MOVIES MADE ME #23: VANILLA SKY

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Cameron Crowe. I’ve already written about three of his films this year (FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, SAY ANYTHING and ALMOST FAMOUS) and I can’t resist doing one more. VANILLA SKY is not as highly regarded as some of the filmmaker’s other work. The film wasn’t a huge money-maker (at least, for a Tom Cruise vehicle budgeted at $68 million) and it got mixed reviews. I know a few people who really love this film, but I can name a few who hate it. Personally, I think VANILLA SKY illustrates exactly what’s so great about Crowe as a filmmaker. To quote the guitar hero of ALMOST FAMOUS, he's all about the “little things.”

VANILLA SKY was Crowe’s followup to ALMOST FAMOUS as well as his second film with Tom Cruise (after JERRY MAGUIRE). The director says that the project began with a private screening of Alejandro Amenabar’s ABRE LOS OJOS at Cruise’s house. The actor already loved the film and had bought the rights to remake it. When Crowe saw it for the first time, he was equally captivated. He decided it would make a perfect “contemporary” successor to his intensely personal period piece ALMOST FAMOUS, and he was eager to reassemble his company of players from that film. He knew he had a great band (so to speak), so he re-assembled them and set out to perform an elaborate “cover song.”

"Cover song" is an appropriate designation, considering the way that Crowe made ABRE LOS OJOS his own. Often, VANILLA SKY is a scene for scene remake… but there’s never any question that it is Crowe’s film. ABRE LOS OJOS is mostly cerebral. The remake is more emotional. In visual terms and in terms of story, VANILLA SKY has a warmer palette. Of course, that may be part of the problem for some viewers…

Amenabar’s source story – about the journey of a man’s sleeping brain inside his cryogenically frozen body – plays out like an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. ABRE LOS OJOS is enigmatic, haunting and often forbidding. The colors are muted, the silences are tiring, and the characters never quite connect with each other. It’s an arthouse thriller. VANILLA SKY is more like a Ray Bradbury story… the sci-fi elements are still there, but the emphasis is on the human drama. (Think JERRY MAGUIRE in THE TWILIGHT ZONE.) That human touch comes from Crowe’s major contribution to the story: “the lucid dream.”

One of the characters in the film describes the lucid dream concept as “the cryonic union of science and entertainment.” Not only will your body be preserved after you die, but your mind will be sustained in an evolving dream, controlled by your subconscious. For Cruise’s character, that means that “reality” is comprised entirely of the things that he loves – his favorite movies (JULES AND JIM and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD feature prominently), his favorite songs (Bob Dylan, Radiohead, etc.), his favorite magazine covers (including a Rolling Stone issue with Katie Holmes on the cover…) and a healthy, long-term relationship with the woman he loves (Penelope Cruz). Sounds too good to be true, right? That’s what Cruise’s subconscious mind figures… and his dream-come-true slowly turns into a bad acid trip. His mind finally rejects the artificial reality… the same way that humans rejected the perfect world matrix in THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS. Cruise’s character, inundated by pop culture, yearns for something real.

On one hand, Crowe seems to be pointing out the dangers of getting too immersed in pop culture. At the same time, VANILLA SKY is a celebration of pop culture and its ability to meld with our memories. When Cruise's ideal world eventually turns sour, that doesn’t mean that Bob Dylan’s music isn’t still a vital part of his real identity. If a person “wakes up” from a lucid dream, they’ll still love the same things. That’s an idea that resonates with me. Hell, I could have called this blog LUCID DREAM instead of MOVIES MADE ME… Both phrases are getting at the same idea. Pop culture is part of who we are.

Cruise’s character is always part of an “electronic crowd scene.” One critic referred to VANILLA SKY as Cameron Crowe’s White Album, but I prefer to think of it as his Sgt. Pepper – with Tom Cruise standing in for the allegedly dead Paul. Tonally, this is something very different from ABRE LOS OJOS… because the familiar pop culture sights and sounds in VANILLA SKY draw us into a warm cocoon, instead of alienating us in the twilight zone.

Crowe’s biggest inspiration for this particular project was filmmaker Billy Wilder. He revered Wilder so much that he tried to cast him as Cruise’s “coach” in JERRY MAGUIRE. Wilder turned him down flat, so Crowe wrote a book about him instead. Reading Conversations with Wilder, one realizes that Crowe sees his cinematic hero not as a cynic (though many critics have labeled him as such) but a romantic. Wilder’s formula is simple: The sweet is never as sweet without the sour. That is also the essence of VANILLA SKY. Sometimes the film gets very dark and depressing and sometimes it also gets syrupy sweet… but these extreme highs and lows exist for a reason. The main character is living heightened experiences… We’re seeing his life (the greatest hits collection) flash before our eyes, and Crowe has to convey the emotional intensity of a lifetime of intense experiences in just under two hours of screen time. It makes sense for the viewer to feel overloaded. It took me several viewings to distinguish and appreciate the “little things” that make this movie so special.

The first time I saw VANILLA SKY, I thought Tom Cruise was simply playing a caricature of himself. On repeat viewings, I started to see his vulnerability. As in JERRY MAGUIRE, Cruise truly reveals himself only when he holds that camera-ready smile so long that the veins in his forehead start to protrude, and the smile begins to look like a plea for help. (I’ve often thought that Cruise and Julia Roberts suffer a similar affliction… and that their smiles will one day be the death of them.)

On first viewing, his character’s downfall seemed to be to be result of callousness. On repeat viewing, I realized that his downfall comes out of his intense fear of being an irredeemable jerk. That’s why he chooses to get in the car with Cameron Diaz – not because he sees an opportunity to sleep with her, but because he doesn’t want to be a bad friend. With the subtle addition of a single line of dialogue (“You never have time for your friends until after they’ve given up on you”), Crowe makes his version of the main character more human than the main character in ABRE LOS OJOS.

