Hombre

My Summer of Western Research™ has provided me a couple of opportunities to read books in conjunction with their film interpretations. Both examples were worthy adaptations. We’ll start with Hombre. (Novel by Elmore Leonard. Screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. Director Martin Ritt.) I wrote about both the book and the movie individually over the past few weeks. Today I’ll do the compare and contrast.

As I’ve said before, Hombre may be Leonard’s best novel. The story is tight and the

characters are a diverse mix. He also shows the dialog traits that would serve him so well in his crime fiction, with undertones of smart-assery throughout. The movie does well to keep all those and uses them to good effect.

There are two key differences that may have had more to do with the facts of moviemaking in 1967 than any artistic choices. In the movie, John Russell (Paul Newman) visits the boarding house he has inherited and meets Jessie Brown, the woman who runs it. (Diane Cilento.) She learns Russell plans to sell the house and decides to make her exit on the same mud wagon he’s leaving on.

None of this is in the book, including her. Instead of both Jessie and Doris Lee Blake, the book has a woman referred to throughout as “The McLaren Girl.” She’s apparently a teenager taken by the Apaches and later rescued by the Army, on her way back to her parents. She serves the role of conscience played by Jessie in the movie. All Doris Lee did was whine and stand in to show what a bastard Cicero Grimes (Richard Boone) is. (In another interesting change, the heavy in the book is named Frank Braden, which is the name of the lawman gone bad in the movie, who also does not appear in the book.)

This is all frosting on a delicious cake compared to the core change made for the film. In the climactic scene, Newman’s Russell gives everyone a chance to carry the bag of money down the hill, which is what Grimes says it will take to save Mrs. Favor from dying of dehydration. Everyone passes until it comes Jessie’s turn. When she says she’ll go, Russell decides he will. The strong implication is that he just wanted to see if anyone else would do it.

In the book, everyone passes and Russell goes anyway, pretty much throwing it in their faces that for all the shit they talked about him, he’s the only stand-up one in the bunch. He and the McLaren girl bond a little before he leave, which shows a little more of his humanity.

I have to wonder if the reason for this key change might have been a perception that the audience wasn’t ready to see everyone bail on a woman in need, redeeming Russell’s sometimes questionable character when he won’t allow Jessie to go to her death. In the book, he makes them all understand they’re nothing but talk. They can plead all they want that the Favor woman can’t be left there to die, but no one will do anything about it but him. Either way, Russell gets his pound of flesh for the shabby treatment he’s been afforded. Only he, who freely admits he doesn’t care about the woman one way or the other after what she said about “those dirty Indians eat dogs,” has the humanity to save her. That’s quite a difference.

That’s not to say it makes the movie any less wonderful; its interpretation of Russell’s character is just as valid. If any of my film student friends has any thoughts on why these changes were made, I’d love to hear them.

Movies Since Last Time

I am enjoying this Summer of Western Research™ even more than I thought I would.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) A disappointment. I’d seen it before but didn’t remember

anything beyond the early sequence where Billy (a miscast Kris Kristofferson) escapes from jail. There’s a reason for that. The film lacks any definite narrative direction, a pursuit story that meanders through episodes alternating between Garrett (James Coburn) and Billy until they end up at the same place. I’ve read that director Sam Peckinpah was pretty much incoherent drunk through most of the production. It shows. (In case you’re wondering, we saw the 2005 Special Edition Blu-Ray, so the cuts that ruined the film’s original release should not have been a problem. It’s just not very good.)

The Magnificent Seven (1960) Shows its age a little, but once it gets going it’s still as

entertaining a Western as you’ll find. It likely begins the turning away from the idealized horse operas with its frank examination of a gunman’s life, a movement that picks up speed with Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country and the spaghetti Westerns until Peckinpah breaks the mold forever with The Wild Bunch. Good as it is, it has what has to be the single worst cut for time of any movie I’ve ever seen, when The Seven start to work their way into the hills to take out three snipers then magically appear in town with the snipers’ guns. The entire missing scene is explained away with “You got them?” I don’t know if the sequence was never filmed or cut for length. Either way, it should have been handled better. Still, among the Top Ten Westerns ever.

