Shakespeare on the Base

 

 

 

"Hamlet's mama, she's the Queen!

Buys it in the final scene!

Drinks a glass of funky wine!

Now she's Satan's Valentine!" 

 

 -Army march chant from Renaissance Man 

 

Penny Marshall, the director of Renaissance Man, is credited with only 7 feature length theatrical releases. While hardly anyone could dispute that Big and A League of Their Own deserve to be in the top slots (and Awakenings is also there, but I've never seen it) the other four movies are probably ranked variably. The four in question here are The Preacher's Wife, Riding in the Car with Boys, Jumpin' Jack Flash and Renaissance Man. (That order is the way they are listed, as the bottom of the list of the seven, on Rotten Tomatoes).

I never really liked the remake of the classic The Bishop's Wife although it was admittedly well done. And Jumpin' Jack Flash was just ridiculous. I can't say much about Riding in Cars with Boys, since that's another movie I haven't seen. But I think that Renaissance Man doesn't get as much love as it deserves. For one thing, there are some standout performances here. The movie features some up and coming actors and actresses in their first (or at least early roles).

Marky Mark Walberg got his first big meaty role here. Stacey Dash, Cher's (Alicia Silverstone) best friend in Clueless,  Kadeem Hardison, a co-star on the Cosby Show spinoff, Lillo Brancato, Jr., who got his start in A Bronx Tale a year earlier, and Richard T. Jones, who most recently has been a member of the cast of the TV series The Rookie are among the stars. 

Also featured in the cast were Gregory Hines as the drill sergeant, Sgt. Cass. Hines was a tap dancer turned actor who made several memorable roles come to life, such as the tap dancer Raymond Greenwood, an ex-patriot tap dancer living in Communist Russia in White Knights. James Remar, whose first prominent role was as Ajax in one of my favorite movies, The Warriors, plays Rago's main Army contact, Capt. Murdoch. Cliff Robertson also makes a brief appearance as Murdoch's superior, Colonel James.

With such talent, it seems a shame this movie never had the impact that it potentially could have had.  Roger Ebert claimed that "the touch that was used so well in director Penny Marshall's previous films Big and A League of Their Own is totally missing in Renaissance Man and it feels like a cross between Dead Poet's Society and Private Benjamin but does not have the warmth or spirit of those films". Other critics found similar faults with the movie.

Renaissance Man (1994):

Bill Rago (Danny DeVito) is a struggling ad man who is trying to get a client interested in his sales pitch. The problem is that Bill is late for the meeting and having to do the sales pitch by cell phone. And why is he late? Because he is stuck in traffic. (A personal note: If MY job was on the line in this situation with a big money account on the line I'd just abandon the car and deal with the tow and fees later, but that's me.)

 

 

 

Because Bill has been having some personal issues that came prior to this incident, he is canned. And forced to go on unemployment. Rago has a rather abrasive attitude about this predicament, and gets on the wrong side with his case worker at the outset, but eventually she finds work for him. Although maybe not exactly what he is expecting. Or even wants.

It seems that the job given to him is to be a teacher to a batch of Army recruits who are about to wash out of the service because they have trouble comprehending. Just what they are having trouble comprehending is never fully established, and this is one of the few nitpicks I have with the film. It's not exactly like they are mentally deficient like Forrest Gump. Although the rest of the camp refers to them as the "Double D's", which stand for "dumb as dog $^:+". 

 

 

The soldiers in question, Privates Donnie Benitez (Lillo Brancato, Jr.), Billy Davis, Jr. (Peter Simmons), Tommy Lee Haywood (Mark Wahlberg), Roosevelt Hobbs (Khalil Kain), Jackson Leroy (Richard T. Jones), Melvin Melvin (Greg Sporleder), Jamaal Montgomery (Kadeem Hardison), and Miranda Myers (Stacey Dash) are sent to this class because the commanding officer of the base thinks that they are worth saving rather than washing out because they have trouble in the brains department. 

 

 

Bill, initially (as would I, to be honest) , has no idea what he is supposed to be doing.  He got the job because he has a master's degree, although not one in English or any other teaching related fields. But in the tradition of government logic that master's degree he does have must mean he can teach, so...

