Crime is touched on lightly, by implication one optional lifestyle in a time of economic hardship. The presentation of George Nelson (Michael Badalucco) is cartoonish from the outset, driving a car with notes fluttering all around it, politely stopping to ask directions before hurtling off with them on board, commanding McGill to hold the wheel as he hangs out to shoot at pursuing police. Strangely, the potential brutality and danger implicit in the situation are transferred onto animals. George, who has the attention span of a small child, is distracted by some cows, which he irrationally shoots at, hitting some. A few are scared into the road and one is hit by his pursuers. Similarly, later Big Dan’s brutality is signaled by his gratuitous crushing of Pete-as-a-toad, which sends Delmar into a rage.
Despite toting a gun and threatening lives, there is little sense that the generic boundaries of the film will be breached by scenes of gore or traumatic violence. Delmar describes George’s entrance into the bank with the understatement, “He’s a live-wire.” George’s getaway plan (having explosives tied around his middle), his tendency to shout all his thoughts, including his catchphrase that he was “born to raise hell,” and his boast that he wants to break his record of three banks in two hours, all suggest that he is quite a retarded figure. Indeed, when one woman mistakes him for “Babyface” Nelson, he becomes quite upset and broods on this lack of recognition. Not long afterward he gives them each some money and walks off into the dark. Although we later see him at the head of a torch-carrying mob (almost leading it as much as being paraded in shame), he still seems cheerful rather than cowed by the experience (as Delmar says, “Looks like he’s right back on top again,” unwittingly echoing James Cagney’s proud boast as Cody Jarrett at the end of Raoul Walsh’s 1949 White Heat that he is “top of the world” just before being consumed by a giant explosion). Less a fully rounded character, George is a caricature of the really brutal Capone-style gangsters of the time and Hollywood’s representation of them (on whom he models himself). Delmar looks back on some of their bank-robbing adventures with “that was some fun,” ruefully remarking that it almost makes him wish that he had not been saved.
The film is also part road movie of an itinerant laborer during the Depression, always on the move with a mythic goal in mind rather than a specific destination with little sense of specific geography, the trio using cars when they can and walking when not. The course of the film seems fairly random but is highly structured. The nonnaturalistic circularity of the narrative, bumping into familiar faces more than once (Dan, George, Pappy, Tommy, and even the whole chain gang on the road and at the cinema), is even commented on by McGill who opines that when George walks off into the night, he is sure they have not seen the last of him. The importance of deadlines is raised only sporadically; the tone in most scenes is relaxed and focusing on small-scale absurdities, so that the narrative becomes a search for Dapper Dan pomade as much as anything else.
Film technology is not intrusive. Coen uses wipes (both oblique and horizontal) to signal a slightly anachronistic film technology, and as Delmar is left mourning the death of the toad (or Pete as he believes it to be) the iris closes on him. The newspaper that McGill tosses into the fire only reveals (to the viewers, not the characters) continuing interest about the identity of the Soggy Bottom Boys and more particularly details of plans to flood the Arkabutla Valley, as it burns and curls open.
The tonal mix is a little jarring at times. The violence meted out to the cows and to McGill and Delmar at their picnic, as well as in the potential lynching of Pete, does not sit easily in the narrative where it takes place. The sadistic brutality of Big Dan squashing the toad in his bare hands, contemptuously throwing it against a tree and then driving off in their car, is just the action of a bully and seems out of sync with the tone of the body of the film. Even though we subsequently see Pete again as part of a chain gang (another miraculous coincidence that McGill and Delmar would pass him), the possibility of suffering has been planted in the mind of the viewer, who has seen Pete whipped if not actually killed. Immediately prior to the flood, the trio were looking at three nooses and three freshly dug graves, irrespective of their pardon from the governor.
