In 1976, television was awfully brave to tackle Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter," the towering and authoritative book about the law and order side of the Manson murders (Bugliosi is the main character, not Manson). A book is one thing, because though it often reads like the most outlandish of fictional murder stories, a book gives the reader some distance. A movie is in-you-face, and this is only a few years after the events. There were still to be dramatic twists in the lives of those involved (not the least of which would be Manson's ever-frightening behavior at every hearing), but none of that matters. We're not discussing the Manson murders here, but the TV miniseries version of "Helter Skelter," those eerie words written in blood at one of the crime scenes (except it was misspelled there, but no matter).
There was a television remake in 2004 that took advantage of new information, but it's completely forgettable and beyond our scope here.
The movie actually begins with a warning that the story is true. In 1979, this was necessary. Thirty years or so later, it's to the Manson murders that every other murder in the country is compared. Everything is possible and everything is believable.
To that effect, I should say that it's nearly impossible to actually pick apart "Helter Skelter" as I so lovingly have done to so many other pieces, good and bad. The movie unravels like a documentary, with actual narration and huge chunks of the court testimony word-for-word from the court transcripts. There is very little attempt at characterization (except for one notable case) in order to make it all seem so realistic, which is awe-inspiring all by itself.
August 9, 1969. In the Los Angeles hills, screams and heard and gunshots fired, but no one quite knows what to report to the police. It's not until a maid discovers bodies that the police are called to a specific location. The bodies at Sharon's house are identified and a suspect is held, the only man on the property still alive, Willie Garreston (John Gries). The detective administering the lie detector note that Willie seems nervous. "Wouldn't you be?" Will understandably says. He doesn't actually remember anything. Another set of detectives are reminded of their case, which has similar clues left, but their suspect is in jail.
Two nights later, the LaBiancas are found, but the press declares that the two murders are unrelated and Willie is released. The reporters are told that the Tate murders were drug related, not so with the LaBiancas. Much of the police force is rather blase about the whole thing, seeing just two unrelated cases.
But, a week later, there is a raid on a ranch for an auto theft ring that turns up the Manson Family. Manson himself (Steve Railsback) is dug up from under the house and the rest of the now-familiar faces and their aliases are rounded up. Manson has aliases such as "Jesus Christ" and "God," but was famously born without a first name and took his last name from one of his mother's men. He's spent nearly half of his life in prison and he has a hypnotic effect on everyone. He even has them singing on the bus to jail.
On September 1, a boy finds a gun in his yard, and put into evidence. At the same time, the Manson Family is released, with no one at all suspecting them of murder. A sheriff investigating another case sends the LaBianca cops back to the ranch to talk to Shorty Shea (John Fain) because he might have some information linking everything. Unfortunately, Shorty is gone from the ranch. By the middle of October, two girls flag down a police car, running from Charles Manson, who had been arrested two days prior for arson, along with the whole gang. It's these two girls who know the details of the murders.
They first link Susan Atkins (Nancy Wolfe) to the Hindman murders and she tells them all the details, but refuses to commit her story to a recording. Why tell them? "For fun," she chirps. But, in prison, she's quite a chatterbox. "Everybody does what he says, even when he doesn't say," she tells a fellow inmate. "He's our father. He's our leader. He's our love. He's our teacher. He's everything," she continues and then confesses that "Charlie's Jesus Christ." She says she was the Hindman murderer, not an accomplice and then brazenly boasts that she was part of the Tate murders.
Three months after the murders, Vincent Bugliosi (George DiCenzo) is assigned to the case. He has a fantastic record of conviction, but there's a hitch. Because of a California law, the statements the defendants made against each other cannot be used. But, Vincent has Danny DeCarlo (Rudy Ramos) willing to "snitch" as long as Manson never finds out, and also if the DA drops certain charges against him.
Danny is taken to the ranch, in handcuffs as requested, to confront the Family members still there. Danny links the Buntline gun to Manson, not to mention a whole other slew of murders. "Shorty's buried around here somewhere, in nine different graves," he says, though he refuses to talk about the Tate murders. However, Susan is still telling her fellow prisoners about the murders, going into particularly graphic detail about killing Sharon Tate. "I loved her. In order to kill her, I was killing myself when I killed her," Susan says, delving into the warped brainwashing that Manson fed them. She also cops to the LaBianca murders and future murders that are being planned. Manson has them believing that killing people is actually a way of loving them, so Susan doesn't see anything wrong with what she's done.
Susan has told all of the details to Ronnie Howard (Sondra Blake), who tries to tell the cops at the prison everything she knows, but they don't believe her. So, she calls the homicide division. However, Bugliosi can't pin anything on Manson because the police can't find the gun (which is sitting in evidence), and because he technically did not kill anyone. They are holding him on the arson charge, but they can't hold him forever. There is even talk of giving Susan Atkins a deal to tell all. The other problem is there is no motive. However, that's just the point to Bugliosi: Manson brainwashed everyone to do it, so it's a conspiracy, it's not based on an actual motive. Good luck proving that one!