 

 

The film struggles through it's first 15 minutes or so, after the initial setup of the premise, especially when it comes to how Bill is finding ways to accomplish the goal he has been hired to do. The assignment that he has given them at one point is to read something and tell about what they learned. He doesn't give them anything specific, just to bring something they can read to the class. One of the funnier sequences of the film involves Benitez trying to figure out what is going on in an Archie comic book.

 

 

The students ask Bill what he is reading and he tells them it is a Shakespeare play, "Hamlet". So, OK, maybe these guys aren't all on the ball, but none of them know who Shakespeare is. (Did they all drop out of school before they reached junior high?) When Bill tells them it's about "sex, murder, incest, insanity". Which, needless to say, intrigues these recruits. And thus, Bill has his new agenda, trying to teach them to understand the intricacies of the language of The Bard and what it all means. 

 

 

Meanwhile Bill is becoming increasingly at odds with the recruits' drill sergeant, Sgt. Cass (Gregory Hines). (Cass, by the way, is never given a first name in the film, but Bill keeps calling him "Lou". Whether Bill had a combative relationship with a guy named Lou in his past is not revealed, or why he uses that particular name, but in the interest of this blog I will use that name from here on out).

 

 

Another funny incident occurs when Lou is chewing out Davis for showing up late for drill. Trying to get Lou to go easy on him only causes Lou to become even more hostile to Bill, as this is seen as an affront to his position of authority as a drill instructor. Bill tells Lou to chill out, calling Lou anal.  "Gee, you must've been potty trained at gunpoint!" (And at this point, I'm thinking Lou might just try to do some impromptu potty-training on Bill).

 

 

As the lessons continue, Bill assigns each cadet with a role in the play. When Davis is assigned the role of Queen Gertrude he responds with shock. "Isn't that a girl's part?" To which Bill informs the cadets that in Shakespeare's day ALL parts were played by males. And Myers responds with a comment that "You mean that Romeo and Juliet were a couple of guys?" (Wait a minute, if none of these recruits know who Shakespeare is how does Myers know about "Romeo and Juliet"?)

 

 

Bill makes one rather grievous error during his tenure. He thinks that Pvt. Hobbs may be getting the short end of the shaft, that he may be brighter than anyone thinks, and has the superiors look into his record. Unfortunately this ends up revealing that Hobbs is on the lam from the authorities for having been charged with drug dealing, and ends up with his arrest. Bill is just as devastated by this turn of events as the recruits are, but he has to make some serious amends to regain their trust. Eventually Bill makes headway in his teaching and even takes the recruits on a trip across the border into Canada to see a performance of Henry V. (Another nitpick here. Is it even remotely possible that these recruits could go on a road trip during basic training without being accompanied by an officer? Just wondering.)

 

At one point in the film, the recruits, eager to show Bill they are actually getting what he is teaching, improvise a rap performance, in which all but one of the recruits join into the rap. The interesting thing about this scene is... the one guy not actually performing in the rap piece they have created? It's Marky Mark Wahlberg, the only bonafide rap artist in the movie... But Wahlberg was the writer of the rap piece, so his input was instrumental in it's own way.

 

 

 

Lou, who thinks this whole classroom thing is a waste of time, keeps trying to undermine Bill and his class. At one point he asks Melvin to recite some Shakespeare, but Melvin is not able to do it. But when Lou asks Benitez to recite Shakespeare, he quotes almost verbatim the St. Crispin's Day speech  from the play they saw the other day, Henry V.

 

 

Bill has plans to present a final exam for the class, but this runs afoul with the higher ups, because if he fails any recruit they are potentially washed out as soldiers. Bill is determined though, but he presents it to the class that they will not be required to take the test.  Of course, on the day of the test, the recruits do show up. (And how could it be any other way? The film would have been for naught if they all opted out).

 

 

There is some wrap in the transformation of Bill from a rather cynical and combative type to one who becomes more attuned to the feelings of those around him. One of the side stories is how Bill deals with his daughter,  Emily (Alanna Ubach). Emily wants to be an astronomer, which Bill is dismissive of at first, but due to his transformation eventually comes to encourage her ambition.

