Performances Ripe for Rediscovery: Michael Paré in THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

***Sofia Coppola has guided some of the greatest performances in all of modern American film.  Career best turns from the likes of Kirsten Dunst to Bill Murray to Scarlett Johansson to Elle Fanning have helped shape Sofia's films.  These actors and performances have gotten a lot of due acclaim for their work but I wanted to highlight a few others who delivered mesmerizing turns for Sofia without ever getting the notice they deserved.***

 

 

Kirsten Dunst's unbelievably haunting performance as Lux Lisbon in The Virgin Suicides remains one of the most devastating performances of lost youth ever captured on the screen.  Dunst's work is in fact so captivating that it is easy to overlook the fact that The Virgin Suicides is filled with incredibly powerful performances from a number of players.  One of the most astonishing is delivered in just a matter of minutes but those few moments have stuck with me strongly since I first saw the film during its theatrical run over a dozen years ago.

 

 

A screen veteran with nearly a hundred film and television performances to his credit Michael Kevin Paré is still probably best known for his iconic 1983 performance as lost rocker Eddie Wilson in the cult-favorite Eddie and the Cruisers.  Paré had just passed his fortieth birthday when he made his surprising cameo as the aging Trip Fontaine in The Virgin Suicides.  Despite the fact that he is only on the screen for a few moments, Paré makes the most of his time and his performance as the fractured adult Fontaine now in rehab trying to recall just why he left Lux Lisbon on that football field after prom is absolutely heartbreaking.  I can think of few performances that so quickly, and potently, communicate middle-age regret and self-rage as well as Paré does for Sofia Coppola in these few moments.  It really is spellbinding to watch. 

 

 

And as suddenly as he appears he is gone.  Led to a 'group meeting' to deal with his addictions, demons and memories with other similarly haunted men who have lost their youth.  The beautiful Michael Pare playing yet another lost man on the dark side and playing it so incredibly well. 

 

-Jeremy Richey, 2013- 

 

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (1) Richard Pryor in BLUE COLLAR (1978)

"Man, where am I going to get that kind of money?  Shit, you're talkin' about, 'bout my life...I take home two-ten a week man, goddamn. I gotta pay for the lights, gas, clothes, food... every fuckin' thing, man. I'm left with about thirty bucks after all the fuckin' bills are paid. Gimme a break, will ya mister?"

In Leonard Schrader's novelization of Blue Collar, based on the searing script he wrote with his brother Paul, the character of Zeke Brown is introduced, and described, with this paragraph:

"Zeke Brown was a lightening bolt.  Thirty-one, lanky and sly, he was an urban-bred black who didn't know where he would strike next.  His quick eyes never missed a trick.  Though his devilish smile promised madcap excitement, his wiry body emitted a restless energy in search of power.  He wanted to rip off the whole system for anything possible, or at least his fair share.  But he never did because he was everybody's scapegoat:  an assembly worker with a wife and five kids."

Richard Pryor was nearing his fortieth birthday when he appeared as Zeke Brown in screenwriter Paul Schrader's directorial debut Blue Collar and he was already one of the most famous performers in the world.  Through a series of dazzling albums, television performances, concerts and film-roles, Pryor had established himself as one of the most trailblazing and visionary comedians, and popular cultural figures, of the post-war era...an artist and man as fearless as he was funny, angry as he was witty and as poetic as he was vulgar.  Richard Pryor was at his absolute peak when Schrader took the bold move of casting him in the most overtly dramatic role of his career and it is one of the great tragedies of his career, and life, that more people didn't turn out for what would turn out to be one of the most towering performances of the seventies in what was one of the decade's greatest films.  