"Charlie's a Hitler nut," a DA from a neighboring county tells Bugliosi when he takes him to another ranch where the Family lived. Bugliosi is told about murders, orgies, all sorts of terrible behavior. Bugliosi is there hoping to find perhaps some clothes stolen from the LaBiancas or the shoe that left a heel print at the Tate crime scene. No luck. The place is such a mess that one detective says of the clothes, "they should be cleaned first and then burned!"
Bugliosi tracks down two of the female Manson Family murders who happily talk about Charlie, who is all about love. They don't seem like anything but hippies, though hippies who believe their cult leader is Jesus Christ. They can't say where they were on the nights of the murders because "there is no time, there's only love," and also because Charlie outlawed all sorts of clocks and calendars. Bugliosi needs to find a way to get Manson before he can escape, and Charlie knows it, giving Bugliosi a series of stares that are every bit as freaky as the real Manson (Railsback nails the role).
It's Danny who gives Bugliosi something of a motive, that if the Family killed "the pigs," by which he meant "the establishment," and blame it on the blacks, a race war will start. That's as straight as Manson's thought process worked.
Next to be interrogated is Leslie Van Houten (Cathey Paine). She claims not to be at the murder scene, but knows there were only four people there, none being Manson, but Leslie is freaked when she hears one of the Family members died "playing Russian roulette," and doesn't tell them much. The info does lead to the arrests of Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian. Watson's fingerprint is found at the Tate residence, the first actual piece of evidence they have.
By December, Linda Kasabian (Marilyn Burns) turns herself in. Susan testifies to the Grand Jury about Manson, going on about her love for him, but stops short of ever actually holding him responsible for anything. She admits to be "programmed." "The words coming from Charlie's mouth did not come from inside him. They come from the 'infinite,'" she tells the the court, completely convinced of everything she's saying. Discussing the night of the murders, she opens says that they were told to go to the Melcher residence (which Tate was renting), take money and kill anyone there. In a flat voice, she tells of how Linda stayed outside while Tex Watson did all the killing. She confesses to writing "pig" on the door with Sharon's blood, but not that she actually killed anyone. "I went the car down and went to bed. I made love to someone...maybe I imagined it," she says about how she ended the night of the Tate murders.
Still on the stand, Susan talks about the LaBianca murders, but this time she slips and says Charlie went with them to the house. Her retelling of the LaBianca murders is even more mundane, explaining what "helter skelter" meant to Charlie. Susan's story is fascinating, but "it just makes a tough trial tougher." Indictments are given against Leslie, Susan, Tex, Patricia, Linda and Manson himself, though the case isn't much. Bugliosi can't use Susan's grand jury testimony in this case, so he really needs more evidence, especially to "nail the little bastard." "With what we've got right now, the judge is likely to throw out the case before we even get to trial," Bugliosi tells a detective before the first hearing. However, the judge grants a continuance and the girls taunt "Mr. BuGliosi" about Manson's speaking to them through the airwaves.
It doesn't get creepier than the scene where Manson is brought into court for a pre-trial hearing and Bugliosi's infallible watch stops. Manson laughs, bug-eyed and content.
As the case is starting in court, it's not the police who crack the case, but first the news, who follow the path laid out by Susan Atkins and find the clothing she discussed discarding. The man who turned in the gun found by his son, is convinced that the gun was the one used at the Tate murders, but the police refuse to even listen to him. It's not until he calls the news that the gun is found ignored in police custody. Forensic tests show it's the one used at the Tate murders. "We could have had that gun months ago!" Bugliosi rails, but the police are just as quick to blame the DA. They still have to tie the gun to Manson himself.
Speaking of that little pipsqueak, he gets to testify, asking to be his own attorney and delivering speeches without blinking, the only person in the entire 1970s decade to do so without illegal narcotics. The only two people who can be tied forensically to the murders, Tex and Patricia, cannot be used because they are in other states who will not extradite them. Bugliosi tricks Manson by pretending their case is ready, but Manson says he's not and thus another continuance is granted, helpful to the prosecution.
Linda Kasabian wants a deal, but Bugliosi refuses, because they have one with Atkins. Things keep going in circles, with Charlie all but untouchable. "Where is the missing link?" Bugliosi is asked, meaning the motive. Bugliosi is sticking to the whole idea of the race war.
Finally, Paul Watkins (Jason Ronard), a former Family member, decides to talk about all he knows. He gives up The Beatles, The Bible, not to mention the orgies and the brainwashing. Paul is able to translate all of Revelations into Charlie-speak. It's quite a conversation and it does finally nail down the race war that he so desperately wanted. The explanation is inexplicably complicated and utterly ridiculous, but no one has been able to figure out Manson since 1979, so it doesn't have to make sense to anyone at any point. We only need to know at this point in the movie that Manson brainwashed a lot of lonely people who believed it.