 

 

Also, being helpful with his recruits ends up with having something good come out of that too, as Pvt, Davis' oft spouted belief that his daddy was a Vietnam War hero is vindicated when the top brass award him the Silver Star that should have been presented to his family 20 years earlier. 

 

 

Renaissance Man was a bomb at the box office. It barely made half of it's production money back ($24 million against a budget of $40 million).  The producers apparently didn't expect much from this movie at the outset.  It was released in the summer (June 3) , for one thing, a time when blockbusters of the year would dominate the the theater. Renaissance Man had to compete with such dynamos of the big screen as Speed, True Lies, The Lion King, Beverly Hills Cop III and Wyatt Earp. And that's just during it's first  two weeks. This is a movie that might have benefited from a later release, like maybe November, where the biggest competition was probably only Star Trek: Generations. 

 

To be fair, the film does have some tendencies towards sentimentality that seems a bit out of place. The relationship between Stacey Dash's Private Myers and Khalil Kain's Private Hobbs is never fully established  during the first half of the film, so her reaction to the arrest of Hobbs in the second half comes off as a bit contrived. And the final scene where Peter Simmons' Private Davis' devotion to his supposed Vietnam War hero dad is vindicated, although emotionally encouraging, seems to be there only for the effect. 

 

I am dedicating this post to my friend, Rachel, of Hamlette's Soliloquy.  Simply because of her love for the original Shakespeare classic play featured here. 

 

Well folks, time to fire up the old Plymouth and head home. 4:30 reveille comes awful early.

 

Quiggy

 

 

 

 

Standing Tall in the Face of Disaster

This is my entry in the Disaster Blogathon hosted by Dubsism and Me

Stephen King has been off and on one of my favorite authors.  (I published a blog piece last year on how he influenced me, which you can read here.)  One of my favorite novels of his is The Stand, which was published way back in 1978.  In the summer of 1984 I had a job as a security guard in a manufacturing plant.  Since my main duties were to watch out for the computer room (this being back in the days when computers took up whole rooms and probably had less processing power than your current smart phone, but were extremely valuable), I had a lot of free time.  One of the books I read that summer was the original publication of The Stand.

In 1990, twelve years after the publication of the original, King brought out the "Complete and Uncut" edition of the book, in which he included much of the stuff that his publishers had forced him to leave out.  (Apparently, according to his preface, the publishers balked at releasing a 1200 page manuscript by a relatively new author and forced him to reduce it to a more manageable 800 page book, still a big book for a fledgling author, but compare that to the average book King puts out today.)

Was King a psychic?  The current spread of the Coronavirus is not near as devastating a disaster as the one described in the book, but one can't help but think of the current situation in the world today if one reads the book's first part (or watches part one of this miniseries).  Note: I would be less than honest if I did not tell you that King himself has recently tried to distance himself from comparisons of the "Super Flu" or "Captain Trips" described in The Stand from the current virus.  But when this blogathon idea first came to my attention back in November, it was the first film I thought of, and now it seems almost prescient that I chose it.

The book and film are both, by necessity, America-centric.  King himself, in the novel, never really delved into what happened in the rest of the world after he outbreak of the "Super-Flu".  Maybe the same thing happens in Russia and China and the rest of the world in some fashion. To be sure it's hard to imagine that some people didn't take the Super-flu with them outside of the continental United States.  That is the only flaw I see in the story however. 

The Stand (1994):

The whole thing starts with a mistake.  OK, so its not really all that much of a mistake.  The US military and the government have been working to create a lethal virus, ostensibly to be used in warfare.  But it is a series of mistakes and mishaps that gets it out into the open.  A mishap inside the military compound releases the virus and a security guard at the gate is told to shut down the complex.  But instead he panics and goes back to his home and gathers up his wfe and baby and hightails it before the override security can shut the gates.

Thus the beginning starts not with a bang but a whimper.   The next time we see the guard is when he crashes his car into a gas station in a podunk town in Texas, where Stu Redman (Gary Sinise) and some assorted friends hang out.  The guard's wife and baby are already dead from the virus and the guard himself is not long for this world.  But he has been spreading the virus everywhere, including Hap's Gas Station where Stu and friends are hanging out.  Eventually Stu and the entire town are packed up and taken to a government facility, not necessarily with their consent.