One of the books I had constantly by my side as a teenager in the eighties was Schrader on Schrader, a volume that is still among my favorite film books.  Glancing at the chapter on Blue Collar recently, I noticed I had scribbled on one of the pages these words, "Blue Collar as good as Taxi Driver" and all these years later I still feel that way.  Schrader's film might not be the cinematic equal to the monumental work he would pen for Scorsese but Blue Collar meant as much to me back in the day and as time has gone by, and life has caught up, it God's lonely men of Blue Collar that I relate to more than Travis Bickle.  Blue Collar is a part of me and it says as much to me about life in this country as any other American film I have ever seen.  Schrader's film is shockingly relevant and I have never seen a performance that so clearly essays the frustration, and justified anger, of the working man more than Richard Pryor's work as Zeke in this film.  It's a performance of staggering authority and weight...funny, caustic, enraged and, ultimately  tragic.  It's as though Pryor took the best of one of his most realistic comedic routines and transformed it into a portrait of a man destined to be run-over, forgotten, and then sold to the system he so hates.  

The shooting of Blue Collar was fuelled with drama from fist-fights and ego-clashes between Pryor and his co-stars (Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto) to constant screaming matches in-between takes.  Schrader would describe it as, "introducing three bulls into a china shop and asking them to get along...right after you would say 'cut' a fight would break out."  The volcanic and troubled Pryor would prove to be Schrader's most difficult challenge.  The opposite of the trained Keitel, Pryor would be magic in the first several takes and then would become bored and start improvising in the later ones.  Schrader said that, "the first (take) would be good, the second would be really good, the third would be really terrific and the fourth would probably start to fall off."  

I have always suspected that Blue Collar was made up of those third takes.  

Paul Schrader would describe Blue Collar as being a film about, 'the politics of resentment and claustrophobia, the feeling of being manipulated and not in control of your life."  Richard Pryor was the classic example of a man who triumphed over the manipulation he was constantly pressured by and the claustrophobia of a system that had been set up for him to fail.  Pryor finally lost his way in a mirror of his own self-doubt and inner demons but he was ultimately a heroic figure who did that very rare things most great artists strive for but fail to really do...he changed people, he changed minds and in works like Blue Collar and Richard Pryor: Live in Concert he told us truths about ourselves that we might have been afraid to face otherwise.  

Despite some critical acclaim, Blue Collar failed to find an audience back in 1978 and it has slipped in and out of print on home video since its initial release.  Pryor's jaw-dropping performance as Zeke Brown should have led him to greater and greater roles but he seemed to begin to self-sabotage shortly after.    

The fact that such a special and unique talent would find himself in something like The Toy less than five years after Blue Collar's release is absolutely heartbreaking.  Only Some Kind of Hero (1982) and Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling (1986) contain traces of the dramatic fire Richard Pryor possessed under the laughter...and his stand-up films, which all showed his genius.  

There was disappointment, there was heartbreak, there was tragedy but when I think about Richard Pryor all I think of is greatness and the knowledge that I wouldn't be worth a damn if I hadn't discovered his work when I was a young man filled with a rage that needed challenging and a heart that needed direction.  

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-

"They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place..."

-Yaphet Kotto with the closing lines of Blue Collar-

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (2) Melora Walters in MAGNOLIA (1999)

"Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing me again?"

Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling Magnolia contains career best performances from a number of multi-award winning performers, superstars and legendary actors but the absolute best performance in the film is given by a virtually unknown actress who was probably best known upon the film's releases in 1999 for a Seinfeld episode she had appeared in several years earlier.  

Born in Saudi Arabia, raised mostly in Holland, Melora Walters was nearing her fortieth birthday when she shot Magnolia, the third film she would make for Paul Thomas Anderson.  Her performance, as the abuse survivor Claudia Wilson Gator, in Magnolia remains one of the most bravest and devastating I have ever seen.  While Walters had been terrific in Anderson's Boogie Nights, there was really nothing in her filmography that could have suggested just how unbelievably great she could be...but she really is beyond great in Magnolia.  It's one of those rare performances that has the ability to change a viewer and just thinking about her work in the film chokes me up.  

