Barton Fink (1991)

BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL THERE'S ALWAYS HOLLYWOOD!

It was bound to happen at some point. Inevitably, the attempt to stay on top of the ‘one movie review a day’ thing would get away from me and I would miss a day. Yesterday was that day, meaning that today I shall need to review two films to make up for it. However, as it turns out, the review that arrives a day late rests on a rather appropriate film, giving that it charts the struggles of a writer’s attempts to overcome writer’s block, with mounting pressures and anxieties making it more difficult to get the job done in the ever-decreasing amount of time to do it. The fourth film from the Coen brothers, it’s a nightmarish drop into the tough world of the Hollywood screenwriter, circa 1941.

New York playwright Barton Fink (John Turturro) is lured to Hollywood to write for the pictures, with his first assignment being a wrestling picture. Staying in the creepy rundown Hotel Earle, Barton develops severe writer’s block. His neighbour, the cheerful insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), tries to help, but Barton continues to struggle as he gets lost in his own artistic impotence… and then things really start to go wrong.

Back in 1989, the Joel and Ethan Coen began writing a script for a movie called The Hat, though it’s title would eventually become Miller’s Crossing. Apparently becoming so lost in the process of writing, their normal speed of productivity came to a near complete halt. Although the pair denied that they were actually suffering from writer’s block, they decided to give themselves a break and began work on a completely different story. Naturally, what they chose to write about was a writer struggling to get over writer’s block. It took them only three weeks before they had completed the script, with them apparently saying that Barton Fink was something they just “burped out”. For something that was seemingly so reflexively expelled from inside them, they created something truly excellent.

Set in 1941, the film presents a quasi-Faustian fable that has a greater grounding in reality than one might think. Through the 1930s, into the 40s and through to this very day, Hollywood sought talent from the East Coast, as New York was the centre of what was considered to be the legitimate arts, such as plays, theatre, Broadway. The contemporary artisans of New York would generally return Hollywood’s gaze in a manner that was both amused and rather patronising. The great film critic Philip French wrote wonderfully about this particular dynamic of cross-country artistic parry and thrust in an article for the Observer back in 1995, Losing It to the Movies, with his main focus being the staff writers of the New Yorker magazine and their conflicted relationship with the Hollywood Dream Factory: disdainful of those in charge, unimpressed with their filmic produce, flattered by their praise, tempted by their money, and disturbed by their own readiness to succumb to it all. Obviously it wasn’t just those at the New Yorker who fell into the trap (such as Dorothy Parker and Herman J. Mankiewicz, who would win an Oscar in 1941 for co-writing Citizen Kane with Orson Welles), but many other big East Coast writers would be seduced by the promise of fortune and glory offered by Tinseltown (like Ben Hecht, James M. Cain and S.N. Behrman). It’s not really difficult to see why they would be tempted by such offers. There’s a saying that in the world of Theatre, the writer is paid a pittance, but treated like a king; whereas in the world of Film, the writer is paid like a king, but treated like dirt (this is actually alluded to in Barton Fink, when studio chief Jack Lipnick tells Fink, “The writer is king at Capitol Pictures. Look at your paycheque. That’s what we think of writers.”). The ones that lasted a long time in Hollywood ultimately became the ones who were the most willing to forgo their own sense of artistic integrity for the sake of easy money and warm weather, or as Philip French said, they stayed to “get rich and become pickled in alcohol and regret.”

