Film #147: Boogie Nights

Even though it has an immense cult following, Boogie Nights is one of those films I love in spite of my better judgment.

I can recall gendering at the beautiful one-sheet for Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough movie months before it was released in the fall of 1997. I marveled at its huge cast, and was excited about the subject matter--a trip through the Los Angeles porn industry of the late 70s/early 80s. I didn’t know who Anderson was at that time, having not seen his first feature, the small-time con film Hard Eight, but that would soon change. The Boogie Nights poster, though, with its intricate photo collage of characters from the film, promised an epic portrayal unlike anything ever attempted. I was extremely thrilled about seeing it.

In it, we follow its naïve central character, Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg, in his first really notable lead role), as he's ensnared into a makeshift family of porn mavens. As he’s performing tricks on the side at his busboy job at an L.A. nightspot, he’s spotted by the patriarchal porn auteur Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds, in one of the best roles of his career). Impressed by his entire...um...package, Horner invites Eddie into the porn fold, and there his triumphs and troubles begin.

Eddie’s eventual transformation into the XXX-star Dirk Diggler is followed in great detail, but this story is really a kind of connective tissue for all the many other tales the film has to offer: Julianne Moore is a top-tier porn actress battling the courts and her ex-husband (John Doe) over custody of their son while using Horner’s coterie of performers as sort of stand-in children; William H. Macy is a meek assistant director struggling with his wife (porn queen Nina Hartley) and her hurtful infidelity; John C. Reilly is an amiable second-string performer (with a penchant for magic tricks) attempting to forge a stronger identity for himself; Don Cheadle is another beaten-down porn star who’s finding his race as a barrier to breaking into the world of stereo sales; Heather Graham is the sexy but largely innocent Rollergirl, searching for the family she can’t find at home.

And Horner himself is battling pressures to convert to video rather than film--an idea he finds abhorrent (this is especially poignant now, seeing as how 35mm is dying right before our eyes, and Anderson is on the front lines in keeping film alive). Throw into this mix Philip Seymour Hoffman as a schlubby sound guy, Luis Guzman as an enthusiastic outsider, Robert Ridgely as a troubled producer (he has a great scene at his downfall, and the movie is dedicated to him, as Ridgely died soon after production), Philip Baker Hall as an imposing moneyman (you have to love Anderson for resurrecting Hall's career), and Ricky Jay as Horner’s loyal photographer/editor, and you can get a sense of this film’s monumental ambition.

I find many facets of Boogie Nights to be quite wonderful. The widescreen cinematography, by Anderson regular Robert Elswit (who would go on to win an Oscar for his work on Anderson’s There Will Be Blood) is always vibrant and inventive, as is the diverse '70s-era source music score (pairing nicely with a sad circus-flavored underscore by Michael Penn). Anderson’s writes dialogue for dumb people particularly brilliantly, so there’s always funny conversation ensuing. The period detail in the garish art direction (by Bob Ziembicki) and costume design (by Mark Bridges, who's gone on to do The Fighter and The Artist) are spot-on. I love seeing Burt Reynolds tearing into a meaty role again and Julianne Moore is beautifully histrionic here, as she would be in Anderson’s Magnolia as well (both she and Reynolds received supporting Oscar nominations). As always, I find John C. Reilly to be a hoot as Reed Rothschild, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is sweetly doofy as the crewman who gets a crush on Eddie (his tortured confession of this to the unsuspecting Wahlberg is, I think, the movie’s most shattering scene).

But I also find that many parts don’t work: William H. Macy is a shamelessly barely-sketched punching bag of a character; Don Cheadle’s story fails to make a deep impression (note: any time you see a character in a white suit doing something as innocuous as buying donuts, you can bet that suit’s gonna be covered in blood by the end of the scene); and Graham’s Rollergirl, while extremely cute, also seems thinly-written. It feels like Anderson just has too much movie here for 2½ hours to hold (as wonderful as it is on the wide screen Boogie Nights would have been, storywise, a much more effective TV series). Also, the film owes a bit too much to the Goodfellas style of soaring-then-crashing storytelling (with the onslaught of the '80s being the rather too-obvious turning point, though thankfully the AIDS virus doesn't even make a cameo appearance, though it obviously looms in the world's future). I know that this sort of structure is an old trope that dates back to silent pictures, but that's kind of why it feels too pat, too easy for a filmmaker like Anderson (who's clearly shown in his subsequent work how complex a storyteller he can be). However, there's no crime in being young, and Boogie Nights feels like a young artist's playground.

