True Crime reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

True Crime Is No Crime, But the Academy Awards…

Putting together my review of True Crime, produced by, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, I headed for the Internet Movie Data Base. I sacrificed a chicken, thought noble thoughts, made sure my feet were dry, and asked the IMDB oracle, "Just what has the triple-hatted Mr. Eastwood been up to?" When my printer finally took a breath, I found six pages of categorized filmography. As an actor he has graced sixty-five films stretching across six decades, beginning in 1955 (with three uncredited roles and a role in one of the Francis the Talking Mule films), ending, for now at least, with Space Cowboys, scheduled for 2000. He has directed twenty-three films (beginning with Play Misty for Me in 1971), produced seventeen, composed (yes, composed!) for five—and has had miscellaneous crew, writer, and television duties.

In case it is news to anyone, and it shouldn’t be since Unforgiven (1992), Clint Eastwood has grown up. He’s not "Dirty Harry" Callahan anymore, and a film with Clint Eastwood is not necessarily "a Clint Eastwood movie." In True Crime the scrawny almost septuagenarian (born May 31, 1930, sharing his birthday with Joe Namath and Brooke Shields—which you can probably only find at the IMDB… or here) plays a recovering alcoholic, a sex addict who is definitely not recovering, a down and almost out reporter who stakes his career on his "nose" for a story. This particular story involves a young man (Isaiah Washington) about to be executed for a convenience store murder.

In the first few minutes of the film, the two men are connected, if only because each is associated with (if not guilty of) the death of a young woman. Otherwise, the two are as different as black and white, as they literally are. Eastwood’s reporter drifts from woman to woman, paying little attention to his wife (Diane Venora) and daughter at home. Washington’s murderer, also with a wife (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and a daughter, creates a cozy bit of domesticity in his final meeting with his family in a cell on death row.

There is not a lot of characterization to get in the way. Accepting Eastwood on his own authority, we say okay, he is such a bundle of contradictions—a reporter as likely to get fired for being drunk as for coming down on the wrong side of a controversial crime or for sleeping with the boss’s wife. It is not as easy to accept Washington’s resignation to execution, or the quiet resignation of the wives. (Why is it that quiet resignation seems to be the dominant character trait for women in film these days?)

The film moves at a lively clip, making two hours and some minutes speed by. There is a graphic grit to the inner city and prison settings that makes the moments of gentleness--a grandmother’s love, a prison guard’s kindness—all the more moving. The detached discussion of the "procedure" that the film builds to, almost as if a high school biology class is getting ready to dissect a frog, not as if an innocent man is about to be killed, makes the stark reality all the more horrible.

It all comes together, and it pretty much works. And, as I flip back through the various categories of Clint Eastwood’s involvement with films, that is what he does so much of and does so well: he works. He has made some distinctive contributions to the iconography of pop culture as well as to the development of American film. Perhaps more importantly, he can be counted on to deliver a couple hours of celluloid that we can count on to make the trip to and through the megaplex worth the effort.

And now, the envelope please. The Academy Awards have once more done their annual bit to combat insomnia. Take Whoopi Goldberg—please! The woman is a brilliant comic, but we don’t need her laughing at herself to remind us. The tuxedos (except for that thing worn by Nicholas Cage) were boring, the gowns not as extreme as we’ve come to expect. Only Jack Nicholson strolled out with a hand in a pocket. (Boo, hiss.) No, no, no, it was not the final Academy Awards presentation of the millenium, but as long as the ceremony dragged out, the point was moot. Having dished enough dirt, I’m ready to get to business.

I don’t like the Academy Awards. There is a certain kind of good film-making that has nothing to do with whether I, with my bundle of quirks, or you, with your exemplary normalcy, like the film or not. (I do not like Titanic, but I respect it as a superbly crafted work.) The past few months, as I’ve watched, studied, and talked about film more intensively than ever to produce these articles, I’ve become more and more convinced that there are core values that most of us, no matter "where we’re coming from," share in a darkened theater.

The Academy Awards have nothing to do with those values. Instead, the Academy Awards are based on four superficial p’s. The first is personality. No matter how deserving James Coburn may be for his supporting role in Affliction, there is a nagging suspicion that he won because he is a nice guy who has been around a long time without an Oscar on his shelf.

The second is placement. Shakespeare in Love and The Thin Red Line were released at the end of the year, the better to be fresh in the minds of critics, while the films of last summer, such as Saving Private Ryan and The Truman Show might as well have been hits in the time of the dinosaurs. Third is politics, which like personality is in Hollywood all too often a matter of sentimentality. And last, in alphabetical order only, is publicity—the get-down-and-dirty fighting and spending over and for awards.

Before the Awards ceremony, a friend jokingly suggested Roberto Benigni would pick up the Best Actor award (as he did, in surprising fact) based on this logic: Ian McKellen and Edward Norton could not win because of the subject matter of their films (homosexuality and right wing extremism) --politics. Tom Hanks wouldn’t win because of the kind of backlash Meryl Streep (who didn’t win this time either) has suffered--personality. Nick Nolte, for some reason, is one of those actors who at the Oscars, will always be a groomsman and never a groom—and I don’t have a clue why. Whether this is the logic of the Academy members, who knows? But, it seems that Benigni might have won by default, although he certainly deserved an award for his performance at the ceremony.

The ballyhooed but not much booed (at least at the ceremony) Lifetime Achievement Award to Elia Kazan came and went. I hope the controversy won’t die down, a tempest in a popcorn box. There are still people carrying all kinds of scars from that seemingly distant time in our history. As one of many commentators pointed out, an unexpected benefit of this award is that it has called attention to a lot of talented filmmakers who languished under the blacklist.

There was nothing like Titanic this year. The touted scrap between Will Shakespeare and Private Ryan broke down like this. Shakespeare pirouetted off with the award for Best Picture, while Ryan saved the Best Director award for Steven Spielberg. Shakespeare’s ladies, Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench, claimed the awards for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, while poor Ryan was left holding a faded pinup. Shakespeare claimed three arty awards, for Best Screen Play, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score. Ryan took home technical honors for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Sound, and Best Editing. The final score: Shakespeare, six; Ryan, five.

Two outstanding films stood out, but so what? What is the point of contrasting two such contrasting films? Films are not racehorses or prizefighters… or in the case of these two films, one is not a racehorse; the other is not a prizefighter. Shakespeare in Love is in many senses of the words a film of words, while Saving Private Ryan, typical of Spielberg’s work, is a celebration of why a movie is not a book. If you do want to know more about the Academy Awards, start at Academy Awards.

Well, we made it through another self-congratulatory orgy, and I’m not talking about another one of my articles. Kick back, dear readers, relax, and get your hopes up. Next week, you’ll read the work of a brilliant young Romanian, who wants to come to the United States to make films. Once you read his sequel to The Truman Show—and you’ll only read it here (for now, at least)—you may never go back to my writing again. So, while I can still say it to you, keep your feet dry and your heart full of noble thoughts.