January 3–10, 2002

movies

Screenpicks

by Sam Adams

M*A*S*H

($26.98 DVD)

An instructive companion to Robert Altman’s new Gosford Park (see review), this reissue of Altman’s 1970 breakthrough film shows the master director developing the first elements of his distinctive style, with uneven but frequently marvelous results. Produced on a small budget — Altman says in several places on the two-disc set he made an effort to keep his subversive anti-war satire "under the radar" of Warner Bros.’ production department — the film was ostensibly set in Korea, but Altman deliberately removed any specific references from Ring Lardner Jr.’s script, the better to point the viewer toward the conflict raging in Vietnam. (The studio nailed him on that one, forcing Altman to add opening titles clarifying the movie’s setting.) Lardner, the blacklisted writer who won an emotional Oscar for best screenplay, receives due credit here for structuring the story and for mixing the daffy humor of Richard Hooker’s novel with bloody operating-room scenes, the juxtaposition that Altman says initially piqued his interest. But everyone involved acknowledges that Lardner’s script was no more than the sketchiest of blueprints; Michael Murphy, one of few actors who’d worked with Altman before M*A*S*H, says he doesn’t recall doing more than glancing at the script on set. (I peeked quickly at a version of Lardner’s script available online and went 17 pages before reaching a line I remembered from the movie.) Stars Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould (who became an Altman regular) tried to get the director fired, convinced, as Sutherland recalls, that he "belonged in an institution for the mentally disturbed," but the finished movie brought everyone around — eventually. While Altman’s trademark camera style is nowhere to be found and the leftover gags from Lardner’s script stick out like nuns in a whorehouse (the film’s Japanese section, with its punch-line-enhancing gongs, is particularly painful), M*A*S*H still retains plenty of its initial vigor, even more so when there’s nothing of import happening on screen. Set pieces, like the premature "funeral" for a suicidal soldier, seem forced and heavy-handed, but every offhand exchange between Gould and Sutherland is priceless; it’s like watching a veteran comedy team spar with each other. Compared with the movies Altman would be making in just a few years, M*A*S*H seems tame. But just imagining how shocking it looked in 1970 is enough to give you the giggles.

Incidentally, the pumped-up special edition comes with several featurettes of widely varying quality, the best of which, a straight-up making-of, reiterates for the 1,000th time Altman’s deep-seated distaste for the wildly popular TV show, whose first season is also released now on DVD. Next to the movie, though, Larry Gelbart’s episodic farce seems trite and contrived, every peal of the laugh track shattering any reality that might accidentally set in.

Almost Famous Untitled: The Bootleg Cut

($34.98 DVD)

It was obvious at the time Almost Famous hit theaters that Cameron Crowe’s thinly veiled autobiography was a labor of love, and in this case, love turns out to have the sharper vision. Even before the movie was released, Crowe was explaining that "his" cut would be on the film’s DVD, and after delays caused by the production of Vanilla Sky, here it is at last, in what turns out to be one of the most lovingly appointed and satisfying discs in the brief history of the form. First, there’s Untitled, as Crowe prefers to call it, 36 minutes longer than the theatrical version and richer in every way. It’s difficult to say whether the cuts made for the film’s initial release were "wrong" or just appropriate to the medium — at 2 hours and 40 minutes, Untitled might well have worn on the fanny. But at home, every restored detail, every extended scene, feels like another treasure pulled out of Crowe’s memory box. Sure, they’re indulgences, but then the whole movie is an indulgence; you can either enjoy the feast or quietly excuse yourself. The commentary, where Crowe is joined by various associates as well as his mother (played by Frances McDormand in the movie), reveals just how deep Crowe’s obsession with detail ran; more than once Crowe’s mother exclaims "That’s my dress!" after seeing McDormand clad in a perfect replica. Other extras are carefully chosen: A snippet of Lester Bangs footage confirms the uncanny accuracy of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance; Crowe’s young stand-in uses "Stairway to Heaven" to convince his mother that rock has literary merit in an "interactive" deleted scene (i.e., you have to play "Stairway" yourself because they couldn’t get the rights); and a 15-minute "concert" and 6-song CD pay tribute to fictional hard rockers Stillwater. (Exactly why you’d want 15-minutes of lip-synching from a fake band is left open to question, but damned if I didn’t watch the whole thing.) The way he accurately called Vanilla Sky a "cover" instead of a remake, Crowe has nailed the essence of a bootleg box set, including just enough to satisfy the fan’s appetite without deluging us with arcana. The only thing that seems unnecessary is the inclusion of the theatrical Almost Famous. Once you’ve seen Untitled, you’ll never want to watch it again.

Jeepers Creepers

($26.98 DVD)

I watched this off-brand horror movie, which wasn’t screened for critics during its theatrical run, at the suggestion of local filmmaker Andrew Repasky McElhinney, whose name I drop solely so I can mention his making the list of New York Times critic Dave Kehr’s top 10 films of the year with his A Chronicle of Corpses. Congratulations, Andrew. Now, about that recommendation….

Written and directed by Victor Salva, who’s better known for his legal troubles than for movies like Powder, Jeepers Creepers starts out like a throwback to the days when horror movies built slowly and were actually meant to terrify, not just goose, their audiences. Gina Philips and Justin Long (TV’s Ed ) bicker like they really are the siblings they play, their unpolished performances only contributing to the movie’s realism. But after a well-staged, slow-building opening where the kids are almost run off a narrow country road by a rusted, looming hulk of a truck, then spot the driver unloading what looks like a body wrapped in sheets, Jeepers Creepers takes a turn into the ridiculous, revealing its villain as a demonic, leather-skinned beast who needs to consume human beings to survive. That the monster seems mainly to prey on teenagers, and that Salva’s a convicted child molester, provides more creeps than anything in the movie proper. (The scene where Long discovers that the monster has gone through his dirty laundry is particularly yecch-inducing.) What starts out as a chilling mystery devolves into unconvincing effects and sub-Poltergeist blather.