Nevertheless, it is required viewing, if only for its extremely tense final third, which finds Eddie struggling with a cocaine addiction while trying to launch a hilariously ill-conceived musical career (the songs, performed bravely and horribly by Wahlberg and Reilly, include the original “Feel My Heat“ and an excruciating cover of "The Touch," the closing song to The Transformers Movie). Particularly memorable in this segment, too, is one of the great scenes in movie history, where a destitute Wahlberg, Reilly and ne’er-do-well Thomas Jane are stuck inside a free-basing coke-dealer’s house. The gun-toting dealer is played with maniacal energy by Alfred Molina; he’s so coked up, he has well-hidden suspicions that these three desperate guys are planning to rip him off. With firecracker’s being thrown left and right by his houseboy, he holds the guys semi-hostage as he insists on playing “Jessie’s Girl” and “Sister Christian” for them on his stereo. You’ll never hear these two songs in quite the same way again. It’s really a marvelously scary moment that puts you right there in this mess and gets your heart pounding like you've been smoking crack alongside Molina.

There are many other things I like about the movie: the note-perfect, stiffly-acted porn sequences, shot on a scratchy 16mm; the famously dazzling tour through one of Horner’s house parties, done in one long shot that recalls a scene out of Kalatozov's I Am Cuba, where we eventually follow a girl as she jumps into the pool out back, all to the perfectly-chosen tune of Eric Burdon and War’s “Spill the Wine”; and the final shot of the film, which recalls another Scorsese classic, Raging Bull, but which ends with, at last, a glimpse of what made Dirk Diggler famous. Most centrally, I wish Boogie Nights as a whole was as good as these individual elements. It stumbles in its enthusiasm, but it’s got moxie, ambition, and know-how; often overpraised, it remains an important film if only as the breakthrough for an electrifying artist like Paul Thomas Anderson who, with each passing work, only seems to be getting more and more challenging.

Forgotten Movie Songs #10: "A Friend" from W.W. AND THE DIXIE DANCEKINGS

I haven't seen John G. Avildsen's W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings since it played on cable back in the early 1980s. Before that, it made an impression on me as a fun, very Southern-flavored musical romp. I watched it first at the Southeast Expressway Drive-In in Atlanta, GA, in 1975, probably on a double bill with another Burt Reynolds movie (my recollection is the second feature was Reynolds' moonshine action movie White Lightning).

Since it's been so long since I've seen the film, I can't confidently comment too deeply on why I love it so. But I can tell you I DO love it. The movie swirls together superstar Reynolds and neewcomer Jerry Reed, stirs in the cute Conny Van Dyke and taciturn country music mainstay Don Williams (in his only feature film appearance), adding here-and-there dashes of character actors James Hampton and Rick Hurst as the remaining Dancekings, then kicks it all up a notch with two superb Southern-fried villains in Ned Beatty (as the colorfully-named Country Bull) and Art Carney (playing the nasty Deacon John Wesley Gore, right after his 1974 Oscar win as the lead in Paul Mazursky's Harry and Tonto). With all of this, the film HAS to be worth checking out again, or for the first time.

Unfortunately, W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings isn't available to see, because it hasn't been released to DVD, but it's certainly a time capsule that deserves to be reopened. One of its major assets are the songs by Jerry Reed, a country star making his screen debut and who, in 1977, entered icon territory as Reynolds' truck-driving buddy Cledus in Smokey and the Bandit). In W.W., Reed plays the leader of a country bar band who's taken to the top via the deviant management of true believer Reynolds, who endearingly rocks and chuckles his way throughout the entire film. W.W. and The Dixie Dancekings was a major hit in the South (especially at the drive-ins) and was the film that preceded director Avildsen's Oscar win for another little movie called Rocky.

