Natural Born Killers Still A Favorite

I can never seem to get enough of Oliver Stone’s 1994 movie, Natural Born Killers. I re-watched the Director’s Cut several nights ago, along with the special features which include director’s commentary, deleted scenes and Chaos Rising; the behind-the-scenes, making-of piece, which has interviews with the actors, producers and crew, and which chronicles the filming and the controversy centered around the violent nature of the movie.

The original screenplay was penned by Quentin Tarantino, before he became “the” Quentin Tarantino. There was a big brouhaha in the press around the time of release about then neophyte producers Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy, JD Productions, optioning the screenplay from Tarantino, who in the meantime became quite famous from the success of Reservoir Dogs. Purportedly Tarantino hoped to get the script back after the year-option expired, so he could make the movie himself, and a big feud erupted between Tarantino and JD Productions, culminating in Don Murphy supposedly saying he would openly celebrate Tarantino’s death, and Tarantino slapping Murphy in the face at a famous LA restaurant.

After the movie was released, Jane Hamsher’s book, Killer Instincts: How Two Young Producers Took on Hollywood and Made the Most Controversial Film of the Decade was published. Killer Instincts is a great, gossipy read about the underbelly of making movies in Hollywood, and the excitement and unique craziness of making a movie with the legendary Oliver Stone.

As the story goes, just when JD Productions was about to lose the option, purportedly due to underhanded, behind the scene maneuvers of Tarantino, Oliver Stone stepped in as director to help Hamsher and Murphy make the movie. He also re-wrote the script, much to the chagrin of Tarantino, with the help of David Veloz and Richard Rutowski.

The whole sordid affair was fodder for the tabloids and gossip mills, and I ate up everything I could find on the movie, since I am one of the biggest Oliver Stone fans on the planet. And I must confess a big fan of Tarantino’s earlier work, as Tarantino was also a big influence on my own wannabe, screenwriting attempts. I snatched up and eagerly devoured every book, magazine and shred of press material I could find on both filmmakers at the time. I’m still a big fan of both auteurs, but Stone is by far the better and more serious filmmaker, and in that famous feud, I would still fall into Stone’s camp.

When I first saw Natural Born Killers on the big screen, I really didn’t like it. I much preferred the serious Stone films, and upon first viewing, I was disappointed. I thought Natural Born Killers was kind of silly and awkward, and even incongruously silly and horrific. It was shocking in places. It was creepy in places. I usually don’t like movies that mix violence and comedy, and I’m not much into satire. As a matter of fact, I didn’t like Natural Born Killers so much, that I ended up watching it ten times on the big screen! And yes, I still have all my chromosomes. By the second and third viewings, I liked it a lot and recognized it as a work of genius: a psychedelic, satirical, no-holds-barred, violent love story. And I must confess, I do love violent love stories. (The Tarantino penned, True Romance, for instance, is a great, violent love story.) By the fourth through the tenth big screen viewings, I took along as many friends as I could and watched it to study camera angles, sets, props, acting skills, etc. I studied that movie intensely, as a devoted, armchair student of film and all things Oliver Stone.

Of course, more controversy eventually erupted over the movie as copycat killings and violent crimes began to occur and be attributed to the movie. Mystery writer and attorney John Grisham even went so far as to help bring a lawsuit against Oliver Stone and Time Warner on behalf of one of the victims. (I have since boycotted all things John Grisham.) According to newspaper accounts at the time, one of the copycat killings even happened on the roof of a convenient store on the NW corner of Midway and Rosemeade, about a stone’s throw from the apartment where I lived in Dallas for many years and made my own movie. The Grisham lawsuit was unsuccessful, thankfully, and no precedent was set which would make filmmaker’s and artists responsible for the actions of a few lunatics and lost souls who might act upon movies, plays, books, poems or other art forms or media created by artists whose soul intent is to move, enlighten or entertain an audience. Tragic indeed when life imitates art in such a way as to cause a murder, and my heart does go out to the victims and their families. But one cannot prosecute Martin Scorcese or Paul Schrader because John Hinckley shot President Reagan purportedly due to an infatuation with the Jodie Foster teen prostitute character, Iris, in the movie Taxi Driver.

It was Aristotle who said, “Art imitates life,” and Oscar Wilde who countered centuries later, “Life imitates art.” I remember reading John Lennon’s Playboy magazine interview in 1980 in which he mentioned he was subsisting on Hershey’s with Almonds candy bars and Gauloise cigarettes. I rushed out and purchased and consumed both of those items simply to experience what John Lennon experienced. Life imitating art, one might say. I couldn’t very well sue John Lennon or Playboy magazine if I developed lung cancer or a tooth cavity, though eating Hershey’s with Almonds and smoking French cigarettes was my way of imitating the artist, John Lennon; silly though it may have been.

Nowadays in film, product placement has become the evil twin of life imitating art. Movie production companies now include brand name, consumer products in their movies in order to raise production funds from corporations that market the products. It’s an art-compromising way to subliminally include commercials into movies to make a buck. When famed filmmaker, David Lynch was asked what he thought about product placement in movies, he replied emphatically, “Bullshit, total fucking bullshit.”

