Cynical Cinema

The Executioner’s Song was a book written by Norman Mailer that ranks with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in terms of true-crime novels. Both books are exhaustively researched novels about true-life criminal figures. Capote’s book was about Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, two lowlifes who slaughtered an entire family on a farm in Kansas. And Mailer’s book was about Gary Gilmore, a murderer who became famous in the late 1970s after he insisted upon being executed. He was the first person killed by the state in America after the re-instatement of the death penalty by the U.S. in 1976.

The film The Executioner’s Song, is a 1982 Lawrence Schiller made-for-TV true crime movie that ranks with Richard Brooks’ 1967 film In Cold Blood. And it’s being released on DVD for the first time Tuesday, August 5th, by Paramount Home Entertainment. Tommy Lee Jones plays Gilmore, and delivers a very good performance as a man who has no clue how to fit into society after being released from prison. He has spent 12 years in jail, and upon his release he goes to live with his cousin. He hooks up with a teenage divorcee, played by Rosanna Arquette, and makes a half-hearted attempt to go straight. But soon his inability to contain his natural tendency toward violence comes out, and he gets busted for murder and sent away.

The second half of the movie deals with Gilmore and his desire to be executed. Lawyers and family members carry on appeals on his behalf, against his wishes. And soon, we believe that perhaps he is right. He really does need to be put to death. His toxic, evil personality continues to do damage even while he is away in prison. The Executioner’s Song originally aired as a 157-minute two-part made for TV movie, and was later pared down to 97 minutes for a theatrical release. The version available on this DVD is somewhere in the middle. At 135 minutes, this “Director’s Cut” is just the right length. It’s more than long enough to create a powerful film experience, and Tommy Lee Jones is so good in the lead role that this movie is deservedly known as a classic.

3 comes out today, July 29th, from Alliance Films. It is not to be confused with the movie Thr3e, which was a really crappy horror film involving the number three that was released last year. No, the 3 that comes out today is a made-for-TV movie from ESPN, telling the story of Dale Earnhardt, one of the most revered drivers in the history of NASCAR. Barry Pepper stars as Earnhardt, a man who was (pardon the pun) driven to be the best. He does an excellent job in what proves to be a fairly tough role. The movie tracks Earnhardt’s rise through the world of NASCAR to become the best driver alive, and goes up to the point where he is…no longer alive. And I must say, the handling of his death in this film is done in a very touching and simple, wonderful way.

In some ways, however, the movie does seem to sugar-coat much of Earnhardt’s personality. The DVD comes jammed with special features, including a second disc with more extras than one could imagine. Race footage, interviews, and all kinds of specials on the man. And judging from those interviews and specials, he was a little bit more of a maniac, and probably a lot more mean and dangerous, than this movie makes him appear. And although I enjoyed the film simply because it’s well done and Earnhardt is an interesting character, I found a lot more value in the special features. 3 is worthwhile for both NASCAR fans and casual observers alike.

Hustle is a 2004 movie from ESPN and Alliance Films, all about the troubled life of Pete Rose. It comes out on DVD today, July 22nd, and it begins after his retirement as a baseball player, in 1987 when he was the manager of the Cincinnatti Reds. I assume we all know the Pete Rose story, but here it is in a nutshell anyway: Rose is still the all-time hits leader in baseball history, a man who knew nothing but baseball. In 1988 he was banned for life from baseball by commissioner Bart Giamatti for gambling. As the manager of the Reds, he was betting on baseball, (including some bets on his own team). Tom Sizemore plays Rose, and one can only imagine he brings many of his personal demons to the role. And I found his performance alternately brilliant and irritating. At times, he really seems to embody Rose as he was at his most charming and reckless (he really does look like him), and at other times, I couldn’t shake the image of John Turturro. Somehow, he really reminded me of John Turturro. But that’s likely my own problem. The movie opens with Springsteen singing Glory Days, which is a promising beginning.