The song "A Friend" echoes throughout the entire film, and becomes an anthem for the goodtime feelings contained within the film. It's still a rousing, even moving song. The music and lyrics are written by Jerry Reed (who also provides the chunky guitar work) and the vocals are shared, suitably, by Reed, Van Dyke, and Williams. My apologies for the poor video quality:



Now this ol' life ain't somethin'
That you live on by yourself
There always comes a time you need a friend
Sometimes this world can get so heavy
And the road can get so long
That you need someone to lend a helping hand

Well, I learned life the hard way
I took all my knocks and lumps
But when I look back down the road at where I been
I can see that all the things I done
In this ol' life have been more fun
Cause I shared them with someone who was a friend

You've got to care 'bout one another
Be a friend and be a brother
Cause you're always gonna need someone
That you can lean on
Got to help each other out
That's what this life is all about
'Cause there ain't no way that you can make
This journey alone

Well, I guess it's time for lookin'
'Cause I been there and back
Yes, I seen life 'bout every which way you can
But as far as I'm concerned
The greatest thing that a man could learn
Is when you're down it's great to turn to a friend

Well, I guess it's time for lookin'
'Cause I been there and back
Yes, I seen life 'bout every which way you can
But as far as I'm concerned
The greatest thing that a man could learn
Is when you're down it's great to turn to a friend
Turn to a friend.

Film #121: Smokey and the Bandit

I can still vividly remember, as a 10-year-old Atlanta kid, first seeing Smokey and the Bandit. My parents had taken me to the Northeast Expressway Drive-In Theater on opening night (if you look at the top right hand corner of this blog, you can see a torn ticket from the theater). The film's star, Burt Reynolds, was then the number one box office attraction in the country, and nowhere was this more evident than in the South. Even though he was born in Michigan but raised in Florida, Burt was pretty much adopted as a hometown boy after his breakout performance in 1972's Georgia-filmed Deliverance, he was pretty much. He returned to the state to shoot White Lightning (1973), Gator (1976) and, in 1977, Smokey and the Bandit. So seeing the latter open at an Atlanta drive-in was a big event.

My father wheeled his much-adored red-and-white '57 Chevy onto the drive-in lot way before dusk, and we sat and waited for the light to change so we could see this film we'd been hearing about for so long. The action-comedy had been in production all throughout 1976, filmed primarily in neighboring Jonesboro and McDonough, with major scenes filmed at the Atlanta's Lakewood Fairgrounds, where a gigantic racetrack and rollercoaster were situated. It was unbelievably exciting for my ten-year-old self to be at the Northeast Expressway Drive-In Theater on opening night; only Burt's very presence could have made it more so.

When darkness fell, we settled in with our snacks and waited for the joy. And so it began, and the film was just gearing up when disaster struck. The frames fluttered and then cooked brightly on the screen, and we knew what this meant: the print had been damaged. The screen lights flashed on in surprise, and I remember instantly looking out the back window and seeing the second screen at the drive-in (this was the first multi-screened drive-in in Atlanta). Smokey was going to be such a Georgia hit that the managers had booked it on the other screen as well, and there, the film was still playing fine. Now, horns on our side were honking in protest as we all waited impatiently for the situation to be fixed. When the projector powered up again, we got a shock: we weren't gonna be seeing Smokey and the Bandit; instead, the second feature, Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive flickered forth.

Now, I don't know if you've ever seen Eaten Alive, but no matter how much love gorehounds may have for it, it ain't no Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it CERTAINLY ain't no Smokey and the Bandit. It's a nasty, scuzzy, unfrightening, totally mean-spirited piece of crap that has Neville Brand as a hotel owner who chops the heads off his guests with his scythe and feeds the corpses to his pet alligator. My mother, an avid animal lover (as we all were) was particularly scarred by the filmed feeding of a guest's pooch to the 'gator (to this day, my mother won't watch scary movies where a dog or a cat appears, because she's sure they're going to be killed off, and she's almost always right; it's a trend that's thankfully almost died off). Anyway, needless to say, we were mightilly pissed. But we stayed steadfast for Smokey, because Burt was our man. Happily, we weren't disappointed.

In it, Reynolds plays Bo "Bandit" Darville, a fast-talking, fast-moving rig driver who makes a massive wager with a bizarre, cocky pair of Texas businessmen (Big Enos and Little Enos, played by Pat McCormick and Paul Williams). They challenge the Bandit to deliver of truckload of Coors beer from Texarkana, TX to Atlanta, GA--a little under 1500 miles--in 28 hours (which was a little more difficult back when the speed limit was only 55 MPH). At any rate, Bandit has no problem with this. He hops into his black Trans Am (you know--the one with the T-top and the firey eagle on the hood) and gits, enlisting the help of Cletus ("When You're Hot, You're Hot" country singer Jerry Reed), who's to drive the actual payload while the Bandit's Trans Am serves as a decoy for the po-lice.