Melora Walters deserved every acting award and kudo imaginable for Magnolia but her work in the film was overshadowed by her more famous cast members.  Anderson's film should have led to more great roles for the talented Walters but, sadly, it wasn't meant to be and her work since has mostly been in television with sporadic small film roles appearing in between (like Cold Mountain).  In 2011 Melora released a book of poetry entitled Sonnets and Failures.  Intriguingly her voice was used earlier this year in Anderson's The Master, a fact that has many of us hoping that the two might eventually work together.   

Even if Melora Walters is never again granted a role as rich and rewarding as Claudia in Magnolia, she will always have this haunting final moment...a glorious closing shot that has the kind of impact most of our most legendary actors spend a lifetime searching for.

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (3) Nastassja Kinski in PARIS, TEXAS (WITH A GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM STACEY MARK)

"I used to make long speeches to you after you left. I used to talk to you all the time, even though I was alone. I walked around for months talking to you. Now I don't know what to say. It was easier when I just imagined you. I even imagined you talking back to me. We'd have long conversations, the two of us. It was almost like you were there. I could hear you, I could see you, smell you. I could hear your voice. Sometimes your voice would wake me up. It would wake me up in the middle of the night, just like you were in the room with me. Then... it slowly faded. I couldn't picture you anymore. I tried to talk out loud to you like I used to, but there was nothing there. I couldn't hear you. Then... I just gave it up. Everything stopped. You just... disappeared. And now I'm working here. I hear your voice all the time. Every man has your voice..."

I have written so much on the career and life of Nastassja Kinski in the past six years that I am not sure what more I can say with this little tribute.  Simply put, Kinski's work in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas is my favorite performance of all-time. 

The only reason's Kinski's work as Jane isn't number one on this list is due to the fact that, unlike most on this roles on this countdown, her work has garnered a considerable cult-following.  Kinski's work in this film has influenced a countless number of artists since...in film, music, fashion and photography.

 

When thinking on Kinski in Paris, Texas the moment that always comes to my mind first is the astonishing close-up that Wenders' captures of her during Harry Dean Stanton's moving monologue towards the film's shattering conclusion.  This close-up, which lasts for several minutes without a cut is my favorite cinematic moment ever...it represents cinema at its purest and Kinski shows herself as an artist of staggering composure, grace and skill.  It's the kind of monumental moment most 'great' actors strive for throughout their entire career but few ever reach.

Kinski's presence looms so large over all of Paris, Texas that it is hard to believe how relatively small her part in the film actually is.  Wenders understood that Jane had to be played by someone so electrifying that just a photograph of her would make us understand Stanton's obsessive and epic journey.  

It is fitting that Nastassja Kinski had her greatest screen moment for Wim Wenders.  It was after all Wenders who had discovered her in the mid-seventies and given Kinski her first role, in the brilliant Wrong Move.  The two would reunite again in the nineties for the undervalued Faraway So Close.  Listening to Wender's commentary on the Paris, Texas DVD one can hear how important the collaborations were to both artists.

While the celebrated close-up of Kinski is her most iconic scene in Paris, Texas there are many other smaller moments which are just as resonate and special including this one:

and especially this one:

Nastassja Kinski's work in Paris, Texas has influenced and haunted many notable artists including Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith (both called Paris, Texas their favorite film before their tragic passings).  The film and Kinski also inspired one of my favorite photographers, the fabulous Stacey Mark, who, along with model Hailey Gates, paid special tribute to the film in the July/August 2011 edition of Jalouse magazine.

Stacey Mark has been one of my favorite photographers for several years now and we struck up an online friendship, which I greatly value, a couple of years back.  Stacey's work is absolutely mesmerizing and has graced the pages of Nylon (she worked as their photo director for a time), Purple, Jacques, Lula and many many other publications.  She has photographed everyone from Emily Blunt to Kate Bosworth and her stunning shots of Asia Argento have already become the stuff of legend.  Outside of being one of America's most gifted young artists, Stacey is a really special person and I am so honored that she agreed to stop by here and share her memories of her Paris, Texas inspired Jalouse photo shoot.  After reading, please pay a visit to Stacey's official site, follow her at Tumblr and like her page on Facebook.  

