Fake-Out

Here is a brief writeup I did for Vegas Seven on the 80's Vegas flick, Fake-Out aka Nevada Heat. All the Pia Zadora, Telly Savalas and Riviera Casino you can stand!

The Damned Don't Cry!

The antihero may be a modern icon, but long before we had Tony Soprano, Walter White or Don Draper, we had Joan Crawford. Sure, she was ostensibly Lane Bellamy, Jenny Stewart or Myra Hudson but, really, she was Joan Fucking Crawford. She became the star of a series of Cinderella stories where there's no fairy godmother, just Joan being her own wicked witch, magicking herself from downtrodden to divadom. The Damned Don't Cry! is one such tale.

The criminal milieu and hardboiled characters also place it at the edge of noir, while the rags-to-riches, plain-to-fancy plant it as a classic women's picture. The Damned Don't Cry! contains many classic Crawford tropes, from the opening ditching of the small town to the noble self-sacrificing finale. In between, there's plenty of what you go to Joan Crawford for: Modeling designer fashions, dining in fancy restaurants, laughing at threats and, more than anything, slapping people around and telling motherfuckers off.

So, we open with a body being dumped in the desert. It's the corpse of George Castleman, an infamous gangster. When the police visit his stunning mid-century home, they find a series of home movies of "the fabulous woman who chose to call herself Lorna Hansen Forbes."

They go to her stunning mid-century home and find a large bloodstain on the carpet but no Lorna. It seems she is the "widow of Wyoming oil magnate, Denver socialite, Texas heiress" or... something. It begins to occur to everyone that they actually have no idea who she is or where she came from.

But the lady and her mink are driving to a shack in the middle of nowhere, where she is angrily received by some hostile old people who live their lives in an intense state of chiaroscuro. "Darling of cafe society" Lorna Hansen Forbes is really slag from nowheresville Ethel Whitehead and it's flashback time. Crawford puts up with her backwater town and worthless husband, her cramped house and her mean dad, but when her little boy gets run over by a truck, well, there ain't no point in staying. And so, the trademark Joan Crawford "I'm blowing this burg" moment comes...

(Hey, at least she gets out, Bette Davis spends all of Beyond the Forest being far more vicious than Joan and she never gets beyond the train station.)

Anyway, Joan heads for the big city, turns down a job as a maid, gets a gig at a cigar stand, flashes the seams in her nylons and winds up with one of those Garment District fashion house dress-modeling gigs where you show off the necklines and the peplums and make nice with out-of-town buyers. (Think Dorothy Parker's "Big Blonde.")

But, of course, our girl is better than this. She latches onto a meek accountant and, somehow through her Joan Crawford superpowers, turns him into a well-paid accountant for the mob within about six hours. Sure, he doesn't like the idea, but if he wants a slice of Crawford, he's gotta pay up for the pie.  

But, of course, all of this is just a way for Joan Crawford to cuddle up to the head gangster, George Castleman. Like Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face or Jean Harlow in Red-Headed Woman, our heroine sees each man as just another rung to climb.

But Castleman thinks that the lady needs a little polishing...

Maybe it's not him doing that to you. Maybe it's the hat.

Thus, he recruits an aging, addled society lady to oversee Ethel Whitehead's transformation (via a year in Paris) into the wealthy and glamorous Lorna Hansen Forbes, thrower of fabulous parties and wearer of fabulous gowns, a doll worthy of such a classy guy as himself. It's all simply fine, a stone cold gas -- until Castleman begins having issues with rival gangster, Nick Prenta, and figures that the best way to keep an eye on him his send this swank dame to the West Coast to, ah... make nice.

This is where it becomes clear that The Damned Don't Cry! is based on the saga of Virgina Hill and her relationship with Bugsy Siegel, although Hill's actual story is far more interesting than what is -- or could be -- portrayed here...

... the original was quite a dish herself...

And so Joan Crawford sets herself up in a mansion in Beverly Hills and sets her sights on landing her gangster... well, the gangster her gangster has sent her after. And so she goes to the casino and looks all over...

Of course, Nick is a cocky asshole with no class but he reeks of testosterone. (And check out that head of hair!) Lorna is at first irked, but soon hooked. She forgets about her gangster back home, forgets about the spying she's supposed to be doing and the information she's supposed to be supplying...

I'm not kidding about the glorious real estate: Frank Sinatra's Palm Springs home, Twin Palms, was used as Nick's house and doesn't Joan have a fabulous time swanning around in it...

Of course, this is the world of Joan Crawford, baby, where the good times never last, but we roll with the punches. And, well, punches are something that might happen when the first gangster finds out about the second gangster. I mean, he told you to fuck him, he didn't tell you to like it.

The Damned Don't Cry! is definitely on the post-zenith side of Joan's career (and i'm not even talking about the first or second zenith, i'm talking about after Mildred Pierce, even) but it still has a bit of that old-school flash and Joan is still 100% a movie star, if not quite still the femme fatale she once was. But, with its curious mix of low-down plot and high-class finish, The Damned Don't Cry! is entertaining enough...

Romeo Is Bleeding

Another film that was ahead of its day, Romeo Is Bleeding was a violent noir homage with a charismatic antihero and sociopathic villainess.

 Don't worry: She's all fucked up and bloody because she just killed a couple dudes.

Romeo Is Bleeding got bad reviews and was something of a flop in its time, but i think that's just because no one got it. I'm not sure everyone would get it now, but hopefully at least the odds are better. If anything, some of the tropes that seemed weird at the time have become a bit overused by now...