It’s from this conflict world that we come to meet Barton Fink, a successful intellectual New York playwright, fresh on the scene and already darling of the critics. His invite from Hollywood is near instantaneous. They want him so they can have him bring that “Barton Fink feeling” to the pictures. The feeling they refer to is Fink’s fascination and preoccupation with the plight of “the common man.” This is his focus, which he believes brings with it a weight of responsibility, both to the lives of those he dramatises but also to theatre itself. As he passionately recounts to his new neighbour, “There’s a few people in New York… hopefully our numbers are growing… who feel we have an opportunity to forge something real out of everyday experience… create a theatre for the masses based on a few simple truths, not on some shop-worn abstractions about drama that don’t hold true today.” To this end, Barton feels uneasy about making the move westwards, not only because of his admitted unfamiliarity with the whole medium and structure of film, but because it would mean removing himself from a place where he can be immersed in the lives of his dramatic inspiration. Indeed, how can he tell the story of the common man when nestled in the warm opulence of Hollywood? To this end, Barton opts to stay in a place that’s “less Hollywood” (it’s not a dirty word). Therefore, his new residence is the Hotel Earle, a disquieting and eerie hotel that seems nearly completely abandoned by residents and staff. In fact, there only seems to be two members of staff to the whole building, receptionist/bell-hop Chet (played by Steve Buscemi) and elevator operator Pete (played by Harry Bugin). And, although reference is made to other guests, we only ever see one: Charlie, Barton’s next-door neighbour, played by John Goodman. At first, Barton is a little intimidated by Charlie, a big man that he meets under less than agreeable circumstances. Barton finds the noise coming from Charlie’s room (of which there is hardly any) to be too loud, distracting him from his important work of writing. He calls down to Chet, who then calls Charlie to ask him to keep it down. After hanging up, Charlie immediately comes knocking on Barton’s door, asking if he was the one who complained. Charlie looks pissed, and Barton is clearly not good with confrontation. As it is, Charlie turns out to be good-natured and apologetic, sorry for the disturbance. It also turns out that Charlie is Barton’s kind of person: an insurance salesman, “a working stiff, the common man.” It looks like Barton has lucked out with his choice of lodgings, finding a great source for material living right next door who is willing to assist the writer in any way he can. And Barton needs the help.

Barton’s complete unfamiliarity with the film world puts him at an almost immediate disadvantage on arrival, despite what Jack Lipnick says. Barton’s subdued personality and artistic pretensions are met with the almost pummelling effect of generosity and praise from Lipnick (Michael Lerner) and his lackey Lou Breeze (Jon Polito). They know he’s great, gifted, wonderful, and they just want him to bring that same standard of class and brilliance to their pictures, give them heart and soul, and in return he can have anything, say anything. Lipnick himself is another big man, equally suited to acting as a steamroller to Barton’s quiet manner. His first project? A wrestling picture for star Wallace Beery. Right away, Barton is rather at a loss about where to start. He doesn’t watch films, doesn’t like wrestling, has no idea to what standard his work is being held. He tries to seek advice from producer Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), an irritable man with contempt for most people, especially writers. Geisler takes Barton to lunch and suggests he speak to another writer, see what advice he can get about the best way to approach the material. When Barton goes the bathroom, he overhears someone being violently sick in one of the stalls. He tries not to notice, but can’t help it when it turns out the person being sick is W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), famed novelist and screenwriter and a big influence on Barton. It’s Mayhew that Barton asks for help with his script, which turns out to be a rough step. Mayhew does offer to help, but when Barton visits his office, he meets Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis), Mayhew’s assistant, who is in the middle of trying to quell the latest drunken outburst of the great writer. The next time they meet, the three are gathered at Mayhew’s home, where his bitter self-loathing, drunkenness and frayed relationship with Audrey see him walk away singing an old slave song. Much is made of the similarity between Mayhew and real-life writer William Faulkner, which is fair to a degree. Indeed, both are Southern writers, esteemed in their field and share a very similar visage. However, by temperament, he is more similar to the previously mentioned Herman Mankiewicz, who enjoyed some great success before becoming severely alcoholic and dying at the age of 55 (“become pickled by alcohol and regret”).

With help still not forthcoming in a way Barton can interpret or recognise, he delves further into his despair. He sits at his desk, typewriter in front of him, staring ahead, desperately looking for inspiration in the wallpaper in front of him. So many images of the film are of the screen completely filled with a single, flat image - the wallpaper, the ceiling, the blank white of the paper resting in his Underwood - all of which will be more than familiar to those who have, at one time or another, tried to write. With every fresh meeting with Lipnick or Geisler, his dread deepens, trying to find a steady footing in his work. His panic gets the best of him one night and he calls Audrey, pleading for help with his script. She complies, arriving to try and help him, but things get complicated when they end up sleeping together… and here’s where I stop telling you what happens and talk about other things.