All right, enough of my rambling...let's here from the awesome Stacey Mark, one of the most inspiring people I know (and a fellow Roxy Music devotee to boot!).

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-

When Jalouse Magazine proposed I shoot a "Paris, Texas" inspired fashion story, I immediately said "no." The image of Nastassja Kinski in that fuzzy pink sweater behind the reflective glass of her peep show room is often imitated but never duplicated. Many photographers have tried and most have failed. Not only was I turned off to the idea of being the one of many artists to attempt this intimidating feat, the fact that the magazine wanted me to create 12 pages based on one iconic image seemed impossible.

The overall theme of the issue was to cast theater student and international girl of mystery Hailey Gates as the lead in all of her favorite films. When I researched Hailey, I learned that not only is her father the television director Tucker Gates, her grandmother is Joan Tewkesbury. Tewkesbury wrote two of Robert Altmans most respected films, Nashville and Thieves Like Us. With heritage like that, who am I to stand in the way of her cinematic dreams? Hailey as Kinski in a 12 page Kinski in 'Paris, Texas' it is.

I enlisted some of the best artists I know to recreate Kinski's butter blond bob to hide Hailey's waist length brown hair, her subtle yet seductive makeup and a wardrobe stylist to hunt down that fuzzy sweater. I decided to have the entire shoot take place in the imaginary room behind the glass. Budget concerns forced me to turn my Brooklyn apartment into a makeshift Texan peep show. 

Fast forward to the recreation of that scene. That scene was haunting me the entire shoot and I had decided to do it at the very end of the day as the very last shot. The wardrobe stylist found a replica of that sweater, the hair stylist had recreated that hair and it was up to me to recreate that scene. We created a background of curtains based on the colors of her the scene, and set the lights around Hailey to both light her from the front with a warm spotlight as well as a light behind her to create a backlit glow. Having the bright lights almost blind her had the same effect as the one way mirror: I could see her but she could barely see me. The apartment was dark except for the light as an iphone quitely repeated the familiar creepy sound of the film's score. It was the first time all day that everyone was silent...hushed. There are few moments where you "experience" a photo, and this was one of those moments. Hailey looked at the lens with longing, the heat and brightness of the lights forced tears down her cheeks. This was, for me and the rest of the crew, our iconic moment.

-Stacey Mark, 2013-

Thanks again to Stacey for submitting this fascinating piece!  After visiting her sites please also check out the official page of the much anticipated film The Turning, which Stacey appears in (and graces the poster of, as seen here):

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (4) Oliver Reed in I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'S'IS NAME (1967)

"This man is a success. 

He has a wife, two mistresses an alfa romeo and one day he decided to get rid of them all."

For many younger film fans the name Oliver Reed will probably call to mind the roaring aging boozer who would show up sloshed on television talk shows, virtually creating the 'viral' video long before the internet.  While he is perhaps among the most 'famous' people on my list I feel like the late Reed is one of the major actors in need of rediscovery, due to the public persona that took over the artist by the end of his life, and for the fact that so many of his greatest films are unavailable on disc.  It's especially tragic that his work in the sixties with director Michael Winner are so relatively unknown here in the states, as it was such an important and fruitful collaboration.  Folks who only know of the older Oliver Reed might be shocked by just how beautiful, how commanding, how touching and just how talented he was in his prime.  Take for example his monumental work as advertising Andrew Quint in Winner's extraordinary 1967 feature I'll Never Forget What's'isname, one of the best films of the sound-era and one of the most prophetic works of art ever created.

I feel unbelievably close to the frustrated Andrew Quint, a man so hungry to escape life's modern dance but who's ultimately trapped by the pleasures he is so accustomed to.  As Quint, Oliver Reed is simply magnificent.  His performance is one of the most moving and resonate I have ever seen.  It's one of those rare performances, like Gene Hackman  in Night Moves or Mickey Rourke in The Pope of Greenwich Village, that haunts me on a near daily basis.  When one of life's many walls gets put up I always flash on the opening image of Reed carrying an Ax through the busy London Streets to destroy the office desk he has been held prisoner by and I think 'if only'...

