My Year of Flops: The A.V. Club Presents One Man's Journey Deep into the Heart of Cinematic Failure

by Nathan Rabin

  Bicurious, Hankie-Waving Case File #63: Cruising

  Originally Posted August 30, 2007

  Cruising arrived at a transitional time for gay culture. By 1980, the drug- and alcohol-fueled party that was gay sex in the ’70s had been replaced by a punishing hangover of STDs and shattered idealism. AIDS lurked just around the corner, and with it a revitalized gay-rights movement blessed with a messianic sense of purpose. The American public hadn’t yet had its consciousness raised by earnest message movies about how gays are just like you and me only with a more sophisticated understanding of musical theater and interior design. The world had yet to witness a deluge of reality shows in which gay men function as magical elves put on earth to help straight people eat better, dress better, and pick the perfect wine.

  AIDS and the full flowering of the gay-rights movement pushed homosexuality out of the celluloid closet, but for much of the ’70s and ’80s, serious movies about gay life were so rare and weighed down with noble intentions that each was received as a major referendum on homosexuality. The emergence of AIDS made every television show, movie, or TV movie about gays an Important Cultural Event first and a work of art or entertainment a distinct second. Message movies were filled with noble, asexual Gay Martyrs who suffered for the audience’s sins and showed us all how to withstand discrimination with quiet dignity.

  Cruising functions as the moody antithesis of the Gay Martyr movie. In the time-honored tradition of its director, William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Sorceror, The French Connection), it’s a film devoid of good intentions or moral uplift, a sleazy wallow in the depths of human depravity. Friedkin set out to make a brutal murder mystery that just happened to take place in the underground gay S & M clubs of New York, but he couldn’t have been surprised when the film was perceived, even before it finished shooting, as a movie about what senior citizens refer to as “the Gays.” Friedkin, who also directed the landmark gay drama The Boys In The Band, certainly didn’t intend for the film’s glowering, muscle-bound leather boys to be representative of the rich and multifaceted gay community. But in the absence of more positive depictions of gays outside of Billy Crystal on Soap, it was perceived that way. Is it possible to remove politics from a movie as provocative as Cruising? Probably not. The film carried considerably more political and social baggage than it would if it were released today.

  Loosely adapted from Gerald Walker’s 1970 thriller Cruising: A Shocking Novel Of Suspense but updated for an era of leather bars and S & M clubs, the film casts Al Pacino as Steve Burns, a cop who goes undercover as a leather aficionado in New York’s sleaziest underground sex clubs to track down a serial killer targeting the community. But first, Steve must prove himself up to the task. When trying to ascertain Burns’ suitability for the job, his superior, Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino), indelicately asks him, “Ever had a man smoke your pole?” (Strangely, that was also the first question in my job interview for The A.V. Club.)

  Steve stumblingly learns the ins and outs of cruising for sex with anonymous leather-clad bruisers. Powers Boothe has a strange cameo as a “hankie salesman” who matter-of-factly informs neophyte Steve that he should wear his colored bandanna in one back pocket to indicate that he is in the market to receive a golden shower and/or blowjob, and the other pocket to show that he’s eager to deliver the same. Apparently they don’t cover that at the police academy.

  As Steve plunges deeper into the subterranean realm of S & M, Friedkin cultivates a dread-choked atmosphere heavy with tension and menace, where every anonymous hook-up is charged with intimations of violence and brutality, as well as sad undertones of vulnerability and tenderness. But then a 6 5” black man clad only in a Stetson, necklace, and athletic supporter (an emissary, perhaps, of the NYPD’s elite cowboy-hat-and-jockstrap division) comes out of nowhere to bitch-smack Steve for no discernible reason while he and a suspect are being hassled by cops, and I wondered, “What kind of motherfuckery is this?”

  Also, Karen Allen is on hand to remind viewers that even though Steve spends all his time hanging with the leather daddies over at the Ramrod, this is the ’80s and he’s down with the ladies. Or is he?

  In a bid to overturn stereotypes, Friedkin has the primary suspect write a thesis on the roots of musical theater between trips to the leather bars. To help offset the idea that all homosexuals are scowling sadists or masochists, Friedkin gives Steve an affable, mild-mannered sidekick named Ted (Don Scardino), whose sitcom perkiness clashes with the brooding intensity of the rest of the film.

