Category Archives: Film, TV, and Theatre

Film, TV, and Theatre

Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

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The rise to star­dom of the orig­i­nal Hol­ly­wood “Latin lover”, Rudolph Valenti­no, is a remark­able one. I’m pret­ty sure nobody who knew him in his child­hood could have had the slight­est inkling of what lay in store for him: he was born in 1895 in Castel­lan­e­ta, at the top of the heel of Italy, to a cap­tain of cav­al­ry in the Ital­ian army and a French moth­er. Although even as a boy he was known for his excep­tion­al looks, he did poor­ly at school, squeezed a cer­tifi­cate out of agri­cul­tur­al col­lege in Genoa, and couldn’t find work. As with so many oth­ers, he depart­ed for the Unit­ed States, and was processed at Ellis Island in 1913, aged 18.

Rodol­fo, as he was then (real name: Rodol­fo Alfon­so Raf­fael­lo Pierre Fil­ib­er­to Gugliel­mi di Valenti­na d’An­tonguel­la), sought work bussing tables at var­i­ous New York restau­rants. He was fired sev­er­al times, but even­tu­al­ly one skill that he did have – danc­ing – secured him work as a “taxi dancer” (hired to dance with cus­tomers) at Maxim’s Restau­rant-Cabaret. He befriend­ed a Chilean heiress there and became entan­gled in some­thing of a scan­dal which moti­vat­ed him to leave town, join­ing a trav­el­ling musi­cal which took him to the West Coast.

It was on the West Coast that things start­ed hap­pen­ing for Rodol­fo; he was encour­aged to seek screen roles and his “exot­ic” looks led him to win bit parts in sev­er­al movies. His big break, though, came when he won a lead role in the 1921 silent movie, The Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse, which became a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess and cat­a­pult­ed him to star­dom. He was mar­ket­ed as the “Latin lover” with a new stage name, and the movies The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle, and The Son of the Sheik all fol­lowed, each one cement­ing Valentino’s rep­u­ta­tion and star qual­i­ty.

He soon became the arche­typ­al sex sym­bol of the silent movie era, along­side the fair-com­plex­ioned, all-Amer­i­can male leads Wal­lace Reid and Dou­glas Fair­banks Junior, as well as the oth­er con­tem­po­rary hearththrob mat­inée idol of for­eign extrac­tion, Tokyo-born Ses­sue Hayakawa (who decades lat­er would appear as Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the Riv­er Kwai). Valentino’s sta­tus as a cul­tur­al icon was sealed in 1926 by his ear­ly death from peri­toni­tis, aged just 31. Mass hys­te­ria ensued, and indeed the events of Valentino’s funer­al are a sto­ry in them­selves (100,000 lined the streets to pay their respects, but so much dis­or­der broke out that 100 mount­ed NYPD offi­cers were need­ed to restore order).

Here is a mon­tage of Valenti­no footage in var­i­ous pub­lic­i­ty shots and off-screen sce­nar­ios – if your only image of him is in cos­tume and make-up (per­haps as “the Sheik”), then you might find this quite com­pelling and worth view­ing to get an insight into the “real” Valenti­no and why the women swooned…feast your eyes!

Rudolph Valenti­no
Film, TV, and Theatre

The “Clinton Baptiste” Scene From Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights (2001)

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Obser­va­tion­al com­e­dy takes for its source the minu­ti­ae of every­day life that peo­ple recog­nise with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing con­scious­ly acknowl­edged or dis­cussed out loud. Essen­tial­ly, it begins with “Have you ever noticed…?” and fol­lows up with some amus­ing obser­va­tion that hope­ful­ly strikes a chord with the audi­ence. A large part of stand-up com­e­dy is based on this premise, of course. When you bring in some well-observed char­ac­ters, them­selves honed from years of obser­va­tion of var­i­ous arche­types, and put them into a well-devised sit­u­a­tion com­e­dy, you can add a whole new lev­el of humour; Peter Kay is a past mas­ter at this.

