Jason Bellamy – Press Play Video Blog

ON THE Q.T., CHAPTER 3: JACKIE BROWN: Quentin and Pam’s Big Score

[A script of the video essay follows:]

Quentin and Pam’s Big Score, Part 1

Things don’t look good for Beaumont Livingston. His self-proclaimed benefactor, Ordell Robbie, has just posted $10,000 to bail bondsman Max Cherry in exchange for Beaumont’s release. Armed with a pump shotgun and way too much information about Ordell’s gun-running business, Beaumont faces not only the inside of a trunk, but a potential 10 year rap unless he cooperates with the Feds. Ordell bails him out because he believes “Beaumont’s going to do anything Beaumont can to keep from doing them ten years, including telling the Federal gov’ment any, and every motherfucking thing about my Black ass.” Beaumont already has, and ATF agent Ray Nicolet is laying in wait for yet another of Ordell’s “employees,” a flight attendant with $50,000, an unbeknownst 42 grams of blow and no intention of declaring either at customs.

Mr. Livingston, I presume, expects Ordell to deliver on his promise of a late night chowdown at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. That Los Angeles institution is tasty enough to make a brother spoon with a spare tire in a vintage American automobile. But in his haste and hunger, Beaumont Livingston forgot two things: One, all that greasy, fried shit’ll kill you. And two, if you’re a character in a Quentin Tarantino movie, and Samuel L. Jackson shows up looking like the Crypt Keeper and offering you a ride,

Don’t get in the car.

The Beaumont sequence is pure Tarantino—comic dialogue, loopy situations, sudden violence. But this scene is lifted from Elmore Leonard’s 1992 novel Rum Punch. And as much as Jackie Brown feels like a Tarantino film, the plot is faithfully Leonard’s. Tarantino wisely pulls entire sequences verbatim from Leonard’s pen, adding his own dialogue as stand-in for the novel’s expert descriptions of action and detail. Leonard is a master of character creation, gritty conversation, and delightfully convoluted situation. A perfect match for Tarantino’s first, and thus far only, according-to-Hoyle adaptation, and the director is respectful to his source.

But like all great directors, Tarantino is a compulsive who must pay tribute to his obsessions. Obsessions like:

That last thing got him in some pretty hot water with Spike Lee.

With a love of Blaxploitation etched in his DNA, Tarantino had to notice that Rum Punch has elements of the genre. There’s a tough main character dame who’s strong enough to fend for herself, a hood criminal with a bevy of women and minions to do his business, and one final, big score designed to extricate the criminal from the ghetto for good. Blaxploitation movies rarely had all three of those things at once—a perfect opportunity for Tarantino’s brand of genre homage and transcendence.

The only minor issue was that Leonard’s heroine, Jackie Burke, was White. Tarantino needed Foxy Brown. The solution was obvious.

This, for the uninitiated, is Pam Grier. It takes Rum Punch 39 pages to introduce Jackie to us. Jackie Brown takes maybe 39 seconds.

Quentin Tarantino was 10 years old when Pam Grier starred in Foxy Brown, a film whose most unsavory plot aspect (and its resulting vengeance) he lifted for Kill Bill: Volume One.

Here, he lifts Foxy’s last name, her movie’s title font and her portrayer. Grier was the queen of Blaxploitation, wielding a shotgun, razors in her ‘fro and a take no prisoners attitude that was simultaneously terrifying and sensual. Jack Hill, who directed her in Foxy Brown, Coffy and two other films, said that Pam Grier had “that something special that only she has. She has ‘it’.” Hill could get a witness from any fan, for we knew: Not only did Pam Grier have “it,” she could whip your ass with “it” as well.

It’s obvious Tarantino wants to show the Grier toughness he loves, but he has deeper intentions. He wants to bring out her softer side as well. In her 70’s output, her vulnerability is physical. She is always abused yet always avenged. Outside of movies like Bucktown or Greased Lightning, she was rarely afforded a typical love story. We’ll talk about Tarantino fixes that next time. For now, flight attendant and money carrier Jackie Brown has to think quick and plan that big score fast. Ordell has bailed her out for the same reason he sprung Beaumont. Michael Keaton’s Ray Nicolet is breathing down her neck to squeal on Ordell, and Ordell has other intentions for her neck. Robert Forster’s Max Cherry, Jackie’s soon-to-be love interest, plays an unwitting part in the scene that got fans of Pam out of their seats in the theater. Herewith, the tough side of Pam Grier.

