Lost in America (1985)

Peter's Nite
Tossed Salad with Roast Chicken, Carrot Cake.

Via AlbertBrooks.com:

Albert Brooks’ style of comedy is based on the realities of everyday life. On this film, Brooks and his crew spent only three of the film’s 45-day schedule on a sound stage. The rest of the time, they were on location all across the United States.

To provide a vivid, highly American setting for David and Linda’s coast-to-coast odyssey, the filmmakers worked in actual, functioning, facilities, eschewing extras and props in favor of real people and things that were on the scene.

While the filmmakers could have used sound stages to substitute actual locales, producer Marty Katz points out that this compromise “would have cheated the audience of a rich movie experience and wouldn’t have fully expressed the theme of the film.”

The story ranges from the work-a-day world of Los Angeles to the razzle-dazzle of Las Vegas to the high energy of New York City; from the stunning beauty of Hoover Dam to the quaint life of roadside trailer camps.

In Las Vegas, the picture company worked and lodged at the Desert Inn Hotel, filming in the casino, lobby, and coffee shop. In the casino, usually seen in films as a distant backdrop, special arrangements were made to enable filming at the gaming tables amid customers and employees.

Armed with the latest lighting advancements of the time and high-speed film, director of photography Eric Saarinen and his crew avoided using the powerful movie lights that would have detracted from the authentic atmosphere of an operational casino.

In striking contrast to Vegas’ neon shimmer was the majesty of the Hoover Dam, where the “Lost in America” company traveled to shoot on both the Arizona and Nevada sides of this landmark.

In New York, David and Linda’s motor home was filmed heading south on Fifth Avenue and pulling to the curb at 57th Street, where David pursues an astonished advertising executive into his office building.

Departing from their New York location, the filmmakers recorded the Howards’ journey from an Arizona trailer camp to wintery Gotham “in reverse” (or opposite direction from their actual travel), necessitating numerous tricky turnarounds.

The trip, depicted in a montage of a few minutes’ screen time, required ten days of grueling roadwork to film. To capture the trek from various points of view, cameras were placed in the motor home’s passenger seat, mounted in a camera car attached to the bizarre convoy, and set up at roadside.

The challenging journey features the deserts of Arizona, the ultra-modern Houston skyline, the Native American atmosphere of El Paso, the Mexican ambiance of Las Cruces, N.M., New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, Atlanta’s Peachtree Plaza, Pennsylvania countryside, and Washington, D.C.’s Capitol.
For the filmmakers, as well as for David and Linda, the journey proved to be an exercise in rediscovering America.

Playboy interview via Unofficial Albert Brooks Page:

PLAYBOY: Do you have muses? Off whom do you bounce ideas?

BROOKS: One of the reasons I married my wife is that she's just got this wonderful brain and a great sense of humor. I talk to her about everything. Also I used to be really close, like talking daily, to Jim Brooks, who gave me those roles in Broadcast News and I'll Do Anything. When I wasn't in As Good As It Gets, I stopped talking to him. Better put me in the movies, Jim, if you want to be my friend.

But, over the years, I've actually written all but one of my movies with Monica Johnson, who's the sister of the comedy writer Jerry Belson. She sort of found me through Penny Marshall and I thought she had great comedic sensibilities. She innately understands the Albert Brooks "character" in these films. And she's a woman which is always a good thing when you write. She makes me laugh. And she's a great laugher, too. I could never write with someone who didn't laugh well.

PLAYBOY: Is laughter better than sex?

BROOKS: Gee, I always thought it was the same thing.

PLAYBOY: Describe the upside of becoming a father in your fifties.

BROOKS: Having a child when you're a little bit older—I'm not talking Tony Randall older—is the coolest thing in the world. The concerns you have when you're thirty about your own career and stuff are huge. But there's just something great about getting past that period so you can really devote your attention to someone and mean it. I don't know what else there is to do on earth. I guess the downside, however, is we're already looking at high schools with wheelchair ramps.

PLAYBOY: So, anyway, how well did you perform in the delivery room?

BROOKS: I cried. When the head popped out, I just wept.

PLAYBOY: You gave up singlehood during maybe the randiest presidency in the history. Did you have any favorite passages from the Starr report?

