Those Old Guys Stole Our Best Ideas

"The old fellows stole our best ideas."

- attributed to prolific American type designer Frederic Goudy (1865-1947)

This year, 2009, marks the 15th anniversary of "Pulp Fiction" (co-written and directed by onetime Manhattan video rental store clerk Quentin Tarantino), the so-called independent film hailed, revered, gushed over, doted on, cuddled and coddled as nothing short of a neo-noir masterpiece, a postmodern watershed that forever changed Hollywood. And for the past 15 years, we in the moviehouse have been scratching our heads in puzzlement over this headlong love affair with what British critic James Wood called a depiction of "the final triumph of postmodernism," emptying "the artwork of all content, thus avoiding its capacity to do anything except helplessly represent our agonies…Only in this age could a writer as talented as Tarnatino produce artworks so vacuous, so entirely stripped of any politics, metaphysics, or moral interest."

For the unaware rare, "Pulp Fiction" (above) in the words of Australian writer Fiona A. Villella, "tells three stories, each based on specific characters. In a maze-like fashion that plays with narrative time, each story circles, alludes and entwines the other."

British critic Jon Ronson declared, "Not since ‘Citizen Kane’ has one man appeared from relative obscurity to redefine the art of moviemaking."

Did "Pulp Fiction" change the way movies are made? One thing is for sure. Wittingly or not, the popularity of the film unleashed, according to Ms. Villella, "a myriad of clones," or what journalist Peter Biskind, former executive editor of Premiere magazine, dubbed a "guys-with-guns frenzy," spawning what A.V. Club critic Nathan Rabin called "Tarantino’s cinematic bastards."

In his review of one such bastard, "Smokin’ Aces" (2006), A.V. Club writer Keith Phipps noted, "Between 1996 and 1999, video store shelves were littered with movies trying their best to emulate the feel of Quentin Tarantino’s films. None of them got it right, and so many got it wrong in the same way - combining quirky characters, recognizable faces, self-conscious dialogue, and stylized ultra-violence with nihilistic attitude - that they practically became a genre unto themselves."

An entire, exhaustive piece could be written on that genre alone, an exhausting catalog of titles offering, to paraphrase the A.V. Club’s Rabin, "little of interest beyond" their "lack of shame in plundering the work of Quentin Tarantino." Alongside the previously mentioned "Smokin’ Aces" (starring Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Alicia Keys [pictured above], Peter Berg, Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia and Ray Liotta), the "flock of me-too classics," to quote Mr. Biskind, included "Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead" (with Andy Garcia, Christopher Lloyd, Treat Williams, Jack Warden, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken), suggested by critic Roger Ebert as "Quentonian" and dismissed by critic Leonard Maltin as "another entry in the post-Tarantino, faux-hip genre"; "Search and Destroy" (Dennis Hopper, Griffin Dunne, Martin Scorsese, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken, John Turturro, Ethan Hawke); "The Immortals" (Eric Roberts, Joe Pantoliano, Tia Carrere, Tony Curtis, Chris Rock); "2 Days in the Valley" (Danny Aiello, James Spader, Eric Stoltz, Jeff Daniels, Teri Hatcher, Charlize Theron, Keith Carradine), of which Roger Ebert commented, "The movie will remind you of (Robert) Altman and Tarantino"; "Suicide Kings" (Christopher Walken, Denis Leary, Henry Thomas, Sean Patrick Flanery, Jay Mohr), criticized as "another installment in a series of irritating aftershocks following ‘Pulp Fiction’" by the A.V. Club’s Scott Tobias, who also noted, "Tarantinoism may have finally reached its nadir"; "Truth or Consequences, N.M." (Vincent Gallo, Mykelti Williamson, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Pollak, Rod Steiger, Martin Sheen), the directing debut of Sutherland, whom Nathan Rabin accused of stealing "dialogue, scenes and characters from not just ‘True Romance,’ ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ but also from ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’"; "Very Bad Things" (Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz, Daniel Stern, Jon Favreau, Jeremy Piven), written and directed by Peter Berg ("Hancock"); "The Big Hit" (Mark Wahlberg, Lou Diamond Phillips, Christina Applegate, Avery Brooks and Elliott Gould); "Knockaround Guys" (Vin Diesel, Seth Green, Barry Pepper, John Malkovich, Dennis Hopper); and (pictured below) "The Way of the Gun" (Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro, James Caan, Juliette Lewis), written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who scripted "The Usual Suspects."

The A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin wrote, "‘The Way of the Gun’s’ worldview seems derived from other movies and pulp novels," which could be said, as well, for "Pulp Fiction" itself, and that brings us to tonight’s double-feature in the moviehouse, two films that out Tarantino’ed Tarantino and beat Quentin to the punch by four decades.