  Like many of Friedkin’s films, especially Bug, Cruising flirts continuously with high camp, with purplish dialogue like, “I know this dude, too. Seen him on the Deuce. He gives the best beatings, like, six ways to Sunday.” Cruising sometimes reads less like a missive from the front lines of sexual transgression than a bad pulp paperback come to life.

  Much of Cruising’s ominous atmosphere comes from its sound design; Jack Nitzsche’s score is unsettling, and Friedkin exploits the ominous clanging and jangle of zippers and buttons for maximum creepiness. In part because gay activists sabotaged Cruising’s sound on location, much of the film is post-dubbed. This can be frustratingly distancing for a film that prides itself on verisimilitude, but it can also be haunting, as when the same eerily disconnected voice comes out of several people’s mouths.

  The film’s character arc traces the psychological damage that working deep undercover has on Burns’ psyche, but since we never get to know Steve before the investigation, his psychological descent doesn’t really register; he begins and ends the film an enigma. Part of that ambiguity is intentional: Friedkin wants the audience to suspect that Steve himself might be a murderer, so his character remains intentionally cryptic. The specter of AIDS casts a ghostly, funereal pall over the film. It’s sobering to imagine how many of the film’s extras—recruited from real S & M bars and directed to act as naturally as a hard-R rating would allow—wouldn’t survive the decade Cruising ushered in on a singularly dark note.

  Cruising explores seamy places Hollywood still fears to tread, delving deep into an ominous world redolent of sweat, fear, Vaseline, and sticky floors. In the three decades since its release, Cruising has come full circle and become a part of gay history, a strangely affecting time capsule of a subculture otherwise ignored by pop culture and the media. Today, it’s compelling primarily as a sociological document of a dirty, dangerous New York where sex and death seemed inextricably linked even before AIDS. In its shameless excavation and exploitation of the killer-queen archetype—the gay man so riddled with self-loathing and guilt that he feels an insatiable urge to kill and punish others—the film is filled with bad politics and dodgy, flawed filmmaking, but it’s weirdly resonant and haunting all the same.

  Failure, Fiasco, Or Secret Success? Fiasco

  Rat-Brained, Man-Animal-Friendly Case File #66: Battlefield Earth

  Originally Posted September 11, 2007

  I can’t believe I somehow made it 66 entries into a feature about historic failures without writing about John Travolta, an actor who makes so many flops that when other actors fail, they have to pay him royalties. Yes, rat-brains and puny man-animals, I am finally writing about 2000’s Battlefield Earth.

  When Battlefield Earth was released, all the resentment toward Scientology that had been building up throughout the years exploded into a worldwide orgy of schadenfreude and Bronx cheers. A legendary disaster well before it was completed, the film hit theaters with a “Kick Me” sign on it so massive it could be seen from outer space.

  The movie became a vessel through which people could vent their frustrations with Scientology without coming off as bigoted. I, of course, have nothing but respect and admiration for Scientology and the powerful Scientologists who control the world, but plenty of deluded souls who aren’t my family, my co-workers, or myself inexplicably resent the wholly legitimate religious enterprise. They resent the way Scientology is as secretive, paranoid, and litigious as Disney, yet far more devoted to s
preading fantasy and make-believe. They resent those obnoxious human-interest stories where Johnny CareerTrouble opens up to People about how Scientology helped cure him of his debilitating marijuana addiction. They resent the way Scientology seems to have made kissing up to celebrities the central component of the faith.

  They resent those self-righteous press releases comparing the German government’s treatment of Scientology to the Holocaust. They resent prominent Scientologists lecturing about the evils of psychology on television and condemning women who use psychoactive drugs to treat postpartum depression as weak-minded pawns of the pharmaceutical industry. They resent the idea that a hack science-fiction novelist could be a religious leader on par with Jesus.

  Of course, if a preeminent figure in my faith had a sideline writing pulp fiction, I’d probably downplay that aspect of his life. If, for example, Moses used his downtime while writing the Torah to hastily compose fantasy novels exploring the adventures of Thoretta, She-Ogre, I’d probably steer clear of publicizing his side gig too aggressively. I wouldn’t try to lure Brigitte Nielsen into starring in a feature-film adaptation of Thoretta, She-Ogre as a way of bringing converts to Judaism.