Hombre (1967) A masterpiece, based on what might well be Elmore Leonard’s best book. I don’t just mean his best Western; his best book, period. (If you haven’t read it, get busy. It’s

as fine a piece of taut storytelling as you’ll ever read, with nary a wasted word.) I was struck this time by how close this falls in Paul Newman’s body of work to 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and how there can’t be two characters more different than Butch and John Russell. Newman’s gift as an actor was how he never seemed to be acting. The entire cast provides outstanding work, and this may be Richard Boone’s best performance. Screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. kept much of Leonard’s dialog and captured the tone perfectly. Hombre never tries to be more than it is, and it’s a lot. There have been Westerns as good, but I can’t think of any better.

The Long Riders (1980) Never seen this one before, in part because I thought it was a

Hollywood gimmick to have sets of brothers (Keach, Carradine, Quaid, Guest) play brothers (James, Younger, Miller, Ford). I should have paid better attention. The casting was organic, stemming from the Keach brothers wanting to play the Jameses, talking to David Carradine about it and him thinking his bros could play the Youngers and it grew from there. An outstanding example of minimalist storytelling as Bill Bryden and Steven Smith team with Stacy and James Keach plus director Walter Hill to tell you everything you need to know without wasting time on exposition. The action scenes ring true and the violence appears as painful as it must have been. Well worth the time as an entertainment, and just as much as a way for storytellers to see how to get in and out quickly without leaving anything behind.

Open Range (2003) Hard to believe people were once worried whether Robert Duvall could play a cowboy. Here he’s Boss Spearman, one of the last of the free range cattlemen, who

grazes his herd over unclaimed ground across the West with the help of his small crew led by Charlie Waite (Kevin Costner). Costner was the driving force, producing, directing, and even putting up his own money, though he insisted Duvall get top billing and says the film might not have been made had Duval not agreed to do it. Pitch perfect from stem to stern, including outstanding performances by Annette Bening as Charlie’s awkward love interest and a pre-Dumbledore Michael Gambon as the evil cattle baron who runs the town. I don’t see it often listed as among the great Westerns, but it should be.

Appaloosa (2008) Here’s another one that should be right up there, Ed Harris’s adaptation

of Robert B. Parker’s first Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch Western. Harris directed and co-wrote the screenplay in a faithful adaptation of Parker’s book, about which I’ll have more to say in a couple of weeks. Harris and Viggo Mortensen play a pair of traveling lawmen who will go to any town that wants to clean itself up so long as the town agrees to their conditions. The basic story is a clever variation of a love triangle, with Harris’s Cole becoming enamored of newly-arrived widow Allie French (Renee Zellweger), whose efforts to play Cole and Hitch against each other spur the core friction in the story. Well told, well acted, faithful to the original material as well as the period in history, this is another that deserves more attention than it seems to get.

The Hustler / The Color of Money

I’ve long wanted to watch The Hustler and The Color of Money back-to-back. I didn’t quite get to do it—a couple of weeks intervened—but close enough.

I’ve probably seen The Hustler ten times now; every time I find something else to like about it. The story, the acting (Paul Newman, George C. Scott, Piper Laurie, Jackie Gleason, and the often overlooked Myron McCormick) is superb throughout. Robert Rosser’s decision to film Walter Tevis’s novel in black-and-white was inspired. The somber tone and dingy surroundings that make the movie would not have worked as well in color.

A few scenes will always stand out. The first marathon pool game with Fats. Eddie’s getting his thumbs broken. His speech to Sarah about his feelings when he’s really on, what we’d now call “being in the zone.” The resignation on the face of Minnesota Fats when he tells Eddie, “You better pay him.” I’ve long thought Sunset Boulevard was my favorite noir film; The Hustler might be better. (The vitriolic discussion as to whether either of those films are noir may begin anon.)