"The Killing" (1956) was a bare-boned, relentlessly grim crime thriller that, according to Leonard Maltin, "really put (Stanley) Kubrick on the map - a case study of a ($2 million) racetrack heist, with a colorful cast of characters," including Sterling Hayden (pictured above), Colleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Elisha Cook Jr., Timothy Carey, Jay C. Flippen and Marie Windsor (seen below with Cook). Produced on a meager budget of $320,00, the film firmly established what The Movie Guide called "Kubrick’s characteristic obsessions," specifically "fatally flawed humans, complicated, interlocking timetables and meticulous plans gone awry," all of which remind us of Tarantino’s modus operandi.

The semi-documentary feel of the film was underscored by the painstaking, intersecting flashback sequences. The Movie Guide noted, "Time becomes a palpable presence in this fantastic film." The very strength of the movie’s narrative flow was defined by Kubrick’s juxtaposition of the scenes. As conventionally as "The Killing" could have been presented chronologically, the director believed the plot would have more of an impact if presented from different viewpoints.

"I’ve got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists," Stanley Kubrick once remarked. "Neither takes life as it is."

Sterling Hayden (above), who played the fatalistic ex-con who organizes the holdup in "The Killing," was a reliable leading man in moody film noir and brooding Westerns of the 1950s. Later in life (he was always personally partial to a life on the sea as a sailor over one in Hollywood as an actor), he delivered memorably grizzled character performances as the demented General Jack Ripper in Kubrick’s "Dr. Strangelove" and as the crooked cop Captain McCluskey in "The Godfather," but it was in lean, mean films like "The Asphalt Jungle" and "The Killing" that he endeared himself to genre fans.

"The Asphalt Jungle" was directed by John Huston, who seemingly shared with Kubrick a fondness for "flawed humans" with "plans gone awry." And that brings us to "Beat the Devil" (above).

After perusing the proposed script for 1953’s "Beat the Devil" (starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by John Huston), one of the censors in the Breen Office (also known as the Production Code, which set censorship guidelines and governed the filmmaking industry from 1930 to 1968, dictating what was and wasn’t morally acceptable content for audiences) wrote, "Everyone in the story…is a completely amoral person, to whom the question of right or wrong would never occur." That, according to the book Bogart by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax, was "the very quality that had attracted Huston and Bogart to the story of a motley gang of thieves and an English couple who comically double-cross each other in a duplicity-laden hunt for an African uranium mine."

Dissatisfied with the straightforward drama of the original script, Huston favored a satirical touch, according to Bogart biographer Jeffrey Meyers, "exaggerating the physical incongruities of the cast as well as the grotesque excess of violence and disaster in the plot." On the urging of Hollywood mogul David O. Selznick, who was married to "Beat the Devil" costar Jennifer Jones, 28-year-old Truman Capote (pictured above) was hired to polish the screenplay. Bogart remarked that Capote "turned out to be magnificent. He wrote like fury - has the damnedest and most upside-down slant on humor you’ve ever heard."

Capote cranked out dialogue a day before it went before the camera, often writing on the set as the actors, particularly Peter Lorre and Robert Morley, offered their suggestions. At night, Capote and Huston (seen together below) went over the pages of the script for the next day while Bogart mixed martinis for them all.

Capote later recalled the experience as "tremendous fun." He said, "Sometimes scenes that were just about to be shot were written on the set. The cast was completely bewildered; sometimes even Huston didn’t seem to know what was going on."

The previously mentioned "physical incogruities of the cast" was delightfully played out in the depiction of the quartet of inept cutthroats who make up Bogart’s "associates," led by the portly Robert Morley (above). Best known as Katharine Hepburn’s ill-fated missionary brother in John Huston’s "The African Queen," Morley was described in Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia as "recognizable by his ungainly bulk, bushy eyebrows, thick lips and double chin," who "was particularly effective when cast as a pompous windbag."

Peter Lorre (pictured above with Bogart), visibly fatter than he appeared in "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca," portrayed the deadpan, platinum-blond German named O’Hara ("from Chile," he explains, "where many Germans are named O’Hara"). One internet wag commented, "Quentin Tarantino must weep about never getting a chance to use Lorre in a picture."

Rounding out the foursome were the diminutive, rat-faced assassin and Hitler sympathizer Ivor Barnard (above) and the tall, cadaverous Italian, Marco Tulli.