BROOKS: I have to say this: My child is not old enough where I'm getting a lot of questions. But I think it might be uncomfortable if you have a kid around 5 years old. The president should not be responsible for the word head coming up at dinner. That should come from the father. When I'm ready to tell my kid what head is, I'll tell him. I don't want the president telling him. "Daddy, what is being on your knees in the Oval Office?" "Well, that's a kind of Moslem prayer. . ."

PLAYBOY: Did your parents know you were funny?

BROOKS: I don't recall that my mother ever thought I was funny. That's why I wrote Mother, which is what the whole movie was about. I know she's very proud of me and I can make her laugh today. But, for most of my life, it didn't matter how funny I was or how funny anybody told her I was—she was very serious about me having another business to fall back on. But I still wanted her approval. I would call her after every Carson appearance—"What did you think?" And she would always, always have the same answer: "Oh, it was wonderful! What did Johnny think?"
And I'd say, "Well, you saw the show--did you hear the audience laughing?"
"No, no, I just wondered . . ."
"What—did Johnny secretly hate me even though they were laughing? No, he likes me!"
So, one day, I actually planned this whole strategy. I'd been waiting for this moment—I did the show, the audience was laughing its head off, and, as ever, she said, "What did Johnny think?" And I sounded very depressed: "I don't want to talk about it. Things are not good."
"What happened?"
"Well, Johnny came into the dressing room and he said 'You'll be the last Jew to ever appear on my show!'"
"What?!?"
Now, of course, my mother was immediately furious: "Don't ever do that show again! If he's anti-Semitic--"
I said, "I'm just kidding."

PLAYBOY: Real Life was released in 1979 and now, twenty years later, your sixth film is finished. What takes you so long?

BROOKS: Well, there would have been more if I could have gotten the financing money easier. Out of those twenty years, there was a good eight spent raising the money! I knew that as soon as I put the words The End on a script, I was going to have to go through these mine fields that I just hate more than the world. Even for this movie. The Muse was written right after Mother—which means it could have been finished and released over a year ago. Paramount passed, so it took longer. It's just very hard to go through the humiliating experience of 20 people saying no till one person says yes.

PLAYBOY: How humiliating has it gotten?

BROOKS: Lost in America was maybe the worst—I went for two years trying to raise money. I wouldn't wish it on anybody, because 99% of these potential investors just want to meet people in show business. You go out to dinner with them and you still pick up the check. You meet these big fat guys from Texas and they're listening to the idea—"So then they go to Vegas and she loses the money—" And the Texas guy interrupts: "Yeeeahh, um, Allll-buht, do you know any hookers?" I learned, by the way, to start out every meeting by saying, "Hello, I don't know any hookers. Now let me pitch you this story."

PLAYBOY: Your films have had completely original comic premises. Can we inventory the inspirations for each? Already, for instance, Real Life has been echoed by The Truman Show and EdTV. You got there first.

BROOKS: Echoed!? Jon Bon Jovi's endtitle song for EdTV was called "Real Life." I mean, come on! When Monica Johnson heard that, she called me in tears. But I suppose it's actually a good thing—maybe it reminded people. Real Life didn't make any money, but at least The Truman Show got some Oscar nominations out of the subject. The important thing is that Real Life still holds up.

PLAYBOY: How about Lost in America?

BROOKS: I always loved the idea of making a life-long decision and finding out four days later that it was wrong. You know, burning your bridges and then having to eat shit. Here was this successful married couple who sell their house, buy a Winnebago, hit the road, lose everything in a week, and realize they've made a mistake. So the concept was all about backing up and eating shit. We all do it in little ways. I wanted to see it big.

Glenn Erikson via DVDSavant:

Lost in America's lesson is that modern urban society makes us status-conscious, artificial, and shallow, but that there are lots of worse things to be and worse situations to find oneself in. When David's back in his element again, slugging away with his cheerfully obnoxious business persona, it's obvious that's where he belongs, and at least now he knows it. Albert Brooks doesn't insist that you see his comedies as 'meaningful,' and they're certainly just as hilarious without any of this thinking ... but it puts him far ahead of the game, up there with the classic comedies.

Most of the setpieces in the film are inspired, and a couple are simply transcendant. Probably the best is David's pitiful attempt to talk a casino executive (Garry Marshall) into giving back the money they've lost at his roulette wheel. David's sorry belief that his ad-man patter can coax money from this man is funny, almost painfully so.