Not long afterward the virus is everywhere.  In Manhattan, Larry Underwood (Adam Storke) arrives to visit his mother.  He recently left home to become a singer in Los Angeles, but he has overspent his advancement and has gone home to escape  his creditors.  And in rural Maine Frannie Goldsmith (Molly Ringwald)is helping her father who has come down with the disease.  Eventually only she and her nebbish admirer Harold Lauder (Corin Nemec) are survivors in the town.  Into this cast of characters is also cast Nick Andros (Rob Lowe), a deaf mute who is stuck in rural Arkansas after being attacked by a gang of hoodlums.

On the other side, there is a malcontent named Lloyd Henreid (Miguel Ferrer) who has been jailed after a foiled holdup in which his partner killed the store owner.  Lloyd's partner is killed, but Lloyd ends up in prison as an accessory.  There is also a character known only as Trashcan Man (Matt Frewer), an arsonist who likes setting fires to things.

With 98% of the population dead from the virus, the survivors are called by superior powers (God and the Devil, or what have you).  The good guys feel themselves being called to rural Nebraska where an elderly black lady, Abigail Freemantle (Ruby Dee) is the instrument of good calling them to her.

On the opposite side is Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan) (who may or may not be the embodiment of the Biblical Antichrist, calling the not so good guys to Sin City, Las Vegas.

The second part of the movie involves the gathering of these assorted characters.  Nick meets up with a good but retarded man named Tom Cullen (Bill Fagerbakke).  Frannie and Harold eventuall hook up with Stu and an older man Stu encountered, Glen Bateman (Ray Walston).  All are being haunted by dreams of both Abigail who is calling to them and Randall who scares the shit out of them.

Eventually the good guys end up having to move to classier digs, since after all there's not much room for them all at Abigail's home/farm, and they pack up to move to Denver, where the rest of whats left of the good guys end up meeting them.

While both sides try to recreate society in their own way, the good guys eventually have to come to the conclusion that the Las Vegas contingent isn't going to sit on their haunches and expect a mutual piece.  What happens next constitutes the second two parts of the movie. Even though the good guys would like to coexist with the bad guys and have it be let each other alone, they know the truth that Flagg and Co. are not going to let it be such a mutual co-existence.

There are some traitors among the good guys, as to be expected.  And eventually the Denver group decides to send spies to see what's going on.  But Flagg is a bit more cognizant of their intentions than they would like to believe.

The movie as made takes a few liberties with the text.  After all, even at a 6 hour running time (it was made into a 4 part serial), some stuff had to be condensed to make it manageable.  And it should be noted that there is not much from the "unexpurgated" version that made it to the film; it's primary source is the original 800 page version.  The good thing is Stephen King had a hand in writing the script, so it stays pretty true to the book (unlike some other films I could name... Lawnmower Man anyone...?)

The cast includes a lot of familiar faces.  Even the author gets a brief cameo.

Watching The Stand may be hard on anyone who has lost friends or loved ones during the current situation.  At least the first act.  But the story is rather intriguing.  And it may or may not encourage conspiracy theorists on their views of the government,  (Again, especially in the first act).  One thing.  I rarely cry when watching movies, but if you watch it I will tell you that the scene in which Kathy Bates makes a cameo caused me to well up immensely.And not necessarily because she dies.  It's more of the circumstances surrounding her death.  You have to watch the scene to relate.  It has to do with my being such a strong advocate of free speech.

Time to head home, folks.  Drive safely.

Quiggy

Road Trips Can Be Such a Drag

Earlier this week, a guy went into a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fl and shot up the place, killing 50 people.   This post is in homage to those who lost their lives in that attack.  Please note:  Everything I write from this point on is from my own personal viewpoint as a heterosexual man.  Any observations, any phrasings or any incidentals are not intended to offend any of my LGBT readers and friends (of which I have, to my knowledge, at least one.  This one is for you, my friend.)

In the course of film history, most gay men have been either the villain (Peter Lorre's Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon  or John Dall and Farley Granger in Rope) or the subject of ridicule (many examples in comedies of the era, but the best example is John Ritter's Jack Tripper on the TV show Three's Company.  Tripper isn't actually gay, but the fact that he is pretending to be gay and how his "gayness" is treated by society is a good illustration).

