jeff bridges

poster

I have this very vague memory of watching Starman as a kid. This would have been the mid to late 80s, I was in my early teens, definitely pubescent. I think Mom rented it. I wouldn’t have known who John Carpenter was at that point, but I’d definitely known Karen Allen from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I’d probably seen Tron by that point and known Jeff Bridges from it.

Starman seems like a very mature movie for me to have watched at the time, so I’m guessing Mom got it for her and since I knew those actors and I liked alien movies I gave it a watch. I definitely remember not liking it, finding it rather boring.

I know I was pubescent because Karen Allen has an early scene in her underwear and that image has stuck in my brain all these years later.

I’ve since become a very big John Carpenter fan, but have put off watching this since that early viewing for having that memory of it being dull.

But it is the Awesome 80s in April and I’ve been watching a lot of early Jeff Bridges movies so I decided to give it another shot.

I still found it to be kind of dull.

Boring means something different to me now, and Starman definitely has its merits, but there is still something flat about it that didn’t appeal to me.

Karen Allen plays Jenny Hayden, a woman living on her own in an isolated lakeside cabin in Wisconsin. She’s a widow, having recently lost her husband in an accident. She spends her nights watching old home movies of him and feeling sad.

The Voyager 2 space probe makes contact with a distant alien race. They send Jeff Bridges (or rather an alien form that eventually takes the shape of Jeff Bridges – or rather Jenny’s late husband who is played by Jeff Bridges).

He immediately decides the planet is hostile and takes Jenny hostage on a road trip to that big crater in Arizona. They eventually become friends, and fall in love. Meanwhile, they are being chased by the Military led by Mark Shermin (Martin Cruz Smith) who is really a scientist interested in aliens, and unlike the rest of the Army men, doesn’t want to hurt the alien.

Basically, it is a road movie with the two leads getting romantic while Bridges is a fish out of water.

Allen and Bridges are great (Bridges was nominated for an Oscar). He gives his alien a lot of physical quirks and ticks. Carpenter and cinematographer Donald M. Morgan created some lovely images. Some of the effects are a little dated, but there’s nothing cringe-worthy.

It is a fine little film, but there’s just not much to it. Carpenter says he was inspired by The 39 Steps and It Happened One Night both of which are much better films. He also says he was trying to get away from the thriller/horror films he’d become famous for. But it should be noted he made Big Trouble In Little China after this.

8 million ways to die

The other day I was in my local used bookstore and I picked up a copy of Lawrence Block’s 8 Million Days to Die. I don’t remember why I did. I’d never read a book from Block before. I read a lot of detective fiction so probably I’d just heard his name mentioned as a good writer of that genre. Anyway, I bought the book and read it. I liked it quite a lot.

It is the fifth book in Block’s series about Matthew Scudder an ex-cop, sort-of private eye. At no point did I feel I was missing anything having not read the previous four books in the series, but I liked it enough to know I wanted to start at the beginning. I still have been unable to find that first book in the series at the used store. Maybe I’ll have to buy it new.

Fast forward a few months and I got a review copy of a book entitled Into the Night by Cornell Woolrich. The manuscript of which was found unfinished in Woolirch’s desk when he died many years ago. Lawrence Block was tasked to finish it. I read it and reviewed it (which you’ll be able to read soon over at Cinema Sentries) and quite liked it.

Lawrence Block must have been on my brain because when I came across this adaptation of 8 Million Ways to Die I got all sorts of excited and watched it immediately. It is good enough that I wish they’d made half a dozen sequels and turned it into a television show.

It has been too long since I read the story to know how faithfully they adapted it to the screen. They definitely moved it from New York to Los Angeles, and I’m sure a lot of the details were changed, I don’t remember that ending at all, but the basics are there.

Jeff Bridges plays Matthew Scudder. He begins the film as a detective working for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. When a raid goes horribly wrong, ending with Scudder shooting a small-time drug dealer in front of his wife and kids, Scudder finds himself without a job and in a drunk ward. Cop politics handled the first, a several-day bender got him into the second.

At an AA meeting, someone hands him a note to be at a private gambling club at a certain time. There he meets Chance (Randy Brooks) the owner of the club, a high-class call girl named Sarah (Rosanne Arquette), and Angel Maldonado (Andy Garcia) a drug-dealing gangster. All three will become the major characters in our story.

But he also meets Sunny (Alexandra Paul) another call girl, the one who initially invited him to the party. She plays coy at first but eventually offers him $5,000 to ask Chance, who she says is her pimp, to let her leave town and leave the business for good.

Chance says he’s not her pimp, doesn’t have a hold on her at all, and has no problem with her leaving. By the next day she’s been brutally murdered.

Scudder isn’t the kind of guy – ex-cop or not, struggling alcoholic or not – to let that sort of thing go and so he’s on the case.

The script was originally co-written by Oliver Stone and R. Lance Hill with some rewrites added by Robert Towne. Director Hal Ashby was reportedly so drunk and stoned while filming that he was fired during post-production. A new editor was brought in who cut it to pieces and added some dialogue in post.

As such the film has a disjointed, shambolic feel to it. Ashby’s films often feel a little disheveled but this is even more so. There are abrupt cuts and references to things that never happened on screen (but clearly were intended to, and were probably cut).

It is also dingy and dirty, a modern film noir that isn’t afraid of the muck. Jeff Bridges is terrific as Scudder. He gets the look and feel of an alcoholic just exactly right. His performance is full of wonderful little details that make his character feel lived in. There’s definitely a touch of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski in it, but more than that, too.

Rosanna Arquette is good as well, though her role doesn’t give her much to do. But really, this is Andy Garcia’s show. He’s terrific. Manic, and edgy. Charming, but always on the edge of violence.

It ends in a fury of shouting and violence that didn’t quite work for me. The whole film is a bit of a mess, to be honest, but also it’s kind of wonderful. I enjoyed living in this world for an hour and a half. I wish I could go back and make it a huge box office hit so we’d have more of these films with Jeff Bridges as Matthew Scudder.