Hustle is directed by Peter Bogdanovich, the man behind such classics as The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon. Bogdanovich shows a sure hand here, but he isn’t given much to work with. I have always felt that the way Rose played the game was an incredibly important part of his story. That on the field, he had no off switch, and that made him an all-time great. But off the field, that lack of an off switch made him something of a menace, to himself and others. The moment when, in the 1970 all-star game, he ran over Ray Fosse, a catcher for the Cleveland Indians, separating his shoulder. Fosse was never really the same after that.

And at the time, this moment became famous in baseball. Look how much Pete Rose wants to win! Even in a meaningless All-Star game he’s willing to get dirty! Well…OK. But suppose, for a moment, that Scott Stevens had laid out say, Ron Francis at centre ice during an NHL All-Star contest, ruining his career. Would anyone celebrate this? Or would they call him a maniac? No one throws at batters in an All-Star game. No one slides hard into second or runs over a catcher. It’s a meaningless exhibition. This was perhaps more an indication of a sociopathic personality than it was an example of hard-nosed baseball.

And the Fosse incident is dealt with in Hustle, early on in a throw-away moment. “Oh, isn’t that Ray Fosse? He was never the same, eh?” And that’s it. So although the details of the Pete Rose baseball playing career are glossed over, his gambling habits are put under a microscope. The whole movie deals with just two years - from 1987 when Rose met Paul Janszen, the man who would become his assistant and later bring him down. And really, Paul is the star of the movie, as he goes from wide-eyed hero-worshipper to a disillusioned, badly used former friend of Rose who turns him in partly because he has no choice, and partly because he has been victimized by the man.

And that’s fine, Paul is played quite well by Dash Mihok, but this really is a movie about Pete Rose, right? Well, why not spend the time learning about Rose and how he got to be the way he is, instead of focusing on the other guy? Why not start during his playing career, at least a bit? Rose comes off at first as a guy who just wants everyone to like him, but slowly it becomes clear that he is just using these people who consider him their friend. And that’s all we really learn about him throughout the whole film. Which makes the whole picture feel very long.

The baseball scenes are few and far between, and really don’t look realistic at all. The supporting cast is decent, but Melissa DiMarco as Rose’s wife Carol doesn’t really seem to know how she feels about her husband at all. Sarain Boylan, as Paul’s wife, is pretty easily placated. And the people playing Marge Schott and Bart Giamatti and Fay Vincent all look quite a lot like the people they are playing, but that is where this story really is. In the back rooms of baseball. And these characters are terribly underused. This movie is really not good enough for the story it tells.

But wait! There is a reason to pick up this DVD! It is the special features. Bart Giamatti’s press conference in 1988, where he banned Pete Rose from baseball for life, has an eerie ring in the context of baseball today. His line “the integrity of the game of baseball must be defended by a process which, itself, lives up to the same standards of integrity” (I paraphrase because I can’t remember it word-for-word) is really striking when looked at through the lens of the steroid scandal. The interviews with Rose are incredible to watch as well - the Primetime interview where he finally admits to betting on baseball in 2004. A Sportscentury interview with John Dowd. There is even an interview with Paul Janszen on ESPN. But what’s saddest about these special features is that they give more of a window into Pete Rose than does the movie. The movie is a miss, but the special features are magnificent.

Released the same day as Season One of Meerkat Manor, the great Animal Planet TV show, is the DVD Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins, which is a documentary that tells the story of the meerkats before the TV show. At a little over an hour long, it is much easier to get a full picture of meerkat society from this film than from the full five hours of the TV show. Both are really good, but The Story Begins is a little more brutal in terms of the deaths (and murders) of some meerkats. This one is narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, who cracks a few lame jokes early on. Thank goodness they dispense with that fairly fast.

Flower is the star of Meerkat Manor, the dominant female who leads the family. The Story Begins is her own, personal Scarface, tracing her rise to power a the top of the meerkat world. (Not quite as swift and brutal a rise as that of Scarface, to be sure.) This documentary would be great for people who are mildly interested and don’t want to sit through the entire TV series, or possibly for people who are obsessive about the TV series and want to know every detail. All in all, the two are very complementary, and I can’t wait for Season Two!