One of the things that struck me as I watched the opening scene of Natural Born Killers is the inclusion by Oliver Stone of various “natural born killers” and inhabitants of the desert: such as the coyote, the rattlesnake, the hawk, the scorpion and the rednecks with the dead deer on the roof of the truck; all killers in their own right, yet all a part of the natural order of the planet. As Mickey Knox says in the nationally televised, prison interview on Super Bowl Sunday that comes later in the movie, “It’s just murder… all God’s creatures do it… the wolf doesn’t know why he’s a wolf - the deer doesn’t know why he’s a deer. God just made it that way.” He goes on to say: “The media is like the weather, except it’s manmade.” Those may be wise observations from a demented mind about the cruelty of nature, but still rather chilling statements to a viewer in a civilized society.

The movie is chocked full of oblique angles, jump cuts, black and white footage and every conceivable angle and film format known to mankind. It is a visual onslaught that never lets up throughout the whole movie: a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic, drug-induced romp through every conceivable manipulation ever dedicated to film. According to Hamsher’s book and interviews included in the Director’s Cut, she and Oliver Stone and others ate hallucinogenic mushrooms while scouting film locations in the desert. The movie itself tries to imitate a psychedelic trip, and successfully does so in my humble opinion.

One of the film’s most disturbing scenes to me is the backstory of Juliette Lewis’s character, Mallory, and her life at home with her abusive father, Jack, eerily played by Rodney Dangerfield. As the scene unfolds and it is made apparent that Jack has physically and sexually abused his daughter, the scene is nonetheless shot as a sitcom, complete with a laugh track included at the most sinister moments. The incongruity of that juxtaposition of a very creepy scene with a laugh track layered in was quite troubling to me, and difficult to watch. It is also at that juncture where Tarantino, during his first viewing of Natural Born Killers, supposedly walked out of the movie theater and said he would, “Watch it on cable someday.” Evidently he did not approve of the rewrites or Stone’s interpretation of his original script. Tarantino had even insisted that he be given screen credit for the “story’’ only, when he was made aware of the numerous changes to his original script.

The cast of Natural Born Killers did a great job. Stone said one reason he cast Woody Harrelson was because Woody’s father, hit man Charles Harrelson, infamously assassinated a federal judge in Texas in 1979, and Stone thought there was something in Woody’s genetic makeup that would bring out something extra in the Mickey Knox character. Juliette Lewis was dedicated to the role of Mallory Knox, and it shows in her flawless performance. Robert Downey, Jr. almost steals the show as the TV journalist, Wayne Gale. Tommy Lee Jones gives a rare performance as the cruel, nose-picking prison warden with his crude, instruments of torture. Tom Sizemore rounded out the cast very well playing the famous, memoir-writing lawman that is hired to track down the psychotic, murderous lovers. As we find out, he too is a killer who strangles a prostitute in a motel as he searches for Mickey and Mallory.

There are no heroes it seems in Natural Born Killers. According to Oliver Stone, “Once [Mickey and Mallory] kill, they’ve entered into this world of breaking all the rules. It’s fitting that the filmmaker is also breaking the rules, with them.”

Maybe to some, Natural Born Killers is a sick, controversial movie, unrealistically portraying a sick world. But, as Tommy Lee Jones says in the interview in Chaos Rising, “You don’t have to be a very sophisticated person to know that this is not an exploitation film. This is an art film.”

Hollywood Love Fest - The 82nd Annual Academy Awards

It was fun to watch the 82nd Academy Awards and once again see all the beautiful people kick up their heels and throw their annual shindig. I thought Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a great job co-hosting, and for me, it was fun to see a Hollywood sacred cow like good old democratic socialist Ed Asner in the crowd, as well as an old timer like Christopher Plummer there as a nominee, even if he did not get his due. Christoph Waltz was a difficult actor to beat, I suppose.

I love the work of cinematographer, Robert Richardson, especially when he was working with Oliver Stone. He was hard to miss tonight sitting behind Quentin Tarantino with his trademark long hair and beard, now snow white, looking like a character in a kung fu movie, the old man from the mountain. He was nominated for best cinematographer for Inglourious Basterds. (I have to get the spelling right on Inglourious and Basterds!)

I was happy to see a young, acoustic guitar-strumming song writer like Ryan Bingham win the Oscar for Best Song for the theme song from Crazy Heart. He went from rodeo cowboy breaking bones riding bulls and living in his pickup truck to Oscar winner in a few short years. He paid his dues and came up the hard way. I bet his life story would make a great movie.

Quentin Tarantino did not look too happy when Mark Boal won for Best Original Screenplay. QT’s script was definitely original, but too silly, I think, to win the top screenwriting honor, and had too much white space.

