HARD TARGET will leave you Woo-zy

Where to begin with HARD TARGET?  Storytelling is not John Woo's strong suit. This might be why he murders the screenwriter in the opening scene. Really— the writer plays the film's first victim (the audience plays the 2nd).

Hot off HARD BOILED, one of the best action films ever, Woo came to Hollywood eager to blow minds. To say he out-Wooed himself in HT is an understatement. When a guy's foot goes through a rotting floor board, it takes Woo 9 cuts (I counted) to show this fraction-of-a-second-long event. 3 of those cuts are in slo-mo, of course. Most of the movie is shot and cut this way. It's exhausting as fuck.

The good news is that HT is hilarious (often unintentionally) and watchable (despite itself) and more than qualifies for inclusion as Essential NOLA Cinema.  The opening set piece that introduces JCVD takes place in Cafe Brazil; in fact, it's the same cafe set that was used in FLAKES, making me wonder when Ude actually bought the place (both films were shot pre-Katrina although FLAKES was released after).  Look for the amazing wide-angle shot of JCVD's mullet with the Apple Barrel's now-covered-by-Dat-Dog mural dwarfing him.

As if that wasn't enough early-90's Frenchmen St, there is an insane (as in completely incoherent) shoot-out that takes place down the block at the corner of Decatur.  It features guys with Uzis on motorcycles, Arnold Vosloo from THE MUMMY wielding a shotgun, and enough machine gun fire to destroy the living shit out of Mona's and Vaso.

There is also some business dealing with the city's homeless population and police department that is actually handled intelligently and with respect. One must assume the 2nd Unit did all that, because 75% of the movie is hyper-spastic adolescent action cut with a disorienting slo-mo/fast-mo rhythm that obliterates all temporal and spatial continuity.

Then, just when you think it can't get any crazier, the film jumps to the bayou, and this happens—

Wilford Fucking Brimley as "Uncle Duvet" (technically Douvee but c'mon we're not stupid) goes John-Rambo-in-FIRST-BLOOD on an army of baddies using only an old shotgun, dynamite, and the power of his mustache. (We Hate Movies did a riotous segment on this)

The finale happens in Blain Kern's Mardi Gras World warehouse on the West Bank, and if anyone's made a John Woo parody sequence, I doubt it can be any funnier than this, the real thing. One of Woo's goddamn doves actually fights on JCVD's side; we know they're buddies because earlier in the film it provided him with a helpful clue. I'm not making any of that up.

NEXT: Louis Malle's PRETTY BABY (1978), by request.

Paul Stekler's History of NOLA Documentaries

Documentarian Paul Stekler has published a pretty comprehensive history of documentary filmmaking in New Orleans. He was part of the NOVAC-generation of transplants ('71 onward) and recently returned to make GETTING BACK TO ABNORMAL (2011).

The only omission in the article I'm aware of is Rick Delaup's awesome RUTHIE THE DUCK GIRL (1998) which was edited by the ubiquitous Tim Watson (mentioned throughout Stekler's article). RUTHIE is my favorite documentary about New Orleans precisely for the reason Stekler touches on in his introduction:

"New Orleans is no stranger to being depicted on film. Images of Mardi Gras, jazz musicians, and parades are familiar to most Americans." [emphasis mine]

He's right, and that's actually a huge problem for the city. The clichés he lists are tired, threadbare, inexcusably hokey, and extremely narrow. It would be like if every film in St. Louis is set on the Gateway Arch, or every film in South Dakota set on Mount Rushmore. Fighting against the tradition of depicting New Orleans as a stereotype is why I make movies here and why I started this blog.

"From Panic in the Streets to the Mardi Gras acid-trip scene in Easy Rider to Cat People, Down by Law, and David Simon’s HBO series 'Treme,' New Orleans frequently appears on screen."

I also disagree with this. It's a very minor point, but his examples belie his assertion. The films he lists are separated by over a decade each, except for CP and DBL which are both '80s. A comprehensive timeline of NOLA cinema (ie. stories set here) would show that even with extremely generous criteria that includes little-seen independent films, until 2007 only one film was made every ~3-4 years here.