Julie Hagerty makes an excellent foil for Brooks, as undemonstrative and thoughtful as he is brash and exaggerated. She makes Linda Howard the kind of person who's genuinely surprised by her own susceptability to the gambling bug, and yet we know she isn't damaged by her husband's tirade of sarcasm when her 'little mistake' turns into disaster. In most of Brooks' stories he doesn't link up well with females, the ending of Defending Your Life being the only slightly strained part of that film. David and Linda are a good couple. Woody Allen basically believes relationships are impossible, and even his sweetest movies reflect this cynicism. Neil Simon conceives of characters as collections of kooky quirks, and all any Simon relationship needs to succeed is for people to to get past one another's idiosyncrasies. All three write funny movies, but I like Brooks' philosophy the best. It actually takes into account the idea that we can be smart enough to understand at least part of our own contradictory natures. Even if we can't change everything about our lives, we can be happier by improving our attitudes.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

Pamela's Nite
Chicken in a wild mushroom and port cream sauce; braised red cabbage; baby Yukon gold potatoes and blue river green beans in a lemon butter sauce. Dessert was blueberry pie and ice cream.
Special Guests: Joey and Baine

Grant Tracey Via Images Journal:

But did Doniphon, alone, kill Valance? This question has haunted me for years. If we read the film traditionally and contend that Wayne sacrificed himself and the woman he loves for the good of civilization, making Stewart the somewhat false hero, then the film resonates an elegy for the dead, and the image of Hally’s cactus flower on Tom’s coffin and her own admission to her husband that she put it there sings a kind of sad tribute of lost love. However, what if Stoddard killed Valance? A close return look at the second shooting scene shows smoke wisping from the barrels of both weapons simultaneously. No doubt Doniphon, a tough-guy hero, hit his target, but maybe Stoddard did too. The slim possibility exists that Stoddard could have done the killing without Doniphon’s help. And if that’s the case, then the film deconstructs a traditional garden/wilderness reading and the resounding words of the editor, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend," resonate as ironic fallacy. What if Stewart didn’t need Wayne’s gun, and Wayne didn’t need his self-consuming guilt? Wayne’s decline and debasement were for nothing and that’s a lot darker notion to ponder than the darkness this film already radiates.

Jabberwock observes:

John Wayne and James Stewart were 54 and 53 respectively when this film was made, and one of the standing criticisms of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is that they were far too old for their characters in the “flashback sequence” (which is, after all, 90 per cent of the film). Makeup helps to an extent, and one of the most notable things about Stewart’s performance as the young Ransom is how he quickens his reactions and physical movements without making it very obvious. He’s a lot more alert and sprightly than he presumably was in real life (in fact, even as a young man, Stewart’s stock in trade was a shuffling, slow walk and a Midwestern drawl – so this performance, given in his 50s, is probably among his most energetic ever!).

The criticism about age is of course justified from the point of view of verisimilitude, but it’s impossible to imagine this film without these men in the leading roles, for their screen personalities are crucial to its effect. Stewart, a more nuanced actor, was the modern man – vulnerable, complex, unafraid to show a feminine side (in fact, he spends some of the key scenes in this film in an apron, which has led to much critical analysis of gender roles!). This was reflected in the roles he played in middle age, especially in films by Hitchcock and Anthony Mann. Wayne, in contrast, was repeatedly used by Ford in their many films together as an emblem of the Old West – the macho cowboy who survived by his shooting skills. By all accounts, the screen image was not very far from the man’s real-life persona, for Wayne was known to be jingoistic, brow-beating, politically on the far right, pro-Vietnam War, full of notions about what “real men” must be like.

Richard Franklin on Ford vis Senses of Cinema:

Ford's style was one of measured simplicity. His pace is slow, his shots simple and unpretentious. Though it is possible to trace the much vaunted lighting style and deep focus of Orson Welles to Ford's earlier films (cf The Long Voyage Home [1940]), his later Technicolor works are the essence of simplicity - eye level camera with hardly a dolly in sight. Director Andrew McLaglan (son of Ford stock company veteran Victor, who cut his teeth as a Ford assistant) tells an amusing story of how he suggested that there was a good angle from an overhead bridge, for John Wayne's introductory shot in The Quiet Man. Ford simply asked "do you stand on a step ladder when you meet someone?"