Penelope Cruz reprises her role from ABRE LOS OJOS, but in VANILLA SKY she’s much more endearing. I can rattle off a litany of minor details that distinguish the rebooted character from the original, and make her so lovable: the oversized coat, “the saddest girl to ever hold a martini,” her reaction to Cruise’s nickname, the way she flips her laundry into the laundry basket with her foot, her celebratory outburst when Cruise leaves her apartment, her optimism (“every passing second is a chance to turn it all around), her whimsy (“I’ll tell you in another life, when we are both cats”), her sensitivity (“Well… your ears are in the right place”), and of course her mole. All of these things are part and parcel of the chemistry between the two leads, who light up onscreen like a couple of teenagers falling in love for the first time.

That’s one movie. Then comes the twilight zone stuff – which, when it finally rolls around, probably pissed some viewers off. I can hear it now: It was a sweet little movie until the writer dropped acid and decided to turn Tom Cruise into Quasimodo. In some ways, the second half of the movie reminds me of Luis Bunuel’s THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (another personal favorite). Bunuel’s film casts two actresses in the same role, to convey the enigmatic quality of the woman at the center of the piece. One is the sophisticated, almost regal French actress Carole Bouquet. The other is the comparatively wild and earthy Spanish actress Angela Molina. The leading man (Fernando Rey) is never able to get close to the object of his desire, because she literally keeps changing. The same thing happens to Tom Cruise in VANILLA SKY, when Penelope Cruz keeps turning into Cameron Diaz. (If you ask me, he should just go with it… There are worse problems to have in life… but let’s not get off track…)

All of this culminates on the rooftop of a New York City skyscraper, under a dreamy Monet-like vanilla sky. (You might get this kind of sky on a particularly smoggy evening in Los Angeles, but in New York it’s a surefire sign that you’re hallucinating.) The final scene is greatly extended from ABRE LOS OJOS. The most obvious change is the addition of the pre-9/11 skyline of New York – a perfect backdrop for the mixed feelings of the main character. VANILLA SKY was released in the fall of 2001, and there was some debate about painting out the World Trade Center in the background. The filmmakers decided not to (why, they rationalized, would anyone with the option of erasing September 11th from their memory not choose to do so in their lucid dream?). Cruise’s leap of faith also carries a lot of additional dramatic weight for anyone who remembers the day… As viewers, our subconscious plays its own role in the lucid dream.

This is where the movie wins me over every time I watch it – for several reasons. First of all, the scene showcases all of Crowe’s strengths as a storyteller. Unlike the characters in Amenabar’s film, the characters in VANILLA SKY are fully fleshed out and self-aware at this point. Cruise’s character moves beyond disillusionment to peace and acceptance. Cruz’s character remains a distinct personality, rather than just an obscure object of desire. (This reflects the main character’s evolution as well, since he has partially invented her.) Kurt Russell also has a chance to shine as Cruise’s father-figure... Even though he's not "real," we can't help but feel his loss.

As in all of Crowe’s films, the right music enhances everything. This final sequence features two memorable songs by the Icelandic band Sigur Ros, and the track that plays over Cruise and Cruz’s farewell, “The Nothing Song,” could not be more perfect. The song is a benediction and a valediction that literally goes beyond words. According to Wikipedia, "The Nothing Song" is sung in "Vonlenska, also known as Hopelandic, a constructed language of nonsense syllables - technically glossolalia – which resembles the phonology of the Icelandic language... It has been said that the listener is supposed to interpret their own meanings of the lyrics.” I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that viewers are supposed to do something similar with the final scene in VANILLA SKY… We’re meant to transfer our own memories and feelings, our own loves and lives lost, onto the final scene. If successful, this is when all of the “little things” coalesce.

For me, this rooftop scene played out like a kind of epiphany when I saw it for the second or third time on home video. (When I saw the movie for the first time in the theater, I was simply overwhelmed… I couldn’t decide whether I liked it or not. I was left with too many things to sort out in my mind, and I felt like maybe the filmmaker hadn’t made enough decisions.) I couldn’t help remembering where I’d been and who I’d been with on 9/11, and thinking of a very intense relationship that ended a few weeks later for reasons I couldn’t quite sort out in my mind. All at once, watching the end of VANILLA SKY, the reasons didn’t matter. It occurred to me that, in the final moment when your life flashes before your eyes, maybe love can outweigh all the other stuff. The information overload - the thousand points of light - become one giant wave of emotion.

A lot of viewers remain baffled by VANILLA SKY, but the filmmaker defines it as a story about “a guy who learns that humanity lives in every little thing, and not to take that for granted.” Simple enough, and powerful.

MOVIES MADE ME #15: UNTITLED (ALMOST FAMOUS)

Some people have music coursing through their veins. That’s what makes Cameron Crowe’s film UNTITLED (the “bootleg cut” of ALMOST FAMOUS) so beautiful. Just as Crowe’s SAY ANYTHING illustrates how a single song can sum up everything important about a couple’s relationship, UNTITLED shows that rock and roll can sum up what’s really important about certain people’s lives. That’s true for every major character in this film, save one.

UNTITLED is the semi-autobiographical story of a young journalist who gets a privileged glimpse behind the curtain of 70s rock and roll and is powerless to resist its charms. I’m reminded of something Lloyd Dobler said about feeling helpless in Diane Court’s world of “food and sex and spectacle”… Infatuation is infatuation, and William Miller (the main character in UNTITLED, played by Patrick Fugit) is head-over-heels, hopelessly, uncontrollably infatuated with the entire world of rock, from the first guitar lick to the last groupie standing. The moment he steps backstage, he’s hooked…. much to the chagrin of his conservative-minded mother, played by Frances McDormand.

In any other film, McDormand’s character would be a comic relief character, nagging and out-of-touch, but here she’s humanized just as thoroughly as the other characters… because UNTITLED is not only a love poem to rock and roll, but also a slice of the writer/director’s real life. It’s a story he has to be honest about. By now everyone knows that Cameron Crowe based UNTITLED on his personal exploits as a young rock journalist (he claims that 90% of the events in the film really happened to him or friends of his). Most interviews and articles about the film focus on that aspect of the storytelling, but not many have entered into an analysis of Frances McDormand’s character, who is based on the filmmaker’s own mother.