I promise to attempt to create that comprehensive timeline in a future post.

I love Stekler's photo in front of Schiro's.  I eat there all the time and set several scenes from my upcoming film LAUNDRY DAY in it. It appears to have only changed for the better in the last 30 years.

NEXT: 1993's HARD TARGET. It'll make you Woo-zy.

Did THE BIG EASY invent Hollywood South?

I put it off, I made excuses, I kept moving it to the bottom of my queue, then forgot I had it when it arrived. Most movies about New Orleans are so obscure as to be discoveries, but I've been hearing shit-talk about THE BIG EASY (1987) since the day I got here, and I wanted no part of it.

Well, it ain't THAT bad.

As a film it's got a solid script from Dan Petrie Jr (best known to contemporary screenwriters as a President of the WGA and writer of BEVERLY HILLS COP) and Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin at the apex of their popularity and charm. There's a really interesting love triangle in the story's center: cop-boss-mom. Quaid's accent— often cited one of the worst ever—is not inaccurate so much as terribly inconsistent scene to scene (it's miles ahead of Kevin Costner's in ROBIN HOOD, to give it the World's Tallest Midget Award).  All in all it's a C+ with a few B+ moments and goes down painlessly.

New Orleans residents are tough on films. As they should be; perhaps they sense the real motivations of Hollywood productions— insincerity at worst, tourist depth of affection at best. But as fatalism is our native religion, being used comes with the territory. Gallows humor and eye-rolling are the main weapons of resistance… if we're not trying to get in on the lucre-flow our politicians laud. And we never see ourselves up there on the silver screen.

Where did this begin? To what moment can we draw a line from "Hollywood South" productions like THIS IS THE END, STOLEN, and so on? It begins with THE BIG EASY.

THE BIG EASY invented the template that Hollywood South is based on.

Consider— it was written for Chicago… and moved at the last minute for budget reasons. Its story has zero details, characters, settings, or devices that can only be found here. It is, basically, an "anywhere USA" story plunked into New Orleans to take advantage of cheap production value and lazy exotica.

What makes this different from other New Orleans films up to that point is the suitability of New Orleans to the setting. CAT PEOPLE (1982) is a mess but as a conceit New Orleans is the only American city it could plausibly take place in, and its sexual/horror vibe fits well. KING CREOLE (1958) is not an Elvis movie so much as a Hal Wallis film that Elvis got cast in, and as such was written around the city, not the King. Even ANGEL HEART (1987)— same year as THE BIG EASY and is based on a novel that takes place entirely in New York City— is about a subject matter (voodoo) that actually makes more sense here.

And maybe that's why locals hate the film so much— it opened the flood gates for thrillers in the 90s like HEAVEN'S PRISONERS that could have been set anywhere, which then led to the tax incentive program (third time's the charm!) that's given us bloated nonsense like 22 JUMP STREET and THE GREEN HORNET and GERIATRIC WORLD (er, JURASSIC WORLD) which cleverly funnels money into the pockets of out-of-towners and depletes film resources for indigenous films.

Then everyone wonders why the city hasn't produced a single successful filmmaker… or film. Thanks, THE BIG EASY!

…On the other hand, it was the first film ever sold at Sundance (true story). So we have THAT to thank it for, too. Maybe Pandora's Box was actually Ellen Barkin's.

Four Generations of Half-Assed NOLA Filmmaking

I've been catching up on reader suggestions for Essential NOLA films. Here's a quick overview, in chronological order.

KING CREOLE (1958)

Full disclosure: I've never seen an Elvis film before. But of course I'd seen countless clips from pastel kitsch like ROUSTABOUT and CLAMBAKE on tv. So I was not prepared for the somber, elegant B&W of KING CREOLE's opening credits, and my jaw hit the floor when I saw the names behind the film— Hal Wallis and Michael Curtiz, the producer and director of CASABLANCA, both Oscar-winners.

