Tag: Breaking Away

Fade to Black (1980)

FADE TO BLACK

FADE TO BLACK (1980) ***

Vernon Zimmerman wrote and directed FADE TO BLACK, a horror film that shows the darkest side of an obsession with movies. Its main character, Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher), takes cinemania literally, as he kills his victims in the guise of his favorite movie characters. They include Dracula, the Mummy, and Hopalong Cassidy.

FADE TO BLACK reached theaters on October 14, 1980. Nearly two months later, disillusioned Beatles fan Mark David Chapman killed former Beatle member John Lennon outside his residence at the Dakota Apartments in New York City. Chapman shot Lennon four times in the back with a .38 special. Chapman stayed at the scene and read from J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” until the police arrived to arrest him. Chapman became fixated on “Catcher” protagonist Holden Caulfield, who loved to rail against “the phonies,” and Chapman surely considered Lennon a phony.

Eric is barely hanging on at the beginning of FADE TO BLACK. His wheelchair bound Aunt Stella (Eve Brent Ashe), who we later find out is actually his mother, nags at him; for example, her first lines are “Eric! Get up! Well, lookie here. Mister Smart Mouth fell asleep with his nose buried in the screen again! Your one-eyed monster is gonna soften your eyes, much less rot your brain! You spend all your time daydreaming and watching those silly movies on the TV and your projector.” Aunt Stella even blames Eric for her accident and her subsequent paralysis many years ago.

Had she ever seen KISS OF DEATH, she might not have been so hateful to the kid. Eric, though, seems to have a special affinity for Richard Widmark’s Tommy Udo, a precursor to Heath Ledger’s Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT. Udo’s the type of guy who thinks nothing of pushing an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs to her eventual demise.

Eric is a perpetual fuck up at his job at a film distributor’s warehouse and his boss Mr. Berger (Norman Burton), well, you know, he does what a good boss does in a horror movie built around revenge. Eric discovers Mr. Berger’s weakness, a weak heart that could stop ticking any time if Mr. Berger proved unable to reach his precious medication.

Co-workers Richie (Mickey Rourke) and Bart (Hennen Chambers), especially Richie, give Eric grief every chance they get.

One day, Eric spots Australian model and Marilyn Monroe lookalike Marilyn O’Connor (Linda Kerridge, in a sensational movie debut) eating in a cafe with her friend. Eric works up the courage to strike up a conversation with Marilyn and he asks her what movie Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell watched in THE SEVEN YEAR INCH. (I know this one. May I please answer? THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.) Eric asks Marilyn out to a movie that night and she says yes. He’s all excited, for a change, about something in the “real world.” …

Marilyn unintentionally stands up Eric, a prostitute treats him like shit, Stella smashes his film projector, and, yes, Eric loses his shit and for the rest of the picture, he seeks vengeance against those who he feels have wronged him.

Even a shady filmmaker named Gary Bially (Morgan Paull) crosses Eric by stealing his idea for a nifty low-budget film named ALABAMA AND THE FORTY THIEVES, which Eric says would be made in the early 1950s style of Samuel Fuller.

I’ve read in several places that FADE TO BLACK fails because Christopher gives a bad performance and/or Eric Binford proves to be such a detestable protagonist. Reviews mentioned that Christopher plays a character totally unlike his Dave Stoller in BREAKING AWAY, Christopher’s last big film before FADE TO BLACK.

An unhinged character like Eric Binford — especially since he loves imitating his favorite movie characters in both appearance and speech — allows the actor latitude to push a performance over-the-top and Christopher definitely pushes those limits for even somebody (like me, for example) who admires his performance in FADE TO BLACK.

I give Christopher a tremendous amount of slack after his breakout performance in BREAKING AWAY; he created one of the more lovable characters in cinematic history and I’ll always be grateful to Christopher for that.

Reviewers, though, apparently forgot Dave Stoller’s obsession with bicycling and everything Italian. Did they not remember “cutter” Dave pretending to be Italian exchange student Enrico Gimondi to impress and then date a cute Indiana University co-ed? Dave even renamed poor Jake the Cat “Fellini.”

Eric and Dave are not as different as reviewers have suggested. Eric just lived a tougher life right from the start and he was definitely not blessed with great friends and family like Dave Stoller. We could get into the whole “Nature vs. Nurture” discussion and when’s the last time a horror movie spurred on that.

What I especially liked about FADE TO BLACK is that it follows Eric’s descent into madness all the way to its inevitable conclusion — especially inevitable since Eric becomes Cody Jarrett from WHITE HEAT — and then it finishes in such a flourish atop legendary movie palace Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to make WHITE HEAT director Raoul Walsh and star Jimmy Cagney proud. “Made it Ma! Top of the world!”