However, there is also a strongly lyrical quality to the film, emphasizing the beauty in the everyday. An anonymous figure at his plough is leisurely framed, standing to watch an oncoming truck with a band playing on it; a slow crane shot down past heavily cobwebbed trees focuses on the three protagonists walking toward the camera; a long shot picks out gloriously golden leaves as the trio accept a lift in an old jalopy, and later they pass two boys, carrying blocks of ice. An itinerant life on the road is unashamedly sentimentalized, whereby pies are stolen from window ledges but money left for the impropriety.
By the end of the film, some narrative problems (the men’s legal status) are resolved, others (McGill’s wife’s unreasonable behavior) continue, and all the while the bonds of family and superstition seem to cross one another and occasionally collide. It is a world that does seem to have some order (possibly at the behest of a divine power) but often that order expresses itself in absurdity. Political and religious corruption exists but often this is dramatized by cartoonish (particularly bloatedly overweight) figures, whose pretensions are exposed, ridiculed, and punished in the course of the narrative.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (George Clooney, 2002)
In 1984 TV presenter Chuck Barris claimed that not only was he a household name on such lowbrow game-shows as The Gong Show but that he had also been a hit man for the CIA and was responsible for the deaths of 33 people. Clooney was probably attracted by the chance to work with a script by Charlie Kaufman, whose critical stock was high after Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), both directed by Spike Jonze. Confessions was a smallish film ($30 million) that would not bring down an entire studio if it failed. It allowed him to draw on favors from friends like Julia Roberts, both to keep costs down and work with people he knew. By taking the part of Jim Byrd, he could be on set but avoid the added stress of a leading part. He could draw on his own childhood, growing up on the sets of popular TV shows (reflected in the reference to Rosemary Clooney, his aunt, during the studio tour and her singing over the closing credits); and Steven Soderbergh, his director on the Ocean’s franchise, was on board as one of the producers.
Jim Byrd sports a moustache somewhere between the Clark Gable style Clooney used in O Brother and the fuller Wyatt Earp look in Men Who Stare at Goats. With his hair slightly slicked back, Clooney delivers his lines largely in an inexpressive voice with impassive features, becoming less friendly only when Barris talks of backing out. Later, the frostiness of their breath as they talk (in literally freezing temperatures), framed in silhouette, separate from the other trainees, reflects this sudden coldness with Byrd stating that at 32 Barris has achieved nothing with his life. When Barris balks at his first killing, Byrd warns, “You don’t play, you don’t leave.” Like Tyne in The Perfect Storm, there is a Jekyll and Hyde quality to his character (he says to Barris that he “could be a great warrior”) with not much emotional range in between, also partly because of his minimal on-screen time.
The closest shot on Byrd (still wearing a ubiquitous hat, suit, and prominent moustache) frames him next to British contact, the stiffly stereotypical Simon Oliver (Michael Ensign). When Byrd later warns Barris about the existence of a possible mole, we see Clooney in a less stylish checked suit, but the spy cliché of hearing dialogue despite playing loud music, supposedly to fool listening devices, is deflated with the provision of subtitles. His final shot by the pool has echoes of Rutger Hauer (oddly present in this film as the assassin, Keeler) in Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) in his strange sitting death pose and brother Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983) in the scene’s use of distorted drums at a moment of death and then a cut to a high-angled long shot without any sound for a second, taking in the bizarre tragedy of the scene.
Sam Rockwell, who worked with Clooney on Collinwood, was
always Clooney’s number one choice as Barris. Rockwell filmed Barris himself over several months, so that the final performance we see in the film is less an imitation or impression but one of embodiment in which gestures and expressions are interwoven with performance. Rockwell still submitted himself to the audition process, including showing some impressive dance moves at his screen test. Clooney preferred casting a lesser-known actor for the role of such a familiar public figure, and Rockwell’s performance here and subsequent work such as Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009) vindicates this choice.