It’s his obser­va­tions of life grow­ing up in Bolton that informs Peter Kay’s com­e­dy. In Phoenix Nights, we see his com­e­dy oeu­vre at its finest, hav­ing filled it with idio­syn­crat­ic but true-to-life char­ac­ters and sce­nar­ios gleaned from his expe­ri­ences of north­ern work­ing men’s clubs (for fair­ness, it should be men­tioned that it was­n’t sole­ly Kay’s baby: Dave Spikey and Neil Fitz­mau­rice were co-cre­ators and writ­ers). The Phoenix Club is a fic­tion­al work­ing men’s club, home to the usu­al vari­ety of club themes: cabaret enter­tain­ment, bin­go nights, karaoke, raf­fles, fundrais­ers, and themed nights, with a stage bedecked with a tin­sel­ly back-drop and — all mod cons! — a smoke machine.

The scene I’m high­light­ing is the one star­ring “psy­chic medi­um”, Clin­ton Bap­tiste, and it strikes, I think, a seam of com­e­dy gold. Replete with the motifs of the end-of-the-pier enter­tain­er – the camp­ness, the mul­let, the flam­boy­ant suit, the local accent at odds with the assumed grav­i­tas of a true mys­tic – actor Alex Rowe’s char­ac­ter is a gift, and he por­trays it bril­liant­ly. The con­ceit is that Bap­tiste is a rub­bish medi­um, with no redeem­ing qual­i­ties, and none of the empa­thy that you would expect from a tru­ly spir­i­tu­al per­son.

Not only is he clum­si­ly obvi­ous with his cold-read­ing tech­niques (“is there a John in the audi­ence?”), but he also man­ages to cause offence and upset by deliv­er­ing the bluntest of mes­sages from “beyond the grave”. To one lady: “You’ve not been well have you? And it is ter­mi­nal, isn’t it…?” (which is evi­dent­ly news to her!). And to a man sit­ting with his wife: “Is there some­thing you want­ed to tell her? Get off your chest maybe?”. “What is it?”, we hear the wife demand­ing, as Clin­ton walks away.

Inci­den­tal­ly, Alex Rowe has gone on to devel­op the Clin­ton Bap­tiste char­ac­ter, out­side of the Phoenix Nights episode – check out the hilar­i­ous Clin­ton Baptiste’s Para­nor­mal Pod­cast. But for now, let’s watch his orig­i­nal scene, and enjoy Clin­ton “get­ting a word”…

Alex Lowe as Clin­ton Bap­tiste
Film, TV, and Theatre

The Shower Scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)

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In Novem­ber 1957, police in Plain­field, Wis­con­sin, inves­ti­gat­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of store own­er Ber­nice Wor­den, arrest­ed one Edward Gein. Upon search­ing his house, they found Bernice’s decap­i­tat­ed body hang­ing upside down by her legs and “dressed out like a deer”. In addi­tion, they found a cat­a­logue of gris­ly tro­phies and keep­sakes made from human skin and bones. Gein con­fessed to mur­der­ing two women and, even more shock­ing­ly, exhum­ing up to nine corpses of recent­ly-buried mid­dle-aged women from local grave­yards. The Butch­er of Plain­field, as he became known, would pro­vide inspi­ra­tion for the future mak­ers of the Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre, The Silence of the Lambs, and – thanks to the 1959 Robert Bloch nov­el of the same name – Alfred Hitchcock’s Psy­cho.

Besides mak­ing peo­ple for­ev­er wary of motel-room show­ers, Hitch­cock­’s Psy­cho con­tin­ues to have an incal­cu­la­ble influ­ence on pop­u­lar cul­ture. It was a clear mark­er in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, par­tic­u­lar­ly the psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, of which Hitch­cock was a mas­ter. It may not have been the first “slash­er movie” (that cred­it has been giv­en to British movie Peep­ing Tom, released just three months pri­or to Psy­cho, or even 1932’s Thir­teen Women) but it was cer­tain­ly the most dra­mat­ic and impact­ful in the pub­lic con­scious­ness.