Blended into this sparkling cocktail of a film were the aforementioned Jennifer Jones (Academy Award winner for 1943’s "The Song of Bernadette") in a deliriously breathless portrayal - as a blond - of Gwendolen, a blissful liar who begins each fanciful insight with, "In point of fact…", and Gina Lollobrigida (the Italian sex goddess in her first English-speaking role) as Bogart’s wife, who confesses, "Emotionally, I am English." The statuesque, voluptuous star (seen below) was nicknamed "Lola Frigidaire" by Huston and Bogart.

Mention must also be made of British actor Edward Underdown as Jones’ clueless husband (pictured below), a faux aristocrat with a stiff upper lip, and Manuel Serano, in a brief but unforgettable role as a laconic Arab chieftain obsessed with Hollywood sex symbol Rita Hayworth, "the peerless Rita," as he calls her.

In remodeling the material from drama to comedy, Huston (seen below with Lollobrigida) not only spoofed the crime thriller but, as well, tossed in clever references to his own contributions to that genre, including "The Maltese Falcon," "Key Largo," "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (all of which starred Bogart) and "The Asphalt Jungle," all sharing with "Beat the Devil" the premise of a band of misfits involved in a failed quest, usually a crime, that goes wrong.

"The monster is stimulating," Bogart said of the director. "Offbeat kind of mind. Off center. He’s brilliant and unpredictable. Never dull." Bogart invested $400,000 (nearly half of the budget) of his own money through his production company, Santana, in the film, much of which was shot on-location in the picturesque town of Ravello, Italy, looming over the Amalfi Coast with terraced vineyards and winding streets.

Huston (seen below, behind-the-scenes with Lollobrigida and Bogart) had hoped "Beat the Devil" would be "a very fine success." He said, "If the humor comes off - as I pray it will - I believe it will make some very tidy sums…On the other hand, if the joke should fall flat - well, God help us!"

After a preview screening of the dark comedy of bad manners, deceit and adultery, director William Wyler, who had won Oscars for "Mrs. Miniver" and "The Best Years of Our Lives," told Huston, "Well, John, that’s the kind of movie that, when you’ve finished making it, you should make another one as quickly as possible." When he promoted the film, Huston warned critics and audiences that "its greatest risk is in someone’s considering it important. You can’t get more trivial."

In the British film magazine Sight & Sound, "Beat the Devil" was noted as having "the air of an expensive house-party joke, a charade which enormously entertained its participants at the time of playing, but which is too private and insufficiently brilliant to justify public performance."
The New York Times called it a "wet firecracker," concluding, "‘Beat the Devil’ ends up beating itself." Another reviewer remarked, "It should have been called ‘Beat the Customer.’" A Baltimore theater owner dubbed it a "hodgepodge of nothing" and offered to refund admission, while a chain of theaters based in Detroit canceled its bookings. One theater manager stated, "It should go down as a freak picture in the Museum of Modern Art."

"It was a flop in New York," Peter Lorre recalled. He attributed the failure not only to the movie’s confusing premise but also to its off-key marketing, explaining, "It was a deliciously sardonic comedy, made for art houses, and they opened it with a blood-and-thunder campaign (as seen in a typical ad below). People just didn’t get it."

"Beat the Devil" did receive favorable reviews. The New Yorker deemed it "a hugely entertaining work," praising its "bright lunacy." Newsweek said it "tries hard to be comic, frothy ‘Maltese Falcon’ and almost succeeds," while Time magazine described it as "elaborate a shaggy-dog story as has ever been told….A sort of screwball classic."

In point of fact, Bogart’s production company broke even on the film. Bogart, however, felt it should have been better. He called it "a mess," and, annoyed that he had paid into what he considered a gigantic private joke, bitterly remarked that "only phonies think it’s funny."

"Beat the Devil" virtually vanished from view until it was revived in the early 1960s by college film societies, and it has since been revered as a cult masterpiece. Nearly two decades following its release, critic Charles Champlin wrote that "in its rather quirky way" the film "is about loyalty, and loyalty is a theme that runs through so much of Huston’s work…It’s also a celebration of rascals, lowlifes, underdogs and born losers."

When Champlin told Jennifer Jones that his favorite of her roles was Gwendolen (as seen above), she smiled politely and recalled, "When Johnny (Huston) was persuading me to do it, he said, ‘Jennifer, they’ll remember you longer for "Beat the Devil" than for "Song of Bernadette"’ I think the S.O.B. was right." (Below, Jones in "The Song of Bernadette.")

"If ‘Beat the Devil’ puzzled audiences on its first release," Roger Ebert noted in 2000, "it has charmed them since." He concluded, "Now that movies have become fearsome engines designed to hammer us with entertainment, it is nice to recall those that simply wanted to be witty company."