Director John Milius describes John Ford's style in terms of the Japanese idea of "conservation of line", saying Ford can do with a couple of "brush strokes" what it takes others six or eight to do. Early in his career, Ford talked about what he called "invisible technique", to make an audience forget they were watching a movie. But later he refused to dissect his work, saying things had to be dead before dissection, and telling young directors like myself only to "make sure you can see their eyes". The impact of an astonishing scene like Tom's farewell to his mother at the end of The Grapes of Wrath is achieved with virtually television coverage. Yet only in Ford would the characters' eyelines intersect at a point somewhere in the middle distance, as if they both see something spiritual.

It is for me in the spiritual that Ford expresses the greatest we can hope our art to be. It is his capacity to mythologise; to ennoble that which might otherwise go unnoticed (like the image of the Philippino extra listening to the announcement of Pearl Harbour, or the "expendable" limping away down a beach, "glorious in defeat", because the artist tells us they were and are).

Orson Welles called John Ford the greatest "poet" the cinema has given us. He is at the very least the US's greatest historian (his films having examined virtually every era from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam) and his landscape surpasses that of say a Remington. His images of the individual dwarfed by this landscape, of family and community huddled against the brutality (and primal beauty) of Monument Valley in The Searchers is unsurpassable. It is not necessarily a true history, but as Ford says in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "when the legend becomes truth, print the legend".

John Ford was more than a filmmaker. He was a legend.

Ken Bowser on Ford & Wayne via PBS American Masters:

Ford had been a successful director for over a decade when he met Marion Morrison, at the time a young USC student working a summer job on the Fox lot as an assistant property man. He saw something in Morrison and gave the "kid" a few walk-ons in his films. Within two years Morrison had changed his name to John Wayne and Ford, very pleased with the young man's work, recommended him to Raoul Walsh, another director on the lot.

Walsh was about to start one of the biggest films Fox had produced to date, THE BIG TRAIL, and the director gave Wayne the lead. The film ultimately flopped and Wayne's career was quickly relegated to grade C westerns on poverty row. This was a situation many felt Ford could have stepped in to remedy, but over the next decade all the struggling young actor heard was that "Pappy was keeping an eye out for a script that would best suit the Duke," his affectionate nickname for Wayne.

As Wayne's career stalled Ford's roared ahead; he was now one of the biggest directors in Hollywood. But the two men stayed friends -- as long as it was clear who was boss.

During these years, Ford (contrary to popular myth, which portrays him as a simple-minded, flag-waving conservative,) gained a reputation inside Hollywood political circles as a staunch Roosevelt Democrat. Wayne on the other hand had virtually no political opinions -- his focus was on his career and family. The bond between the two men was largely the result of long cruises to Mexico and the Pacific Island chains on Ford's yacht "Araner." These jaunts, where Ford was accompanied by Wayne, Henry Fonda, Ward Bond, and others looked like nothing more than drunken pleasure trips, and for Wayne and the others that's what they were. Unbeknownst to his passengers however, director Ford was spying. Since the mid-thirties Ford had been covertly photographing shorelines and shipping lanes for the American military in preparation for a war many in the War Department felt was inevitable.

It was after one of these voyages in 1938 that Ford teasingly asked Wayne to read the script of his next picture. Could Duke give him "some advice on what young actor might play the role of the Ringo Kid?"
...
Being a symbol of America was a responsibility that ate away at Wayne. It was that sense of responsibility combined with his continuing guilt over not serving during the war that drove Wayne deeply into politics.

As the Cold War heated up and the Iron Curtain fell, Wayne began to merge his personal commitment to defending America with his screen persona. And from behind the camera, Ford's vision of his country and his part in how it saw itself was shifting. With THE SEARCHERS, THE HORSE SOLDIERS, and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, Ford would use the iconic image he'd helped Wayne create to cast light into the shadows of the country he loved. While Ford's perspective may have grown darker, his love of America, its people and its landscape, never dimmed.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

Nora's Nite
Special Guest: Lisa!
Indian Food, Lemon meringue Pie
For the first time in MovieNite history, Nora forgets about dessert and actually needs a "hint."

