Michael and Angela fall in love, after Michael moves her into his bachelor quarters inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. You might ask how a priest could live with a woman inside a cathedral without being noticed, but the cathedral seems to be severely understaffed, and the only other priest in view is genial old Father Freddie (Paul Dooley), who stutters a lot and waxes philosophical. In order to handle the tricky challenge of a love scene between the priest and the young woman, the writer-director, Donald P. Bellisario, gives us an extended erotic sequence and then reveals it was only a dream. Of course, after the “dream,” both characters subsequently change in their behavior toward each other as if they had really made love, the movie being so dishonest that it eats its cake and has it, too.
There are “secrets” in this movie that will gnaw at your credibility, “revelations” that are either (a) not surprises, or (b) completely implausible. The plot is a feverish scavenger hunt through lurid melodrama, impossible coincidence, shocking exploitation of the religious material, utter disregard for the audience, and a cheerful contempt for the talented actors—who have the right, I think, not to be made fools of.
Although Bellisario makes pious bleats in his press releases about the moral crisis faced by his hero in the movie, let’s face it: This movie was made in order to give us a love affair between a priest and a sexy woman. The other stuff—making the Mafia look noble, putting in lots of bloody special effects—are bonuses. Ask yourself this simple question: Would Last Rites have been financed if the priest had resisted all temptations and remained chaste until the end? Are there stars in the sky? Does a bear shine his shoes in the woods?
Lawn Dogs
(Directed by John Duigan; starring Mischa Barton, Christopher McDonald, Kathleen Quinlan; 1998)
John Duigan’s Lawn Dogs is like a nasty accident at the symbol factory. Pieces are scattered all over the floor, as the wounded help each other to the exits. Some of the pieces look well made, and could be recycled. We pick up a few of them, and them together, to see if they’ll fit. But they all seem to come from different designs.
The movie isn’t clear about what it’s trying to say—what it wants us to believe when we leave. It has the form of a message picture, without the message. It takes place in an upscale Kentucky housing development named Camelot Gardens, where the $300,000 homes sit surrounded by big lawns and no trees. It’s a gated community; the security guard warns one of the “lawn dogs”—or yard workers—to be out of town by 5 P.M.
In one of the new houses lives ten-year-old Devon (Mischa Barton), who has a scar running down her chest after heart surgery. Her insipid parents are Morton (Christopher McDonald) and Clare (Kathleen Quinlan). Trent plans to run for office. Clare has casual sex with local college kids. And Trent (Sam Rockwell) mows their lawn.
Devon is in revolt, although she doesn’t articulate it as interestingly as the heroine of Welcome to the Dollhouse. She wanders beyond the gates, finds Trent’s trailer home in the woods, and becomes his friend. There are unrealized undertones of sexuality in her behavior, which the movie never makes overt, except in the tricky scene where she asks Trent to touch her scar. He has a scar, too; here’s a new version of you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.
The people inside Camelot Gardens are all stupid pigs. That includes the security guard, the parents, and the college kids, who insult and bully Trent. Meanwhile, Trent and Devon spend idyllic afternoons in the woods, being friends, until there is a tragic misunderstanding that leads to the death of a dog and even more alarming consequences.
Nobody makes it into the movie just as an average person. Trent’s dad is a Korean vet whose lungs were destroyed by microbes in the K rations, and who is trying to give away his American flag collection. Trent is the kind of guy who stops traffic on a one-lane bridge while he strips, drives into the river, and walks back to his pickup boldly nude. Devon is the kind of little girl who crawls out onto her roof, throws her nightgown into the sky, and utters wild dog cries at the moon.
All of these events happen with the precision and vivid detail of a David Lynch movie, but I do not know why. It is easy to make a film about people who are pigs and people who are free spirits, but unless you show how or why they got that way, they’re simply characters you’ve created. It’s easy to have Devon say, “I don’t like kids—they smell like TV.” But what does this mean when a ten-year-old says it? It’s easy to show good people living in trailers and awful people living in nice homes, but it can work out either way. It’s easy to write a father who wants his little girl to have plastic surgery so her scar won’t turn off boys, and then a boy who thinks it’s “cool.” But where is it leading? What is it saying? Camelot Gardens is a hideous place to live. So? Get out as fast as you can.
Little Giants
(Directed by Duwayne Dunham; starring Ed O’Neill, Rick Moranis; 1994)
Just yesterday I was cleaning out the office and I threw away a paperback by Sid Field, the famous Hollywood screenplay coach. Field is the man who is largely responsible for that strange feeling you may have had lately, that every movie seems to be about the same. The characters, locations, and gimmicks may change—but the story structure is right out of the book.
Field teaches screenwriting workshops. The workshops don’t seem able to teach you how to write like yourself, but they sure are able to teach you how to write like everyone else. At a time when Hollywood is bashful about originality, it’s a real career asset to be able to write clone screenplays.
Look at Little Giants, written by James Ferguson, Robert Shallcross, Tommy Swerdlow, and Michael Goldberg. What do you mean, it’s one of the stupidest movies you’ve seen? It got sold, didn’t it? And it got made, didn’t it? So that makes it a success, doesn’t it?
It’s mind-boggling to reflect that this screenplay actually involved work by four writers. It’s such a small achievement, their division of labor must have resembled splitting the atom. I don’t have any idea if Ferguson, Shallcross, Swerdlow, and Goldberg have ever attended one of Field’s workshops. Maybe they didn’t need to. Working in two platoons, they have skillfully removed all vestiges of originality from this story, and turned in a perfectly honed retread of every other movie about how a team of losers wins the big game.
Oops! I gave away the ending! The plot stars Ed O’Neill and Rick Moranis as two brothers in the small town of Urbania, Ohio. O’Neill is a football hero and Heisman Trophy winner. Moranis is a nerd who runs a gas station. His daughter Becky (Shawna Waldron) is one of the best football players in town, but when O’Neill chooses a team for the Pop Warner League, he doesn’t choose Becky, ’cause she’s a girl. He also doesn’t choose the fat kid, the skinny kid, the kid who drops every pass, etc.
Moranis thinks it’s unfair. So he decides to coach his own team—the Little Giants. At first they are utterly incompetent. Then John Madden and a bunch of pro stars (Emmitt Smith, Bruce Smith, Tim Brown, and Steve Emtman) turn up in town after their bus gets lost. And they give the kids some quick lessons, turning them into only severely incompetent players.
Comes the day for the big game between O’Neill’s jocks and the Little Giants. The O’Neill team includes a mountainous kid named Spike, who speaks of himself in the third person, and whose father has the movie’s only funny line: “Every night before he goes to bed I massage his hamstrings with evaporated milk.” Spike, of course, is the instant enemy of Becky, who has despaired of playing football as a girl, and joined the cheerleading squad. But after the first half ends disastrously, she gets steamed, and runs out on the field wearing her helmet, shoulder pads, jersey—and, of course, cheerleader skirt.