It is of course the sto­ry of Nor­man Bates (Antho­ny Perkins), the obses­sion­al, split-per­son­al­i­ty psy­chopath of the title, and Mar­i­on Crane (Janet Leigh), the sin­gle female find­ing her­self in very much the wrong place at the wrong time, name­ly Bates Motel. The noto­ri­ous show­er scene, in which Mar­i­on is mur­dered in a fren­zied knife attack, is the piv­otal scene and one of the most stud­ied mon­tages of film edit­ing ever made. It was shot over one week in Decem­ber 1959. The fin­ished scene runs for three min­utes, includes sev­en­ty sev­en dif­fer­ent cam­era angles, main­ly extreme close-ups and fifty cuts.

For Leigh’s blood, which swirled down the show­er drain, Hitch­cock used Bosco choco­late syrup. To cre­ate the sound effect of the knife stab­bing flesh, he sent prop man Bob Bone out to fetch a vari­ety of mel­ons. The direc­tor then closed his eyes as Bone took turns stab­bing water­mel­ons, casabas, can­taloupes and hon­ey­dews (he chose casa­ba). The sound­track of screech­ing string instru­ments was an orig­i­nal and high­ly effec­tive piece by com­pos­er Bernard Her­rmann.

Para­mount had con­sid­ered the movie a high­ly risky project, so Hitch­cock deferred his salary in exchange for 60 per­cent of the net prof­it. The film cost just $800,000 to make, grossed $40 mil­lion and Hitch­cock pock­et­ed some $15 million…so not a bad deci­sion!

Alfred Hitch­cock
Film, TV, and Theatre

Christopher Guest’s This is Spinal Tap (1984)

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When I was young, not yet a teenag­er, I inher­it­ed from my elder sis­ters a num­ber of vinyl LPs, among them David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, Cat Stevens’ Teas­er and the Fire­cat, the Moody Blues’ In Search Of The Lost Chord, and an album that appar­ent­ly didn’t need much of a title: Led Zep­pelin II. Although I loved all of these records, it was the lat­ter album that informed my imme­di­ate direc­tion in music; riff­ing gui­tar, crash­ing drums, shriek­ing vocals: what was not to like?

Soon I would encounter Deep Pur­ple, Thin Lizzy, UFO, AC/DC and Black Sab­bath, and by my mid-teens, a (large­ly young male) cross-sec­tion of the coun­try would be in the grip of the so-called “New Wave of British Heavy Met­al”. Seem­ing­ly all of a sud­den, there was a super­abun­dance of bands com­pris­ing long-haired, leather‑, den­im- or lycra-clad rock­ers: Judas Priest, Sax­on, Iron Maid­en, Def Lep­pard, Angel­witch, Pray­ing Man­tis, the list went on and on. And oh, the gigs! I attend­ed many of those. You would find your sens­es assault­ed by very loud music, bright lights, dry ice, a seething crowd of head­bang­ing fans, the smell of sweat and patchouli oil – it was cer­tain­ly a thrilling expe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, the idio­syn­crasies of the genre, along with some of the bands’ increas­ing­ly the­atri­cal stage shows and themes, would make them ripe for satire.

Enter Christo­pher Guest, a British-Amer­i­can screen­writer, actor, and come­di­an who would become known for his series of com­e­dy films shot in mock-doc­u­men­tary (mock­u­men­tary) style, and begin­ning in 1984 with his hilar­i­ous take on the heavy met­al move­ment, This Is Spinal Tap. Direct­ed by Rob Rein­er, it stars Guest, Michael McK­ean, and Har­ry Shear­er as mem­bers of fic­tion­al British heavy met­al band, Spinal Tap, and we fol­low them on their Amer­i­can tour. The film sat­i­rizes the behav­iour and musi­cal pre­ten­sions of rock bands, and to those with an inside view of the British heavy rock scene, the result is a painful­ly accu­rate and utter­ly hilar­i­ous pas­tiche.