There is no way any director other than James Cameron should have won for Best Director. The dedication, innovation and persistence behind Avatar cannot be equaled for a long time to come. I guess The Academy thought the time had come for a woman to win Best Director. So be it. I loved Strange Days and Point Break, by the way, both directed by Kathryn Bigelow, but no way The Hurt Locker was better directed than Avatar.

And The Hurt Locker wins Best Picture? There is like no way! James Cameron was robbed, probably by the military industrial complex and the necessary glorification of the war. I actually fell asleep at the theater watching the last twenty minutes of The Hurt Locker, but I was wide awake at the climactic ending of Avatar. The Hurt Locker was a propaganda snooze fest compared to Avatar. I know a lot of film purists and Cameron haters didn’t want to see a special effects-heavy production like Avatar win, but the movie is way too grand and magnificent to be overlooked. What a travesty! Plus it has almost grossed a billion dollars domestically! Let’s face it, it’s entertaining. Oh well, it’s not the first time a movie or director has been robbed at the Oscars. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Just look at Martin Scorsese and Raging Bull. Movies are so much fun to watch when they are good, and good is such a relative term when it comes to cinema and the Academy of Motion Pictures. An audience is a fickle thing.

We place actors on such pedestals, and make them into demi-gods, yet they are for the most part normal people who just happen to have a cool job. Just for an instant tonight watching the Academy Awards I thought I was watching an homage to great statesmen or perhaps the scientist who invented the cure for polio, not a bunch of people playing house and cowboys and Indians. I have to admit, I loved every minute of it. As an industry, cinema has only been around for a little over one hundred years. That’s the blink of an eye in historic terms. I hope I’m around long enough to see many more movies and many more innovations.

My Gonzo Take on the Golden Globes

Okay, I watched the 2010 Golden Globes. I really enjoyed the show. I thought the host, Ricky Gervais, did a great job while drinking his beer at the podium, getting an obvious buzz in a much more informal environment than the Oscars. As usual, I was jealous of all the beautiful people enjoying the limelight at the Beverly Hilton while I sat in my trailer park, glued to the screen, green with envy, and guzzling Budweiser.

It was fun to see Mickey Rourke kiss Mike Tyson… nice to see such macho guys show a little love. Seeing Colin Farrell as a presenter reinforced once again how much I wish I could cast him in my mobster script, Joey & Jeffie, as Joey (Crazy Joe) Gallo beside Michelle Rodriguez as Las Vegas showgirl, Jeffie Lee… maybe someday if I don’t get whacked first or if Harvey Weinstein doesn’t beat me to the punch.

I thought it was only fitting that James Cameron won Best Director and Avatar won Best Motion Picture. I mean, really folks, who can beat the four and a half year project, Avatar? I know all you film purists hate it, but you have to give the devil his due: Avatar is what movies are all about, i.e., it is entertaining. So suck it up - better luck next time.

And how about Quentin Tarantino? Suave… goddamn, he’s suave! I mean, I thought his movie Inglourious Basterds was an overrated version of a Hogan’s Heroes episode from a script with way too much white space, but what do I know? I still love the guy. I miss the days of True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. I’d give my left nut to be able to write scripts like that. And I just know that the misspelling of bastards must have been unintentional, but when called on it he must have said, “Fuck it” and left it at that. I mean, didn’t the guy drop out of school in the Eighth grade? And let’s not forget, this is a guy who said Oliver Stone is “an overrated Stanley Kramer.” He had the balls to say that about Oliver fucking Stone, man!

The fact is, none of Tarantino’s movies come even close to Platoon or Born on the 4th of July. Inglourious Basterds nominated for Best Motion Picture? Knee grow, please. As one astute observer at the Cannes put it, Inglorious Basterds is “…an action movie with no action.” But Tarantino was a huge influence on me, and is one of the reasons I decided to write scripts. I fell for the whole million dollar ad campaign paid for by the Weinstein’s of the video store clerk turned movie auteur. And I always go see everyone one of his flicks when they come out. I’m just jealous! Okay?

And the rest of the show? I didn’t see most of the shows that were nominated or that won. My cable TV got cut off almost three years ago when I sold my soul and spent every extra penny I had to make my own shitty little movie. But I’m happy for everyone, okay?

I’m happy for Jeff Bridges. I always liked his dad, Lloyd Bridges, in the television show, Sea Hunt, which aired back when Methuselah was a baby. I will eventually see Crazy Heart.

Meryl Streep? You can’t go wrong with the greatest living female actress on the planet. Unless maybe with Jessica Lange as a serious contender for that slot?

Robert Downey, Jr.? He’s like the new Brando, right? Or he’s at least in contention with Christian Bale for that title, right?

I would love to see Precious, but jeez, what a downer of a movie it must be… after watching the trailer I was reaching for my hanky and felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I will say, however, that the best golden globes at the 2010 Golden Globes were on Mariah Carey. I will see Precious someday, too.

Maybe this year I’ll get my cable hooked back up and have some extra bread to see some cable TV and some flicks, man. Hell, I might even get to make another flick myself… who knows what the future holds?