I'll Never Forget What's'isname is also a brutal reminder to just how amazing a leading man Oliver Reed was and his scenes with the tragic Carol White (who will appear on my next 'Ripe for Rediscovery' list I do) are exquisitely touching and seductive.  Reed was one of cinema's great poets and I think his work as Andrew Quint is his finest screen performance, even better than his savage turn in Ken Russell's The Devils a few years later.

We lost a true champion in 1999 when we lost Oliver Reed and we lost one of our truly great actors.  He was bigger than the Oscar he was never even nominated for throughout his dazzling career.  Unlike some of his greatest films, I'll Never Forget What's'isname isn't impossible to see in this country as copies of the out of print Anchor Bay DVD (which features an extraordinary Winner commentary) can still be found.  Seek it out anyway you can find it...it really is one of the very best films I have ever seen and Reed's performance should be legendary.

 

-Jeremy Richey, 2013-

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (5) Jennifer Jason Leigh in GEORGIA (WITH A GUEST CONTRIBUTION FROM J.D. LAFRANCE)

"Poor little girl,

ran away for good.

I try to explain why she won't say a thing..

Sad, sad thing,

I'm so far away now.

How can I say why she won't talk at all?

She holds a deck of cards.

She wants to be alone.

'I've been very ill, I've tried waking up.

Now I want to be alone."

-John Doe, Exene Cervenka, "Poor Girl", 1983-

It happened around 1991, around the time of Rush, when Jennifer Jason Leigh went from being one of America's most talented young actors and became some kind of supernatural force of nature...the likes of which cinema only sees every other decade or so.  For a five year period or so Leigh delivered a series of performances that rivaled any seen in American film history from Brando in the fifties to De Niro and Pacino in the seventies to Rourke in the eighties.  Not all the films were great but when Leigh was given a suitable role in this period the results were electrifying and unforgettable.

There were several performances Jennifer Jason Leigh has given in her now four decade career that I could have chosen for this series.  If I had to pick her absolute greatest role I would say that few actors in cinema have ever delivered a performance as truly touched by genius as her work in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) but I had to go for her work in the crushing Georgia (1995), not only for personal reasons but because the thing that blows me away so much about her work as the heartbreaking Sadie Flood is that it is a creation that comes entirely from the heart and soul of Jennifer Jason Leigh, whereas she had a real-life basis with Dorothy Parker.  

I've never seen anything quite like Jennifer Jason Leigh in Georgia.  Her work is an unbelievably original and unique creation.  It's as though she was able to take all of those X albums we listened to in the eighties and transform them into this performance...all those haunted, lonely and strung-out characters in those songs (how fitting that John Doe shares the screen with her here) come to life in Leigh's performance in Georgia and it is spellbinding to watch.  It's a crushing performance to watch as well...if Bridget Fonda represents the wonderful vibrancy of my twenties, then Leigh is my dark place.  Memories that are hard but necessary.  

I knew that the great J.D. Lafrance, who runs the always unstoppable Radiator Heaven, admired Jennifer Jason Leigh as much as I do so I was thrilled when he agreed to write me up a piece for this series.  Thanks so much to J.D. for this wonderful piece and VIVA Jennifer Jason Leigh!

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-

J.D. Lafrance on Jennifer Jason Leigh in Georgia, written for Moon in the Gutter in 2012.

Georgia was a very personal, passion project for actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose mother, Barbara Turner, produced the film and wrote the screenplay. Georgia depicts the tempestuous relationship between two sisters, both of whom are singers with Leigh playing Sadie, the younger, less talented one, and Mare Winningham playing the older, more successful one. The film is rich with characterization as it explores the complex relationship between two siblings. Leigh delivers a truly fearless performance as she actually sings in the film, unafraid to play someone who makes up what she lacks for in talent with passion. 

