunch, who had committed suicide.
I didn't go to college with my friend, but I did meet him through friends I made in college in that way that friendship networks often evolve. And I don't know if he would have been considered the most talented member of our group.
He certainly didn't commit suicide.
But there were so many moments in "The Big Chill" that seemed to fit our situation. I guess it had to do with the fact that we were young, like the group of friends in "The Big Chill," and we were dealing with the premature loss of a member of our group.
After my phone conversation was over, I remember sitting in silence in my apartment — for how long, I do not know — thinking about "The Big Chill." I thought of other things, too — memories of happier times — but I did think about "The Big Chill" quite a lot.
The next day, in the newsroom where I worked, I was telling a couple of co–workers about my phone conversation. The managing editor was standing nearby and listening. When I finished telling the story of the phone conversation, the M.E. said, "Did you think about 'The Big Chill?' "
I didn't answer. I didn't know what to say.
But it was on my mind.
My circle of friends was never as prosperous as the ones in "The Big Chill," but when we gathered for our friend's funeral, it was a lot like the movie. That was what struck me about it.
The surroundings weren't the same. The movie took place in a kind of rambling, antebellum Southern home; our gathering was in an apartment. It was in the South, but that was the only surface similarity.
The emotions were certainly the same for us, though, and we sought some meaning in what had happened.
The folks in "The Big Chill" watched a football game to renew their bonds. We watched a movie.
We even had our equivalent of Meg Tilly's character — younger than the rest of us, a bit naive and really unacquainted with the person for whom we were grieving.
(Tilly's character actually was acquainted with the deceased — played in an obviously nonspeaking role by Kevin Costner. Our tangential character never met our friend and constantly sought to cheer us up — as if we had all taken the same chemistry test and done poorly on it.
(Tilly wasn't quite that removed. She had been the deceased's girlfriend prior to his suicide — but some of the similarities were, well, spooky.)
"The Big Chill" managed to walk a fine line between humor and drama, and Tilly's character was a perfect blend of both. Sometimes, admittedly, it was hard to take her seriously, but then she would say something that would knock you off your feet.
Like when she and the other characters were talking about happiness and happy people, and the group looked to her for some insight.
"I don't know very many happy people," she protested.
That was the conundrum that the baby boomers — played by Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, JoBeth Williams, Kevin Kline, Tom Berenger, Mary Kay Place and William Hurt — faced. Their futures didn't seem to be living up to the expectations of their pasts — even if, on the surface, everything seemed to be on track.
That isn't unique to the baby boomer generation, of course, but it still seems to come as something of a shock to every generation.
They hadn't been together in quite awhile so there was a lot of catching up to do — and, apparently, some unresolved issues and unrequited loves that made for interesting, and sometimes poignant, subplots. My group hadn't been apart nearly as long, and there wasn't nearly as much drama, but there was a similar longing to recapture the past in some way — or at least rewrite some of the episodes.
It's been my experience that most people, at some point in their lives, attempt to relive the past or evaluate it in some way, and "The Big Chill" was an excellent study of characters of the baby boom generation staring into the abyss of middle age — and, for the most part, not caring for what they saw.
Nancy (Shani Wallis):I thieved for you when I was half his age and it's your dirty work I've been doing ever since.
Bill (Oliver Reed):Well if you have it's a living ain't it?
Fagin (Ron Moody):Yes, a living is a living.
Nancy:Some living, Lord help me, some living!
Some movies are so linked in my memory to particular places or people or times in my life that it is impossible for me to separate them.
"Oliver!" is like that for me — several times over.
As was so often the case in my family in those days, we made frequent trips to Dallas to visit my grandparents — and we always seemed to go to movies a lot during those visits. There was a movie theater just a few blocks up the street from my grandmother's house, and it always seemed to be showing the latest hit movies.
And I have a clear memory in my mind of seeing "Oliver!" at that theater — more than once.
(Sometimes a movie stayed at that theater indefinitely. In the days before the multiplexes and home video, theaters like the one up the street from my grandmother's home only had one screen so the successful ones booked the popular movies and kept them there indefinitely. "Oliver!" was like that. I don't know how many times I saw it, but it was more than once, and each time was at that same theater.)
"Oliver!" premiered on this date in 1968. Most likely, my family wasn't in Dallas at this time of the year — the school where my father taught was on a trimester system in those days, and the fall term typically began in late September. His presence on campus — for teachers' meetings, freshman orientation activities and all that other stuff — would have been required.
It was probably Thanksgiving — or perhaps Christmas — when we came to Dallas and saw "Oliver!"
When I see it now, I enjoy the musical adaptation of a familiar story by Charles Dickens, but, at the time, I don't think I knew that. I'm sure the original story was beyond my years.
(Later on, I did read "Oliver Twist" — probably when I was in high school or college — and I liked it, but, in my mind's eye, I saw Oliver Reed, Ron Moody and Shani Wallis when I read about Bill Sikes or Fagin or Nancy.)
I remember that I found the music very appealing, which made it all the more remarkable that "Oliver!" did so well at the Oscars — well, remarkable in the context of the years that followed. Movies that are perceived to be musicals have rarely even been nominated for the major Oscars in the last 45 years.
But "Oliver!" got 11 nominations and won five — as well as a special Oscar for choreography.
I didn't really recognize anyone in the movie when I saw it on the big screen, but the movie's success at the box office and the Oscars catapulted many of the movie's stars to a new level.
The movie won Best Picture, and Carol Reed won an Oscar for Best Director; Reed had been making movies for more than 30 years and was already well known for movies he made following World War II so winning wasn't crucial for him.
Simply being nominated was enough to give a career boost to folks like Jack Wild (the Artful Dodger), who went on to host a reasonably popular children's Saturday morning TV show — and even folks who weren't nominated benefited from just being associated with the movie. It was a plus for Oliver Reed (Bill Sikes), who was voted one of the five most popular stars in Great Britain a couple of years later.
Wallis, who played Nancy, the whore with a heart of gold, enjoyed a higher professional profile because of her affiliation with the project. She made some more movies and appeared on some TV shows in the years after "Oliver!" but I suppose it could be said that it represented the high–water mark for her career.
(As a child, I remember watching "Oliver!" and being mesmerized by Wallis. Whenever she was on the screen, even if she wasn't an important player in the scene, she had my undivided attention. I don't think I knew her character was a prostitute — I probably didn't know what prostitute meant — but, looking back, I think there was a sexual angle to it for me. She excited my budding sexuality in ways I couldn't explain then — and still can't explain today.)
It may also have been the high–water mark for Mark Lester, who played the title role and went on to appear in some movies and TV shows but received no Oscar nomination for his work. I thought he sang as well as any of the other boys his age in the movie, and that was really most of what his role demanded from him.
"Oliver!" appears to have been the pinnacle for Lester, but he is appearing in a movie (now in pre–production) that will be his first in more than 25 years. Who can say at this point how it will be received by the public or the critics?
I must confess that I don't really know what kind of an impact his part in the movie had on Moody's career, but I have my suspicions.
Moody was nominated for Best Actor for his performance as Fagin. He had been making movies for nearly 10 years, and he made maybe a dozen more in the years after "Oliver!" He did some TV, too. By most accounts, I suppose, he had a successful career.
He was even offered the lead in TV's Doctor Who the year after he was in "Oliver!" but turned it down.
Considering the long–term success of that series, that may have been the pivotal moment in his career — for better or (most likely) for worse.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