  John Travolta doesn’t feel the same way. For him, producing and starring in one of the great masterworks of L. Ron Hubbard (a book that reportedly sold more than a bazillion copies, including several to non-Scientologists) was primarily an act of religious devotion. I love John Travolta, but I love laughing at him even more. If you can’t enjoy a laugh at Travolta’s expense, then you aren’t really living.

  Battlefield Earth opens in a fanciful world where mankind has been defeated by a race of nine-foot-tall aliens from the planet Psychlo, whose gnarled appearance suggests what Klingons might look like if they took their fashion cues from the leather daddies in Cruising. Humanity has finally shaken off the highfalutin plague of book learning and stuff knowing and lingers in a caveman-like state of superstition and ignorance. Rather than invoke the wrath of demons and monsters, men hide in caves and eschew all but the faintest traces of civilization.

  Travolta plays the head villain, a cackling dandy named Terl looking to maneuver his way out of an unwanted position as the head of security for an obscure mining planet called Earth. Where other, less visionary science-fiction movies waste their time with laser-gun battles, thrilling chases, and exotic worlds rich in spectacle, Battlefield Earth devotes much of its running time to corporate maneuvering among nine-foot-tall alien management types. This decision pays huge dividends when Terl’s superior cackles that rather than giving Terl a reprieve from doin’ time on Planet Earth, “We’ve decided to keep you here for another 50 cycles. With endless options for renewal!” Director Roger Christian repeats “With endless options for renewal” three times for effect. Who needs Wookies when you have characters talking about endless options for renewal? Sadly, Battlefield Earth really is all about Terl’s plans to move up the Psychlo hierarchy through Machiavellian politicking, deceit, and blackmail.

  Rather than wait out his 50 cycles and endless options for renewal, Terl concocts a harebrained scheme: He’ll trick puny man-animals like Barry Pepper’s intrepid hero Jonnie into mining gold for him, then use the rewards to fund a lavish life back on Planet Psychlo. But since no one believes a race as primitive as man-animals can operate complicated machinery, Terl hooks Jonnie up to a deus ex machina contraption that teaches him about flying and the Psychlo language and throws in the collective knowledge of the universe as a bonus. Jonnie quickly evolves from caveman simpleton to supergenius.

  Who could have guessed that Terl’s savvy plan to give Jonnie all the tools necessary to destroy him and Planet Psychlo and reclaim Earth would backfire? But that’s just what happens: Johnnie decides to embiggen humanity by sharing his knowledge. Before long, the puny man-animals have hatched a plan to cast off their alien slave masters once and for all.

  Any movie that relies on the presence of an all-the-knowledge-in-the-universe machine to advance its story isn’t distinguished by brilliant plotting. So what is Battlefield Earth’s strength? It isn’t dialogue. Here are some choice lines:

  I am going to make you as happy as a baby Psychlo on a straight diet of Kerbango.

  Those corporate crapheads won’t know we stole it.

  You are out of your skull-bone if you think I’m going to write on the report “shot by a man-animal” as the cause of death until I see it!

  Terl’s bickering banter with Iago-like sidekick Ker (Forest Whitaker) is the stuff of middling sitcoms. (“After Homeboys In Outer Space, the out-of-this-world laughs continue with Terl and Ker in Those Crazy Psychlos!, only on UPN!”)

  It’s a measure of the public’s indomitable affection for the icon behind Vinnie Barbarino, Vincent Vega, Tony Manero, and Danny Zuko that our love affair with Travolta survived Battlefield Earth. And Moment By Moment. And The Experts. And Perfect. With Battlefield Earth, Travolta attained pop-culture immortality. He’s proved that no film can destroy him, not even this one.

  Failure, Fiasco, Or Secret Success? Fiasco

  Animal-Abusing, Studio-Wrecking, Career-Killing Case File #81: Heaven’s Gate

  Originally Posted November 1, 2007

  Steven Bach’s fascinating, maddening book Final Cut chronicles the making and unmaking of the 1980 film Heaven’s Gate from one of the least interesting possible perspectives: that of a United Artists executive despondent over spiraling costs and angry at an arrogant director who’d gone upriver and taken much of the studio’s money with him. It’s like reading an account of the sinking of the Titanic from the perspective of the guy who owned the company that made the boat.