Rockwell excels at eccentric characters, such as Wild Bill Wharton in The Green Mile (Frank Darabont, 1999), and he captures Barris’s manic energy as seen in the montage sequence of the pilot for The Dating Game, where he acts as floor manager, director, and warm-up man. Rockwell delivers a strong performance of a mind in meltdown, vividly portrayed in jump cuts, with mumbling, hesitant speech, sweating, and panicked shots from his point of view. When Barris is slapped hard in the face by a girlfriend, Rockwell swings around, open-mouthed to face the camera, and is held in an iconic freeze frame, an emotional loser and figure of fun like the final appearance of Ned Ryerson (Stephen Tobolowsky) in Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993). We see Barris’s mental deterioration, perhaps deriving from a murderous career, and the appearance of former victims at his own wedding has a slight Banquo-like feel, even though Barris never really has the truly tragic stature of a Shakespearean hero like Macbeth.
The movie opens with, and is sporadically interrupted by, real figures from Barris’s TV career, talking in interview mode about him. Such footage—including host of American Bandstand, Dick Clark; host of The Dating Game, Jim Lange; and Gong Show regular, Jaye P. Morgan—using high contrast and infrared film (at the suggestion of cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel), clearly sets it apart from the body of the narrative and gives the film some semblance of documentary. On the DVD commentary Clooney mentions End of the Road (Aram Akavian, 1970), a film also concerned with a mentally unstable protagonist, but the device is also used in more serious films like Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Schindler’s List or comedies like Rob Reiner’s 1989 When Harry Met Sally or even Clooney’s own Up in the Air. In a sense, the challenge for the audience is to allocate the narrative to a particular pseudo-director within the film. If the CIA story is true, then Byrd is directing operations; if not, then what we see are expressionist nightmares from Barris’s deluded imagination.
The authenticity of Barris’s story is left open in the film. There is certainly much about Barris that is childish, from skulking around the set of American Bandstand, taking pictures, to nearly messing up the code phrase in meeting Patricia (Julia Roberts) in Helsinki. On the other hand, the reaction of Penny Pacino (Drew Barrymore) in the car at the end, i.e., dismissive laughter, means this is also the perfect cover. The notion of a highly subjective universe is underlined by Barris’s opening voice-over, his clearly disturbed mental state, standing unkempt and naked in front of a TV in a hotel room, as well as the narrative construct of his writing down what he has done as a way of giving meaning to his life, what he terms “a cautionary tale.” Clooney’s visual style complements this sense of a world out of kilter, opting for off-center framing, and extended length of shots, so that along with the dissolves as transition devices, these feel like the stylistic markers of a new scene, although we remain in the old one.
A key part of the authenticity question is whether any other main character interacts with the shadowy figures associated with Barris’s double life. Like The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999), if no one else does, then it could all be a subjective fantasy. Byrd appears suddenly like a ghost on the set of The Dating Game in one of the contestant seats, up in the lighting gantry, during which time no one other than Barris interacts with him. This is how matters stand, right up to the scene in which Barris introduces Peter Jenks (an uncredited second role for Robert Burke who also plays a CIA instructor) to bark at the contestants and intimidate them into toning down the innuendo in The Dating Game. The appearance of a character across the two plotlines could be seen to validate Barris’s CIA story a little further. This is underlined in the later restaurant scene when Penny sees, hears, and almost speaks to Patricia. These two scenes make all the others possible.
However, if Barris’s story was true, it might be expected that such a double life would spill over into his everyday life more clearly. Shots like where he greets Penny at the door with a pistol held just out of her sight might seem comic in isolation, but that such an individual could assassinate as many people as he claims seems highly unlikely. On the other hand, it is conceivable that if the CIA pursues the madcap schemes dramatized in The Men Who Stare at Goats, it might look at Barris as possessing the kind of profile they could use (an unstable background, an easily suggestible nature, and given to irrational behavior that might act as an effective cover). Clooney does not show us the kills clearly (except the death of Renta on the DVD extras), retaining an element of sympathy for Barris while also adding to the ambiguity of the validity of his story. The victim in the alleyway is shot off-camera, Keeler (Rutger Hauer) is the one who strangles his target in Berlin (manically smiling for Barris’s snapshot), and although Barris pulls his gun on the annoying whining contestant in Helsinki, he does not actually fire. As Barris seems to take to the part of spy, he dons the look he associates with such a role (leather jacket, shades, cigars, and permed hair). His concept of Cold War spying is mediated through cinematic representations, so we see a version of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1965) but with dominant reds as it is shot in color.