Let’s start with the band mem­bers’ names, all great choic­es: David St. Hub­bins (McK­ean) and Nigel Tufnel (Guest) on vocals and gui­tar, bassist Derek Smalls (Shear­er), key­boardist Viv Sav­age, and drum­mer Mick Shrimp­ton. Most of the film’s dia­logue was impro­vised and dozens of hours were filmed, and giv­en that the prin­ci­pal actors were Amer­i­can, the fideli­ty to the British­ness is out­stand­ing. The film is packed with great scenes, but to keep it down I have select­ed two for your amuse­ment: the clas­sic scene where Nigel Tufnel takes us on a back­stage tour of this gui­tars and amps (includ­ing the ones that “go up to eleven”), and also the hilar­i­ous Stone­henge scene, in which the band, play­ing its set-piece epic, is flab­ber­gast­ed to see the expect­ed 18-foot tall stage props of Stone­henge descend to the stage at the cru­cial moment in dimen­sions con­struct­ed erro­neous­ly in inch­es. Price­less.

Spinal Tap
Spinal Tap

Film, TV, and Theatre

Ken Loach’s Kes (1969)

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I’m from York­shire and, like all York­shire men and women, am very proud to be so (you may have encoun­tered this prob­a­bly not-unan­noy­ing phe­nom­e­non if you’re not your­self from York­shire). The coun­ty is known for the rugged beau­ty of its Dales in the north-west, and its Wolds and Moors in the north-east, though it is asso­ci­at­ed too, in the west and south, with a bleak­er, more indus­tri­al land­scape, where social depri­va­tion and pover­ty has played its part. One such area pro­vides the set­ting for Ken Loach’s 1969 film, the clas­sic (and often very mov­ing) “York­shire film”, Kes.

The film, adapt­ed from Bar­ry Hines’s nov­el A Kestrel for a Knave, fol­lows Bil­ly Casper, a sen­si­tive and down­trod­den 15-year-old from work­ing-class Barns­ley who finds solace in train­ing a kestrel. It is a gen­tle dra­ma about harsh cir­cum­stances, and I remem­ber its impact: it was some­thing of a sen­sa­tion, and it won the young actor, David Bradley, a deserved BAFTA for his role.

Bil­ly’s broth­er bul­lies him and his fam­i­ly neglects him. At school, most of his teach­ers ridicule and reject him, espe­cial­ly sadis­tic Mr Sug­den (Bri­an Glover, with a bravu­ra per­for­mance you’ll see below). Bil­ly appears head­ed for a menial job with no future and con­se­quent­ly has no moti­va­tion and noth­ing to look for­ward to, until the day he finds a kestrel, a Euro­pean fal­con, which he befriends and cares for. He rais­es, nur­tures, and trains the fal­con, whom he calls “Kes”, and encour­age­ment from one of his more sym­pa­thet­ic teach­ers (played admirably by Col­in Welland) offers Bil­ly hope.

The nat­u­ral­ism achieved in the film is tes­ta­ment to Loach’s direc­to­r­i­al skills and his desire for authen­tic­i­ty. The schoolkids that he directs play their parts for real, with lit­tle appar­ent self-aware­ness. It often feels as if the view­er is watch­ing via a hid­den cam­era. Take this clas­sic foot­ball match scene, below, where­in Mr Sug­den boss­es the kids boor­ish­ly (though, it has to be said, high­ly amus­ing­ly), elic­it­ing much ban­ter, rich with local jar­gon and accent, from kids on and off cam­era. It will per­haps prompt rec­ol­lec­tion of cold, mud­dy sports pitch­es from your own school­days; it does me. How­ev­er, it is a charm­ing piece of social real­ism that you will enjoy even if you don’t catch every bit of dia­logue!

Film, TV, and Theatre

Mike Myers and Dana Carvey as Wayne and Garth in Wayne’s World (1992)

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Writ­ing my last blog about Jimi Hen­drix at Wood­stock put me in mind of the hilar­i­ous scene from the movie Wayne’s World, where­in the char­ac­ter Garth, prone as he is to day-dream­ing, envi­sions him­self invei­gling a beau­ti­ful woman to the sound­track of Hendrix’s Foxy Lady. I chuck­led so much sole­ly from its rec­ol­lec­tion that I just had to find it and fea­ture it (along with sev­er­al oth­er scenes from the movie) this week!