So, Gary Oldman plays Sgt. Jack Grimaldi, a corrupt New York City cop who's in bed with the mafia and sleeps around. Don't worry, he'll get his. Everyone does.

Smoking is not sexy.

Lena Olin's Mona Demarkov is both femme fatale and evil mastermind combined--imagine Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past rolled into one or Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin in The Big Heat being the same person. Like Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, she is not just a heartless monster, but a heartless monster that derives genuine, visceral enjoyment from watching her victims squirm. And die.

Nope. Not at all.

While the title is taken from a Tom Waits song, the film has nothing to do with it. Oldman-as-Grimaldi is a bored policeman who wants a taste of the good life he sees all the criminals around him devouring. He's got a beautiful brunette wife and a sexy blonde mistress and a bungalow in Queens. He's making a little extra cash selling out informants to the mob. He tells us all of this in third-person voiceover in case we don't get the noir thing (Actually at one point he gets so involved in the monologue that another character has to lean over and interrupt him.) but it's obvious that this a pawn who only has delusions of being a king.

So, Grimaldi sets up one informant, only to get tangled up with the mob's toughest assassin, Mona Demarkov. She's not just bad, she's a psycho killer. Literally: A lunatic who murders people while laughing hysterically. Usually dressed in lingerie, always in stiletto heels. She is smarter, tougher and meaner than any man around. Some crooked cop criminal wannabe self-styled ladies' man? She can eat him for lunch and still ask to look at the dessert menu.

Grimaldi tries to play Mona against the mob, the NYPD against the Feds and is not nearly smart enough to do so. The dipsy mistress starts hassling about marriage, the compliant wife has been wised up all along and he's still got Mona to deal with. She may be crazy, but he's an idiot who can't think further ahead than the tip of his dick. Grimaldi and Mona spend the whole film trying to kill each other or fuck each other or fucking kill each other. And you know who's going to be on top....

Romeo Is Bleeding also has some fabulous New York City location shooting in the last days before Giuliani wrecked everything (Or began: Bloomberg finished the job.) everything from a nightmare dream sequence on the Wonder Wheel to a backyard overlooking Cavalry Cemetery to a Greenpoint car crash to shallow graves in the shadow of the World Trade Center. Actually all the cinematography is beautifully done. The soundtrack is also atmospheric and evocative of classic noir films (brushed drums, wailing saxophone).

Gary Oldman is compelling and sympathetic while being an in-over-his-head jerk and pulls of a damned convincing New York accent; Olin is over-the-top as the voracious Mona Demarkov, but that's the way the role is written and she plays it to the hilt, a woman who takes no bullshit from or for anyone. Romeo Is Bleeding is certainly not a great film, but it's a fun watch...

Death to Smoochy

Shine on, you crazy diamond!

Upon its release, Death to Smoochy was considered a raging failure, an utter piece of crap, unfunny and disgusting. And i can get why people hated it...

... because those are the reasons that i love it. Yes, all the characters are unlikeable. Yes, the set design is cartoonishly lurid. Yes, the dialogue is fast and foul. Yes it's over-over-the top. Yes, it's viewpoint is bitter, misanthropic and vile. And you people keep saying all of this like it's a bad thing! And Death to Smoochy contains what may be the most weird, twisted, stone-cold-crazy performance Robin Williams ever delivered.

Williams plays Rainbow Randolph, host of a children's TV show. Imagine some sort of Captain Kangaroo/Liberace/Doug Henning weirdness with tap dancing and little people. 

 ... we won't even talk about the "toss" and "catch" part of the song.

However, Rainbow Randolph is also a coke-huffing, ass-grabbing, bribe-taking, foul-mouthed asshole. It's that third one that gets him in trouble with the FBI. Jon Stewart (with a Nero haircut) and Catherine Keener (with some really nice outfits) have to find a squeaky-clean replacement. Given that in the sordid backstage world of kiddie TV shows, most stars seem to be heroin mules, wife beaters or recently deported, they're stuck with Smoochy. If you always hated Barney, a fuchsia rhino singing folk songs should be close enough to the purple dinosaur's "I love you, you love me" to deeply irk.

There's Ed Norton in cargo pants and cowrie shell necklace as Sheldon Mopes aka Smoochy. Fucking self-righteous, clean-living hippie. Anyway, Smoochy gets Rainbow Randolph's time slot and Rainbow Randolph requires revenge. First up: Cookie sabotage!

 "He made it from dill-dough!"

... and herein lies the magic of Death to Smoochy. There are a number of times when i'm practically certain that the script just said "Robin goes off." (And, actually, if you look at the DVD outtakes, it's proven -- there's a few different versions of his ranting freakouts.) The best moments of the film are when Williams just lets loose and this moment of shrieking dozens of euphemisms for "cock and balls" at a scandalized rhino furry and dozens of delighted small children is the first.

However, there is not nearly as much Rainbow Fucking Randolph Williams in this film as there should be and too much granola fuckwit Smoochy. Also there's a whole host of subsidiary villains: Jon Stewart's network sleaze, a bunch of Irish gangsters, a criminal charity headed by Harvey Fierstein and director Danny DeVito as an shady agent. But, then again, we get the fun bits, like Williams' bad disguise and accent roulette on the way to the Nazi rally...

 Also, there's an ice show that is a major plot point. Because "No one says no to an ice show."

Death to Smoochy is a flawed film -- and not in a bad taste/foul humor way. But it bogs down in those plot twists and somehow manages to push out an ending where suddenly we have good guys and bad guys and conventional conclusions. Still, for those moments that allow Robin Williams to roll loose and wild like an id set loose on mescaline with its hair on fire, Death to Smoochy is definitely worthwhile.