But where, oh where, did they get the movie’s ending? Is it in the original novel, The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks? Don’t know. Haven’t read it. The climactic events are shameless, contrived, and wildly out of tune with the rest of the story. To saddle Costner, Penn, and Newman with such goofy melodrama is like hiring Fred Astaire and strapping a tractor on his back.
Meteor
(Directed by Ronald Neame; starring Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, Trevor Howard; 1979)
Movie critics are always complaining the special effects are bad, but do they ever say why? Not usually. They satisfy themselves with a snappy one-liner (“Godzilla’s opponent looks like a large, runny blob of Gorgonzola cheese”) and then race on to the sociological implications of the work in review.
Well, the special effects in Meteor are bad, and let’s take ourselves a nice, leisurely conducted tour of their various shortcomings. We can indulge that luxury because the story of Meteor (apart from the special effects) hardly inspires discussion. This basic plot has already been filmed nineteen times. It wasn’t any good before and it’s not any good now.
1. The Meteor. Apparently a very large, false rock, photographed from just above its top surface as it occupies the foreground and rolls toward the camera. The problem here is that since the camera doesn’t seem to move in relation to the background, the meteor appears to be rolling in place on its axis—rather than toward us.
2. Outer Space. In his classic film 2001, Stanley Kubrick revolutionized the way we visualize objects in space by photographing them moving slowly in relationship to one another, while a Strauss waltz filled the sound track. Fine, if the objects are delicately rendezvousing while their speeds are synchronized in the same plane—as his were. Meteor also gives us majestic outer space ballets of space objects, but is guilty of an oversight: Its objects are hurtling toward each other from opposite directions and thus would be perceived as moving at the sum of their speeds—in this case, tens of thousands of miles an hour. You’d have to look fast.
3. Reaction Time. After an explosion, a piece of meteor hits an American space probe. Just before it does, the crew members throw up their arms in horror and recoil. Impossible. At the speeds involved, they wouldn’t have the slightest chance of realizing what was going to happen—let alone see the meteor approach—before they were blasted to smithereens.
4. The Disasters. I’ll be kind here. I won’t mention the unspeakably incompetent obligatory shots of tidal waves and cities in flame. But here are two laughable scenes that didn’t even have to be in the picture:
Scene One: An Eskimo or Mongolian (I didn’t catch the accent) looks up in the sky and gasps as a small meteor flashes down and explodes. Where does it land? Just on the other side of a handy nearby mountain, of course, so its glow can light up the sky. Since it is obvious that in a fiction film the director can place his Mongolians anywhere, why pinch pennies and put him on the wrong side of the mountain?
Scene Two: my favorite. The heartrending incident of the 12,000 dead Olympic cross-country skiers, who are all crushed by a massive avalanche. Hold on! you say. Do we really see all 12,000 skiers? Yes, as a matter of fact, we do: The movie fools us. We see all 12,000 skiers cheerfully speeding past the camera, and then the announcer on a newscast breathlessly breaks the tragic news: “Just minutes after these scenes were shot, the skiers were all killed!! . . . Luckily, our camera crew escaped by helicopter just in time!” What luck.
5. The Case of the Anamorphic Intergalactic Objects. Here we have the ultimate El Cheapo Sleazo effect, but first let me explain “anamorphic.” To make widescreen movies, the images are first squeezed, and then projected through a special lens that stretches them out to lifelike dimensions. But, if you take ordinary, everyday images and then project them through an anamorphic lens, they will look really stretched out. Example: The ads at intermissions with those squatty and fat Coke bottles.
Meteor uses anamorphic effects in a desperate and truly sleazy attempt to make its explosions look bigger. Ordinary explosions and glowing meteors are shot (badly) in regular ratio and run through the lens. Result? All the meteors in this movie are wider than they are high.
Enough. Do the people who made Meteor take us all for total fools? And, if so, could that possibly be because they’re looking for company?
Milk Money
(Directed by Richard Benjamin; starring Melanie Griffith, Ed Harris; 1994)
Sometimes they produce a documentary about the making of a movie. You know, like The Making of “Jurassic Park.” I would give anything within reason to see The Making of “Milk Money,” or, for that matter, to simply listen to recordings of the executive story conferences. In fact, it’s funny . . . as I sit here in a late-summer reverie . . . why, it’s almost as if I can hear the voices now. . . .
* * *
Studio Executive A: So what’s the premise?
Studio Executive B: We got kids, we got sex, we got romance, all in a family picture
A: Can’t have sex in a family picture.
B: Depends. Nobody actually has sex. Sure, you got a hooker, but she’s a good hooker, with a heart of gold. Melanie Griffith is gonna play her.
A: Kind of like Working Girl Turns a Trick?
B: Cuter than that. We start with three twelve-year-old boys. They’re going crazy because they’ve never seen a naked woman.
A: Whatsamatter? They poor? Don’t they have cable?
B: Ever hear of the concept of “the willing suspension of disbelief?” I know the audience will find it hard to believe but it’s true: These kids don’t know what a naked woman looks like. So they pool their pocket money and ride their bikes into the big city, and ask women on the street if they’re hookers, until they find one who is. That’s Melanie.
A: How much they got?
B: More’n a hundred bucks. So she shows them.
A: She strips? This has got to get a PG-13 rating.
B: Like I say, it’s a family movie. She only strips to the waist. And we only see her from the back.
A: (slightly disappointed): Oh. So that’s ten minutes. Where do we go from here?
B: There’s more to the plot. Melanie is in danger from the evil gangsters who control prostitution, and after her pimp is killed they think she has all of his money. So she needs to hide out. And one of the kids thinks she’d make an ideal wife for his dad. So he invites her out to the suburbs.
A: The dad’s not married?
B: We got a nice touch here. The kid’s mother died in childbirth. So all his life he’s had this single father. He wants to fix up dad with the hooker, see? He thinks she’d make a great mom.
A: So we get a Meet Cute?
B: Yeah. See, the kid moves the hooker into his tree house, and then tells his dad that she’s his buddy’s math tutor.
A: What’s she wearing?
B: A kind of clingy minidress with a low neckline. High heels.
A: Is that what a math tutor wears?
B: You ever see My Tutor? Private Lessons? Any of those Sybil Danning or Sylvia Kristel pictures?