Back in 1987, on a Cana­di­an vari­ety show called It’s Only Rock & Roll, an aspir­ing com­ic called Mike Myers was try­ing out a new char­ac­ter in a brief seg­ment called Wayne’s Pow­er Minute. The char­ac­ter of teenage heavy met­al fan Wayne Camp­bell with his pup­py-like exu­ber­ance and love­able-air­head phi­los­o­phy was pret­ty much ful­ly formed even back then.

It was a cou­ple of years lat­er that Myers joined the Sat­ur­day Night Live cast and intro­duced Wayne to a wider audi­ence, in the form of the Wayne’s World sketch­es, now with side­kick Garth Algar (Dana Car­vey). The premise of Wayne’s World was that it was a pub­lic-access tele­vi­sion show broad­cast from Wayne’s base­ment, and char­ac­terised by its chaot­ic pro­duc­tion style, the anar­chic school­boy humour of its hosts, and their obses­sion with “babes” and rock music.

Myers and Car­vey record­ed 27 episodes dur­ing its 1989–1992 hey­day and in 1992 filmed the first Wayne’s World movie, the per­fect vehi­cle for Wayne and Garth to get involved in antics and exploits in the wider world. The movie was an instant crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess. Catch­phras­es abound, and many of them have become col­lo­qui­alisms: “Par­ty on!”, “Good call!”, “I am not wor­thy”, “Excel­lent!” (when intoned in the cor­rect way), “No way…way!”, and of course “…not” (as in “Sure, it’s a great movie…not!”).

 

Wayne’s World base­ment
Film, TV, and Theatre

Fry and Laurie’s “John and Peter” sketch (1990)

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Many a com­e­dy dou­ble act or group cut its teeth as mem­bers of the Cam­bridge Foot­lights, the ama­teur the­atri­cal club run by stu­dents of Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty (and which has been going since 1883) – Beyond the Fringe, Mon­ty Python, the Good­ies, and a sur­pris­ing num­ber of media per­son­al­i­ties active on our tele­vi­sion screens today. One pair of for­mer Foot­lighters pur­sue their careers indi­vid­u­al­ly these days but for a long time through­out the 1980s and 90s their obvi­ous comedic chem­istry was exploit­ed to great effect as a dou­ble act. I’m talk­ing about Stephen Fry and Hugh Lau­rie, who col­lab­o­rat­ed in such pro­grammes as the Black Adder series, Jeeves and Woost­er, and four series of A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie.

A Bit of Fry and Lau­rie was a sketch show cast for a post-Alter­na­tive com­e­dy audi­ence, in which elab­o­rate word­play and innu­en­do were sta­ples of its mate­r­i­al. Both per­form­ers brought great char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion to the sketch­es, and were equal­ly fun­ny, though Fry’s well-known intel­lec­tu­al heft was clear­ly present through­out the series.

My favourites of the series’ char­ac­ters were John (Fry) and Peter (Lau­rie), who are high-pow­ered, hard-drink­ing busi­ness execs, engaged in backs-to-the-wall, board­room hard talk, the joke being that their loca­tion, unlike Lon­don or New York, is com­plete­ly non­de­script (Uttox­eter) and their busi­ness dis­tinct­ly under­whelm­ing (a health club). The char­ac­ters are of course a par­o­dy of hard-dri­ving busi­ness­men of the time, draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from such board­room soap operas as Man at the Top and Howards’ Way, in which char­ac­ters’ bom­bast is deliv­ered with such com­plete seri­ous­ness, and as if the fate of the free world depend­ed on it, about mat­ters that the view­ers know are of no real con­se­quence.

