MY MOVIE SHELF: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 175  Days to go: 178

Movie #202:  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

When AFI released its 50 Greatest Villains, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) was right there at #5. Now, make no mistake, Nurse Ratched is a cold, exacting bitch who manipulates and stealthily, maliciously torments her patients, all while wielding a soothing voice to hide her disdainful stare, but I think it’s about time there was some real talk about One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That being, specifically, R. P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is a real asshole. And an irresponsible asshole at that. That’s not to say that McMurphy deserves everything he gets — I would never say that — but let’s not delude ourselves that Ratched isn’t at least a little bit justified in her hatred of him.

I first became fascinated with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest because it was on one of those lists of Things From the Year of Your Birth that you get at novelty stores or whatever. It was awarded the Best Picture Oscar that year, and I’ve always felt a little bit connected to it as a result — long before I ever watched the thing. Then when AFI’s Top 100 Films of All Time came out and I set about trying to see as many as I could of the ones I hadn’t yet, there it was again. I watched it, and I loved it. It really is a phenomenal picture. The Academy wasn’t wrong. (It also won Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director, all deserved.)

R.P. McMurphy is a petty criminal who gets in a lot of fights and never plays by the rules and stirs up trouble as a general rule. He’s not a bad guy, exactly, but he’s not a hero either. He’s a jerk. He’s obnoxious and selfish and rude and he has absolutely no respect for authority. So as a way to game the system, he’s decided to act crazy in jail in order to get transferred to the state mental hospital. He thinks it’ll be a cakewalk. He’ll have a little fun, get out from under the thumb of the prison guards, and go back to his life when his sentence is over. Joke’s on him, though, because the hospital ward is Nurse Ratched’s domain, and she and the doctors there can extend his stay as long as they see fit. He’s been committed, you see, and while she knows (as the doctors do) that he’s not crazy, he’s made a point to be a pain in her ass, so she votes to keep him under their care for the time being rather than send him back to jail.

McMurphy is pissed at this, naturally — not that he knows she voted to keep him there but when he finds out his sentence won’t run out in 68 days like he thought — but he still makes no effort whatsoever to toe the line. He’s spent all his time on the ward riling up the patients — most of whom are there voluntarily because they have extreme depression, anger or other social anxieties — gambling away the few privileges they have, and constantly trying to escape. Then he throws a huge party in ward one night, sneaking in booze and chicks before he runs away for good, but manages to pass out drunk before he runs away, and he’s caught again. It probably wouldn’t be the end of him if he didn’t then try to strangle Nurse Ratched for her cruel and unrelenting treatment of a fellow patient following the night’s debauchery. Attempted murder is not going to win you any favors, it turns out.

So if McMurphy isn’t the hero of the story then, who is? If Nurse Ratched is the villain, then someone must be the hero, right? The hero, it turns out, is Chief (Will Sampson). He’s a large, looming Native American who appears to one and all as deaf and dumb. McMurphy treats him as a pal, though, despite the claims that Chief has no idea what McMurphy’s even saying. It doesn’t matter. Mac plays basketball with him and jokes around with him and makes him feel like part of the group, and eventually Chief reveals he can hear and talk just fine. The two become good friends, and Mac tries to convince Chief to run away with him, but Chief is there (and faking a serious disability) because he can’t face the world, can’t talk to people, can’t leave the security of the ward. He’s afraid of it all and plays the role of the deaf-mute because it prevents him, then, from having to try to engage and to talk and to interact with others. Chief’s triumph at the end, therefore, is truly inspiring and heartwarming. He’s lost his friend (well before Mac returns to the ward, it turns out, making what happens next more an act of mercy than anything else), but he still finds the strength to go, to leave the confines of the ward, with all its safe and familiar routines, and to head out into the great expanse of the distant mountains. It’s a lovely ending.

