Everybody's All-american

Well, if I was true to my word, I would never have gone to see another picture by Taylor Hackford. But what can I say... I got sucked in. By the gloss and the glitter. By the presence of Dennis Quaid, one of my favorite performers, and of Jessica Lange, who is certainly a safe bet. And by my pathetic longing for a picture which will capture on screen what “The Last Convertible” did on print (not even the television version of that wonderful book did it). I guess I want a picture to explain America since the war, to explain my generation, maybe to express those distant hopes and dreams, to help people (read: me) come to some sort of understanding of what is really important (love? success? friends? loyalty? all of the above? What if you have to choose?) instead of the dreadful ambiguity which seems to infuse everything in this bitter and cynical world. But alas... this picture didn't do it either. Let's be truthful: the picture is crappy in a big and bloated way. It drowns under the weight of its own excesses. There’s too much going on there, and it is just not handled adroitly enough to carry any impact. It slogs interminably across the screen in a truly leaden way, foundering on every reef and tripping up everywhere there is a chance to do so.

I mean this thing doesn't miss an opportunity to blow it. It is a classic example of how you can spend 25 million (it must have cost this much) and still wind up with a piece of crap. All those good intentions going awry just makes me sad, but I think the bottom line is that Hackford's sensibilities are not up to the task he had been given. He doesn't know what is important and what's not, what to emphasize and what to let slide, what to focus on and what to let fade into the background. He just flings all this STUFF at you, all these lavish scenarios, this opulence, these costumes. He just flings everything at you full volume as if that is good enough to make the point, as if he expects everyone watching to draw their own conclusions; in any event he leaves you no choice; he’s certainly not drawing any conclusions. This is ultimately why the picture fails. All the good photography in the world won't make up for a total lack of moral perspective, of EMPHASIS, and what the hell else is a director FOR? I mean, anybody can tell the camera which way to point. It's like he is saying "Let's do this! Let's do that! Young love? Let's do it! 60's unrest?? Let's do IT! The growing cynicism of adulthood??? Yeah!! Let's do it! Racism?? YEAH! MURDER??? LET'S DO IT!!! THE VANISHING OF YOUTH???? LET'S DO THAT TOO!! LET'S DO EVERYTHING!!! NOW!” (And lots of other stuff besides.)

The problem of course is that when everything is banged into your head at that volume, the end result is that nothing has any impact at all. In fact it gets kind of numbing. And that means it gets kind of boring. The sad truth is that I looked at my watch a lot in this picture. It was dull. Superficially the picture is very good at creating the LOOK of certain eras and venues but gets nowhere trying to capture the visceral feel. (We'll see if the picture “1969” due out shortly does any better at this; perhaps by focusing on a very specific time-period it will succeed, but we're getting a bit speculative here.) Everything is presented in cinematic shorthand, a code to tell you what the situation is with the least amount of footage. Big bonfire at a pep rally. The “colored folk” living in the ghetto, who are hostile until they get to bettin' on ("Lawdy") a footrace between our hero Gavin "The Grey Ghost" Grey (Quaid) and a Black guy who is actually faster but was denied his shot at fame because of his race. But that's OK--he goes on to lead the civil rights protests in the area and winds up being a big-time businessman and politico, who gets the revenge(?!) of being able to hand out a job to Gavin's wife when they are on the outs).

Does Hackford actually think that he can summarize the vast societal changes that went on in this country by having Cake (Timothy Bottoms in the wateriest role of Gavin's cousin who carries a twenty-five-year torch for Gavin's wife) change his haircut and shaving habits? I mean come on. Bottoms is trotted out every few scenes or so so that we can tell from his whiskers which way the country is going. The character itself is another shorthand; he goes from being the wallflower wimp to the hip and brilliant college professor who wisely observes all that goes on. If he's supposed to be the moral center of the picture he fails miserably. He's really nothing more than a Greek chorus, to fill us in if we miss the point. The only scenes with any real impact are probably the football scenes, but they don't count because, like shots of pool balls smacking each other, they are too easy to imbue with a life that they don't really possess.

Another one--Lange (in her Magnolia queen turned REAL WOMAN in capital letters role) is shown to be a big businesswoman by virtue of the fact that she has long conversations on the phone about work and annoys her husband. There's no character there, just a performer going through some motions that are supposed to signify something. It is the ultimate in superficial moviemaking. I'll take “Dirty Harry” any day, because at least there they are not trying to convince you that what you are seeing is anything more than what is onscreen. Taylor expects the whole story of this nation’s painful rites of passage to come to you because some people talk on the phone or a husband and wife have an argument. Fooey. That just does not cut it. The changes that the characters undergo are hardly presented with any more clarity: Gavin drinks more and puts on weight (Quaid reportedly added 40 pounds for the role) and ignores his wife. Lange ages (gracefully) and acts frustrated. Cake follows the path of liberal righteousness and ends up being the only one who is fulfilled, but not before he has an affair (well, actually it's just a one-nighter) with Lange, an event which comes across as completely unconvincing. It also seems completely insufficient to cause the falling out between Gavin and Cake 20 years (yes, twenty) later, just before Gavin experiences his revelation at how "lucky" he is and enjoys a Capra-esque rapprochement with his forgiving and forgiven wife (they kind of cram all this in during the last five minutes of the picture, and a good thing too, because by this time we are about ready to walk out of the theater).

In truth, Lange and Quaid are probably the only performers who would have even had a shot at pulling this 25-year span off with any dignity. They try hard, but they are left stranded high and dry by a script and a director which don't allow them any more access to the characters than we have. They could come through with their reputations intact, though certainly not enhanced. John Goodman, who was the husband in “Punchline,” is once again victimized by his role. I'd love to see this guy get something decent to do. And Bottoms, the most waffly actor I know, waffles his way through this role too. What really bothers me about this picture? Everything, I guess. But mostly it’s where the picture doesn't go. Hackford and company are so excited about doing a Big Picture that they forget the basics (character, motivation, point of view) that are required to make a picture work. The picture never arrives at any resolutions about the questions it seems to want to gobble up. It's almost as if Hackford doesn't really believe that the movie can answer--or even ask--those questions. and if he doesn't believe it, there is no way that we will. Not in a million years.