Hollywood Senses History With 'The Lot'
Star Botsford Talks Similarities Of Old And New, PLUS: Review Of 'Head Over Heels'
Thanks to the new American Movie Classics weekly series, "The Lot," the golden age of Hollywood and the wondrous backlots where all the action took place are alive again.
Well, make that sort of alive again.
What's interesting about this fascinating show is that it's not necessarily a biographical account of filmmaking in the good old days. Most of the characters and settings are fictional, but have, nonetheless, striking similarities to the people and places of the day. AMC doesn?t try to hide those similarities, and in fact promotes them.
The cast of matinee idols, studio heads and starlets includes Kimberly Rhodes, who plays a Carole Lombard?type character, and Rosemary Harris, in a wild turn as a sharp-tongued screenwriter in the vein of Dorothy Parker.
Also among the stars on "The Lot" is Sara Botsford, an aging starlet whose star is beginning to fade in Hollywood. And while the name of her character is Norma St. Claire, she said few comparisons can be made to another Norma -- Norma Desmond, a symbol of lost fame in both the stage and screen versions of "Sunset Boulevard."
"The similarity is that they both live in a protective and artificial environment, but Norma Desmond was written as a very bitter woman," Botsford said. "The one thing that we wanted was for the character of Norma St. Claire not to be bitter. She's a survivor no matter what it takes. If she's in danger of losing her house, she'll sell stockings. She'll do it in glamorous style, of course, but she will sell them. She'll do whatever it takes, and that's part of the fun and humor of her. They get the comedy out of her by putting her into ridiculous situations and make her fight her way out of them.
"I think Norma St. Claire is a combination character in the Rosalind Russell area, but not anybody specifically. Maybe also some of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis -- all those sort of grand names."
Oddly enough, "The Lot" is shot on the Culver Studio lot, one of Hollywood's oldest existing backlots. And while the feeling of shooting there doesn't come close to eclipsing the golden age of Hollywood, it doesn't mean that Botsford has no sense of the history that preceded her. While she's very much in tune with the heritage of Hollywood, she's not so sure that the movie industry as whole feels the same way.
"There certainly is a loss of heritage, because the people who run the big studios now came out of other fields -- they're run by conglomerates and big businesses now and people who weren't invested in the film industry from the beginning," Botsford said. "Many of the people who ran these studios -- Louis B. Mayer and the like -- they came out from New York and had a huge passion to make movies. They were invested in the art of making movies.
"The people who run the studios now aren?t in invested in that; they're invested in making profits. There are so many very young people who are in extremely powerful positions who have no sense at all of history or the heritage of the industry."
To say that Prinze (son of the late star of the perhaps-not-so-classic "Chico and the Man") is no Jimmy Stewart is almost unkind. As a possibly perfect, possibly homicidal character in "Head Over Heels," Prinze demonstrates the acting range of a popgun and all the charisma of a vaguely Latino Ken doll. His love match in this clunky, by turns rude and sickly-saccharine bomb is Monica Potter. And no, she is no Grace Kelly either. In fact, Potter is Julia Roberts "lite," having clearly cut her performing chops by precise, mindless imitation of America's big-toothed sweetheart.
The film roughly follows the Hitchcock thriller -- except that it replaces keen psychological tension with banal love bleating between the characters, jarringly intermingled with tired dumb-model jokes and lots and lots of poo-poo humor. Potter is Amanda Pierce, a socially awkward art restorer at the Met art museum who stumbles onto a fabulous shared apartment with four beautiful supermodels. She and the Fashion Four begin obsessing about Jim Winston (Prinze), who lives across the way. Pierce is convinced that she witnesses Winston murdering a model who visits his apartment, and decides to a) investigate her suspicions and b) go on a date and sleep with the guy.
That's among the thousands of thoroughly ridiculous plot devices in this awkward mess of a movie. It grows nearly impossible to watch as the tasteless scatological humor and weak slapstick alternates with shallow romantic platitudes between the doofus love duo. If only Prinze really were a lady killer ... maybe he could have wiped out the whole cast before this thing hit the theaters and saved us all watching it fall head-over-heels in a failed attempt to please us. --Joseph
Ruttle
'Valentine' (R)
The premise of this thriller, directed by "Urban Legend" lensman Jamie Blanks, follows a geek-turned-hunk who plots revenge on the popular girls who humiliated him 13 years earlier at a grade school Valentine's Day dance. Donning a black suit and plastic cupid mask, Mr. I-don't-take-rejection-well sends his prey ominous Valentines before butchering them.
Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, Jessica Cauffiel and Katherine Heigl play five gorgeous women without boyfriends before Valentine's Day. As potential suitors come into their lives (all of them tall, dark and mysterious naturally), the girls start receiving cards, not-so-tasty chocolates, and blood-red roses.
Like the scores of slasher flicks that came beforehand ("Halloween" "Friday
The 13th," "Urban Legend" "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer"),
"Valentine" uses cheap techniques to evoke scares. Scantily-clad women creep through hallways and open doors, calling out "Hello?" innocently after hearing something crash or
creak in the distance; every character is portrayed in a suspicious light so one never really knows who the killer is (unless, like me, you made a "lucky" guess); unsuspecting victims walk into the same traps over and over again and make irritatingly doltish decisions -- all devices treading familiar horror film territory.
Richards is relegated to the bathing beauty victim, once again showing off her aquatic assets. Jessica Cauffiel, who recently honed her helpless victim acting skills in "Urban Legends: Final Cut" falls prey to Cupid's bow early on. The film's dramatic climax lost a bit of its impact due to frequent bouts of laughter from the audience.
First Halloween, then Christmas, now Valentine's Day -- what's the next holiday to be gored in a Hollywood horror film treatment? The possibilities are endless: St. Patrick's Day Parade Of Prey? Thanksgiving Of Terror? Boxing Day Bloodbath?
Wow, now that's a scary thought for us film critics. --Suzanne Ellis
--@ The Movies columnist Tim Lammers is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and votes on the BFCA's annual Critics' Choice Awards. The awards show makes its broadcast debut Saturday night on E! Honored guests include Russell Crowe and directors Steven Soderbergh, Ridley Scott and Ang Lee.
Catch up with Tim on these recent @ The Movies interviews:
New In Theaters
'Head Over Heels (PG-13)
Alfred Hitchcock's roly-poly self must be rolling in his grave to see his classic "Rear Window" updated by the likes of Freddie Prinze Jr.
"Valentine" is a cut-and-paste rip-off of every slasher film that preceded it, offering nothing new besides a fresh-faced crop of buxom beauties in line for the offing and a different mask for the knife-wielding maniac.