More good news. Susan Atkins says her Grand Jury testimony was false and refuses to testify. So, they can make a deal with Linda Kasabian. If she testifies honestly, they will petition to have the charges against her dropped. "I just want to get it all out of my mind," she tells them as to why she will testify.
But, Manson continues to make a mockery of the pre-trial hearings. He pretends he's Jesus on the cross, causing his followers to howel. He forces the judge to resign, and he still wants to represent himself. He finally relents on the latter, having a lawyer assigned.
When the trial begins, the Manson Family members sings gleefully outside the courthouse and the DA finds a way to bar them from the courtroom itself, deeming them all potential witnesses, who by law cannot be in the courtroom while other witnesses are testifying. Thus, Manson's ability to play to the crowd is limited to just his co-defendants. As Bugliosi dives into his opening statement, Manson clowns around to giggles from his girls. The defense attorney objects to Linda Kasabian's testimony on the grounds that she's insane, having "taken LSD over 300 times." But, the defense loses and she's allowed to testify. Her testimony, many times interrupted, certainly speaks to Manson's ability to control his followers, especially a harrowing group rape of a young girl. She claims he told them, "if you are willing to be killed, then you should be willing to kill" and they all believed it. Then it's onto "helter skelter" and his desire to start the race war, just the night before the Tate murders. As she gets to the night of the murders, Manson slowly makes a notion of cutting his throat, scaring Linda, but she plugs on.
Linda is able to identify the gun used and explains how she, the other girls and Tex carried out the Tate murders (Manson was not present at those murders, that fact is indisputable by this point). During the Tate murders, Linda was waiting by the car. She heard the screams and sees some of the victims bloody and dying.
On the following night, Manson himself was present at the murder scene, at least initially. "He said last night was too messy and this time he was going to show us how to do it," Linda claims. He and Linda left before the murders were committed. The defense gets its chance to dissect Linda's testimony, after a headline about Nixon declaring Manson guilty is seen by the jurors, almost causing a mistrial (luckily, the jurors all say they are not biased by the headline, which Manson brought into the courtroom).
Manson and the girls don't help themselves by their behavior. The girls chant in unison and Manson flings himself at the judge, who says he would have "defended himself" if Manson had gotten closer. The judge tosses the chance at another mistrial and the prosecution rests. But so does the defense. The girls want to testify, but only to absolve Charlie of anything. So, the tactic is to keep them from testifying. The judge says they have a right to testify, so he voids the resting of the defense.
Charlie wants to make a statement, and the judge allows it, though without the jury present. Here is Railsback's chance to shine, playing one of the greatest villains of the 20th Century. And he doesn't disappoint. His few moments of testimony as Manson, not to mention his other shennanigans, void his performance in the miniseries remake of "From Here to Eternity," where is idea of acting simply staying awake. Manson's speech almost makes sense, blaming society for keeping him an ignorant worthless human, but the crazy part of him, not to mention those eyes, is more evident. Whether or not he believed anything he preached will forever be up for debate, but what he preached was certainly unique, and obviously a lot of people believed it.
The defendants misbehave so badly that the judge orders them removed from the court for the duration, though they listen in a nearby room where no one can hear their outbursts. It's finally time for the closing arguments, where of course Bugliosi shines (this is his story after all, and everything possible is done to make the defense attorneys seem like a gang of idiots), giving a speech so fulfilling he could have won an election right there on the spot (though calling him "not Charles Manson but Charles Con-man" is a groaner).
Finally, it's time for the verdict. Seventeen months after the murders, the defendants are of course found guilty of first degree murder as well as conspiracy to commit murder. Then comes the penalty phase, there the defense hopes the girls, now sporting the same X etching on their foreheads as Charlie, will feel some remorse. They don't. Manson tells Bugliosi, "if I get the death penalty, there will be a lot of bloodletting," now sporting a shaved head. His outburts are increasingly desperate and all of them (sporting shaved heads) are sentences to death.
One scene that may have been somewhat imagined or, at the very least extended, is when Manson asks to speak to Bugliosi in the courtroom, only a few people around. He says Bugliosi gave him "a fair trial" and he's thrilled to be back in prison, the best home he's ever had. Plus, he gets "steady chow" and "can play his guitar." "I don't need broads, there plenty of sex in prison," he even chirps. "I almost pulled it off," he crows, but Bugliosi sticks a pin in that, telling Manson, "you're not even important anymore," that all he did was commit a few murders. What could be more infuriating to an egomaniac than that?
Manson and the girls are spared the death penalty when California abolishes it, and all are eligible to apply for parole in 1978. It's only 1976, so the rest of the story cannot be told.