Only problem is, Reynolds takes the time to pick up Sally Field, who's decked out in a wedding dress and is thumbing a ride on the highway, escaping her marriage to a doofus played by former football star Mike Henry (who'd played alongside Reynolds in The Longest Yard). Henry's father happens to be a foul-mouthed, over-zealous country sheriff named Buford T. Justice (a dynamic, career-reviving, Southern-fried turn for certified New Yorker Jackie Gleason), who makes it his mission to catch the Bandit and foil his delivery of that Coors beer. So then we get nearly an hour of terrific car chase stunt-work from director Hal Needham, a former stuntman himself. Drive-in audiences (and four-wall audiences, too) wouldn't see so many cars pulverized for another three years, when John Landis' The Blues Brothers hit the screen. Next to that and H.B. Halicki's Gone in 60 Seconds, there has never been more wholesale destruction of Detroit product ever recorded on film. This makes Smokey and the Bandit one of the greatest drive-in movies ever (not one of the film's scenes takes place at night, which made it great for drive-ins, as it was hard to see, under the stars, scenes filmed in darkness).

Scripted by James Lee Barrett (The Greatest Story Ever Told) and Charles Shyer (Private Benjamin), the film was tight, funny, and fast. It may seem stupid today--and it is, really. But I defy you to admit you're not entertained at least a bit by it upon first viewing. Reynolds and Fields are a searing-hot couple (they'd go on to a real-life relationship that lasted for four years; together, they'd go on to appear in Smokey 2, Hooper, and the excellent Reynolds- directed comedy The End); Gleason, with his cornpone Southern accent, is ridiculously funny as the bumbling sheriff (I love it, against my better judgment, when he lets loose with the undying catchphrase "I'm gonna barbecue your ass," but my truly favorite scene--one that still makes me giggle like a kid--occurs when Justice walks out of a restaurant with a long stream of toilet paper improbably hooked onto his treasured smokey's hat). Henry also gets laughs as his idiot-boy son, always there making sure his dad's hat is secure (even after the top's been lopped off of their patrol car). Once cast as a villain in Gator, another Reynolds vehicle, Reed is quite charming (his "boogety, boogety, boogety" has become a rallying cry at present-day NASCAR events, and his songs "Eastbound and Down" and "They Call Him The Bandit" have become country classics). And my mom even got to instantly get over her distaste at the death of that dog in Eaten Alive, because Smokey starred a yelping basset hound named Fred as Reed's sidekick.

According to Box Office Mojo's ALL TIME BOX OFFICE CHAMPS adjusted for inflation list, Smokey and the Bandit ended up making more than $408 million, and became the centerpiece for the CB craze of the 1970s. Two sequels followed--the second was just okay, and the third was one of the most hilariously bad movies ever made); it also spawned countless rip-offs. My mom and dad liked it so much they ended up shelling out for a black Trans Am in 1978; now, THAT was bitchin' (though it broke down so much my parents swore never to buy another American-made car again). So, even now, after seeing all the Bergmans, Antonionis, Kubricks and Kurosawas the world has to offer, my fondness for Smokey and the Bandit remains as indelible as my love for fried chicken, cicadas, dogwood trees, and drive-ins.

My 20 Favorite Actors

Seeing as how the 20 Favorite Actresses meme has taken hold of my film-blogging cohorts so completely, I see no reason to delay in starting a 20 Favorite Actors meme, too. It was tough picking my crew (and remember: they're my faves, not the best), but without delay, here are my choices, with twenty runners-up close behind:

Clint Eastwood (key films: Dirty Harry, The Good The Bad and the Ugly, The Beguiled, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Million Dollar Baby, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, In The Line of Fire, Bronco Billy, Escape from Alcatraz, White Hunter Black Heart, Play Misty for Me, A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Gauntlet, Tightrope, A Perfect World, Paint Your Wagon, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Joe Kidd, Magnum Force, Kelly's Heroes, Unforgiven, Gran Torino, Trouble with the Curve)

James Stewart (key films: Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Vertigo, Rear Window, The Naked Spur, Winchester '73, Bend of the River, The Philadelphia Story, The Glenn Miller Story, Harvey, Anatomy of a Murder, The Stratton Story, The Man from Laramie, The Shop Around The Corner, The FBI Story, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Destry Rides Again, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Naked Spur, Broken Arrow, The Greatest Show on Earth, The Flight of the Phoenix, The Shootist)