John and Peter’s loud catch­phrase was “Damn!” and sev­er­al increas­ing­ly ridicu­lous vari­a­tions on this theme (“Three pints of Damn and a chas­er of Hell-blast!”), as they uncov­er some new busi­ness-crit­i­cal twist or plot engi­neered by arch-rival Mar­jorie, John’s ex-wife. This mar­vel­lous premise is summed up thus:

“Dammit John, I’m talk­ing about the big idea. The dream that you and I shared. The dream of a health club that would put Uttox­eter on the god­damned map once and for all”

Inci­den­tal­ly, Uttox­eter is in Stafford­shire…

Fry and Lau­rie as John and Peter

 

Film, TV, and Theatre

Reza Badiya’s Title Visualisation for Hawaii Five‑0 (1968)

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When I was grow­ing up in the sev­en­ties, after a decade of main­ly black and white tele­vi­sion, there was a pletho­ra of new, colour­ful, excit­ing TV dra­mas: Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble, The Six Mil­lion Dol­lar Man, Starsky and Hutch, The Cham­pi­ons, The Per­suaders, Kojak…the list goes on.

Most of these of course were Amer­i­can-pro­duced and the indus­try churned them out to a pub­lic hun­gry for enter­tain­ment. A lit­tle-known name out­side of the TV indus­try is Iran­ian direc­tor Reza Badiyi, but he deserves recog­ni­tion from those of us who devoured hours of the afore­men­tioned shows, for Badiyi helmed lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of hours of episod­ic TV. He direct­ed more than 430 episodes of tele­vi­sion, includ­ing mul­ti­ple episodes of Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble, The Six Mil­lion Dol­lar Man, The Rock­ford Files, Hawaii Five‑O, The Incred­i­ble Hulk, T.J. Hook­er, and Cagney and Lacey.

Badiyi began his Amer­i­can career as a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, hav­ing moved from Iran in 1955 and grad­u­at­ed from Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty with a degree in film-mak­ing. He worked with direc­tors such as Sam Peck­in­pah and Robert Alt­man before mov­ing increas­ing­ly into tele­vi­sion. No-one would claim Badiyi’s work in the sev­en­ties as great works of art but, with their break­through visu­al effects, they were cer­tain­ly cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant for young view­ers like myself.

To rep­re­sent Badiyi’s oeu­vre I have cho­sen the title visu­al­i­sa­tion (i.e. the open­ing and clos­ing cred­its) for Hawaii Five‑0. If you were alive in the sev­en­ties, there’s a very high prob­a­bil­i­ty these images will be very famil­iar to you. Backed by an irre­sistible score by Richard Shores, Badiyi used dynam­ic, zoom­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, copi­ous imagery from Hawaii (the 50th State — Five‑0 — get it?), with cool quick-cuts and freeze-frames to set the view­er up nice­ly for the upcom­ing crime-defeat­ing dra­ma. Who can for­get the fast zoom-in to the top bal­cony of the Ilikai Hotel, with Jack Lord’s Steve McGar­rett turn­ing to face the cam­era?

For the clos­ing cred­its, Badiyi chose to use these icon­ic out­rig­ger canoeists bat­tling the surf (any­one remem­ber sit­ting in a line of like-mind­ed plonkers on a dance floor, pad­dling like crazy and singing duh-duh-duh-duh duh­h­hh duh­h­hh…?)

All in all, a bravu­ra title visu­al­i­sa­tion by one of the most pro­lif­ic direc­tors of episod­ic series tele­vi­sion in the his­to­ry of the medi­um. Book him, Dan­no!

Reza Badiyi

Film, TV, and Theatre

The HAL 9000 Scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

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There’s been a lot of talk in the media recent­ly about Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI). Face­book uses it for tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing, pho­to tag­ging, and news feeds. Microsoft and Apple use it to pow­er their dig­i­tal assis­tants, Cor­tana and Siri, and Google’s search engine has utilised AI from the begin­ning. There appears to be some­thing of a chase to cre­ate flex­i­ble, self-teach­ing AI that will mir­ror human learn­ing and appar­ent­ly trans­form our lives.

There have been some big-name doom-mon­gers on this sub­ject, how­ev­er. Elon Musk thinks AI is prob­a­bly humanity’s “biggest exis­ten­tial threat”. Stephen Hawk­ing fears that AI may “replace humans alto­geth­er”. Bill Gates agrees with both of them. Me, I’m not so sure; sure­ly you can always turn a machine off?…(on the oth­er hand, have you ever tried clos­ing Skype?)