But isn't that enough? What a case!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Elvis (1979)
Only a handful of years after Elvis Presley's death, director John Carpenter and star Kurt Russell gave TV "Elvis," their first of many collaborations together. This is a very loving tribute to Elvis, apparently with the approval of his family, ending in 1969, rather than taking us to the bitter end. We'll leave that for the 2005 "Elvis" (and we'll get there, I promise). This one has Dick Clark as an executive producer, for crying out loud, so it's pretty gosh darn bubble gummy. It often borders on laughable idol worship, but at the time, that made sense. In 1979, biopics were still meant to evoke warm memories. It would take Christina Crawford to shake-up the genre, but that's a few years in the future, so for now, settle in with a nice cup of cocoa, your favorite blanket and a cat or two. Here is "Elvis" the way we wanted to remember him in 1979.
Okay, okay, I know. "Bj, that sounded too simpering for a cynic like you." So, if you prefer, I'll put it this way: this version of Elvis is so whitewashed, it's as if his whole life is filmed with the Vaseline lens beloved by actresses of a certain age. If you cant see the flaws, they aren't there. Extrapolate the rest yourselves, my friends.
It's 1969, the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Elvis (Kurt Russell) is hiding out and there are death threats against him, though his father Vernon is handling that. He also has faithful Priscilla (Season Hubley), in whom he confides his fears that he's gotten old and might not be able to perform like he used to. As if Elvis isn't worried enough, TV news is there to scare him, asking aloud if he is still able to hack it. Elvis can't do much about his personal feelings, but he he can shut off the TV...with a gunshot.
Being a television piece about a real-life person, the prologue inevitably leads us back to the past, to 1945 when Elvis is just a boy strumming a guitar. Elvis' takes flowers and candy to his stillborn twin brother's grave. Local kids think he's a bu]it nuts, and he gets beaten up for it, but his mother Gladys (Shelley Winters, looking utterly ridiculous trying to hide her figure under a sweater and her hair under a wig), is very supportive. She tells him that "they say when one twin dies, well, then, the other one grows up with all the strength and good sense of both," before the family sits on the porch and sings hymns, in full harmony. It's the televised equivalent of cotton candy.
Teenage Elvis is awfully particular about his looks, primping in the school mirror while the other kids make fun of him, saying his hairdo makes him look "like a squirrel." As they try to chop it off, he's saved by Red West (Robert Gray), who scares the pack off (I think it's because Robert looks like a student who has been forced to stay behind for about 25 years). Elvis goes out under a tree and starts singing, which attracts a crowd of worshipful girls.
"The future is in electricity," Elvis' father (Kurt's real-life father Bing Russell) says right before the housing authority arrives and tells the family they are being evicted for making too much money (roughly $70 a month). "Ain't this family never gonna have no luck?" Shelley blubbers, literally puffing her face out to full volume to try to force tears to fall. Elvis is determined to help the family with its financial troubles by singing. Geez, maybe Mickey and Judy can help by putting on a show in the barn and singin' along to raise the money!
Cute blond Bonnie (Melody Anderson) loves Elvis' talent and wants him to do the school variety show, but he says he's "chicken." However, after Red's trumpet solo, just his sideburns could get a standing ovation. He sings a ballad about a dead dog to the kids, with Bonnie gazing steadfastly and the rest of the girls jumping up and down at the song's end. "They really liked me!" a shocked Elvis says before being sent out for an encore. Elvis loves the applause and as he and Bonnie sit talking by a lazy river, Elvis confesses the adulation, Bonnie and even the wildflowers "are making my heart go kind of funny." He says he wants to marry her and the two kiss in a very chaste fashion (more so as not to smear the incredible amount of make-up caked on both their faces). Those wildflowers are hornier than these two.
After graduating, Elvis wants to sing, and his parents both support it. Hell, even Bonnie supports him, "peculiar" though he dresses. He hangs around music stores listening to black men singing in his spare time, waiting until he has the $4 it takes for Sun Records to let you record your own album. Sitting in the waiting room, suspicious Marion (Ellen Travolta) keeps wanting to know which singer he sounds like, but of course we know he doesn't actually sound like anyone. Sun Records founder Sam Philips (Charles Cyphers) isn't so sure, thinking Elvis' guitar sounds like a drum. Oh, coincidentally, Sam needs a back-up singer who sounds black "to make some blues" and when Elvis is offered the gig, he's so excited, he forgets to hang up the phone on Marion, racing over as fast as he can. Singing to Ronnie McDowell's vocals, Kurt's Elvis neither sounds nor looks black, but that's just it, isn't it? Elvis was like no one else, blurring racial boundaries musically. Except the movie isn't brave enough to bring up the racial issue in more than a hurried sentence.
Elvis rushes off to the movies before his song is put on the radio for the first time, forcing his parents to chase him into the theater. You see, Mrs. Presley isn't particularly quiet (maybe she was in real life, but Shelley Winters whispers like hail on aluminum siding), and Elvis has to miss the rest of the movie to avoid the "ssshhhh" sounds from the audience.