Throughout the film, Barton’s biggest trouble is, essentially, that he is too pretentious. Now, he is an artist, and he truly believes that with that job comes the responsibility to tell the truth, to say something important, to make a difference in the world. And like his New York brethren, he believes that he can express the importance of the everyday monotony of life, find the poetry in the mundane of the regular working stiff. However, for all of his desire to live amongst the common people and show their value, the manner in which he talks about them makes it clear that he is not one of them. He talks about them as a separate entity, a group to be studied and filtered, like he’s panhandling the working class for gold. When the hotel shoe-shining service gets Barton and Charlie’s shoes mixed up, it offers the shot where Barton unsuccessfully tries to write whilst squirming in shoes too big for him - he literally cannot fill the shoes of the common man. He also completely overlooks the potential for help that rests right next door. Barton writes about the common man, but completely ignores it when Charlie repeatedly says, “I could tell you stories,” insisting on telling Charlie about how difficult it is to find a story to tell. Barton is writing a wrestling picture, but pays no heed to the offer Charlie makes to tell him about the sport. Much later, Charlie tells Barton that his problem is that he doesn’t listen, which certainly seems to be true. Charlie listens, says he hears everything that goes in that dump. That’s probably why he has an infection in his ears, because he can’t filter it like Barton can. When he eventually does finish his work, Barton celebrates by going to a USO dance, which is naturally filled with sailors and soldiers due to be shipped off to fight the war the next day. When one sailor asks to cut in on Barton’s dance partner, he manically fires back that he is a writer, that he’s celebrating finishing something good, yelling at those about to fight, “I’m a writer, you monsters! I create! I create for a living! I’m a creator! I am a creator!” Such is Barton’s reverence for the role of writer that he can forgive a certain amount of indecency from those who can write, such as Mayhew. At the meeting at Mayhew’s home, when the great writer gets drunk and threatens Audrey, Barton tells her, “That son of a bitch! Don’t get me wrong, he’s a fine writer.” Barton isn’t a bad man, really just a kind of ignorant one.

He also believes that he must suffer for his art, that a piece of himself must go into everything he writes if it’s to be any good. He’s not satisfied with himself or his work unless he had to go through Hell to get it done. And this is just exactly the point in Barton Fink. He doesn’t just go through Hell; he gets a room there. The Hotel Earle starts as a vaguely metaphorical building in which Barton takes up residence, but eventually drops the vagueness and turns into a full-blown house of surreal and rather unsettling images. It begins simply with signs of a rundown building, one that is home to few. In Barton’s room, the fan runs constantly because the heat is so bad that it sweats the wallpaper from the walls. A viscous glue-like substance literally runs down, the green wallpaper peeling away to reveal the vicious red colour of the walls beneath. This itself could be as good an explanation for Charlie’s ear infection, that the reason he hears so much is because he spends his time with his ears pressed to the wall, where the sickly residue runs into his ears, making him ill. Other details are liberally scattered throughout the film in such ways that you will probably miss them on your first, second, even third viewing. For example, notice everything that surrounds the elevator: when Barton takes the elevator to his floor for the first time, aided by the zombie-like Pete, the number six is said three times in fairly quick succession; or that when we are making the journey with the characters, we are travelling down, but when we are not, we see them rise up from the depths. All of these allusions to Hell further echo the aforementioned Faustian nature of the story, creating a very clear parallel with how all of those East Coast writers felt when they were courted for work in the land of movies.

Of the myriad ways you could interpret the film, a perfectly valid one is to question whether or not much of the film really happened or if just it existed in Barton’s head. At one point, in one of his many moments of staring at the blank whiteness of the paper, the whiteness consumes the screen, which could so easily be a transition from the real world to the one of Barton Fink’s imagination where he is the distressed hero, lost in a world created by a mind soaked with literary allusion to Dante and Kafka. That plotlines get introduced and lost, creating what would seem like vast holes in the film, make such a reading more convincing. Only later, when Barton has completed his story and left, can we consider that we are now free of his inner turmoil... maybe. See what you think in all of it.

There is not a single bad performance in this film. Most of the roles where written with specific actors in mind, and it’s very difficult to imagine anyone else who could have handled the job. Everyone is absolutely spot on. Turturro is every inch the awkward, introverted, pretentious writer from New York who is out of his depth; John Goodman is outstanding as the jovial Charlie, who gradually darkens throughout the film, but never entirely loses the warmth; Michael Lerner ably carries the dual nature of Lipnick, equal parts virtuous benefactor and severe tyrant; Tony Shalhoub’s Geisler is superb, a barely contained pot of resentment, whose delivery of the line where he asks Barton to throw a rock to find a writer is enough to sell the character completely; John Mahoney’s mix of Southern manners and angry contempt is perfect for W.P. Mayhew; and Judy Davis gives the most grounded performance in the whole film.

The cinematography from Richard Deakins, who I maintain is the best DP alive right now, does great work. The colours, the shadows are all so rich and solid. They genuinely make the film feel resolute. And Carter Burwell’s music is just as great as always.