This con­cept of computers/machines gone bad is a well-worn theme in sci­ence fic­tion, with the Ter­mi­na­tor series of films an obvi­ous exam­ple, but it was back in 1968, in Stan­ley Kubrik and Arthur C Clarke’s sem­i­nal 2001: A Space Odyssey, that we were intro­duced to our first elec­tron­ic wrong ‘un, HAL 9000. HAL (from Heuris­ti­cal­ly pro­grammed ALgorithm, appar­ent­ly, though some have con­jec­tured an eas­i­ly-decrypt­ed code ver­sion of IBM) is a sen­tient com­put­er con­trol­ling the sys­tems of the Dis­cov­ery One space­craft on its mis­sion to Jupiter.

HAL is ini­tial­ly regard­ed as anoth­er mem­ber of the crew, engag­ing genial­ly with its human col­leagues, play­ing chess with them and so on. How­ev­er, he begins to mal­func­tion in sub­tle ways. As the mal­func­tion­ing dete­ri­o­rates, the crew mem­bers dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­con­nect­ing HAL’s cog­ni­tive cir­cuits. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, HAL can read lips and dis­cerns their plan, and his pro­grammed direc­tives to pro­tect the mis­sion lead him to rea­son that he must kill the astro­nauts. In this clas­sic scene, crew mem­ber Dave Bow­man is out­side the main craft in a “pod” and is seek­ing re-entry, ask­ing HAL to open the pod bay doors. HAL (voiced chill­ing­ly by Dou­glas Rain) isn’t play­ing ball…

Film, TV, and Theatre

Steve Martin and John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

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Writer/director John Hugh­es had had a series of suc­cess­ful movies in the eight­ies fea­tur­ing teenage angst and adven­tures (Weird Sci­ence, Break­fast Club, Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off) when he embarked on this, the more grown-up movie, Planes, Trains and Auto­mo­biles. It’s a com­e­dy, and it is indeed packed with com­ic set pieces, but it’s a lot more than that: it has a gen­uine pathos and poignan­cy.

Inspired by an actu­al hell­ish trip that Hugh­es had per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced, in which var­i­ous delays and diver­sions had kept him from get­ting home for an entire week­end, Hugh­es appar­ent­ly wrote the first six­ty pages of the script in just six hours. Steve Mar­tin plays Neal Page, a mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive des­per­ate to get back home to Chica­go to see his wife and kids for Thanks­giv­ing, and who along the way becomes sad­dled with show­er cur­tain ring sales­man Del Grif­fith (John Can­dy). Mishaps befall the two through­out their trav­els, and they endure every indig­ni­ty that mod­ern trav­el can inflict on its vic­tims.

The suc­cess of the movie is found­ed on the essen­tial natures of its two prin­ci­pal actors: Steve Mar­tin and John Can­dy embody them­selves, and this is key to why the film is able to reveal so much heart and truth. Neal spends the movie try­ing to peel off from Del, whilst Del spends the movie hav­ing his feel­ings hurt and then com­ing through for Neal any­way. It is road trip and bud­dy movie rolled into one, done to high­ly comedic effect, and my fam­i­ly returns to it time after time.

The last scenes of the movie deliv­er the emo­tion­al pay­off we have been half-expect­ing all along. Neal under­goes a kind of moral rebirth: we know he has learned a valu­able les­son about empa­thy, and there is true poignan­cy in the scene where Neal finds Del wait­ing alone on the L plat­form. Inci­den­tal­ly, there is a moment just before this scene where Neal, on the train home before he returns to find Del, starts to laugh qui­et­ly to him­self as he recalls their mis­ad­ven­tures. It’s won­der­ful­ly nat­ur­al and it turns out that there was good rea­son for that: unbe­knownst to Steve Mar­tin, Hugh­es had kept the cam­eras rolling in between takes on the Chica­go train, while Mar­tin was think­ing about his next lines, and in so doing cap­tured this unguard­ed moment.