In Marlo Thomas’s book The Right Words at the Right Time, Cameron Crowe remembers a moment when he realized that his own mother played a similar role in his life. Her message, which he took to heart, was to “value humanity with good humor and live up to yourself in the world.” That lesson is what grounds William Miller as he hurtles helplessly through a world of food and sex and spectacle. That’s the reason that he can appreciate what’s so beautiful about rock and roll, without becoming jaded or cynical about the things that aren’t as beautiful.

And she’s not his only mentor. As in real life, rock critic Lester Bangs (played by the always brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman) instructs the young journalist to be honest in everything he says and does, regardless of what other people think or say. “The only true currency in this bankrupt world,” Bangs tells him, with an appropriate solemnity, “is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” This message also made a huge impression on Crowe… In fact, the original title of ALMOST FAMOUS was THE UNCOOL. It’s also the name of the filmmaker’s official website: http://www.theuncool.com/

After arming him with these two lessons, Crowe throws his alter ego William Miller into the maelstrom, where he proceeds to fall in love in every way possible. UNTITLED features a conventional love story between the wide-eyed innocent William and the worldly-wise Penny Lane (a star-making turn by Kate Hudson; this is her CACTUS FLOWER). Within a few hours of their first meeting, Penny pulls William aside and confides him (in a way, you can tell, that she never confides in anyone): “I’m going to Morocco. For one year. I need a new crowd.” When she invites him to come along with her, William can’t help beaming. His response is classic: he says yes, but with some understandable hesitation. Within the space of a single evening, Penny Lane has made him aware of a world that is roughly 1 billion times bigger than the one that he has lived in his entire life. (That’s the way love goes, isn’t it?) Also, his mother is beckoning him from a few yards away using the “family whistle.” Penny can see that he’s a little conflicted, so she says, “Are you sure?” William responds, “Ask me again.” She repeats the invitation and this time he musters utmost enthusiasm: “Yes!”

On the DVD commentary, Crowe says that actor Patrick Fugit never meant for the line “Ask me again” to be in the film. The actor felt that he had flubbed his response, and wanted to try another take so he asked Kate Hudson to feed him the preceding line one more time. Crowe, however, recognized the sincerity of the moment and used the entire sequence. In the finished film, the exchange is amplified by Nancy’s Wilson’s acoustic guitar on the soundtrack, which strikes the perfect tone of wonderment, then escalates into full-blown euphoria as Crowe widens the shot, pulling back into a high-angle, as if the God of that suddenly larger world is smiling down on William while he giddily runs toward the car. If the combination of cinematic elements in this scene don’t warm your heart to its core, nothing will.

The second love story in the film is the love affair that every true music-lover experiences. Penny Lane sums it up well: “If you ever get lonely, you just got to the record store and visit your friends.” Fairuza Balk’s character also hits the nail on the head when she talks about “loving some silly band so much that it hurts.” UNTITLED celebrates this mentality with every second of its running time, and dissects the idea in the most loving ways through its characterization of the musicians in the fictional band Stillwater.

It’s tempting to try to identify the real-world inspirations for the band at the center of the film. As a young journalist, Cameron Crowe traveled with plenty of contenders: The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, The Who, etc. I believe I read somewhere that Crowe claimed he based guitarist Russell Hammond on Lynard Skynard’s Ronnie Van Zant. The role also makes me think of guitar legend Jeff Beck. Probably the character is a hodgepodge of real-life inspirations, but also something more: Russell Hammond is the main symbol of Crowe’s belief that the best rock music is based on pure instinct. In one crucial scene, Russell (played by the unassuming Billy Crudup, who has the ability to go from sweet to dangerous in the blink of an eye) explains to William that rock and roll is all about the little things – “the mistakes” – like a single “woo” at the end of Marvin Gaye’s song “What’s Happening, Brother?” Moments later, he demonstrates his theory onstage with a random guitar windmill in mid-song. It’s a simple, inspired moment of abandonment of form. A little taste of anarchy. (Fugit's "mistake" in the Morocco scene is brilliant for the same reason...)

In contrast to Russell’s character, Jason Lee’s self-effacing lead singer Jeff Bebe is mostly intellect. I remember one time when I went to a show at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London with an excellent saxophonist named Joe Estock. We saw a band that was technically brilliant, but not quite inspired. I vividly remember a moment about halfway through the first set when Joe turned to me and tapped his forehead and smiled. A moment later, he tapped his chest and nodded his head back and forth. I got the message: The music was all head and no heart. I’ve thought of that many times over the years, because music is often that simple. When it works, it works on an instinctive level that’s too deep for words.

The same is true in filmmaking. Very often the scenes that I remember most vividly owe as much to the music as to the writing or the acting – because music determines the tone of a scene. The right music can turns copper into gold… It’s not just a matter of choosing a resonant song; it’s a matter of choosing exactly the right song to convey a very precise emotion. It’s harder than it seems, but this is Cameron Crowe’s greatest talent as a filmmaker. UNTITLED is a treasure trove of inspired musical interludes. Crowe pays tribute to Led Zeppelin’s wistful “That’s the Way” in an on-the-road sequence that evokes a sense of nostalgia through the use of autumnal light. There are a million other examples that I could point to. The group singalong to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” A “food and sex and spectacle” montage set to Lou Reed’s “Waiting for the Man.” Kate Hudson’s solo dance to “The Wind is the Song” by Cat Stevens. Penny Lane’s bittersweet birthday party (Elton John again). Penny getting her stomach pumped while Stevie Wonder’s “Cherie Amour” plays in love-struck William’s head. Billy Crudup and Fairuza Balk’s coda scene, featuring Zeppelin’s haunting “The Rain Song.” My favorite scene in the entire movie may be the heart-achingly beautiful airport scene, featuring Nancy Wilson on acoustic guitar. Everything about it is perfectly timed. There’s no escaping its emotional resonance.