Jack Nicholson (key films: Chinatown, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Five Easy Pieces, Terms of Endearment, Carnal Knowledge, The Shining, The Passenger, The Last Detail, Easy Rider, The Pledge, About Schmidt, Broadcast News, The Border, Prizzi's Honor, As Good As It Gets, The Terror, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Shooting, The Departed, Hell's Angels On Wheels, Tommy, The King of Marvin Gardens, Hoffa, Batman, Ironweed, Blood and Wine, A Few Good Men, The Witches of Eastwick, Ride in the Whirlwind)

Paul Newman (key films: Hud, Harper, The Hustler, Hombre, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Color of Money, Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Verdict, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Sting, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Nobody's Fool, Absence of Malice, The Left-Handed Gun, The Hudsucker Proxy, Road to Perdition, Torn Curtain, Cars, WUSA, Pocket Money, Twilight, Buffalo Bill and the Indians)

John Heard (key films: Chilly Scenes of Winter/Head Over Heels, Cutter's Way, Mindwalk, Heaven Help Us, Heartbeat, Between The Lines, The Sopranos, Home Alone, Big, After Hours, Cat People, The Trip to Bountiful, Beaches, Rambling Rose, C.H.U.D., Waterland, Pollack, In The Line of Fire, Animal Factory, Sweetland, Too Big to Fail, Sharknado)

Robert De Niro (key films: Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, The Deer Hunter, The Godfather Part II, Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, Cape Fear, Casino, Jackie Brown, Awakenings, 1900, Once Upon a Time in America, Analyze This, Copland, Great Expectations, New York New York, Bang The Drum Slowly, True Confessions, Brazil, What Just Happened, Everybody's Fine, Stone, The Mission, This Boy's Life, Heat, Wag the Dog, Bloody Mama, Silver Linings Playbook)

Henry Fonda (key films: Twelve Angry Men, On Golden Pond, My Darling Clementine, Young Mr. Lincoln, Once Upon a Time in The West, Fail-Safe, The Lady Eve, The Wrong Man, Mister Roberts, The Grapes of Wrath, The Ox-Bow Incident, Fort Apache, Madigan, Drums Along the Mohawk, The Tin Star, My Name is Nobody, Gideon's Trumpet, You Only Live Once, In Harm's Way, The Longest Day, The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, Advice and Consent, Jesse James, The Boston Strangler, The Best Man, Jezabel)

Spencer Tracy (key films: Fury, Boys Town, Judgment at Nuremberg, Inherit the Wind, Adam's Rib, State of the Union, Captains Courageous, The Old Man and the Sea, Bad Day at Black Rock, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Desk Set, Father of the Bride, A Guy Named Joe, Pat and Mike, Stanley and Livingstone, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World)

Boris Karloff (key films: Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, Scarface, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Criminal Code, The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Black Cat, The Body Snatchers, Bedlam, The Raven, The Terror, Targets)

Thomas Mitchell (key films: Stagecoach, The Sullivans, Gone With The Wind, Lost Horizon, It's A Wonderful Life, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Make Way for Tomorrow, Only Angels Have Wings, Our Town, Tales of Manhattan, Wilson, High Noon)

Woody Allen (key films: Annie Hall, Broadway Danny Rose, Play It Again Sam, Bananas, Manhattan, The Front, Sleeper, Take the Money and Run, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Love and Death, Stardust Memories, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, Scenes From A Mall, Zelig, Hannah and Her Sisters, King Lear, Manhattan Murder Mystery, To Rome With Love, Fading Gigalo)

Morgan Freeman (key films: The Shawshank Redemption, Street Smart, Million Dollar Baby, Se7en, Glory, Unforgiven, Driving Miss Daisy, Levity, The Sum of All Fears, Deep Impact, Invictus, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Lean on Me, Teachers, Clean and Sober, Now You See Me)

Groucho Marx (key films: Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, Coconuts, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Skiddoo, Monkey Business, A Night in Casablanca, At The Circus)

Jeff Bridges (key films: The Last Picture Show, Bad Company, Starman, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Cutter's Way, The Last American Hero, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Fearless, The Big Lebowski, Iron Man, Tron, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Contender, Crazy Heart, The Fisher King, Seabiscuit, Hearts of the West, Texasville, The Door in the Floor, Heaven's Gate, Stay Hungry, True Grit, Fat City, Rancho Deluxe)