Glenn Erickson via DVDSavant:
Most escapism of the time would instantly prescribe a man for what ails Lucy, or better, lots of men. That's where The Ghost and Mrs. Muir deviates from the norm. Captain Gregg is good company at the odd times when he's there, but he's not flesh and blood and both of them know that's what Lucy (or Lucia, as Gregg calls her) needs. There's a sadness about Lucy's life that stays hidden beneath the surface of the film. In less glamorous surroundings, this could be a tale of isolation and estrangement.

It almost is. Lucy's romance with the ghost clearly has no sex angle, just the thrill of being worshipped by a handsome lover. So the audience gets the soulful romance without the sex. It's just the kind of masochistic thrill that became popular in soapy 50s pictures.

But there are some interesting twists. In a terrific scene with the wonderful Anna Lee, Lucy finds herself the "other woman" in a faithless triangle. The sobering novelty of the moment places no satisfaction in adultery, the foundation of many a Hollywood potboiler. Muir's yearning for her married beau dissolves as soon as she finds out the truth. Refreshingly, the story places the blame with the wayward and deceitful man, and notes a sad but unspoken bond between the wronged women.

All of Lucy's real relationships are with other women, with her maid as the only lasting one. Her daughter Anna (initially a cute Natalie Wood) has her own life to lead and as such becomes as remote as the rest of the world that Lucy has turned her back against. Both the maid and Anna have vague memories of hearing and seeing Captain Gregg too, a nice touch.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is in some ways a female Vincent Price movie, an "Ellen Allan Poe" picture. Like a Poe character, Muir lives in isolation, indulges in delirious fantasies, has disastrous relationships in the outside world and obsesses over lost loves real and imagined. It's all from a distinctively female perspective, however. Time has a different meaning - Muir is less rushed and less desperate in her actions than a Poe protagonist. When the years make her gray and rot the wood down on the beach, there's a crushing dread involved, a feeling of loss and perhaps waste. But it's a natural feeling derived from life and not some supernatural curse of guilt or honor. The mature philosophy here is contrary to Poe's fated morbidity. People get old and lonely and they die, and life moves on. It's supposed to be that way.

Philip Dunne vis Wikipedia:
Philip Ives Dunne was born in New York City, the son of Chicago syndicated columnist Finley Peter Dunne and Margaret Ives (Abbott) Dunne, the daughter of the Chicago Tribune's book reviewer and novelist, Mary Ives Abbott.

Although a Roman Catholic, he attended the Middlesex School (1920-1925) and Harvard University (1925-29). Immediately after graduation, he boarded a train for Hollywood. His first screenplay (uncredited) was Me and My Gal, released in 1932. His first credited screenplay was The Count of Monte Cristo, released in 1934. After working for various studios, he moved to 20th Century Fox in 1937, where he would remain for 25 years (excepting 4 years civilian war service during World War II), scripting 36 films in total and directing 10. He also produced several of his later films.

Dunne was a co-founder of the Screen Writers Guild and served as vice-president of its successor, the Writers Guild of America from 1938 to 1940 . He later served on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), from 1946 to 1948.

Before World War II, he was a member of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, a group founded in May, 1940, that advocated military materiel aid to Britain as the best way to keep the United States out of the war.

From 1942 to 1945, Dunne was the Chief of Production for the Motion Picture Bureau, U.S. Office of War Information, Overseas Branch; notably, he produced the non-fiction short The Town (1944), directed by Josef von Sternberg, which has received some critical acclaim.

In 1947 he co-founded the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the House Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) investigation of Communist influence in Hollywood. He appeared before HUAC with other Hollywood figures in a well publicized meeting in October 1947.

Dunne received two Academy Award nominations for screenwriting: How Green Was My Valley (1941) and David and Bathsheba (1951). He also received a Golden Globe nomination for his screen adaptation of Irving Stone's novel The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), as well as several peer awards from the Writer's Guild of America (WGA).

Dunne married the former Amanda Duff on July 13, 1939; they had three children, Miranda, Philippa, and Jessica.

In 1980 he published his memoirs, Take Two: A Life in Movies and Politics.

Dunne died of cancer on June 2, 1992 in Malibu, California

The 1992 film The Last of the Mohicans, directed by Michael Mann and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was based on Dunne's 1936 screenplay of the Fenimore Cooper novel.