Barton Fink is a truly excellent film. Rich in every aspect of filmmaking, from the writing to the direction to the performances to the cinematography to the music, nothing is wasted here. It holds enough detail that it can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, and is always such a joy to watch. It’s dark, occasionally unsettling, and regularly funny as hell. Really, why aren’t you watching this already?

Armageddon (1998)

FOR LOVE. FOR HONOUR. FOR MANKIND.

Michael Bay. For many, this man is the Devil. A Devil made of overblown visual excess, superfast editing, heavy stylisation and heavy-handed patriotic images that seems to want to pound the merry hell out of the viewer’s brain, forcing it into submission. He’s also one of the most bankable directors on the face of the planet. He may spend an absurd amount of money on his films, but he makes it all back and more. In 1998, he released one of his most successful films ever, a disaster movie about an asteroid heading for Earth and total destruction. The fact that another similarly-themed film came out only a couple of months prior did little to diminish its business. Michael Bay had more zoom, more bang, more Bruce Willis saving the world. And thus, like the Devil would, Michael Bay brought us Armageddon.

A meteorite the size of Texas is heading towards Earth, and will destroy all life on the planet. With only eighteen days until impact, NASA come up with a plan to fly out the rock, drill to the core and blow it apart with a nuclear bomb. To do this, they enlist the help of Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), the world’s best deep core driller, to train their astronauts for the job. However, Harry thinks the astronauts can’t be trained in time, and decides to take his own crew and do the job himself.

I’ll be honest, it’s a bit unfair to be laying all this blame at Michael Bay’s feet. Equally as guilty of pushing the much-lamented line of overblown Hollywood excess is über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer. They’ve had a steady partnership since Bay’s feature debut with 1995’s Bad Boys and, between the two of them, they have racked up an impressive list of big budget smash hits ever since. In fact, Bad Boys is the film that did the least amount of business, only managing to make around $141 million from a $19 million budget… that’s, uh… that’s some failure there. Since then the budgets skyrocketed, with Armageddon’s (coincidentally) being around $140 million, with a final box office of just over $553 million. Good lord, that is a lot of money. It’s with such numbers that Michael Bay has always felt that he can effectively counter any criticisms about the quality of his films. After all, if the film’s were really so bad, how can they be making so much money? And even if he did accept what critics say of his work, he’d be drying his artistic tears with $100 bills. Such is his life. Now, enough of all this financial talk. What’s Armageddon really like?

We’ll leave the visuals aside for now and look at the script itself first… Armageddon is stupid, insultingly so. Whilst the premise of an asteroid hurtling towards Earth with global annihilation on its mind is hardly far-fetched, the stuff that comes after it is wilfully ridiculous. In fact, this stupidity is so deep-rooted in the film, it actively tries to make people stupid by fostering a rather unsubtle form of anti-intellectualism. Watching it, there’s a common element that is returned to over and over again throughout: smart people are dumb, and the common man always knows better. The idea that sending a crew of deep core drillers into space to tunnel into a meteorite is insane. They do initially suggest that qualified astronauts, who have already been training for eight months for a (coincidentally) similar space drilling mission, receive some extra guidance from Stamper on the best way to proceed. However, since Stamper says that it takes a lifetime to know how to become a real roughneck, he makes the call that it would be easier to train drillers how to astronaut than training astronauts how to drill. That’s ridiculous. On this point, there is a story that, supposedly, when Ben Affleck was discussing the script with Michael Bay, he questioned the logic in this point. Michael Bay’s response? “Shut up.” Of course, this offers up further questions, like what kind of response is that to a perfectly legitimate point? Why wasn’t this point discussed further? Why did Affleck agree to do the film if that’s the answers he gets to basic questions of story logic?

Bay has actually openly talked about how the film’s solution doesn’t really make sense, and that many aspects of the film’s relationship with reality are nonsense. For example, why are there so many massive explosions and fires in space? Where’s all this convenient gravity coming from? Why are the communications signals using a separate, weaker satellite to transmit than the weapons remote? Why do both driller vehicles have machine guns? Apparently, the filmmakers were aware of all of these problems and inaccuracies and holes in the film, but chose to leave them be because it would make it more entertaining, and that your average film goer doesn’t know enough about these things to be able to really question them… and this is how we come to something close to an answer as to why Michael Bay seems to hate intelligence. The less you know, the more receptive to this kind of agonising drivel you are. And Bay compounds this by repeatedly suggesting that the smart people are idiots, easily outclassed with straight-talking and "common sense". In Armageddon, Jason Issacs plays a NASA scientist and is introduced as “pretty much the smartest man in the world.” However, even he is left looking sheepish after only a few minutes with Harry Stamper, who puts down his technical capabilities and seems shocked that this big-time smart NASA science guy can’t come up with anything better than a one-shot drilling expedition to save humanity. That’s why Stamper gets on so well with Billy Bob Thornton’s Dan Truman. He may be a smart engineer guy, but they’re cut from the same straight-talking, “just the facts, ma’am” kind of cloth. The rest of the NASA boys all seem to be sweating a lot and on the point of nervous breakdown, which sits in remarkable contrast to how we saw things not too long ago in Apollo 13. Those guys knew the stakes, but they also knew that staying calm and rational was the best way to approach a crisis.