DAMN!

Quentin and Pam’s Big Score, Part 2

Welcome to the seduction of Max Cherry, writer of 15,000 bonds, survivor of 57 years on the Earth, newcomer to 70’s soul music. Male. Obviously not blind. Bearing witness to Jackie Brown, looking refreshingly like a normal human being and pressing a different kind of gun to his bone. She renders him helpless with the clarion call of her partners in crime,

“The Delfonics.”

Quentin Tarantino relishes putting a gun in Pam Grier’s hands, throwing us back to the good old days of Nurse Coffy, Sheba Shayne and Friday Foster. Her genre reputation precedes her, and one can almost hear QT cackle as he merges Brian DePalma’s split-screen, Jack Hill’s dialogue and an overzealous sound man’s rendition of that “CLICK” that accompanies that gun aimed at Ordell Robbie’s favorite toy. But this commandeering of DePalma and Hill serves the drama—Elmore Leonard crafted the Ordell-Jackie pas de deux in his novel, Rum Punch, to get us here. It’s Max’s gun Jackie’s stolen, and its retrieval leads not only to Max’s seduction but also to some of the most poignant dialogue Tarantino has scripted. Notice how delicately the camera moves in on Grier’s profile. It’s almost as if we’re eavesdropping on Pam and Robert, not Jackie and Max.

Jackie needs an ally like Max because The Big Score, that Blaxploitation staple designed to get one out of the hustle, involves Jackie smuggling half a million dollars of Ordell’s money from Cabo San Lucas. She’ll do it under the nose of ATF agent Ray Nicolet, tricking him with a visible $50,000 that distracts Ray from a hidden $500,000. Max decides to help because he too wants to get out of his hustle. That, and because the Delfonics–pretty fucking persuasive.

Whom you trust is essential in any heist, and Ordell trusts his right hand man Louis. He and Louis were in the hoosegow together, and Ordell believes in honor amongst thieves, a common mistake amongst thieves. Additionally, Ordell has his bevy of women primed to do his bidding and, true to Blaxploitation form, ready to assist on The Big Score.

There’s aging Motown wannabe Simone, whose impressions of Diana Ross and Mary Wells hint that, though this pussy may be old, it’s real and it’s spectacular.

There’s Sheronda, country as a chicken coop, naïve as hell, and recipient of Ordell’s most hilarious putdown.

Then there’s Melanie, his “little Surfer Girl” whose excessive drug use disguises a truly cunning and vindictive mind. Of the dope use, Ordell tells her “that shit will rob you of your ambitions.” Melanie’s ambition is to rob Ordell of his money. So maybe the dope use is a good thing.

Ordell thinks this is his game, but “The Money Exchange,” the codename for The Big Score, is designed to favor Jackie Brown. He let her create it, he’s entrusting her to screw over the Feds, and he’s unaware of how deep her alliance with Max Cherry runs. It’s going to work, though, because Ordell thinks his scary disposition will keep his bitches in line and they will not—repeat will NOT—betray him.

The logistics of The Money Exchange are faithfully recreated from Dutch’s novel. But its execution is pure Tarantino. Cutting loose and succumbing to his love of time manipulation, QT presents the money swap from three characters’ perspectives: Jackie’s, Max’s, and the comic duo of DeNiro and Fonda’s Louis and Melanie. Each depiction focuses on its protagonist’s traits. Jackie is in control in hers, with a great little dialogue about an even greater little pantsuit. Louis and Melanie are antagonistic in theirs, culminating in a very violent Abbott and Costello routine involving a lost car. And Max’s version is cool, suspenseful and exciting, because he’s the one left holding the bag.

When Ordell and Max drive to the final showdown with Jackie, the film uses The Delfonics’ 1971 classic, “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind,” as an almost subliminal reassurance that our heroes will succeed. Jackson uses silence to great ominous effect here, a visual terror undercut by the lovely musical accompaniment from the car stereo. This is Jackie and Max’s song, and Jackie Brown is a romance, or as close to a romance as its director has ever been.