  Reading Bach’s book, I felt powerfully conflicted. Critics almost invariably side with filmmakers in their battles with studio executives. For filmmakers are artists, and they don’t need some Captain Bringdown in an expensive suit telling them what they can or can’t do with the studio’s money. And executives are supposed to be well-paid philistines with calculators for hearts.

  But what happens when a filmmaker genuinely goes mad? Hollywood films don’t exist in a vacuum. When a production like Heaven’s Gate spirals out of control, companies go out of business (Heaven’s Gate essentially killed its studio, United Artists, though MGM later revived it), ambitious filmmakers get rejected by executives terrified of green-lighting the next Heaven’s Gate, and good, hardworking people lose jobs.

  Some creatures lost more than just their jobs. The American Humane Association, which was barred from the set, accused Michael Cimino of slaughtering, maiming, or abusing animals during the production, primarily horses. You can indirectly thank Cimino for those “No animals were harmed in the making of this film” disclaimers at the end of films. The AHA’s review of the film states, “The animal action in the film includes an actual cockfight, several horse trips, and a horse being blown up with a rider on its back. People who worked on the set verified more animal abuse, such as chickens being decapitated and steer being bled in order to use their blood to smear on the actors instead of using stage blood.” It ends, “The controversy surrounding the animal action in Heaven’s Gate prompted the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance Of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) to contractually authorize AHA oversight of animals in filmed media.”

  Then again, has great art ever been produced that didn’t involve staging cockfights, decapitating chickens, blowing up horses, and bleeding cows? I’m pretty sure all those things happened during the filming of the first three Muppet movies.

  It’s fitting that the original title of Heaven’s Gate was Johnson County Wars, since the production resembled a war more than a typical movie set. Cimino kept an armed guard by the screening room to prevent executives from meddling with his vision, and he directed while wearing an admiral’s cap and wielding a gun full of blanks. In the battle of Heaven’s Gate, whom do you side with: the company man or the madman? Captain Willard or Colonel Kurtz? The man with the lunatic vision or the executive with shareholder
s to answer to?

  Heaven’s Gate helped kill the auteur-driven American cinema of the late ’60s and ’70s. It became the ultimate cautionary warning, a campfire tale senior executives tell junior executives to scare the bejeesus out of them during corporate retreats.

  Watching Heaven’s Gate today, it’s easy to see why Cimino could look at dailies and think he had a masterpiece. It’s equally easy to see how Bach could look at those same dailies and sense a looming financial disaster. From a creative standpoint, funding a movie like Heaven’s Gate was risky. From a financial standpoint, it was insane.

  With Heaven’s Gate, Cimino went from being one of the hottest filmmakers alive to persona non grata. He went from auteur of the future to dead man walking. His career and reputation never recovered from the one-two punch of the film’s legendarily troubled filming and box-office death. Cimino hasn’t directed a film since 1996’s barely released The Sunchasers. Rarely has a filmmaker fallen so far so fast. Cimino could have resurrected his career with 1984’s Footloose, but he was fired after the shoot threatened to turn into Heaven’s Gate: The Musical.

  Yet today, Heaven’s Gate stands as a stirring testament to Cimino’s superlative gift as a cinematic stylist. It’s a film of rare beauty and scope, a feast for the eyes and a harrowing, unflinching meditation on the cruelty of capitalism. It rivals William Friedkin’s Sorceror in its bone-deep cynicism and eviscerating take on the free market’s coal-black heart of darkness. In Heaven’s Gate, being poor and an immigrant is a crime punishable by death, and the lives of the poor have less value than the cattle they steal to keep from starving.

  The director’s cut of Heaven’s Gate begins with a series of stunning setpieces set at the Harvard graduation of James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) and his dissolute chum Billy Irvine (John Hurt), the booze-sodden class orator and class cutup. From the first frame, Cimino’s roving camera goes anywhere and everywhere, panning endlessly and ecstatically across lushly orchestrated processions and a dance where the camera becomes a silent partner to the boozy, bleary graduates reveling in a hard-won sense of accomplishment. Cimino conveys in deliriously cinematic terms the pomp and grandeur of an Ivy League graduation. It’s the benediction of the next generation of American aristocrats, filled with lawyers, senators, and other masters of the universe.