And with his song on the radio, Elvis is a small-time hit. The girls at the little gigs he plays go wild over his sound, his look and of course his gyrations. As film Elvises go, Kurt Russell is as good as they get. Having worked with Elvis as a kid, he must have studied him, because he has the moves down pat. In a full face of Max Factor (with an umbrella to protect it from the rain), Elvis, Red and the boys go off to Nashville to audition at The Grand Ole Opry. At first, no one can believe this kid and his back-up goofs are the ones on the record, but the sound is undeniable once he starts up. However, the Opry isn't interested and Elvis throws a (rather polite backstage) fit. His effect on kids is hypnotic. He sings and they go wild. Hell, he curls his lip and they go wild. Red has to pull him from the stage or the girls will tear him apart. Just not at the Opry.
After one gig, Elvis is punched out by a male who is not an admirer and the gang hits the gas going after him (with tricked up hillbilly music making the scene play like silent movie footage), Mrs. Presley waking up just as it's happening, knowing something is wrong (though Shelley's look could be read as gas). During the chase, the car overheats and the guys almost lose their luggage and instruments as the car burns. "Those guys out there, they are always mad at me," he tells Red, who reminds a still-naive Elvis that these punks are just jealous because their girlfriends react so strongly to him. Elvis calls his mother, who relates her dream to him, just as it happened in real life, and then tells him Bonnie has found "another beau." As the sun sets and the guys are stuck at a gas station, this is one of those scenes meant to evoke tears. I'll be the heavy here: Bonnie wasn't waitin' around for Elvis forever. She's a young lady with needs! Okay, back to the purity of the fantasy...
Enter the villain, or hero, or whatever people consider him from decade to decade, Col. Tom Parker (Pat Hingle). Puffing on a stogie, he's convinced to watch Elvis perform and he certainly knows a cash cow when he sees one. "Son, in 29 years of show business, I've never seen anybody do what you did tonight," he tells Elvis. What does Elvis do with his new money? He buys his mother a big fancy car. "I don't even know how to drive!" she roars, looking like she's about to re-suffer her "Poseidon Adventure" heart attack. He's making $2000 a week now, and he spends it all on his mother, with the car and jewels, not to mention wigs and make-up.
Col. Parker picks the very moment when Elvis his making his mother happiest to lower the boom that he's sold the Sun Records contract to RCA. Sam and Marion are less upset than Elvis, because they stand to make a fortune, but Elvis feels loyal to the people who got him started. No bitterness, just hands squeezed. Come on, that's not even HALF believable! Over at RCA, Elvis records "Heartbreak Hotel," but he has problems recording it and then collapses during a concert from exhaustion. Hee refuses to rest because he's doing it all for his parents. "I'm gonna be an actor in the movies," he tells his mother from a hospital bed.
He's not a natural in front of the camera, slouching and basically just being the hick he is. His parents are there to support him, but he's more dazzled by actor Nick Adams, who has worked with his idol James Dean (or more, if you read some books). "Mrs. Presley, the director can be replaced, Elvis can't," Col. Parker says when Mrs. Presley notes that the director is being tough on Elvis. Was that a hint of sarcasm in "Elvis?"
But enough of that, it's time for the Ed Sullivan Show. "Remember, above the waist," the men in the booth say as Elvis starts singing, but the audience goes hog wild. This defining moment in 20th Century pop culture cannot ever be equalled by any imitator, and especially on a strangely cheap looking set, but Kurt's imitation holds very solidly and the time is kept to a minimum to avoid too much comparison.
The media is rough on Elvis, calling him a "sausage" and saying his moves are vulgar, but he only wants the approval of his parents. So, he buys them Graceland, where his mother feeds chickens on the front lawn. "Mama decorated everything," he shows off, telling his parents that they can invite the whole Presley clan to live there. But, there is a "price of fame," in that he has no privacy, so he has to buy out movie theaters or arcades for a whole night in order to just have fun with Natalie Wood and his posse.
Mrs. Presley, lording it up in Graceland, thinks Elvis should retire, just settle down and be normal. "He could open up one of those spare rib restaurants," she clucks after wondering if Elvis minds her weight gain. Wait, whose dream are we living? These two scenes together are supposed to show us that all is not perfect for Elvis Presley, but it's done so tamely that it still seems like an ideal way to live. And Shelley just wants ribs, admit it.
Elvis colors his hair jet black for Christmas (or to go in the Army or whatever), but his focus is still on his mother, who is now sporting enough make-up for three actresses. She doesn't know what to do with herself in her opulent surroundings and she is worried about the whole Army thing. "It's peacetime," he tells her, then scooting off in a red silk shirt to downtown Memphis with his friends. He watches his mother take a pill. Uh oh. That's never good.