The Color of Money is good, not great. Scorsese was smart to go the opposite route: where The Hustler is all dark and shades of gray, The Color of Money is flash and dash. Nine ball instead of straight pool. He pays proper homage to his predecessor in various ways, thanks to an excellent screenplay by Richard Price, adapting Tevis again, though the film is, apparently, radically different from the written sequel.

The telling differences are just as the older Fast Eddie describes the differences between nine ball and straight pool. Straight pool is a thinking man’s game, every shot sets up the next. Nine ball is for bangers, you can slop the balls in and win. It’s quicker and flashier and better for TV. There’s not as much heart in The Color of Money. Maybe the emotions than come with the sense of loss felt in The Hustler are more powerful than the sense of gain at the end of TCOM. Whatever, it’s a fine movie, but The Hustler is a great one.

A couple of side notes. It’s often said Newman’s Oscar for TCOM was delayed payment for the one he should have won in The Hustler, his lifetime achievement award. Maybe. It’s still a hell of a performance, a mature actor taking the edges off of an older character and showing everything he’s learned in the interim.

And Tom Cruise. Cruise made TCOM during a stretch when I really thought he was about to become the next Paul Newman; I originally saw the movie as passing the torch. Cruise made Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July at about the same time, and he was on his way to becoming the sex symbol who could actually act. No one—no one—confuses Cruise’s career with Newman’s now. Cruise really is Vincent Lauria, immense talent, but an incredible flake too much in love with his perceived persona to realize his full potential.

Absence of Malice (And More)

Slowly but surely, we’re easing back into our weekly movie watching routine. This past weekend’s choice was Absence of Malice, a 1981 release starring Paul Newman and Sally Field.

Newman plays Michael Gallagher, a liquor distributor whose father was mobbed up; his uncle is head man in Miami. When the investigation into the disappearance of a union organizer goes nowhere, the Feds lean on Michael, hoping he’ll use his underworld contacts to help them out. To speed this along, knowledge of the investigation is leaked to an eager young reporter (Field). The resulting article essentially ruins Gallagher’s business, and the life of a close friend who tries to help.

The point of the movie is the balance of freedom of the press, its use and abuse by the government, and how people can be ground up by the interactions of institutions that are ostensibly there to serve them. Newman is excellent (his performance was nominated for an Oscar), playing Michael as a hands-on businessman who wants only to be left alone. He has nothing to do with the family’s other business, yet it’s clear he loves his uncle and wouldn’t do anything to hurt him, even if the threat of sleeping with the fishes wasn’t real. His decision to take action on his own makes sense, and the scheme he comes up with is clever and believable. He wants Field’s reporter to believe and trust him, but on his terms. It’s a better performance than The Color of Money, for which he won his lone Oscar. (For the record, Henry Fonda won that year for his farewell performance in On Golden Pond.)

Newman’s in good company. Sally Field was nominated for a Golden Globe, and Melinda Dillon was nominated for an Oscar in a supporting role as Michael’s friend. Still, for all its strengths, the movie is stolen by a ten-minute performance at the end by Wilford Brimley as Assistant Attorney General James Wells. (The role was essentially reprised in his appearance as Postmaster General in Seinfeld.) Rarely can an actor make a movie his own in what is essentially a cameo performance; the best other example that comes to mind Donald Sutherland’s work as the arsonist in Backdraft.

Absence of Malice is worth watching just for Brimley alone, though it would still be worth it had he not appeared. Highly recommended.

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My parents came to spend the holiday, so we watched several movies last week. Among them was Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. I only caught the last 45 minutes, and we all know Hitchcock was a genius, but this movie stank on ice. There were enough unbelievable plot holes in what I saw to sink a battleship. I won’t go into detail here, but the whole conceit of the picture, that their kidnapped child can hear Doris Day singing, even though he appears to be about half a mile away in the embassy building, then be found because Jimmy Stewart pinpoints his whistling—portrayed as phantasmagoric echoes in the soundtrack—is enough to put one off of Hitchcock forever, or at least until Rear Window is on again.