The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (128 page)

When
Unforgiven
won best picture and best director (with the supporting actor Oscar going to Gene Hackman), the enshrinement of Eastwood was manifest. His next film—
In the Line of Fire
(93, Wolfgang Petersen)—was its perfect proof: this was mainstream entertainment, beautifully cast and played, suspenseful—and ridiculous. It gave Clint his best screen romance yet (with Rene Russo) and a superb opponent in John Malkovich (all the better that they did not quite play scenes together, thus masking the radical clash in acting styles). The picture had everything—except one hint or glimmer that Eastwood wants to be more than the best and smoothest running engine on the road. He
is
a Cadillac, yet he prefers a Ford superstructure. He is earnestly middlebrow, and dedicated to efficiency. Yet Gary Cooper—the obvious comparison—became a tragic figure. The test that awaits Eastwood is whether he can find himself in neurosis and failure.

Not yet. In years of mounting glory and respect, Eastwood directed seven more films (from
Madison County
to
Mystic River
). Let’s be candid:
Blood Work
was mild, geriatric fun,
Absolute Power
was silly,
True Crime
was lazy,
Madison County
was in awe of Meryl Streep, and
Garden
was atrocious. But
Mystic River
is a real movie, and a helpless view of human nastiness. I felt it was fabricated in plot and indulgent of its actors. But some felt it was close to greatness. If so, it’s clear how often Clint has coasted.

In the most recent update of this book, Clint had directed
six
more films, two of them complex war pictures! In his seventies! The achievement is extraordinary. Alas, I liked only one of the pictures,
Million Dollar Baby
, but I liked it a lot. The Pacific war movies seem to me platitudinous.
Changeling
is just awful. And
Gran Torino
showed how conservative he is. But
Million Dollar Baby
was a sweet sucker-punch of an entertainment. After
Gran Torino
, he said he was retired from acting—so he could concentrate on work.

Aaron Eckhart
, b. Cupertino, California, 1968
Eckhart has the squared-off concrete jaw of a comic-book hero—and the savage grin to go with it. He could pass as Robert Redford’s Mr. Hyde. For a while he experimented with naturalistic he-men—like the casual, biker lover to
Erin Brockovich
(00, Steven Soderbergh)—but he makes a bigger impact when either exaggerated or playing off type. Of course, he’s forty, and he has to wonder how long a guy has to find his niche. As it stands, Eckhart is a warning (don’t make up your mind about his characters too quickly), but he’s someone who has yet to take charge of a picture.

He was in
Slaughter of the Innocents
(93, James Glickenhaus), but he made his first impact as Chad in
In the Company of Men
(97, Neil La Bute), one of the coolest deviant manipulators in a growing field. He stayed with La Bute for
Your Friends & Neighbors
(98), and for a moment he looked like a new type of modern nasty guy—plausible but creepy. Someone may have suggested it was no way to go, or that a big career was tough to mount on the shoulders of La Bute. So Eckhart modified himself:
Molly
(99, John Duigan), where he started to be caring;
Any Given Sunday
(99, Oliver Stone);
Nurse Betty
(00, La Bute);
The Pledge
(01, Sean Penn);
Possession
(02, La Bute), where he seemed uneasy;
The Core
(03, Jon Amiel)—as a comic-book hero; expendable in
The Missing
(03, Ron Howard); a mastermind in
Paycheck
(03, John Woo).

He could do nothing with the mess of
Suspect Zero
(04, Elias Merhige);
Conversations with Other Women
(05, Hans Canosa), talking, talking to Helena Bonham Carter;
Thank You for Smoking
(05, Jason Reitman), which caught his brazen hostility very well;
Neverwas
(05, Joshua Michael Stern), a confusion that he coproduced;
The Black Dahlia
(06, Brian De Palma); a small part in
The Wicker Man
(06, La Bute).

He was funny in
No Reservations
(07, Scott Hicks) and then he did
Bill
(07, Bernie Godmann);
Nothing Is Private
(07, Alan Ball); Harvey Dent and Two-Face in
The Dark Knight
(08, Christopher Nolan);
Love Happens
(09, Brandon Camp).