Breaking Away (1979)

BREAKING AWAY

BREAKING AWAY (1979) Four stars

BREAKING AWAY is one of those films that makes me feel incredibly good inside and it belongs on a list with such films as ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, ROCKY, THE BLACK STALLION, CHARIOTS OF FIRE, HOOSIERS, and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION for being uplifting cinematic experiences of the highest order.

It would be enough that BREAKING AWAY ends on a high emotional note, but the film, written by Steve Tesich and directed by Peter Yates, gives us a half-dozen great characters who have left an indelible mark on so many viewers. I’ll discuss these characters far more than I will THE BIG RACE, because they are far more unique and special than a feel good finish that has unfortunately become an industry standard over the decades.

We shall begin with our four main protagonists, Dave (Dennis Christopher), Mike (Dennis Quaid), Cyril (Daniel Stern), and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley). They are 19 years old and going nowhere fast. They have decided to waste away their lives together and not work or go to college. They are derogatorily known as “cutters” to Indiana University students in Bloomington, since they are the sons of the stone cutters that built the campus. BREAKING AWAY provides us a rare opportunity to hear working class sentiments expressed onscreen. This is also undoubtedly the best movie ever made in Bloomington, Indiana.

All four protagonists, as well as both of Dave’s parents, are developed and sharply delineated. They are as real as the people in our lives.

Dave becomes obsessed with all things Italian, especially cycling and Team Cinzano. Dave takes his obsession so far that the family cat Jake has been renamed Fellini, Dave speaks Italian and plays opera records, he shaves his legs, he wants his parents to have another child because Italians have big families, and he pretends to be an Italian exchange student named Enrico Gimondi to impress a cute coed because he feels that just regular old Dave Stoller won’t cut it with this beauty. Dave drives his parents up a wall, especially his former stone cutter and current used car salesman father; “I want some American food, dammit! I want French fries!” We’ll return to the father soon.

Mike and Cyril both discuss their former athletic careers, Mike football and Cyril basketball.

“You know, I used to think I was a really great quarterback in high school,” Mike said as the contemporary Hoosiers practiced in front of our protagonists at Memorial Stadium. “I still think so too. Can’t even bring myself to light a cigarette, cause I keep thinkin’ I gotta stay in shape. You know what really gets me though? I mean, here I am, I gotta live in this stinkin’ town and I gotta read in the newspapers about some hot shot kid, new star of the college team. Every year it’s gonna be a new one. And every year it’s never gonna be me. I’m just gonna be Mike. Twenty-year-old Mike. Thirty-year-old Mike. Old mean old man Mike.”

Cyril bemoans the fact that his athlete’s foot and jock itch have gone away. “I was sure I was going to get that scholarship. My dad, of course, was sure I wasn’t. When I didn’t, he was real understanding, you know. He loves to do that. He loves to be understanding when I fail.”

Moocher predates Marty McFly, only Moocher hates being called “shorty.” He gives a sound explanation for being short in stature, “It’s my metabolism. I eat three times a day and my metabolism eats five times a day.”

We mentioned Dave’s father earlier and he’s the best character in BREAKING AWAY. Paul Dooley should have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1980, but he was not even nominated for his performance as Dad. Barbara Barrie, who played Mom, did get nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

Please just take an opportunity and think in this moment about how often we see a positive father on film. We’ve seen so many deadbeat dads, absentee fathers, child abusers, goofballs from another planet, etc., that it almost seems like a miracle when we see a more positive portrayal of a movie father. It should not be that way.

Dave exasperates his father in ways that older teenagers and young adults have so often throughout history and then in a way unique to Dave with his Italian obsession. In the long run, though, father loves son and vice versa, most evident in a great scene when father and son take a walk and talk about how they really feel.

“I was proud of my work,” Father tells Son. “And the buildings went up. When they were finished, the damnedest thing happened. It was like the buildings were too good for us. Nobody told us that. It just felt uncomfortable, that’s all.”

After conflict between cutters and campus kids escalates and spills over into a fight in the student union, IU officials determine the cutters are allowed to enter a team in the Little 500 bicycle race. They become “The Cutters.”

IU graduate Tesich based his Academy Award winning screenplay on real people and real events: Dave Stoller takes root from Dave Blase, Tesich’s fraternity brother and Little 500 teammate who put together 139 of the 200 laps (a record) for the winning Phi Kappa Psi team in 1962. Blase also inspired Stoller’s love of everything Italian.

British director Yates (1929-2011) made a large claim of his fame on directing BULLITT, that 1968 Steve McQueen vehicle with the legendary car chase in San Francisco. The bicycle race that ends BREAKING AWAY, it’s every bit as thrilling as the chase in BULLITT. BREAKING AWAY is the better movie.

In closing, I leave BREAKING AWAY a little note.

Adoro BREAKING AWAY ed è una mossa speciale perché solleva gli spiriti e mi fa venire voglia di parlare una lingua straniera con il mio gatto.