Rum Punch leaves its final scene ambiguous. Jackie Brown puts a bittersweet, old-fashioned finality to the proceedings, with the duo finally doing what we’ve been waiting all film for them to do.

As the final scene mirrors the first, we Blaxploitation fans revel in seeing our heroine once again prevail. We’ve been amused by Tarantino’s shorthand. And we’ve confirmed what we’ve known all along: A woman can only be tough 23 hours out of the day. That last hour, even the toughest chick needs to power down and meditate on her emotions.

Damn.

A globetrotting computer programmer by trade and movie lover by hobby, Odie Henderson has contributed to Slant Magazine's The House Next Door since 2006. Additionally, his work has appeared at Movies Without Pity (2008) and numerous other sites. He currently runs the blog Tales of Odienary Madness.

Jason Bellamy ruminates on cinema at The Cooler and is a regular contributor to Slant Magazine's The House Next Door, coauthoring The Conversations series with Ed Howard. Follow him on Twitter.

EYE OPENERS: VIDEO ESSAY: Mickey Rourke: Highs & Lows

The video essay above, by Jason Bellamy, is a tribute to Mickey Rourke, in honor of his 60th birthday, which is today. Originally posted at Bellamy's blog, The Cooler, It takes us through Rourke's best performances and his moments of distended excess, from Rumble Fish to 9 1/2 Weeks to Angel Heart to Sin City to The Wrestler. And, as such, it's a moving tribute to the changing career—and changing body—of a remarkably complicated screen actor.

Jason Segel’s THE MUPPETS proves it’s time for Kermit & Co. to pack it in

In his effort to revitalize the brand, Jason Segel exposes his fondness for the Muppets as boldly as he exposed his naked body in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. No hidden agendas here, The Muppets is packed with full-frontal nostalgia that suggests not just Segel’s desire to relive the magic of yesteryear but also his fervent belief that the Muppets’ charms can cast an equally powerful spell today. The Muppets, which Segel co-wrote with Nicholas Stoller, opens with an outright appreciation of The Muppet Show and the not so subtle implication that Segel spent his childhood feeling as if the Muppets were part of his family. If you’re a hardcore fan and realize how much the brand’s spirit has strayed from its roots since Jim Henson’s death in 1990, this is exactly the kind of opening you want to see, and it’s equally encouraging when, not much later, Segel’s Gary and his brother Walter (a Muppet performed by Peter Linz) break into song. The film’s rousing opening number, “Life’s a Happy Song,” captures some of the cherished Henson-era optimism and sweetness in its title alone, and the lyrics have a casually playful absurdity to them that feels just right. But the capper is a massive dance routine at the end of the song, when the citizens of Smalltown, USA, come flooding into the frame to form a leg-kicking, jazz-handsing chorus, creating a spectacle that would rank among the all-time greatest Muppet moments if not for one small problem. None of them are Muppets.

For a guy who so clearly gets the Muppets, Segel should be the first person to realize how utterly un-Hensonian this is. Henson’s Muppet movies are full of big musical performances, but always with the Muppets at the center of the action. In The Great Muppet Caper alone, there’s the black-tie dance sequence that includes Miss Piggy tap-dancing, the synchronized swimming number, also starring Piggy, and “Couldn’t We Ride,” with the whole crew on bicycles. The thrill of these Henson numbers is their audaciousness, the way Henson dared to make the Muppets part of the action in scenarios in which it seemed logistically impossible. Segel’s opening dance number takes the opposite approach. One moment Walter and Gary are singing their way through the streets, and the next moment Walter is gone, literally kicked from the frame, never to return until he’s wheeled in on luggage at the very end of the sequence as dozens of humans dance behind him. Audacious? Hardly. And it’s a sign of what’s to come. Segel’s core mistake is to repeatedly push the Muppets to the margins in a movie designed to give them the spotlight. Case in point: Of the more than 20 songs in Henson’s three Muppet movies, only one of them has a non-Muppet performer (“Piggy’s Fantasy” in Caper, in which Kermit vies with a voice-dubbed Charles Grodin, which is part of the joke). Yet of the six original songs in Segel’s film, only one of them is Muppets-only. One.