Thomas Alva Edison
(1847–1931), b. Milan, Ohio
Just because a man gets credit for inventing the incandescent filament doesn’t keep him from being dull. For all his outpouring of patents, innovations, and conveniences, Edison the man always seemed grim, suspicious, and costive. There’s an eerie contradiction between his own humorlessness and the way so many of his inventions made more fun for more people more of the time. Yet Edison probably reckoned he’d discovered the light bulb so that people could work longer hours. He’s a grinch, and only his investors warmed to him.

The funniest thing he ever said—“Everyone steals in industry and commerce. I’ve stolen a lot myself. The thing is to know how to steal”—was actually meant to be helpful. It also alerts us to his most significant pioneering in terms of movie history: it was Edison, the chronic thief, who got lawyers in to protect his rights. And today there are more lawyers than bulbs.

Edison employed people, and his involvement with film is really all to do with W.K.L. Dickson (1860–1935), an inventor who used Edison’s money and resources to develop a camera, a system of film stock, and a means to mount the show. In 1891, they put in a patent for a Kinetoscope camera and the subsequent peepshow apparatus: Edison’s invention was to have a system by which a viewer put his or her eyes to a hole and saw whatever was on the filmstrip. It was movie, but it was Walkman movie as opposed to theatrical show.

By 1892, Dickson had established the “Black Maria” in West Orange, New Jersey—a crude film studio where he recorded scenes on film from Eastman. In 1894, Kinetoscope parlors were opening up, and doing very well. Dickson urged Edison to pursue some kind of projector—a light show for the masses. But Edison was unimpressed. He said that in all of America there would be no call for more than ten projectors. And then, the Lumières put on the first film show in Paris in 1895.

Of course, once he had been beaten, Edison caught up and tried to rewrite the rules. He began a lengthy campaign to take credit for the invention, and this would lead him into a key role in the Motion Picture Patents Company. Court judgments made clear his meagre achievement, but Edison wanted everything, and he had the means to nail it down. He became the first great imperialist of the picture business, the harbinger of American TV series playing in huts in Third World countries.

Years later, MGM sought to celebrate the inventor with two films,
Young Tom Edison
(40, Norman Taurog) and
Edison the Man
(40, Clarence Brown), in which Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy played the thankless part. If only Edison had had one atom of the great Mick’s fun!

Blake Edwards
, b. Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1922
1955:
Bring Your Smile Along
. 1956:
He Laughed Last
. 1957:
Mister Cory
. 1958:
This Happy Feeling; The Perfect Furlough
. 1959:
Operation Petticoat; High Time
. 1961:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. 1962:
Experiment in Terror/The Grip of Fear
. 1963:
Days of Wine and Roses
. 1964:
The Pink Panther; A Shot in the Dark
. 1965:
The Great Race
. 1966:
What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?
. 1967:
Gunn
. 1968:
The Party
. 1969:
Darling Lili
. 1971:
Wild Rovers
. 1972:
The Carey Treatment
. 1974:
The Tamarind Seed; The Return of the Pink Panther
. 1976:
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
. 1978:
The Revenge of the Pink Panther
. 1979:
10
. 1981:
S.O.B.
. 1982:
Victor/Victoria; Trail of the Pink Panther
. 1983:
Curse of the Pink Panther; The Man Who Loved Women
. 1984:
Micki and Maude
. 1986:
A Fine Mess; That’s Life
. 1987:
Blind Date
. 1988:
Sunset; Justin Case
(TV). 1989:
Skin Deep; Peter Gunn
(TV). 1991:
Switch
. 1993:
Son of the Pink Panther
.

Edwards was originally a writer and actor. As an actor, he appeared in
Ten Gentlemen from West Point
(42, Henry Hathaway);
Strangler of the Swamp
(45, Frank Wisbar);
Leather Gloves
(48, Richard Quine);
Panhandle
(48, Lesley Selander); and
Stampede
(49, Selander). He wrote the scripts for the two latter films, and for six Richard Quine films:
Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder
(52);
All Ashore
(53);
Cruisin’ Down the River
(53);
Drive a Crooked Road
(54);
My Sister Eileen
(55); and the effervescent
Operation Madball
(57).