In 1958, Elvis did indeed go into the Army (if you missed that biographical point, just watch "Bye Bye Birdie"), having his hair cut for real. He tells Col. Parker that he's worried he'll lose his status by not working for two years. "You are a phenomenon!" Col. Parker tells him. Parker has it all figured it, having stocked up on Elvis movies and songs so his fans will never notice he's gone. "I consider it my patriotic duty to keep you in the 90th percentile tax bracket," he cracks to Elvis. Mrs. Presley moves to a trailer on base to cook for her boy, but she keeps having spells. She can't seem to remember that Elvis has told her he's being sent to Germany. The scary music swells up as Shelley swoons and is taken to the hospital, though all she can think of are the lights left on in the trailer. The movie so worships Elvis' adoration of his mother (it's 1979, just about the last year guys were allowed to love their mothers), but Shelley's over-the-top performance is so difficult to digest it makes the relationship silly rather than touching. She's in a hospital bed done up with a wig, lashes and make-up enough to hop out of bed and run for the Emmy podium just in case, though Shelley Winters' days of touching gold statuettes were loooooooong gone by this point. Thankfully, after an hour and a half, we're done with Shelley as Mrs. Presley dies from hepatitis (not offense to Mrs. Presley, who I'm sure was a lovely woman, but if the character hadn't died, history might have needed some reinvention to bump off Shelley).
Elvis goes off to Germany, where starts that karate chopping crap as graffiti on the wall says, "Elvis Uber Alles." Mr. Presley wants to get married again, but Elvis is such a loyal son, he's okay with it. He understands his father's loneliness. Twenty seconds later, Priscilla walks in the room and Elvis is smitten. Hell, she's the only person in his life with longer eye lashes than him! Elvis goes over to introduce himself, as if Elvis needs introduction, and the two hit it off immediately. He sits at the piano and plays for her, just for her. We get a montage of "nothing exists but us" footage, driving through the hills, having a picnic, swapping daffy powdered sugar dialogue.
Just because Shelley Winters has left the building doesn't mean she took all the kitsch with her. At a beer hall in Germany, the polka band invites Elvis up to perform, "Tutti Frutti" of all things. In his uniform, he can still do the moves, and the whole place, from the ancient extras done up to look like Von Trapp cast-offs to the ancient extras done up to look like beer hall furniture, claps along. Oh, but I should mention it takes a black piano player to make it all possible. Of course it does.
Elvis returns home from the Army to cry some more about his dead mother in the bedroom that hasn't been touched since she died. Back in civilian clothes, which mean a lot of silk and bedazzled belts, Elvis tries to get a model airplane to work. He goes to light a cigarette, and every member of his entourage holds up a lighter. "Thank you very much," he says for the first time in the movie. What any of this has to do with anything, I can't quite say. We seem to be filling time before the next big event in Elvis' life.
As he's playing the piano with all the cheer of an undertaker, Red asks him how he feels. "I feel alone. I feel like a prisoner," he complains. "I'm sorry," Red says with half a smile and then leaves Elvis to return to his dirges. Now we're going to extreme lengths to cover up Elvis' dark moods. What would be so wrong with a little tiny hissy fit? Instead, Elvis just plays the piano and croons, sounding like Perry Como on a really slow day.
Elvis calls Priscilla's father, a Captain in the Army, asking to let her come to Graceland. They will be chaperoned. Hell, even his grandmother (Meg Wyllie, who was playing old ladies even in 1979, nearly 25 years before her death in 2002) lives there. Of course Elvis gets Priscilla, but only if she stays in school. "Sometimes it's hard for me to think of you as a little girl," he tells her as he's dropping her off at Immaculate Conception. "Then don't," she says, a little too knowingly for the kid she is.
And get this one: in his next scene, performing on stage in one of his gold sequined get-ups, he's wearing a cross. That's how pure and untouched he is. His body is still moving in ways that make the girls faint, and at the end of a song, he rips off his tie and throws it to the ladies, who rip at each other for it. Some little girl doesn't grab it fast enough, so he has her brought up to the stage, where he places the cross around her neck! And the concert continues.
Want to love Elvis even more? He has nothing but hatred for Lee Harvey Oswald when he sees him on TV. What's next, beatification? Who didn't hate Lee Harvey Oswald? We need a scene for that?
Priscilla, still just a teenager, glides down the stairs in a gorgeous outfit, one that covers her nearly from head to toe, but Elvis is transfixed. None of the other party guests exist for them. "You wish they wouldn't do that...stop everything when we come in?" he asks her. He wants not to be special, "just go to Europe, be like a tourist and see the world." It's yet another "I want to be free" speech, the umpteenth of the past thirty minutes, and Priscilla listens contently, asking only two questions. The first comes near the onset of the quiet tirade, the Europe part, when she asks if he would take her with him. Yes, of course, he just wants the rest of the world to go away. And the second question? "Do you like my hair?" Does he ever! He's ga-ga for it because...sit down for this one...it's the same color as his mother's. This leads into more mama-lovin' and then he plants an open-mouthed kiss on Priscilla (but a tame open-mouthed kiss).