None of this is to suggest that Segel’s approach to the Muppets isn’t endearing in its own way. But The Muppets speaks to the ability of Segel and Amy Adams (as Gary’s girlfriend Mary) to be Muppet-like as often as it speaks to the appeal of the Muppets themselves. What’s particularly odd about Segel’s reboot, directed by James Bobin, is that it tends to miss most glaringly when trying hardest for the bull’s eye. Midway through the film, for example, the Muppets, who have been gathered together from far and wide to put on the traditional one-last-show, are faced with
cleaning and repairing their decrepit studio. After watching Scooter quietly push a broom for a few unproductive seconds it’s Walter who reminds the Muppets that this is the kind of stuff that they’re supposed to do to music, and he’s right. But Starship’s “We Built This City”? Uh, no. That scene might be intended as Segel’s nod to the Muppets’ recent successes on YouTube, where they covered Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” to hilarious results, but it lacks the Muppets’ own signature. It’s more like an Alvin & The Chipmunks cover: same song, different performers, no reinvention. Thus it smells like surrender, an odor that returns late in the film when the Muppets sing “Rainbow Connection” as the main act of their studio-saving telethon. Make no mistake, watching the gang
perform “Rainbow Connection” is lump-in-the-throat touching and realistic, too (not that the Muppets have ever been about realism), but it comes off like a concession – that the Muppets’ best days are behind them and the most magic we can hope for is an occasional performance of their greatest hits.

Maybe that’s true. Maybe what Segel’s film shows us is that Henson and Frank Oz, the puppeteers extraordinaire who through their voices and hands gave so many of these characters their spirit, are irreplaceable. As disappointing as it can be to watch the Muppets lose their identities in adaptations like The Muppet Christmas Carol and Muppet Treasure Island, the catch-22 of letting the Muppets be themselves is to be made increasingly aware that, with Henson and Oz gone, most of the performances can be nothing more than imitative. Credit where it’s due, Steve Whitmire’s Kermit is as strong as it's ever been – he’s mastered the subtle finger movements that make Kermit so thoughtful – but Fozzie and Piggy, to name two, are frequently off key, and Rowlf seems to have lost his personality entirely. When the new troupe nails it, as Whitmire and Eric Jacobson do when Kermit and Fozzie have a quiet conversation in hammocks underneath the stars, it warms the soul. But so much of what works in this picture is an allusion to the Henson era (the lens flares that recall The Muppet Movie) or a direct quotation of it (the cover of the “Rainbow Connection”), and as welcome as it is to see banjos hanging on the wall of Kermit’s office or to spot a photograph of the African-mask puppets from Harry Belafonte’s famous performance on The Muppet Show, these little details can make the film feel less like a reinvention for a new generation than like a fantasy camp for the old one.

Segel’s stroke of brilliance with The Muppets, beyond reviving the running gags and meta references that are key to the brand, is to backload the picture with the sort of colorful, chaotic and heartfelt performances that typified The Muppet Show, ensuring that the movie ends on a high note. I’m not sure what the shelf life is for the cover of Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You” by about a dozen chickens, but I do know it’s precisely the kind of mischief Henson would be up to if helming The Muppet Show today and that it inspired much of the packed crowd at my screening to break into gleeful rhythmic clapping. Trouble is, so many of these thrills send us backward, not forward, like the goose bump-inducing recreation of The Muppet Show’s opening number, confining the Muppets to retro appeal. In the movie’s greatest shot, one that perfectly blends the familiar and the new, Kermit sits alone backstage, his hand on a small handle that he’ll use to throw open the oval hatch through which he’ll announce the start of the show, looking angst-ridden and full of questions. Will their material hold up? Will anyone come to watch? Will the crowd still love them? Segel’s film makes it clear that the answer to those questions is yes, but we’ve yet to see if someone can return the Muppets to their roots while moving beyond nostalgia. Segel’s film offers hope and also confirms fears.

Maybe the time has come for Kermit and the gang to cede the spotlight, not to eliminate the brand but to preserve it. Maybe the Henson-era characters need to be retired, replaced by Walters, Bobos and Pepes. It’s a tough task, immortality. Then again, part of loving the Muppets is believing in the dream.

Jason Bellamy ruminates on cinema at The Cooler and is a regular contributor to Slant Magazine's The House Next Door, coauthoring The Conversations series with Ed Howard. Follow him on Twitter.