There are a few concessions made towards allowing smart people to have some kind of dignity. Amongst the crew that Stamper selects to take with him are Oscar Choice, a brilliant geologist played by Owen Wilson, and Rockhound, another geologist and certified genius played by Steve Buscemi. However, their dignity does not last long. Oscar never really gets to show how smart he is, since he doesn’t last long on the flight. Rockhound, so named because he’s constantly horny (and the closest we’ll get to a live-action Quagmire from Family Guy), ends up going nuts with space dementia and has to be physically taped up after he starts shooting the superfluous machine gun. The fact that these guys are said to be very smart is really just so we don’t question why they’re being allowed to go along on this mission, but it’s just so transparent. It all actually reminds me of old cartoons from the 1980s like Inhumanoids and The Centurions. Those shows were full of hero characters said to be accomplished chess players and military strategists and thrill-seeking master chemists, and all for a show that was just about people fighting monsters in spacesuits. The ridiculous character bios were just something to make it “more plausible”. The difference is that those cartoons actually put forward the idea that being smart was a good thing, whereas Armageddon will only let you be smart if you don’t ask questions about the plot and have some sort of other serious character flaw, like being a sex-pest or a corpse.

Okay… now the visuals. The special effects are superb. Honestly, they are really very good. They should be, it’s a Michael Bay film and that’s what he does best. We’ll have to just accept that with great effects come great stretches on the limitations of movie physics, such as the fact that the world seems to be in a near perpetual state of sunset. I understand that Bay likes sunsets, because they look cool. And they do. However, if you’re going to show a short montage of moments from around the world, how in the hell can every country be at sunset at the same time? Also, Bay has this thing of constantly moving the camera, sliding from side-to-side or, his favourite, moving the camera around the character as they turn in the opposite direction whilst in slow-motion. It’s cool to look at, but it does speak to a weird sort of visual hyperactivity that many find unsettling.

Yet another disagreeable thing that bubbles up out of this film: in the first ten minutes, it’s really quite racist. Just look at the scene in which the first wave of smaller meteorites hammers New York City. Eddie Griffin appears as a bike messenger with a small dog called Reggie and, I swear to God, you could replace every single one of his lines with “Aw shiiit, son!” When Griffin has a run-in with a Samoan street vendor, Eddie unloads a light bit of racial abuse (“If I wasn’t a Christian, I’d be throwing your fat, pineapple-eatin’ ass through the window!”). Then there’s Mark Curry, who plays a cab driver and, once again, he might as well be saying “Aw shiiit, son!” over and over. His passengers, an Asian couple, aren’t much better. The husband never says a word, but his wife speaks in deliberate stunted English “I! Want! To Go! Shopping!” Christ, what the hell is this? Armageddon was the highest grossing film of 1998, and it has this kind of crap in it? If you can reduce most of your characters’ dialogue to a single stereotypical catchphrase without losing any hint of personality or affecting proceedings in the slightest, you know you done wrong. Even Peter Stormare doesn’t seem to be playing a Russian cosmonaut so much as a thick Russian accent that happens to be wrapped in a cosmonaut. However, he’s okay because he’s just a regular guy, who fixes multi-million dollar pieces of equipment by cracking it with a wrench and yelling at it.

The performances themselves are okay, though nothing really goes beyond that. There is one performance that really drags things down, and that is Affleck. Now, I’ll admit to being something a fan of the guy. Kind of. I like him in a few things and I certainly think he gets more flak than he really deserves. However, almost every scene with him here is either way overblown or it seems like they just interrupted him having soup in order to film. So he’s either cocky in a uncommitted kind of way, or he commits too much, shooting way over the pitch of everyone else. Maybe at some point, he asked Michael Bay for direction and got told to shut up again.