Gene Hackman (key films: The French Connection, Bonnie and Clyde, Scarecrow, The Conversation, Night Moves, Unforgiven, Hoosiers, Mississippi Burning, Superman, Superman II, The Royal Tennenbaums, Twice in a Lifetime, All Night Long, The Poseidon Adventure, Prime Cut, Young Frankenstein, Reds, The Quick and the Dead, Twilight, The Birdcage, I Never Sang for My Father, Cisco Pike)

Peter O'Toole (key films: Lawrence of Arabia, The Stunt Man, The Ruling Class, Becket, Creator, The Lion in Winter, What's New Pussycat, Venus, My Favorite Year, Lord Jim, Caligula, The Last Emperor, Venus, Ratatouille)

Steve Buscemi (key films: Reservoir Dogs, Fargo, Ghost World, Trees Lounge, Boardwalk Empire (TV), Interview, Mystery Train, Parting Glances, Living in Oblivion, Con Air, In The Soup, Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing, Monsters Inc., Airheads, Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, Big Fish)

Lawrence Olivier (key films: Wuthering Heights, Sleuth, Rebecca, Henry V, Richard III, Marathon Man, Othello, The Prince and the Showgirl, That Hamilton Woman, A Little Romance, The Entertainer, Hamlet, Spartacus, Clash of the Titans, The Boys From Brazil, Khartoum)

Michael Caine (key films: Sleuth, Educating Rita, Deathtrap, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Cider House Rules, Zulu, The Man Who Would Be King, Alfie, The Ipcress File, The Italian Job, Get Carter, Noises Off, Children of Men, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Quiet American, Inception, Blood and Wine, Little Voice, Mona Lisa, Gambit, Now You See Me, Play Dirty)

Burt Reynolds (key films: Deliverance, White Lightning, Starting Over, Smokey and the Bandit, Boogie Nights, Sharkey's Machine, Best Friends, The Longest Yard, Breaking In, The End, Citizen Ruth, Gator, W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings, A Bunch of Amateurs, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, Hustle, Shamus, Evening Shade (TV))

My twenty (incredible, to say the least) runners-up are: Marlon Brando, George C. Scott, Peter Sellers, Daniel Day-Lewis, Albert Finney, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Dustin Hoffman, Johnny Depp, Orson Welles, Robert Duvall, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Chaplin, Bill Murray, Albert Brooks, Max Von Sydow, Charles Durning, Ian Holm, Dennis Hopper, and Tom Wilkinson.

Film #55: Sharky's Machine

All Atlantans of a certain age have a soft spot for this Burt Reynolds movie that, like it or not, remains one of the best ones ever shot in the ATL. I think it's a lotta fun and probably Reynolds' finest directorial outing. It's adapted from Georgia author William Diehl's best seller
about Tom Sharky, an Atlanta homicide detective obsessively tracking a local mobster (a slimy Vittorio Gassman). He keeps on with this even after being busted down to the city's seedy vice department, where Sharky starts recruiting members of his machine (including old guy Brian Keith, goofy technician Richard Libertini, vice chief Charles Durning, mousy forensics expert John Fiedler, and cool black dude Bernie Casey). Beautiful British model Rachel Ward made her feature film debut playing Gassman's premier $1000-a-night call girl (with whom Reynolds naturally falls in love). The scenes with the Machine provide a lot of good comic relief that matches nicely with the more violent portions of the film (highlighted by a deliciously over-the-top bad-guy turn from coke-snortin' Henry Silva).

A former Georgia native, Burt Reynolds has an affinity for Atlanta that shines right through on Sharky's Machine. The city's 1982-era locations are put to optimal use, from the opening shootout outside City Hall to
the climactic race to the top of the 72-story Peachtree Plaza Hotel (the closing scene features a stunt by Dar Robinson that still holds the record for longest free-fall stunt in motion picture history). The opening image of the hotel, set to Randy Crawford's "Street Life," gives me chills especially when the helicopter shot centers in on a tough Reynolds navigating the city's train tracks. Sharky's Machine looks good, having been
photographed by William A. Fraker (1941, WarGames), and it sounds good, too, scored with an energetic collection of jazz standards and originals by Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughn, Peggy Lee, and The Manhattan Transfer. Violent yet often quite funny, I think Sharky's Machine has had a big influence on Quentin Tarantino, for one; it's filled with the sort of cheeky banter and bravado that runs all through his films (plus he used "Street Life" as a song in Jackie Brown). I'm curious to see if anyone out there agrees that it must be a Tarantino favorite. Just look at this clip and tell me this doesn't feel like something Q.T. ate up as a kid.