Society itself could be blamed, but a major factor was the Hays Code which ruled with an iron truncheon over what could and could not be presented on film.  Because homosexuality was considered a disease by the prevailing authorities, even so far as to being a cause to be arrested for being a homosexual in the real world of the time, the Hays Code established that a gay person on film had to be presented in a negative light.

This gradually began to change in the 1970's.   According to my research for this post, the turning point was considered to be the Stonewall riots, an event that occurred in 1969 in New York City in response to police raids on a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village.  The resulting exposure and outcry of the LGBT community caused the rest of the world to begin change in its view of the homosexual.  This also made its way to Hollywood, where always with its eye on the bottom line, the studios began to see possibilities of the LGBT dollar in the theater.

Before this gets to be a tedious history lesson (or is it already too late?) I will end this ramble, but the fact is that homosexuality is not viewed in such a negative light these days.  In the mid 1990's alone, there were two movies that presented an entertaining look at the world as viewed by "drag queens".  A drag queen, to quote Wesley Snipes' character in To Wong Foo, is "a gay man [who] has way too much fashion sense for one gender".






















The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

The ostensible star of this movie (aside from the titular bus, anyway...) is Hugo Weaving, an Australian actor who came to prominence in the United States from such high exposure roles as Elrond in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or if you like your films dense and confusing, as Agent Smith in The Matrix movies.  Weaving plays Tick, a gay man who performs a drag queen show under the name "Mitzi".

The true star, in my opinion, however, is the legendary Terence Stamp, who won the Golden Globes for Best New Actor in his very first role as the titular character in Billy Budd (1962), and has been dozens of movies since, including a few of my favorites (Superman II, Wall Street, Alien Nation, The Limey).  Stamp plays a transgender woman, Bernadette, who has recently lost a lover.

Rounding out the cast is Guy Pearce.  Pearce is also a native Australian, who came to attention outside Australia when he appeared in L. A. Confidential.  I did not see that one until much later.  My personal introduction to Pearce was as the scientist who invented The Time Machine in the early 2000's remake of the classic film of the same name, and the following year in  with Jim Caviezel in The Count of Monte Cristo.  Pearce plays a rather flamboyant and exuberant gay man named Adam, who does his drag queen show under the name of "Felicia".

Bernadette, Felicia and Mitzi

In the beginning of the movie, Tick gets a call and is invited to come to Alice Springs to perform his cabaret.  The cabaret, it turns out, is that he and his entourage dress up in drag and perform by lip-synching to various "hit" songs.   Tick calls up his friend Bernadette, who has recently lost her lover, and invites her to come with him, conveniently neglecting to tell her that Adam will also be accompanying them until it's too late for her to back out.  Neither knows, as yet, that Tick is going because the person that requested his performing troupe is his wife.

Adam, for his part, manages to acquire a run-down tour bus for the trip, which he promptly dubs "Priscilla" (the titular "Queen of the Desert").  The three take off for their trip from Sydney to Alice Springs.  They stop over on their first night, but are not received very well with the populace of the town.  This is repeated several times during the course of the movie, in which due to the prevailing fears, prejudices, or just seething hatred for their homosexual-ness, are alternately threatened or abused.  After awakening from their overnight stay the first night they find their bus vandalized with the words "Aids F***ers Go Home".

Unfortunately this is the best picture I can find of the bus
without the offending graffitti.  Take my word for it,
however, it is impressively dilapidated.  

At one point, probably due to the hostility they are experiencing on the main road, the three decide to take off across the Outback via a dusty secondary road.  Due to the less than reliable transport, they break down in the middle of the desert.  That night an Aboriginal Australian takes them back to his encampment where the trio perform their act for them.

Bernadette goes off hiking looking for help.  Meanwhile, Adam decides to redo the bus in a bright lavender paint job.

Eventually Bernadette returns with Bob, a local mechanic who tows the lame bus back to his shop.  Bob is married to a mail-order bride, a very brash and brassy Filipino woman, who before the movie is over tells Bob to shove it where the sun don't shine and takes off.  This leaves Bob free, and he follows along with the trio on their trip.  He also gradually falls in love with Bernadette.  (Bernadette, you will remember, is a transgender woman.)