Was there anything I even liked about it?… the music was pretty good, all stirring and effectively drawn. As I said, the effects were good, and so was the sound… hmmm…

Armageddon is unbelievably stupid. It makes little to no sense, most of the acting is of a standard no higher than alright, and it shows a level of ignorance on so many things that it’s actually rather impressive in its scale. What’s worse is that the film actually relies on its audience being more stupid than itself, actively encouraging them to distance themselves from logic, intelligence and basic common sense. It’s a hateful film, and no amount of Bruce Willis as The Great American Jesus stuff will put this right anytime soon.

Animal Factory (2000)

ON THE INSIDE THE RULES ARE BRUTAL AND THE STAKES ARE HIGH

If there’s one place that I don’t know about, it’s prison. And if there’s one place that Eddie Bunker does know about, it’s prison. Bunker used to be a criminal, a seriously bad egg convicted of vandalism, armed robbery, numerous assaults, including jamming a fork in another boy’s eye at age 15 and stabbing a prison guard at 17. He was, for a while, the youngest inmate in the California penal system. However, on the inside, he became a novelist, writing No Beast So Fierce (about armed robbery) and Animal Factory (about life in prison). He also became friends with people in the business, including James Ellroy, Michael Mann and Danny Trejo. He’s also appeared in many films, most notably as Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs. As can be expected, some of his books, those mentioned above, were eventually turned into films.

Ron (Edward Furlong) is privileged young man, sentenced to a stretch in prison on marijuana charges. On the inside, he is taken under the wing of 18-year prison veteran, Earl Copen (Willem Dafoe). As Ron serves his time, he becomes part of Earl’s gang, so Earl can keep him out of trouble. However, with prison being the place that it is, filled with violence, drugs and the constant threat of assault, it might not take long before Ron succumbs to his environment.

I’ve actually got the novel for Animal Factory, although I’ve never got round to reading it. No real reason as to why, I’ve just been busy reading other things. I will say, though, that if the novel is anything like the script for Animal Factory, which Bunker co-wrote with John Steppling, a sporadic writer of crime films and TV, then I hold out less hope for the book than when I first acquired it. The script is quite poor. Although it is filled with some nice details of prison life that could only have come from someone with firsthand experience, the script that it produced is remarkably clumsy. The major problem is that Bunker and Steppling seem to have confused gritty brutality with a lack of subtlety. Often characters, particularly Ron, say what’s on their minds in an awkward attempt to convey information. You can understand the necessity for it, of course. The prison system is a complex thing, and the rules of conduct are as important as the rules of basic survival. Like Ron, we are a stranger to these walls, so we need someone to tell us what’s happening, who’s who, how to behave if you want to stay alive and… well, intact. Ron isn’t alone in this. Some of Earl’s conversations have the distinct air of mere exposition and explanation, so the feeling of being spoon-fed is hard to ignore. There are also quite a few plot holes, such as Ron’s father’s attempts to get him out and the film’s open-ended and weak denouement.

Some of our principle characters are rather poorly drawn, too. Ron’s relationship with Earl is meant to be something akin to a father-son dynamic, but neither character is sufficiently built to explain the reason for this. The only scene we have to think that there may be a problem between Ron and his real father, played by John Heard, is that his dad missed Ron’s court date, so he got sentenced on his own. However, every other time we see him, Ron’s father is attentive and loving and incredibly self-sacrificing. It’s also never properly determined why Earl would care one bit about Ron. Does he remind of him of himself when he was young? Does Earl have a son that won’t speak to him, and so Ron becomes a surrogate? Is he doing someone other than Ron a favour? It’s never really addressed in a way that offers a satisfactory explanation for his actions. Given that this is the central relationship of the film on which the film rests, it’s just not good enough to warrant any kind of investment from the viewer.

Sadly, the direction does little to rectify this situation, which is a real shame because it’s directed by Steve Buscemi. There is just no atmosphere to this prison. Given the title of the film and its very clear thesis (that prison is a place for breeding criminals, not rehabilitating them), there should be a palpable air of threat behind these bars. Scenes of violence seem to have such a distance to them, even when they involve our main protagonist. And everything just seems so blocky. There’s no sense of nuance or delicacy to the visuals. Just because we’re in a harsh place, doesn’t mean the images have to be so rudimentary. The environment isn’t even that harsh. One of the major obstacles to this lack of atmosphere is the cinematography from Phil Parmet, and the general lack of grit on everything. The lighting is so pleasant that the surroundings actually look quite comfortable. Hell, say what you want about Prison Break, at least that place looked grim and the characters were defined and somewhat threatening.