The ward is filled with notable performances from a lot of recognizable and renowned actors, as well. There’s a really young Danny DeVito as Martini, a lanky and bald Christopher Lloyd as Taber, Sidney Lassick as Cheswick, Vincent Schiavelli as Fredrickson, and prolific character actor Brad Dourif in his first credited role as the tragic and adored Billy Bibbit. While most of these patients still won’t leave the ward after McMurphy’s time there (and poor Billy’s is cut short by circumstances brought on by both McMurphy and Ratched, despite McMurphy’s view of things), he did bring confidence and verve back into their lives. He made them a little more open, a little more sure of themselves, a little more alive — at least for a time. So maybe McMurphy is a hero in his own right. A tragic hero, perhaps. One who never really lived up to his potential, was fouled by his own colossal screw-ups, and one who ultimately lost everything, but one who made a little bit of a difference — who made things just a little bit better for a while.

It’s a thought, anyway.

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Johnny Dangerously

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 220  Days to go: 220

Movie #157:  Johnny Dangerously

Swear to God, if you haven’t seen Johnny Dangerously, just what, exactly, are you doing with your life? Once again, Amy Heckerling proves herself a skilled comedy director and gets almost no credit or cachet out of it. Why isn’t she given more projects? I mean, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless are considered iconic films of their generations. And while Johnny Dangerously isn’t that, it is the single-best film ever made entirely out of puns and silly gags.

Fun fact: Marilu Henner (Lil Sheridan) still knows all the words and choreography to “Dangerously.”

Michael Keaton plays the lead, a good Irish kid named Johnny Kelly who gets caught up in a life of crime with the Jocko Dundee (Peter Boyle) gang in order to pay for his mother’s mounting medical bills. Ma Kelly (Maureen Stapleton) is an older-than-she-looks 29-year-old, living the hard life of an immigrant widow (her husband Killer Kelly having gotten the electric chair some years before). She’s constantly in need of surgeries to locate her thyroid or unblock her salivary glands, and Johnny will do anything to pay for them. He also adores his kid brother Tommy (Griffin Dunne) and pays for his way through law school, only to find out his brother wants to be District Attorney and fight crime.

Fun fact: Marilu Henner remembers the names and faces of every single person she met making this film in 1984.

There are so many silly little things in this movie, it’s almost impossible to highlight all the ones I love. Tommy’s desperate need to hump his brains out with Sally (Glynnis O’Connor), is a good one, mostly for his mother’s “ba-BOOM ba-BOOM ba-BOOM” and Johnny’s informational film, “Your Testicles and You.” Then there’s the game show presentation by D.A. Burr (Danny DeVito), tempting Tommy to Play Ball, followed by the speeding up of the song on the radio as Tommy’s car brakes fail, followed by Johnny getting invited by Burr to two weeks in Puerto Rico before the newspaper headline “D.A. Burr Dies in Commercial.” Then, of course, there’s gangster bad boy Danny Vermin (Joe Piscopo) who carries an 88 Magnum, has it out for the Kelly boys and whose father hung him on a hook once. Once! But far and away the best is Richard Dimitri as gangland nemesis Roman Moronie, a fargin icehole corksoaking bastidge if ever there was one.

Fun fact: Marilu Henner can tell you exactly how many takes it took for Johnny to stick a business card in her boob pocket or for Danny to drop her from his lap.

There’s so much more, though. Jocko thinking his “dork” has been blown off, Ma Kelly thinking of taking up smoking and the ashtray present that clinches it, Polly the parrot wearing jailhouse stripes as he passes a message along the grapevine to Johnny, and oh, the shelf paper! It’s just filled to the brim and overflowing with jokes.

Fun fact: Marilu Henner can still give the exact details of the fit and feel of every costume she wore for the film, including fly fisherman and nun disguises.

 

A really smart joke is a great thing (something I love, in fact), but to make a super funny movie, the best plan of action is to make the most jokes. The more jokes you can cram into something, the funnier it’s going to be. Some will land better than others, some will be dumber than others, but by giving your audience no chance to breathe from one joke to the next is the absolute best way to keep them laughing. And that’s something Johnny Dangerously is great at. Plus, it has a moral: “Crime doesn’t pay. Well, it pays a little.”

Fun fact: Marilu Henner still knows precisely how Michael Keaton kisses.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Get Shorty

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 256 Days to go: 256

Movie #121: Get Shorty

If you remember my post about Be Cool, some two and a half months ago, you maybe realized I wasn’t super fond of it. Get Shorty, I find, is worse. Tonight was my second viewing of the movie, and each time has been boring. I find myself drifting off, doing other things, contemplating tomorrow night’s menu or what my husband’s upcoming work schedule is. That’s not the sign of a great film.