“Recount” is an HBO movie that premiered on May 25th on HBO in the states and The Movie Network here in Canada.  Originally, Sydney Pollack was slated to direct the film, but pulled out at the last moment due to an undisclosed illness, which of course was cancer, the same cancer that caught up to him yesterday.  A sad coincidence as this fantastic movie premieres.  This is one of those major TV drama events where a made-for-TV movie actually gets hype and buzz and deserves it.  Well worth checking out.

HBO has just put the movie on TV, a dramatized version of the real events that led up to George Bush being fictitiously elected over Al Gore in 2000.  I recently saw Antonin Scalia, one of the American Supreme Court justices directly responsible for the handing of the election to Bush, saying in an interview “it was eight years ago.  Get over it.”  But America can’t get over it.  They still have that falsely-elected president, who is still screwing things up on a daily basis.  And not in a fun, keystone-cops kind of way.  Screwing things up in a malicious, Mr. Burns sort of way.  Scalia, by the way, is also the Supreme Court justice who believes torture is not an act in violation of the Eighth Amendment, the one dealing with “cruel and unusual punishment”.  His reasoning - although torture, such as waterboarding, IS cruel and unusual, it does not qualify as “punishment”.  You see, people who get tortured are not being punished for anything, since they have not been convicted of anything.  They may well be innocent.  And if they are innocent, then they are not being punished.  A prince of a man, Mr. Scalia.  But I digress.

Anyway, although the politics and questionable behaviour of Antonin Scalia are something about which I could rant for aeons, the man does not figure prominently in Recount.  Rather, the movie is about several other people.  Ron Klain (Kevin Spacey), Al Gore’s fired-then-rehired campaign advisor.  Warren Christopher (John Hurt), the secretary of state under Bill Clinton, who was sent by Gore to supervise the recount.  (Sidebar - Christopher, so far, is the only person portrayed in this film that has objected to his protrayal.  He has not seen it, but he read the transcripts and felt they made him sound way too naive.)  Katherine Harris (Laura Dern), the Florida Republican Secretary of State who exhibited terribly partisan and unethical behaviour during the 2000 election, doing everything she could to hand victory to Bush.  And James Baker (Tom Wilkinson), the Secretary of State under George Bush Sr., who was the chief legal advisor to Bush Jr. in 2000.

Each of those actors gives an examplary performance, especially Spacey, as an idealist who will fight to the end, and Dern as a woman in way over her head with a self-esteem problem and a taste for the spotlight.  Also terrific are Dennis Leary as Michael Whouley, and Ed Begley Jr. as David Boies.  Although we already know the end result of this film, (and for many of us politically interested folk, the entire process), this film still plays like a thriller.  Each moment is more and more tense, as you really get a sense of the machinations behind the scenes.  You get righteously indignant at the Republican troublemakers who tried to delay the re-counting of the votes.  You get furious at the groups who intentionally excluded more than 20,000 voters, most of them African-American, under the false pretext that they had been convicted of a felony.  You pull for the supreme court to render the right decision, and you can get right into it when something goes the right way for a change.  Even though you know for a fact that at the end of the movie the bad guys win and we get eight years of Chaney and Rumsfeld and Rove and Rice and that president guy.

 The only really irritating thing about the movie is the appearance of Bush and Gore themselves.  The two of them appear courtesy of archival footage, which is fine, but then they are shown, always from behind, and played by some stand-in actor.  That gives Recount, if only for those few brief moments, the feel of one of those lame, cheap, re-enactment scenes from a When Animals Attack show, or Unsolved Mysteries.  Aside from that, however, Recount is incredibly brisk, moves along very quickly, and is an absolutely thrilling political true story.  Tour-de-force performances all the way through, and a script that I’m sure just wrote itself.  Catch this one while you can, playing on The Movie Network right now.