Though the movie runs close to three hours, I always hate leaving the world that Cameron Crowe creates in UNTITLED. I not only wish I could go on the road with Stillwater, I earnestly wish I could have been involved with making the film, because it seems like the behind-the-camera experience of the actors was as genuine and inspiring as what their characters go through. (Check out the bonus features on the DVD, or read Jerry Ziesmer’s autobiography.) Somehow Cameron Crowe is able to evoke in his stories the feeling of being alive in the moment of a particular place and time – being so truly alive that you wouldn’t change anything about your own experiences (good, bad or ugly) for anything in the world. His characters always seem to be aware that those transcendent moments are fleeting, but the awareness never stops them from living life to its fullest, without fear or inhibition. They savor each experience as if it’s their last, and try to live their lives with honesty, integrity, good humor and an open heart. That is the true spirit of rock and roll.

MOVIES MADE ME #10: SAY ANYTHING

There’s a scene in SAY ANYTHING where Lloyd Dobler is at a graduation party with Diane Court, and this goofy-looking guy with a bad 80s haircut comes up to him and says, “How did you get Diane Court to go out with you?” Lloyd responds, matter-of-fact, “I called her up.” The other guy, still confused, adds, “But how come it worked? I mean, like, who are you?” Lloyd answers, “I’m Lloyd Dobler.” You could say that he’s playing it cool, but really Lloyd is just stating the facts. He did convince Diane Court to go out with him simply by calling her up. At this point in the movie, even Diane Court isn’t quite sure why she said yes. The goofy-looking guy, obviously stoned, takes a few seconds to fully process the information, then smiles. “This is great,” he says, “This gives me hope.”

On the DVD commentary, Crowe says that SAY ANYTHING originated with the character of Diane Court. The writer/director calls Diane a “golden girl." One of the characters in the film clarifies: "She's a brain trapped in the body of a game show hostess.” Smart and beautiful, ambitious yet humble. The problem with the script, Crowe says, was inventing a guy who actually deserved Diane Court. He was stumped, until the solution showed up on his doorstep one day – in the guise of a gentleman kickboxer named Lowell. Crowe describes his real-life inspiration for Lloyd Dobler as stoic, noble, polite and (most importantly) optimistic. That’s how he wrote the character.

But that's only half of Lloyd Dobler. Crowe admits that he wrote a sunny character, someone who is instinctively optimistic. Actor John Cusack gave the character more complexity. Cusack says he wanted Lloyd to be a true teenager of the Reagan era – someone jaded and angry about yuppie culture, and therefore very anxious about the future. It was Cusack who came up with Lloyd’s GRADUATE-esque manifesto: “I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.” As Lloyd explains to his guidance counselor, he’s “looking for a dare-to-be-great situation.” Deep down, he's too restless to settle for anything less.

That’s why he falls for Diane. She is clearly marked for greatness. Which brings us to the main question: Why does Diane Court fall for Lloyd Dobler? That’s what the goofy-looking guy at the party – and probably a good portion of the male audience – is trying to figure out. In high school, what I personally keyed in on was the phone call. “I just called her up,” Lloyd said. Actually, it wasn’t quite that simple. He had to psyche himself up for the phone call by kicking a punching bag for a while. Once the adrenaline was flowing, he picked up the phone and dialed Diane's number. (Not just six numbers... All seven of them.)

I figured I could handle that. I went for a three mile run, then called up a girl I’d only talked to once or twice. A girl who was way too beautiful and way too smart to ever date me. She was also a year older -- and when you're a freshman in high school, that's a pretty big deal. I had no plan about what to say to her. I was 15 and had no car, so I couldn’t very well ask her out on a date.... I figured I'd just keep talking until she joined in or hung up.

Unlike Lloyd, I didn’t get the girl. But she did become one of my closest friends for the next several years. That said, I figured the random phone call had been effective enough to warrant a second attempt. The next attempt didn’t go as well. The girl and I had absolutely nothing in common. To make matters worse, she had an on-again, off-again boyfriend who liked to slash people’s tires. I figured: Third time’s the charm. By that point, I had a license so I could actually propose a date. I didn’t get a date, but I got another close friend.

It’s no great mystery why I couldn’t pull off the “Lloyd Dobler effect.” First of all, I don’t look like John Cusack. Second, I never had the guts or the charm to deliver the “friends with potential” line. Most importantly, I was insecure. That’s the one thing that Lloyd Dobler is not, and it’s the secret of SAY ANYTHING. On the DVD commentary, Cameron Crowe and John Cusack sum up the essence of the character by saying that, for him, “optimism is a revolutionary act.”

Lloyd Dobler is often frustrated and angry, and he obviously has some violent tendencies (the guy wants to be a professional kickboxer, for crying out loud), but he always restrains his urge to lash out... Even in the scene where he gives Diane his heart and she gives him a pen... Even when she comes back to him and pleads for his forgiveness. (What guy, post-breakup, hasn’t dreamed of turning this opportunity into a cruel revenge scenario?) In the worst of circumstances, Lloyd makes a conscious choice to follow his better instincts and to present his best side to the world. It took me a while to learn that lesson.

The most famous scene in SAY ANYTHING is the one where Lloyd fights for Diane by showing up outside her bedroom window, and playing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” on his boom box. The music and the look on John Cusack's face in that scene say everything you need to know about Lloyd and the movie. Extra footage from the special edition DVD shows that this look almost didn't exist. In every other take on this scene, the look on Cusack’s face is defiantly hostile. It's clear that Lloyd wants to prove his point (that Diane still needs him) more than he actually wants her back. The scene is too much about his fragile male ego, and not enough about his love for Diane. On the other hand, the take in the final film achieves a perfect balance: Lloyd looks proud and stoic, but not petulant. Apparently, he has taken to heart his friend Cory’s advice: “Be a man. Don’t be a guy…”

The music in the scene (Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes," which became a staple on radio request shows after the movie was released) was also a near-miss. Cameron Crowe originally wanted to use Billy Idol’s “To Be a Lover." When the scene was shot the first time, he opted instead for Fishbone’s “Turn the Other Way.” Neither song would have conveyed emotional vulnerability. Again, the scene would have been about Lloyd’s wounded pride instead of his unwavering love for Diane.