One of the more frustrating things about the film are the occasional hints at something interesting, a story that may be worth picking up on, or a character that clearly has some depth just waiting to be explored, but they never get picked up. At best, it’s a glimpse and a single line of dialogue and then we move on. For example, near the beginning of the film, Ron briefly talks to a black kid, another young man going to the same prison for the first time. They occasionally spot each other as they serve their sentence, but there’s one instance where we see the different positions they find themselves in. Passing each other in the hallway, it’s clear that the other young man has had to become the property of a much larger prisoner for protection; he’s become a “punk”. Thanks to Earl, Ron has not been broken down by the place in the same way, so he’s remained free of violation. This opens up an interesting notion, whereby we could much better see the kind of toll prison takes on a young man new to the system, compared to the relatively easy road Ron has. However, we so rarely see this other kid, and when we do he’s actually in decent shape, so the whole point is rather moot.

There are some things that are good. John Lurie’s music has an interesting edge to it, a bluesy feel streaked by metallic grindings that offset the surroundings better than the lighting or direction. There’s also a surprising and welcome cameo from Antony Hegarty, from Antony and the Johnsons, as a prisoner singing for other inmates at a performance night. The performances are okay for the most part, many trying their best to cope with such poor character development, Furlong and Dafoe included. Two performances stand out, however, as being the closest thing to having actual depth or presence, something tangible. Typically, they are both bit parts. The first is Mickey Rourke’s Jan, an effeminate transvestite prisoner who has taken to modelling himself after Liza Minelli, albeit a very butch Liza Minelli. Ron’s original cellmate, Jan talks incessantly, and very amusingly, about what he wants to do when he gets out, where he’ll go and how hard he finds it being so pretty in such a nasty place. It becomes clear that he is very lonely, and needs a sympathetic ear to listen to him because he feels so alone. It’s simply from how well Rourke plays Jan that we get a sense of the character’s place in prison and the world. It’s also absolutely typical that we never see or hear about him again after Ron is moved to another cell. He's just abandoned. The other good show comes from Tom Arnold, who plays Buck Rowan, a regular of the prison system, new to these parts and a thoroughly nasty individual. Arnold is a big, imposing guy, so Buck is actually the only person in this whole prison who makes any kind of impression as a threat, and Arnold does it with little more than a hard stare. Every time he’s onscreen, he’s very menacing, making no secret of his desire to rape Ron, despite his supposed protection. Once again, the film dispatches Buck quickly and, though we hear about him afterwards, it’s a very unsatisfying conclusion and leaves the film feeling hollow once again.

Animal Factory should really be much better than it is, but it simply isn’t. The script is weak, the direction is short-sighted, the cinematography is wholly inappropriate and most of the actors spend their time trying make up for the weakness in the writing. Plus, in this film, prison just seems so inconsequential. There’s no real feeling of lasting threat, from guards or other prisoners, or that this is the kind of place that can change a person forever. This isn’t an animal factory… it’s a Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Airheads (1994)

THE AMP'S ARE ON BUT NOBODY'S HOME

In the early 90s, there was a run on comedies aimed at the so-called “MTV Generation”. The timing of this was likely an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Mike Judge cartoon Beavis and Butt-head and Mike Myers’ hit Wayne’s World, both from 1992. Now that a new demographic had been identified as viable target, Hollywood naturally set their sights on them. Some were of a more straight dramatic measure, but music was a big draw. Musicians were making cameos left, right and centre in these films, and amongst the titles released was Airheads.

Chazz (Brendan), Rex (Steve Buscemi) and Pip (Adam Sandler) are a band, The Lone Rangers, trying to cut into the music business. Hoping for a big break, they sneak into a radio station to get their demo tape played, but end up taking everyone hostage with fake guns when the DJ refuses to play it.

Airheads was the debut script from writer Rich Wilkes, whose work has always reflected his growing up in L.A. and a deep connection to music. It’s a rather odd beast, being that it’s not completely stupid, but not entirely smart either. It’s satirical, but also quite scattergun in choosing its satirical targets. It’s got a definite desire to “say something” to its audience, but seems a little at a loss at times as to what to say. It’s very self-aware, but still lacks a full sense of maturity. It’s plot is cobbled together from a variety of other, better films, but still exudes enough of its own personality to work. Wilkes seems to know from the get-go that the film won’t really be taken seriously, because the characters themselves aren’t taken that seriously. They yell, they stomp, they decry, and they’re pretty stupid, but they’ve got drive and passion and a need to be heard.