Elvis and Priscilla get married, but loyal Red isn't invited to the ceremony, only the reception. What the hell? He's been with Elvis since high school. Upstart crony Joe Espito (played by a young Joe Mantegna, whose name is misspelled in the credits) gets to go, so why not Red? I don't even see Granny, though Mr. Presley is there. Red is pissed as hell about it, so he waits until the whole gang is at...I hope you are still sitting...a roller skating rink to check Elvis against the wall and tel him how angry he is. Elvis says he had no idea who was at the wedding, that Col. Parker arranged it all.
"Hold me," Priscilla inevitably says as they are happily hugging in the garden when he's told it's time to zoom off to Hollywood. As he's grumbling his way through the shoot, Priscilla is at home practicing her ballet among the gilt-drenched surroundings. Take your pick as to which is cheesier: Elvis complaining that the movies aren't fun anymore while getting a pie in the face, or Priscilla twirling around the living room.
Neither scene has anything to do with the story because when Elvis returns from the shoot, it's Priscilla who gets to moan about being lonely. She doesn't get any time with Elvis anymore. Oh, right, the neglected wife bit. That's in every movie about a successful man, so if you didn't expect it shame on you. But, Elvis has a twist on it. You see, he has to spend time with the guys for a reason. "You see their wants. I have to look beyond their wants and see their needs." You can pause and read that again. I rewound the movie to hear it again, but trust me, it doesn't make any more sense the second time. If we were allowed to show anything but Elvis-as-The-Pope, we wouldn't need to invent drama. Literally. Elvis goes outside with a sandwich and in order to fire the whole gang, pretends one of the guys said something about him. You can rewind that too, but it won't do you any good this time either. Feeling bad a half-second later, Elvis offers the guy he fired a few hundred dollars. Why did he fire them all? "I don't know, I just did. Well go get 'em all back," he tells an underling who was out of earshot during the trumped-up dissolution of Team Elvis. In case you don't understand that the past for Elvis was better than the present, he ends this section by going into the garage and looking at the now-old car he bought for his mother with his first success.
Then he screens "Rebel Without a Cause," saying Dean's lines about not fitting in along with him, but Priscilla interrupts his cine-karaoke session to tell him she's pregnant. Elvis is now into his ludicrous plumage phase, at home in satin shirts and rhinestone everything, but he's so darn happy, he, his friends and even Priscilla sing cheery songs around the piano. Elvis spends a fortune on the baby that isn't even born yet, as both he and Priscilla agree that they want the baby to "have a normal life." How'd that turn out for ya, Lisa Marie?
Two hours and fifteen minutes into the movie, Elvis gets angry enough to smash a lamp. "What's happening to me?" he asks Priscilla. The anger was about the remixing of his songs. "It's my music. It ain't theirs, it's mine," he whines. Priscilla isn't much help, telling him to call Col. Parker, because Elvis' fears are beginning to run deeper, or at least less shallow. "I don't want to be 40 and up on some stage singing 'Heartbreak Hotel,'" he tells her. His crystal ball wasn't too good. He would be up there at 40 singing it, but with a whole new bag of trick! If he knew about the Liberace outfits, maybe he wouldn't be so scared. He may have been drunk the whole time, but the public ate it up!
Priscilla gives birth while Elvis is in the yard doing karate moves. Talking to his dead twin brother in the next scene, with a convenient storm raging outside, he stills feels "something is missing, you know? Somewhere deep inside me, there's an empty place." Quit the bitching! You have a hot wife, a gorgeous baby and a great career. I know, I've been asking for actual drama for over two hours, but now that we have it, it's unintelligible and, I might add, annoying. He just seems like a spoiled child.
He wakes Priscilla up in the middle of the night to read her some passage from a philosopher who said the dead (his brother, his mother) aren't really dead. "What are your running from?" she asks. "Why did everything in my life happen the way it did...ain't no such thing as coincidence," he responds, not that it answers her question. She tries to end the conversation in a very schoolmarmish manner, by telling him she would like to read the passage, at some time that isn't the middle of the night, before she is forced to understand it all.
Hiding out in Graceland, afraid of his shadow, Elvis is upset when Priscilla asks to bring a friend to the house. She wants her own friends. Makes sense. "I can't live in a bubble...I want to have my own friends, not hand-picked ones. Having my own life will not do anything to us," she sagely tells him. She's awfully smart, this Priscilla (which is proof that the real Priscilla approved this tripe). The argument, like all of their others, doesn't actually GO anywhere. It just happens, in a bubble, kind of like the life she's leading. To either work out her frustrations or try to understand the life Elvis lives, she goes to the karate room and smacks around the bag a bit, just for a few moments before...before nothing happens. We truly are just filling the movie with footage to meet the time requirement.