The bus arrives in Alice Springs where, surprise surprise, Tick also has a son he hasn't told the group about.
This movie, as with all road trip movies eventually, is all about transitions.  Each character learns something about his or herself.  Tick ends up taking his son (who has no problem with his father's sexual identity, as Tick feared he would) back with him to Sydney while Bernadette stays with Bob in Alice Springs.  (Apparently she is starting to have feelings for Bob in return.)

Australian movies had been getting attention in the states before now (Crocodile Dundee, Mad Max, The Man from Snowy River just to name a few).  This movie helped to spur the ongoing craze for the quirky tpe of movies for which the movies from Oz became known.  At some point in the future I intend to do my own Oz-fest posting, as there are about 4 or 6 on my future post schedule from Down Under.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything!  Julie Newmar (1995) 

If you haven't seen this movie, you are indeed missing out.  Two he-man studs of the action-adventure genre, Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes, stepped out of their cushy comfort zones to take on the roles of drag queens.  Accompanied by John Leguizamo as a third drag queen, this movie is the second road trip movie, somewhat inspired by the previous movie, although, as we will see, entirely different in how it plays out.

Swayze is Vida Bohemme, and Snipes is Noxeema Jackson.  The two are co-winners of  a New York City drag queen contest and given two air fare tickets to Los Angeles to compete in the national Drag Queen pageant.  (I should note, in my opinion, that Swayze looks pretty decent, and convincing, as a woman in this flick but I thought Snipes looked exactly like what he was in real life {as opposed to his character}, a man dressed up as a woman.)

Leguizamo plays Chi Chi Rodriguez, a runner-up who is devastated by not winning the contest.   (Here, again, I interject my opinion.  I kept having to remind myself that "Chi Chi" was indeed a man in drag.  He, of the three, pulled off the role of a drag queen the best.)  Vida convinces Noxeema to trade in their air tickets to buy a car and take Chi Chi with them on their trip.  To achieve this they go to a restaurant run by a friend, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt (really!) , played by Robin Williams.  With Williams help they are given access to a car dealer who lets them have a land yacht of a Cadillac convertible.

Noxeema, Chi Chi and Vida

Somewhere in the midwest (it's never actually said which state they are in, but a lot of the outdoors portion of the movie was shot in Nebraska) they are pulled over by a sexist, racist and homophobic Sheriff Dollard (Chris Penn).  Initially Dollard thinks they are really all women and tries to molest Vida who knocks him out.  They think, however, he is dead, and race for their lives to get away from the scene.

The rickety old Cadillac breaks down however, and the three find themselves at the mercies of the elements.  Fortunately they are rescued by Bobby Ray (Jason London) who takes them into his hometown of Snydersville.  Their car is towed in by Virgil (Arliss Howard), and they are given a room in the town's hotel, also owned by Virgil and his wife, Carol Ann (Stockard Channing).



Almost everyone in the town is totally oblivious to the fact that the three are not what they seem to be  (although it is revealed later in the movie that Carol Ann was clued in from the very start.)  The three have an incredible influence on this small town America, each in their own various ways.  Vida tries to be the typical busybody, although in her defense, Virgil is a scumbag wife-beater, and her interventions is well needed.

 Noxeema meets an older woman who was once the proprietor of the town's movie house, whom she gets to come out of her shell.

 Chi Chi has a crush on their rescuer, who has a crush himself, although he does not know Chi Chi's true nature.

Vida and Noxeema chide Chi Chi for leading on poor Bobby Ray, especially because Chi Chi is a man, but also because Bobby Ray has a lovelorn admirer there in Snydersville himself, Bobbie Lee (Jennifer Millmoe).  All's well that ends well, in this story though because Chi Chi relents and lets Bobby Lee have her beau.   When Sherriff Dollard, who was only unconscious and not dead, shows up, all hell breaks loose, comedically.  The homophobic sheriff calls out for the drag queens to show themselves, and everyone in town identifies themselves as the drag queens for which he is looking.

Folks, this entry is one for the books.   If you have been a frequent reader of this blog, you will realize these were not the typical "man cave" movies I am wont to usually reviewing.  But let it not be said I can't come out from under a rock and watch a couple of good movies that would not usually fit that niche.  Hope you enjoyed this entry.

Quiggy