Penny (Drew Barrymore) is an effective counterpoint to Barris’s amorality. She is portrayed as a force for good, kooky but engaging and clearly deserving of better treatment. Barrymore, a big fan of Barris in The Gong Show, plays an empathetic figure, as well as acting as something of a reflection of 1960s counterculture. Their shared playful nature, shown wearing Marx Brothers-style masks in bed, suggests at some fundamental level that they are right for each other. The montage, complete with small jump cuts, as Barris carries her over the threshold of a new house together, upbeat Latin music, and the discreet blurring around their lovemaking, all suggest this is a real opportunity for Barris. However, Penny is a figure of much-maligned virtue, such as the scene in which he talks to the top of her head as she lies on his chest and pulls her up into shot to answer her plaintive question, “Do you even like me?” Penny is crucial to maintaining a redeemable element in his character. Although he reacts angrily to her proposal, he does eventually come back to her (even if it is mostly due to her persistence).
Clooney as Director
As a first-time director, there was obviously a lot of pressure on Clooney to have a credible presence on set, and he prepared carefully with meticulous storyboarding and tried to build confidence with some relatively easy shots to start with. However, there is real ambition to tell his story in an innovative fashion, right from the outset. The scene at the door with Barris and Penny was planned as a split screen but with both speakers facing outward, presumably to emphasize the failure to connect at this point, psychologically rather than emotionally. The use of a range of film stock, cross processing (the use of processing film in chemicals normally used to treat other kinds of film), and shots that are not explained fully at the moment they appear (the prostitute singing happy birthday) all present a challenging viewing experience. Flashbacks in black-and-white infrared film are juxtaposed with more lurid color for shots of the hippy counterculture as we criss-cross about 50 years of time in the narrative, often with sudden leaps back to Barris’s childhood, in washed-out sepia tones. Clooney is not afraid to use Kane-like extreme low angles, like when Barris picks up some forms for management training, suggesting the character’s grandiose dreams. Clooney uses lightweight, mobile cameras for brief, albeit gimmicky, shots like the one from the point of view of the tray on which Patricia carries the poisoned tea.
Barris’s fragmented cha
racter is conveyed by several shots in which he looks into reflective surfaces, including TVs in a store, inspiring his move to Manhattan to seek a job in the television industry. Later, he is seen in reflection, staring at the names of the NBC chief executives, displayed behind glass. As Penny lies in the bath, talking to him, he is staring into the bathroom mirror, clearly not listening, even being bluntly rude about “dating bullshit” and caring what other people say. Later, we see Penny’s face momentarily reflected over that of Tuvia (or possibly this is Barris, raised-as-a-girl), disturbingly suggesting that he never really gets over his strange obsession with the young girl; and also in the very opening scene, there is the faint, even ghostly reflection of Barris himself in the smooth grain of his own door.
Clooney also uses some ambitious long takes, involving large numbers of extras as Barris arrives at NBC first as a visitor as part of a tour and then disappears out of shot only to appear seconds later, leading his own group out of shot and then reappearing eavesdropping on stagehand Debbie (Maggie Gyllenhaal) describing her ideal man, which he instantly resolves to become. Time is telescoped as well as showing Barris’s drive to succeed. Later as Byrd explains his idea of Barris’s chaperoning role as cover for European operations, Clooney shoots the scene in long shot, refusing to cut closer so that we hear their conversation but only see Barris speaking to Byrd’s back, seen from outside the glass of a control room. This makes Barris seem more isolated and not only forces viewers to pay closer attention to the dialogue but is preceded by continuous dialogue on the floor of The Dating Game and then the lighting gantry as if Byrd can flit ghost-like from place to place.
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