Bottom line: It took at least two men to invent Lloyd Dobler… one who was maybe a little too sunny to win Diane's heart and one who was maybe a little too dark to keep it. Combine the two and you've got a story that shows we can only attain the unattainable once we’ve learned how to balance ego and selfless love, self-control and surrender. Lloyd is a character who can handle genuine intimacy. That's why he gets the girl. And that’s probably the most significant realization I ever took away from any teen angst movie... Maybe even one of the most helpful realizations I’ve ever taken away from any movie.

On a random side-note, Cameron Crowe says on the DVD commentary that the boom box scene was shot in a park opposite the 7-11 where Lloyd kicks broken glass out of Diane’s way. About a year ago, someone told me that the 7-11 in SAY ANYTHING is the one at the corner of Magnolia and Tujunga in Valley Village. As it happens, there's a huge park across the street, on the other side of Tujunga. It's hard to tell if this is the same place, but like the idea that Lloyd and Diane’s courtship might have taken place in my backyard.

MOVIES MADE ME #7: FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH

I was in middle school the first time I saw FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. It was a Friday or Saturday night and I was flipping through the channels, looking for a worthy late-night time killer like Monster Vision, Nite Flix, or USA's Up All Night. I stumbled onto the second half of FAST TIMES and was instantly mesmerized by the film's delicate balance of rowdy humor and serious drama. What really hooked me, I think, was the abortion scene. It seemed to belong to a completely different movie. It wasn't overwrought like the abortion scene at the end of THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN, which was weirdly accompanied by the pulse-pounding U2 anthem "I Will Follow." The matter-of-fact tone of the scene was somehow even more affecting.

Since TBS had the movie in constant rotation, I recorded the entire thing a few nights later... and realized that FAST TIMES could manage abrupt tonal shifts so effortlessly because the characters seemed so real. I felt like I could have gone to school with these people... Some of them I knew well and some of them I would never know, but all of them were familiar. That's a strong testament to the storytelling abilities of writer Cameron Crowe, director Amy Heckerling (who, by the way, was allegedly hired only after David Lynch turned the movie down!) and a cast of future celebrities including Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Nicolas Cage and Anthony Edwards.

It's easy to talk about the powerhouse actors who brought the film to life, but - as a big fan of Cameron Crowe - I'm more inclined to talk about the characters, all of whom were based on real teenagers that the writer knew personally. Crowe, a 22-year-old rock journalist, wrote the FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH novel after spending a full year "undercover" as a 17-year-old senior at Claremont High School in San Diego. His goal was to tell the story of high school life from the perspective of the teenagers themselves. His thesis: "The only time these students acted like kids was when they were around adults."

In the introduction to the book, Crowe says that his "research" wasn't going so well at first... until he met Linda Barrett. He writes, "Somehow all roads at Ridgemont High led to Linda Barrett. Everyone knew her. She left an indelible mark on most students who came in contact with her. She was chronically exuberant, usually in a relentlessly good mood. She knew how to dress, and she knew how to walk."

In the film, Phoebe Cates plays Linda Barrett - and no one is likely to forget the way she walks. An entire generation of American men entered puberty at the exact moment that Phoebe Cates exited Stacy's backyard swimming pool in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. Unfortunately, the TBS version edited that scene down to nothing. For about a year, I had no idea that Phoebe had gone topless in the scene. (It wasn't even clear from the television edit why Judge Reinhold had disappeared into the house so quickly.) The TV cut did, however, include two scenes that are NOT in the theatrical version - both of which use slightly more subtle means of characterizing Linda Barrett / Phoebe Cates as a sex goddess:





I should add that, on the night I set my VCR to record the movie, TBS followed FAST TIMES with another early Phoebe Cates movie called PRIVATE SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. (God bless 'em.) PRIVATE SCHOOL is a fairly routine PORKY'S rip-off, but I love it anyway. And because it features both Phoebe Cates and Ray Walston, I've always associated it with FAST TIMES. I heartily recommend it to connoisseurs of the great American teen sex comedy.

The first chapter of Cameron Crowe's novel revolves around Linda's younger, more inexperienced friend Stacy Hamilton, as she is getting laid by a slimy older guy on the last night of her "Summer of Wild Abandon." Stacy, you see, simply can't bear the thought of starting high school as a virgin. This chapter I knew by heart. Knew the girl. Heard all the maddening details of her awkward encounter with an older "townie." To Stacy, being seduced by an older man was romantic. To me, the idea of a college-age guy seducing a high school freshman wasn't just utterly creepy... it was (more to the point for a 14-year-old guy) hopelessly unfair. How could a guy in high school possibly land a girlfriend when all the girls his age were being zoomed by frat boys?

Crowe sums up: “It was one of the cruel inevitabilities of high school, right up there with grades and corn dogs. After thirteen, girls tended to mature at a rate of two- to three-times faster than boys. This led to a common predicament around Ridgemonth High. Two kids were in the same grade. The girl was discovering sex and men. The boy, having just given up his paper route, was awakening to the wonders of gothic-style romance." This was the author's setup for the character of Mark "The Rat" Ratner, the socially-inept romantic who's confined to a soulful but terminally platonic relationship with Stacy. (Unfortunately, I could relate.)