The film's not CASABLANCA good, but it is in most ways an excellently written, superbly acted, perfectly directed French Quarter gangster film. Elvis himself completely inhabits a high school ne'er-do-well caught between family disputes, financial imperatives, and bigwig machinations. Most impressively, he plays him without a trace of vanity or irony; he's completely believable. Unfortunately, the screenplay runs out of ideas about 85% into the natural arc of the story, and abruptly just ends, like they ran out of film or something. But for capturing the French Quarter in the 1950s so realistically and its right-from-the-streets cast of characters, it is Essential NOLA Cinema.

CAT PEOPLE (1982)

Paul Schrader's erotic-horror film is better than history remembers it, but worse than its cult following would have you believe.  A spiritual predecessor to Michael Almereyda's HAPPY HERE AND NOW (2002; I'll be writing about it soon) in that it evokes a creepy yet sexual atmosphere, leans heavily on genuine NOLA geography and architecture, then adds half-baked fantasy elements, dubious interior sets, and cheesy music (Tangerine Dream and Vangelis have ruined more movies than Chris Tucker).

It adds up to a mess, but a pleasing mess than never stops entertaining, even as it flops between genuine quality and so-bad-its-good train wreck. See it because Nastassja Kinski's house is across from my old apartment on the corner of Bourbon and Esplanade. (Note: the We Hate Movies podcast has a fantastic take-down of this film that is both exhaustive and fair.)

HEAVEN'S PRISONERS (1996)

This Phil Joanou bomb won 2 Razzies and is most known as how Teri Hatcher lost her credibility after rocketing to fame in "Lois & Clark." All of that is unfair and unjustified: this is actually a solid, ambitious thriller that never quite pulls off a delicate balancing act.  It wants to be "LA CONFIDENTIAL in the French Quarter" but its slick, commercial-yet-kind-of-cheesy style undermines its gravitas and sets the film on the wrong footing.

It opens with a long sequence out of a made-for-tv movie: Alec Baldwin saves a child from a sinking airplane that crashes in a lake while he's sailing. It's standard Hollywood heroics but it turns out that the film is going for the exact opposite of that— Baldwin is in fact playing a thick-headed recovering alcoholic of dim intelligence and real human vulnerability. This fact takes over a half hour to be established, but when it finally does, the screenplay then takes our dumb, obsessed lug and really puts the screws to him in a way that's organic and suspenseful. By the time we enter the finale, it is as dark and distressing as Paul Schrader's AFFLICTION (high praise). Essential? Borderline. Recommended? Yes.

STOLEN (2012)

Ah, Hollywood South. Maybe the only thing worse than a NOLA-shot Hollywood film is a NOLA-shot Hollywood film that wants to cast New Orleans as itself. STOLEN reteams the muscle behind CON AIR, director Simon West and French Quarter resident Nick Cage in a criminal-must-rescue-daughter/heist film. Basically a straight-to-video rip-off of TAKEN, except it's better than TAKEN, because in its corner-cutting it made some interesting choices: the whole film takes place in ~10 hours (including the prologue and epilogue), and Cage actually turns in a grounded, vanity-free performance that's so far from BAD LIEUTENANT it's hard to believe it's the same actor.

Which is not to say STOLEN is good: West is a third-tier Tony Scott and the script is second-rate. The decision to set the story 1) on Mardi Gras Day (!!) and 2) hide the daughter in an active taxi cab (?!?) results in some astounding moments of unintentional comedy, like when Cage meets a colleague in a totally empty Checkpoint Charlie's, or when the villain's cab drives up to a Mardi Gras parade's barricades on Canal Street and stops in surprise, as if the parade dropped out of the sky, or that a car could get within a half mile of Canal on Fat Tuesday. You can play a drinking game by spotting the same set of 12 extras in costume they used in the background of shots on Frenchmen Street. Despite the good cast and Cage's performance, STOLEN is recommended only as a dumb diversion or for lulz.