At one point, she sings a cover of Elvis Costello’s “Almost Blue” in a raspy whisper that is mesmerizing to watch and then sings backup for a band terribly, screeching her way through a song. It really takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there like Leigh does, not just in the music scenes but also off-stage in the way she relates (or doesn’t) to those around her. As always, the actress fully inhabits the role and it starts with her look, adopting raccoon-eye makeup and a perpetually disheveled appearance that represents her messy life.

Leigh’s gutsy performance culminates in an intense performance of Van Morrison’s “Take Me Back” that seems to go on forever (in a good way) as we see Sadie at her most vulnerable. This sequence encapsulates her character perfectly – all ambition and passion with no talent. She tries so hard that your heart really goes out to her despite being a painfully awful singer. It is this scene that really divided critics and fans of Leigh but I’ve always found it powerful and real with a rawness that is rare. 

While Georgia belongs to Leigh, she is a gracious performer, allowing others to take center stage while she supports them. Sadie is just one of those people that eventually rubs everyone the wrong way whether it be her sister, her manager or her husband. She is one of the many damaged characters Leigh has excelled at playing over the years and perhaps the most fascinating. She runs the emotional spectrum in a performance that is among her very best. By the end of the film you really feel like you’ve gone on a journey with Sadie and seen her through ups and downs. The film ends very much as it began with each sister living their own very different life, leaving us to wonder what might happen to Sadie as she continues to pursue her dreams.

31 Performances Ripe for Rediscovery (6) Season Hubley in HARDCORE (1979)

"At least you get to go to heaven...I don't get shit."

Paul Schrader's Hardcore (1979) has long been a favorite film of mine but I feel as though I view the movie differently than most, and probably differently than the way Schrader intended.  To my eyes the film is about a truly despicable man who loses a daughter due to his coldness and oppressive belief system and then gets a shot at redemption with a surrogate daughter, whom he abruptly abandons after 'rescuing' the first.   

I've always found it interesting that one of Hardcore's biggest influences is John Ford's The Searchers, another film featuring a 'heroic' father figure that I find to be an absolutely revolting human being.  Hardcore might not be as 'great' of a film as The Searchers but I think it's a more interesting one as I feel like one of the most notable aspects of it is Schrader's own mixed feelings towards his subject matter...whereas I feel like The Searchers is finally just an vile racist work disguised as a social commentary.  

Perhaps I will eventually write about the very difficult, and quite brilliant, Hardcore but for now I just want to salute the incredible Season Hubley, who gives one of the bravest and most complex performances I have ever seen as Niki, the young woman who sees a glimpse of light in George C Scott's character Jake Vandorn before being completely discarded by him during the film's heartbreaking conclusion.

Season Hubley was in her late twenties when she appeared in Hardcore and she was coming off a decade that had seen her working in various films and television programs to relatively little notice.  She had just delivered a scene stealing performance as Priscilla Presley in John Carpenter's Elvis when she signed on for Hardcore but she had never been granted as challenging a role as Niki...and sadly she wouldn't after either.

While she only appears in a handful of scenes in the second half of Hardcore, Hubley's work shows that she really was one of the most talented, and sadly underused, actors of her generation.  She not only holds her own with the volcanic Scott, she steals every moment she's in with a performance that so precise and so finely-tuned that not a trace of 'acting' can be seen.  The fact that she is able to project so much even though Schrader has her wearing sunglasses through most of her moments on screen makes the performance all the more remarkable.  

Hubley's work as Niki is unbelievably brave, extremely captivating and finally just gut-wrenching.  I still can't believe that her performance didn't bring her more attention and better roles after.  Within a year she would be stuck again making TV movies, with only sporadic films like Vice Squad (1982) appearing every few years.  She would close out her career in the nineties, with her work on the Soap All My Children probably bringing her the most fans and notice.   

Despite the fact that Season Hubley was never again granted the kind of meaty role like Niki I am grateful that we at least have that one role.  It really is one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen.  For more information on the life and work of Season Hubley, check out this fine tribute blog.  

-Jeremy Richey, 2012-