In the book, it is Rat who takes Stacy to the free clinic to have an abortion. Mind you, he is too naive to realize that's what he's doing. Stacy - confronted with the responsibilities of adulthood before the Rat has any real concept of what people around him are doing in the local baseball dugout - suffers through a depressingly clinical procedure that leaves her thinking, "I wish men could experience this." The abortion scene in the movie is equally melancholy, if not quite so bitter:



In the movie, it is Stacy's brother Brad who drives her to the clinic, and reassures her afterward. That's appropriate, since Brad has been forced to do a lot of growing up in his senior year. Crowe explains Brad's coming-of-age as follows:

“All year long Brad had delayed making any decisions about his life beyond senior year, though somehow he knew he would end up in college. To him the thought was like a dentist’s appointment or a visit to a crotchety relative – he could always put it off another month. This, after all, was to be his Cruise Year, and he had intended to consider life beyond high school only after he had a maximum amount of fun. Now everyone was going around talking about college applications and essay questions, and Brad hadn’t even gotten his Cruise Year into gear… After College Orientation Week, Brad Hamilton began to get a nagging image in his mind. In it he was forty years old, wearing an apron and working in a burger stand. He was surrounded by junior high school kids, telling him his fries were still the best.”

No high school senior can fail to identify with this sentiment. There is one particular scene in the film -- which also appears only in the television edit -- that captures the character's anxiety perfectly:



For the sake of comparison, here's another deleted scene that features Brad at the beginning of the school year and the height of his nonchalance. (The scene also features a young Nicolas Cage delivering his only line of dialogue in the film.)



At the opposite end of the spectrum, far from Brad's world-weary concerns about the responsibilities of adulthood, is Jeff Spicoli. In my opinion, Spicoli is not the most engaging character in the film. He operates more like a mascot for the proceedings than part of the actual story (and that's exactly how the film's distributors have always portrayed him in previews and posters). That said, there is something that keeps the character from becoming a punchline: In this role, Sean Penn is utterly, brilliantly earnest. When Spicoli says "All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine," he means it as sincerely as Gandhi meant "You must be the change you want to see in the world."

And that is the essence of high school as most of us remember it. It was a time when we could get away with floating through life on new experiences... though many of us were too anxious or insecure at the time to take advantage of it the way Spicoli does. Here's a deleted scene that features the character at his most mythic, talking about a souvenir given to him by Mick Jagger:



There is also one other deleted scene that features Spicoli and his buds (played by Eric Stoltz and Anthony Edwards), but it seems almost too hostile for the character and is the one scene that I think comes close to betraying the tone of the film:



Cameron Crowe and Amy Heckerling say, in the DVD commentary on FAST TIMES, that they were inspired by an earlier coming-of-age movie called OVER THE EDGE. At first glance, FAST TIMES and OVER THE EDGE don't have much in common other than the age-range of the main characters. OVER THE EDGE is about a group of characters who are brimming with violence; the characters in FAST TIMES are as sunny as the film's Southern California setting. Inevitably, OVER THE EDGE veers into "after school special" territory, but it is saved by the same thing that consistently buoys FAST TIMES: The characters wear their hearts on their sleeves, without ever quite realizing it. They are nothing if not completely earnest.

The FAST TIMES movie ends with final exams and the final dance of the school year. Cameron Crowe's book ends with an even more appropriate rite of passage: the annual trip to Disneyland. (Apparently this is a ritual among high schools in Southern California...?) Who could imagine a more gloriously absurd way to sum up the experience of high school than pouring a few hundred teenagers into Disneyland for a day? Crowe writes (presumably based on real-life experience) that the theme park workers are extremely intense about guarding the family-friendly magic of the Magic Kingdom, so it's no surprise that the filmmakers didn't get to shoot there. Still, I would have liked to have seen Linda and Stacy, Brad and The Rat, Damone and Spicoli pretending to act like adults while a guy in a Goofy suit poses beside them.

Even more than that I'd like to see a true "special edition" release of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH that includes all of the scenes deleted from the theatrical version. To me, the movie just isn't right without all these character-building fragments... and I can't imagine why Universal has released the same DVD two or three times and not bothered to add these extras. Show me a petition and I'll sign it.

Led Zeppelin and the Celtic Twilight

I recently paid a visit to writer/director Cameron Crowe’s website and read his 1975 Rolling Stone interview with Led Zeppelin – the real-life basis for the 2000 film “Almost Famous.” Crowe is such an enthusiastic writer that I immediately dug out my Led Zeppelin box set and started listening again. In the interview and in the film, Crowe makes a distinction between the “little things” that make music memorable and the “industry of cool” that suffocates it. For him, Led Zeppelin was (at least in its heyday) the epitome of rock and roll, and I’m inclined to agree - though I prefer Led Zeppelin for its epic moments, rather than for the “little things." The band has always had a loyal fan following, but by contrast most rock journalists of the 1970s regarded the band members as irresponsible, self-important windbags. By the time that Led Zeppelin had become the most popular band in the world (with the release of their untitled fourth album), they had pretty much sworn off the press. To get his interview, Crowe had to convince them that he was, first and foremost, a fan… which was made a little easier by the fact that he looked young enough to be in high school.

I became a fan of Led Zeppelin when I was in high school, despite the fact that they hadn’t released a studio album since before I was born. It started when my friend Ben made me a copy of Led Zeppelin II, affectionately known as the “Brown Bomber” album. Some people (including Ben, I think) would argue this album represents Led Zeppelin at their finest – a straightforward, hard-driving, blues-drenched aural assault. Simple and unpretentious. The band followed up that album with a grueling tour of the States, then went into retreat in the Welsh countryside. When they resurfaced, their music was suddenly more restrained and more enigmatic. This is the Led Zeppelin that I eventually fell in love with.

On the first song of the third album, the band adopts the guise of Viking conquerors come to ravage the British Isles. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones were eagerly embracing their public image as corruptors of the youth, and the mythic imagery became part of their schtick. Sure, it was silly… but the music was searing. They also embraced the folk sounds and stories of their British homeland on songs like “Gallows Pole,” based on a centuries-old tale about a maiden begging the executioner for her life. The folk song, reminiscent of Welsh Arthurian legend, goes something like this:

Hangman, hangman, hangman / slack your rope awhile
I think I see my father / ridin’ many a mile
Father did you bring any silver / father did you bring any gold
Or did you come to see me / hangin' from the gallows pole
No, I didn’t bring any silver / no I didn’t bring any gold
I just come to see you / hangin’ from the gallows pole

The song evokes the Hangman of the tarot deck, an ancient system of magic symbols that Jimmy Page was fascinated with. Page, the band’s lead guitarist and its most consummate musician, was said to dabble in black magic – not unlike a certain infamous bluesman of the American South who allegedly sold his soul to the devil in return for musical talent. Whatever the cause, the guitarist was at the height of his powers as a musician. Around the same time, singer/songwriter Robert Plant was coming into his own. Shortly after the birth of his first child, he wrote “That’s the Way” – a somber reflection on the loneliness of life on the road. “I don’t know how I’m gonna tell you,” he sings, “that I can’t play with you no more.”