Wilkes also knows who these characters are, which does make them much easier to take. An older writer, less familiar with the audience demographic, would probably have relied on some pretty stock characterisations, and it would have just felt false. Not to say that Wilkes’ creations are completely realistic, but they feel much firmer with him. There is perhaps a degree of sexism going on, though. Really the only females we’ve got are Chazz’s girlfriend Kayla and station employee Suzzi, both of whom are a bit broadly written. Kayla is meant to be the strong female presence, but comes off more as a whack-job bitch, and Suzzi is your run-of-the-mill bimbo.

Michael Lehmann, best known for directing Heathers back 1988, does a good job of keeping the pace up the picture. There’s a very slight thematic connection there, looking into untapped youthful angst. Let’s be clear, Heathers does it so much better and is an infinitely better film, but it’s a point that occasionally raises its head here and there in Airheads. He also gets the odd filmic references and “inspirations”, doing what he can to subtly play them up. For example, when Ernie Hudson’s beat cop is trying to negotiate with the band, he has the occasional standoff with the SWAT leader. It’s Die Hard writ in comedy, and Lehmann plays on this very well. He also handles his cast very well, never entirely letting it go far enough to become as ridiculous as it sometimes threatens to become.

The cast do a great job, with a memorable performance given in almost every role. Brendan Fraser brings his great appeal and likability to Chazz. A common complaint at the time was that he was too likable to make Chazz any kind of threat, but many forget that there’s a past to Chazz that is entirely at odds with how he is now, and Fraser is believable as both. In him, you can see how one became the other. Steve Buscemi gives a great largely deadpan performance, and nicely evokes Rex’s slightly aggressive arrogance. Adam Sandler, here before he really hit big, plays a prototype of the kind of character that he would get much mileage out of later on (quite, nice, kind of stupid guy who can freak out with the best of them), but never distracts from the whole. He remains quite sheepish for the most of the film, which makes him much more appealing. Joe Mantegna actually gives Ian some depth, being the once-passionate DJ and music fan, now relegated to watching his beloved medium get taken over by idiots and gimmick acts. Mantegna carries a weariness on him in the role, though he’s still the owner of the old rebellious spirit. Michael McKean, in another mild joke of the movie, does a great, cowardly rat as the station manager; Judd Nelson sports slicked hair, an unsettling smirk and even more unsettling facial hair as the slimeball record exec; David Arquette is a mild comedy gem; Michael Richards plays to his physical comedy strengths; Reg E. Cathey plays the Angry Black Man to a tee; and Nina Siemaszko shows off some great comedy skills, though she is much better than this role.

I mentioned earlier the scattergun nature of Airheads. Given that it is a satire, at least in part, it is something of a misstep that they seem unsure as to what to satirise. There are swings taken at the record industry and the soulless execs at the heart of it, at the spiritless bands that employ gimmicks to make it instead of meaningful music, at the radio stations who keep great bands from being bigger because of label pressure… at the world in general, it would seem. However, on an equal footing, the film knows better than to simply call our heroes actual heroes. It’s aware of the idiocy of their plan. Chazz himself seems to be aware that he is nothing particularly special in the rock scene. It’s not without the sense of irony that, for all of the band’s desire to become stars without resorting to a gimmick, they end up hitting the biggest gimmick of all when they accidentally take everyone hostage.

The biggest thing to take from Airheads, though, is not a failure to adequately aim and fire the satire gun. It’s even really that it is speaking to a particular disaffected generation. The thing that comes across strongest from the film is the innate desire to express oneself, and that is what lies at the heart of not just music, but any art form. Everyone feels things and the also feel the need to express those feelings. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s eloquence itself, sometimes it’s useless gibberish, sometimes it’s inspiring, sometimes it’s hideously destructive, but it is the root of anything anyone has ever done to make their mark on the world. It almost doesn’t matter what their song is like, so long as they get their chance to be heard. Though, for the record, I like the song.

Airheads is great fun, and has a great spirit to it. It is easy to see why many don’t like and largely dismiss the movie, because it is riddled with faults that should my most measures cripple it. However, this is, to some degree, a good evocation of the kind of erratic nature of a youth who wants nothing more than to say something and be heard, but remains without much of clue as to what to say. It’s certainly not got all the brains in the world, but it does have a lot of heart.