The thing is, I don’t find John Travolta all that intimidating, maybe? He’s a big tough loan shark (thankfully, this movie doesn’t use the term “shylock” as often as Be Cool does), apparently the best fighter around, and can outsmart anyone and everyone. It’s a bit much.

What else is a bit much is the plot, which, while a decent send-up of the Hollywood hustle of putting a movie together that can maybe feel like a mob shakedown, is unreasonably convoluted and all over the place. Chili Palmer (Travolta) starts in Miami where he has a few run-ins with Ray Barboni (Dennis Farina, who is kind of funny as a bumbling mobster, but who is much more satisfying in things like Big Trouble as a competent mobster), then goes to Vegas to collect a debt, where he gets a job to collect another debt in L.A. Deciding he just “likes it” in L.A., he opts to leave loan-sharking to become a movie producer, as you do.

So in the midst of all this movie wheeling and dealing there are shakedowns and double-crosses and all sorts of underhandedness, featuring additional toughs drug dealer Bo Catlett (Delroy Lindo), stuntman-turned-heavy Bear (James Gandolfini), and the guy who played Lazlo Hollyfeld in Real Genius (Jon Gries) as some guy named Ronnie.

And on the movie side of things there’s Gene Hackman as B-movie producer Harry Zimm, acclaimed actor Martin Weir (Danny DeVito), and actress-turned-producer-turned-Chili’s-girlfriend Karen (Rene Russo). (Elmore Leonard might have a thing for chicks named Karen.) All the movie people try to act at least as tough as the mobsters and drug dealers and other criminals.

It’s kind of funny, like I said, but it’s also kind of a mess. Not only that, but being the “Cadillac of minivans” couldn’t save the Oldsmobile Silhouette (or any other Oldsmobile), so it’s kind of disappointing in general.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Be Cool

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #25: Be Cool

I’ve never seen this movie before (it’s my husband’s), though I have seen Get Shorty once, which Be Cool is the sequel to (watching them out of order because that’s what happens when you don’t give your sequels alphabetically-later titles). So I find myself spending a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on in 2005, when this movie came out. I feel like maybe The Pussycat Dolls were a thing? This movie makes me feel like it’s referencing the time when people were trying to make Nicole Scherzinger a thing — like, a solo thing. I could be wrong. Maybe The Pussycat Dolls were later.

Anyway, this movie, like its predecessor, is satirizing a lot of things: gangster stereotypes, the movie business, the music business, girl groups, rap groups, etc. It really crams a lot in there. Unfortunately, it only feels like maybe half the people working on it were aware it was a comedy. I’m unsure at this moment whether the writer of the screenplay was one of those people. Elmore Leonard wrote the novel, of course, and I really dig his stuff — as will be immediately apparent when we get to the undervalued masterpiece Out of Sight — but some of his slickness and ease with the written word and with the worlds of hoodlums and wannabes seems to have been lost in the translation of this one. Get Shorty was revered in its way — Hollywood loves a good inside joke, which was all Get Shorty was, really, one big mock-up of Hollywood insiders — but despite its overtly meta jokes, Be Cool falls a little short of that insider-y vibe. It feels a bit slapped together, sloppy, loose around the hinges.

There’s also the problem of its jokes not aging that well, what with T-Mobile Sidekicks, dusty caricatures of both black men and white men who “act like” black men, and some cringe-inducing attempts at gay-bashing humor, but if you can tune some of that stuff out, it’s really not all that bad as far as lightweight comedies go. The attempts to go meta land fairly well, and whoever costumed Uma Thurman was just goofy enough to put her in cutesy t-shirts advertising her newly widowed status. Plus, Andre 3000 (Andre Benjamin) is really kind of delightful as the awkward and clumsy rapper Dabu, and The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) is often downright hilarious.

The entire plot, concerning Christina Milian’s character Linda Moon, is tortured, it’s true, but without it how could they have shoehorned Steven Tyler’s terrible acting into the mix? And really, I would watch this movie just to see the late Anna Nicole Smith make out with Danny DeVito on the Kiss Cam at a Lakers game. Not even kidding.