The band’s sessions in the Welsh countryside produced a significant instrumental piece called “Bron-Yr-Aur” (later included on the “Physical Graffiti” album). The difficult-to-pronounce title is a Welsh phrase used to describe the winter sunlight in the northern part of the country. The phrase effectively sums up the change in the band’s sound: they were taking on a more reflective, somber mood. Now that I live in Los Angeles, I can’t listen to this album without thinking of the way dusk falls here – that melancholy glow, created by smog, at the end of the day. Maybe it’s because, in “Almost Famous,” Crowe used “That’s the Way” over an image of sunset on the western horizon. Or maybe it’s because I've read that the band experienced a sublime mix of excitement and homesickness while visiting the far edge of the western world. In the book “Hammer of the Gods,” band biographer Steven Davis explains how the music reflected the lives of the traveling band: “Led Zeppelin lived in two worlds, one a secure green England of family and tradition, the other a lurid Hollywood movie of fantasy and excess.” With the third album, we begin to see the emotional struggle between the two – the conflicting perspectives of protector and destroyer, as if the musicians were trying to create a bridge between the “death of rock” and the afterlife. Their sound became, in a word, autumnal.

The band’s nameless fourth album (sometimes called “ZOSO”) has long been hailed as their greatest achievement, and the lyrics prompted fans and critics to speculate even more on the secret alchemy that created the music. The title of the first track, “Black Dog,” suggested to some that they had embraced black magic as a way of life, and were beginning to feel cursed. In British folklore, a black dog is often a portent of death. The song, of course, was not about a dog but about a soulless woman with “eyes that shine / burning red.” Clearly something out of Romantic literature (maybe Coleridge or Byron?). Robert Plant has maintained that the title was a reference to a real dog that wandered in and out of the studio during recording. Maybe he was telling the truth, or maybe he was secretly trying to build the band’s dark mystique.

Two of the most memorable tracks on the fourth album, “The Battle of Evermore” and “Stairway to Heaven,” wax poetic about a time of kings and queens, destroyed by a Dark Lord. It’s hard not to read a bit of the history of the British Isles into these tunes, especially since Plant has said that the songs were inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. What Tolkien was trying to do was to build a genuine mythology for a people whose myths had been shattered by many centuries of invasion and conquest (first the Normans, then the Saxons). Tolkien, like his peer W.B. Yeats, was intrigued by the Celtic Twilight – a nearly-forgotten time when the British Isles worshiped the Old Gods of the Earth instead of the Christian God. In the early 1970s, the members of Led Zeppelin were torn between the magic and mystery of these ancient stories and the magic and mystery of the California dream. Though the song “Going to California” insists that they left their home land with an aching in their hearts, the band members were nevertheless captivated by the grandeur of their home-away-from-home: “The mountains and the canyons start to tremble and shake / as the children of the sun began to awake.”

The lyric makes me think of the image on the cover of the band’s next album, “Houses of the Holy.” The image is a group of naked children climbing up an ominous rock formation at land’s end in Northern Ireland, striving to reach the sun. According to the ancients, the formation was the handiwork of a race of giants who ruled the British Isles before men. The juxtaposition of giants and children might be interpreted in a number of ways – perhaps the sun is meant to visually represent the band’s music, summoning young listeners like a pagan Pied Piper. All that really matters is that the image is evocative and awe-inspiring. And so is the music.

From the moment Robert Plant sings the first line of “The Song Remains the Same” (“I had a dream. / Crazy dream”), we’re transported to another – larger – world. “The Rain Song” follows up with melancholy reflection: “These are the seasons of emotion / And like the wind they rise and fall.” (I can think of no better expression of the impact this music had on me when I was a teenager.) “Over the Hills and Far Away” continued the Piper’s journey, though unfortunately it led into a group of experimental songs (“The Crunge” – a nod to funk; “D’yer Maker” – a nod to reggae; “Dancing Days” – a step toward pop music). Presumably, these songs were the band’s way of insisting that they weren’t taking themselves too seriously – reassurances that all that pretentious mythologizing was offset by occasional playfulness. Still, there was a logical progression. “No Quarter” is the flip side of “The Rain Song” – as dark and ominous as any song the band ever produced. “The Ocean” rounds out the album, offering Plant’s perspective on the ocean of Zeppelin fans and offering a glimpse of the Viking warriors as family men: “Now I'm singing all my songs to the girl who won my heart / She is only three years old and it's a real fine way to start.” Once again, the lyrics were written for Plant’s daughter, who was three years old at the time.

By the time “Houses of the Holy” hit record stores, Led Zeppelin was an industry unto itself. They had climbed the impossible mountain, and now there was nothing left to do but fall. Perhaps aware of this, the band named its new label Swan Song, and chose an image of the suffering Icarus (the boy who flew too close to the sun) as their icon. Although the double album “Physical Graffiti” is very uneven – as perhaps it should be, since the recurring theme on the album is the struggle between sin and salvation – I love it because it’s passionate. The band was determined to go down in flames, playing bombastic but nevertheless powerful tunes like “In My Time of Dying,” “Trampled Underfoot,” “Ten Years Gone,” and of course “Kashmir.” The first of these has a particularly dark legacy – Plant has suggested that the lyrics to this traditional blues number (“Meet me, Jesus, meet me… so I can die easy”) are a self-imposed curse, responsible for a near-fatal car accident that he suffered in 1975. More recently, Page & Plant have professed a particular liking for “In the Light,” which is (like the more popular “Kashmir”) an epic composition with an eastern flair. I like to think of it as rock and roll’s answer to the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and I remember being captivated the first time I heard Plant urge listeners to “sit with elders of the gentle race this world has seldom scene / and talk of days for which they sit and wait when all will be revealed.”