Like so many of his generation, Edwards has not lived up to the promise of his first few movies. In his case, the loss is sharper because he seemed wittier and more perceptive than most. Above all, he had a good writer’s sense of character, dialogue, and construction, allied to an original, black-lacquer comedy.
Mister Cory
was an exceptional film and
Operation Petticoat
and
High Time
were tart comedies, with some of the extravagant fun of
Operation Madball
. But
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
, despite being Edwards’s best-looking film, was nervous of Capote’s original and now looks like one of the series of American films made of bitter chocolate but with soft centers.
Experiment in Terror
was frightening, but no more than an exercise.
Days of Wine and Roses
went much deeper; indeed, its pessimism got out of artistic control and showed a dark side that Edwards has otherwise concealed. Inevitably, one compares it with
The Lost Weekend:
Edwards’s is a more somber film, but it shares Wilder’s fatal inability to see his characters as much more than lines in a script. The tidy sense of character, as so often in American cinema, tends to make neat drama out of tragic material.

Since then, Edwards has gradually lost his way.
The Pink Panther
shows all his wit, but
A Shot in the Dark
and
The Party
only illustrate the undisciplined talents of Peter Sellers.
Gunn
was the cinema version of a TV series launched by Edwards;
The Great Race
is high farce, much longer than it should be, but full of good jokes that build gradually;
What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?
is an entertaining exposure of military stereotypes. Most distressing, however, is
Darling Lili
, starring Edwards’s second wife, Julie Andrews, and his most disastrous failure.
Wild Rovers
has a certain fatalistic charm, but the resort to a Western hinted at the way Edwards was running out of steam.
The Carey Treatment
lacked even the hopeless ambition of
Darling Lili
and seemed the work of a tired man.

He has worked occasionally as a writer on other people’s films:
The Notorious Landlady
(62, Quine);
Soldier in the Rain
(63, Ralph Nelson); and
Inspector Clouseau
(68, Bud Yorkin). Three more Panthers kept him working. What next—
The Pink Panther Born Free?

In fact, not even the death of Peter Sellers (in 1980) deterred Edwards: he pushed on with three more ghostly Panthers, the one from old Sellers footage, the next with young comedian Ted Wass as a replacement, and finally with Roberto Benigni as Clouseau Jr.

For the rest, Edwards has gone from the crazy satire of
S.O.B
. and the gender confusion of
Victor/Victoria
into the flat doldrums of modern comedy.
The Man Who Loved Women
has Burt Reynolds in a reworking of Truffaut’s film; several movies had star pairings that refused to get chemical—Dudley Moore and Amy Irving in
Micki and Maude;
Ted Danson and Howie Mandel in
A Fine Mess;
Kim Basinger and Bruce Willis in
Blind Date;
Willis and James Garner in
Sunset
. Worst of all, though, is Julie Andrews and Jack Lemmon in the insufferable
That’s Life
. Life should have sued.

In 1993, the combined decision of the Directors’ and the Writers’ Guilds gave the Preston Sturges Award to Edwards. There was something so macabre, inappropriate, and inevitable in that decision—somehow the decline of Hollywood had been encapsulated.

Atom Egoyan
, b. Cairo, Egypt, 1960
1984:
Next of Kin
. 1987:
Family Viewing
. 1989:
Speaking Parts
. 1991:
The Adjuster;
“En Passant,” a segment from
Montréal Vu Par…
. 1993:
Calendar
. 1994:
Exotica
. 1997:
The Sweet Hereafter
. 1999:
Felicia’s Journey
. 2000:
The Line
. 2001:
Diaspora
. 2002:
Ararat
. 2005:
Where the Truth Lies
. 2008:
Adoration
. 2009:
Chloe
.

Egoyan is a remarkable and admirable figure. Of Armenian descent, he was born in Egypt, where he lived for a few years as a child before moving to western Canada. To be a Canadian filmmaker is, in the words of a movie on which Egoyan assisted, to exist “in the shadow of Hollywood.” And there is no country of which the ordinary American is more dismissive than Canada. But Egoyan has not simply made a fruitful career there, he has impressed the outside world
—The Sweet Hereafter
, his best-known film but not necessarily his best, won an Oscar nomination for directing (it succumbed to James Cameron and
Titanic
). Yet he does not seem to have been swayed away from his own course, which is quiet, introspective, rather wistful, and very fond of that delicate area where the imagination becomes the spirit.