In general, I think that the less said about the subsequent albums (“Presence,” “In Through the Out Door,” and the posthumous “Coda”), the better… with one major exception. “Achilles Last Stand” is exactly what it purports to be – the final hurrah of a group of wild Englishmen who went into concert the way a Greek soldier would go into battle, without the least hesitation, and eventually crashed and burned with all the flare of the Hindenburg. Sifting through the ruins, we may not find poetic genius, but I submit that we do find the impetus for epic poetry…

“Because, to him who ponders well,
My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
Of things discovered in the deep,
Where only body’s laid to sleep.”
- W.B. Yeats

The Valley

When we first moved to L.A., I wasn’t sure I wanted to live in the San Fernando Valley. Known simply as “the valley” to Angelinos, the moniker is synonymous with middle-class suburbia (remember "Valley Girl" with Nicholas Cage?) and the porn industry. Suffice it to say that the valley has a somewhat déclassé reputation, especially among its neighbors to the south.

I have a feeling that this has always been the case. The valley was scarcely livable before the turn of the 20th century, when a few ruthless businessmen bought up the land, and irrigated it with water from an aqueduct that was unknowingly financed by the residents of Los Angeles. (If this sounds familiar, it’s because the L.A. “water wars” served as a backdrop for the movie “Chinatown.”)

Once the aqueduct was completed (in 1913), the Valley was quickly annexed by the City of Los Angeles – much to the chagrin, one imagines, of city residents. The Valley has been growing ever since, becoming a city in its own right. Beginning in the 1970s, there have been numerous attempts at secession. In the 2002 city elections, supporters argued that Valley residents are paying equal taxes for unequal public services. Opponents to the south blocked the secession... but, despite the technicalities, the Valley and the City of Los Angeles seem to exist independent of each other - two cities, divided by the Santa Monica Mountains.

After a few weeks in L.A., we eventually settled in Studio City on the southern fringe of the valley. Most of our trips in the past few months have taken us south or west, but this weekend we decided to explore the north side of the mountains – following a map of forgotten filming locations.




Suburban Hell (the Brady Bunch house)


The Los Angeles "River"


Forget it, Jake...

We started in Tujunga, on a residential street that hugs the edge of the San Gabriel Mountains in the northwest corner of the valley. This was the location of Elliot’s house in Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial” (1982). The forest scenes were filmed in Northern California (hence the redwoods) and the neighborhood bike chase was shot in Northridge, but Tujunga was E.T.’s home away from home – with the mountains out back and a nice view of the valley in front. The early morning fog was a nice touch.



Next, we headed south to Pasadena, to see The Gamble House, a genuine tourist destination that appears on the National Historic Register. Most people visit this oversized 1908 bungalow for its unique architecture… but not me. I visited it because it was Doc Brown’s 1955 house in “Back to the Future.”



From Pasadena, we headed east to North Hollywood, and visited two locations that only a true movie geek could appreciate. First: the 7-11 at the corner of Magnolia and Tujunga. This is where Lloyd Dobler’s first date with Diane Court ended in Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut, “Say Anything.” As they were walking across the parking lot, Lloyd pointed out some glass for Diane to walk around. Later in the movie she says, “I always think of that whenever people say ‘What are you doing with Lloyd Dobler?’”

I remember that because I watched the movie at least 8 million times when I was in high school. Like I said, it takes a true geek... someone who would make his girlfriend accompany him to a sketchy 7-11 in North Hollywood and snap photos while a homeless guy stares at them.



Next stop: The Fox Fire Room cocktail lounge on Magnolia Boulevard. This is where “quiz kid” Donnie Smith met the love of his life (a male bartender with braces), in Paul Thomas Anderson’s opus “Magnolia.”

I can practically hear the jukebox playing old Supertramp hits, while Donnie whines, “I have lots of love to give… I just don’t know where to put it.”

If you continue east to Reseda and go up a few blocks, you can also visit the electronics shop where Donnie absent-mindedly drove his car through the front window. A block away from that is another P.T. Anderson shooting location – La Iglesia Christiana Nuevo Empezar, which doubled as the Hot Traxx disco in “Boogie Nights.”





In the afternoon, we took the 101 to the far western side of the valley, and found that Canoga Park lives up to the cliché that everything in suburbia looks exactly the same.

This is also where we found Brad and Stacy’s house from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” written by Cameron Crowe. Scenes set at the school were filmed at two locations in the valley: Canoga Park High and Van Nuys High. The front of Van Nuys is recognizable from the beginning of the movie.

Other nearby locations for this film include the Encino Little League Field (“The Point”), the Sherman Oaks Galleria (unrecognizable from the film, now that it has been converted into an outdoor mall), the Santa Monica Promenade (featured as the front of Ridgemont mall), and a coffee shop in Brentwood that doubled as the “All-American Burger” where Brad worked.





We headed back east, through Reseda, and passed by the apartment building where Daniel Larusso and Mr. Miyagi lived in “The Karate Kid.” It looks pretty dingy these days but, as I recall, it looked pretty dingy in 1984 too. (I suppose the point of this drive-by was not to scout a future place to live, but to celebrate the fact that we are living in the same city where some of my favorite films were shot.)

Another fan has compiled an exhaustive list of filming locations from "The Karate Kid," including Allie's house in nearby Encino.



With a proper amount of nostalgic thoughts, we headed back to our street in Studio City…

… which is currently the shooting location of “Bratz: The Movie,” starring Paula Abdul. Instead of turning on the TV, we just look out the window… and get a casual reminder of just how BORING production can be.

That said, I have no doubt that “Bratz” will be an instant classic, and that we’ll soon have movie geeks trolling through our own neighborhood, snapping photos and saying “This is where…”

Then again, maybe not.