To that end, take a bathroom break while Elvis holds a jam session, complete with a black female quartet of back-up singers, more instruments on the soundtrack than are being played in the room and what seem like fits of apoplexy from Elvis, all in preparation for the Las Vegas gig. I say send the show to Vegas as is, because the cornball factor is off the charts. No, wait a minute, let's take it a step further...let's doll Elvis up in a velvet shirt and have him explain to Priscilla, who has just now been told about Vegas, about how much he needs his audience. You mean the audience that he's ignored for nearly a decade? "Nobody can mess with his music," he says. Ah, so it's to protect the music, not really please the people? Priscilla, of course, sees the lapse in common sense, and starts another fight. She feels like another old lady, like her life is slipping by, but Elvis insists on the tour. "I love you Elvis, but if anything happens to us, I can make it without you," strong girlfriend chirps to her man. But, let's temper her threat with a big hug. Another scene lost to syrup.
Elvis really only has one person to talk to: his wall. Or, his brother as he insists on addressing the wall. He wishes he could talk to his mother, go back in time, redo it all, blah, blah, blah. "If I make it in Las Vegas. If I can just get up on that stage and feel those people one more time, just one more time..." he whispers to the wall, I mean his brother, in another stalling moment of self-created drama. Here's the problem about writing a movie about a problem-free Elvis: when the problems actually arise, you can't feel sorry for the man. Live has been damn good and he's bitching and moaning for reasons that don't make sense. If we saw the warts-and-all Elvis, we would know not only was he a very insecure person, but, by this point in his life, nippin' the bottle more than now and then.
Back in 1969 in Vegas, we pick up where we left off: Elvis shooting the TV that had melodramatically suggested this was either "the beginning or the end of a great career." Even The Beatles, they tell us, are passe. But, Elvis decides to go on, tossing on a jumpsuit filled with shiny beads and buckles, defying the advice of his father and hangers-on that he does not go on. He calls Lisa Marie, promising to "come home soon" and cries buckets as the "2001: A Space Odyssey" music cues up loudly on stage. Pants flared, crotch barely contained, Elvis goes out and performs for the crowd. Now, Kurt Russell in 1979 certainly looked a whole lot healthier and sexier than Elvis in 1969, but it's understandable that this fluff would keep the thin Elvis flame alive, but more noticeable is the audience. Elvis performed in GIANT arenas in Las Vegas, but the set here is about as big as a junior high auditorium and it seems that all of Elvis' fans were 150 years old. I would be willing to accept middle age, but old? As in wheelchair-check-at-the-top-of-the-ramp old? Come on! We're simply repeating extras to save costs. Look closely and you'll see some of those wacky Germans from the beer hall.
Anyway, Elvis tears through two songs to a frantic audience and then as he goes into "Battle Hymn of the Republic," Kurt freezes. I say Kurt, because it's not the film, but only Kurt, who has to stand in a frozen pose for a really uncomfortably long time as we get the also-inevitable montage of past highlights, as if we haven't been watching the movie since the beginning. By the end, Kurt looks like he's going to pass out and I feel for him. Why not just freeze the film?
It's over. What happened to Priscilla? She went on to make pots of gold selling Elvis memorabilia, I guess, but the movie gives us no hint. What happened to Col. Parker? He stopped showing up around 1958 and never reappeared (perhaps Pat Hingle got a better gig and bolted while he could. Red? Mr. Presley? The movie just leaves us hanging. It doesn't even give one of those "Elvis Presley died from..." title cards that biopics usually toss in before credits. According to this movie, Elvis might actually still be performing on a stage in Vegas somewhere.
I know that by blasting apart the holes in "Elvis," I've spilled the truth for legions that Elvis' life was more substantial than his beloved marshmallow. I know that no Elvis Fan Club will be sending me birthday presents (and let's not even guess what the Shelley Winters Fan Club people must think of me) this year, but if you base your knowledge on Elvis on this miniseries, then go on believing he's still alive. That belief is as much rooted in reality as this production. I will admit that Kurt Russell gives one hell of a performance, a towering achievement in a movie that doesn't ask him to do anything but an imitation of The King. I can also surmise that this movie is played on permanent loop in Priscilla's mansion, because she's actually the heroine somehow. Other than that, I can only recommend any other Elvis film but this one, even one of Elvis' actual movies, which are a heady lot. As I promised at the start, when we get to the 2005 version, things will have much improved (and by that, I mean honesty will surface).
Okay, okay, I know. "Bj, that sounded too simpering for a cynic like you." So, if you prefer, I'll put it this way: this version of Elvis is so whitewashed, it's as if his whole life is filmed with the Vaseline lens beloved by actresses of a certain age. If you cant see the flaws, they aren't there. Extrapolate the rest yourselves, my friends.
It's 1969, the International Hotel in Las Vegas. Elvis (Kurt Russell) is hiding out and there are death threats against him, though his father Vernon is handling that. He also has faithful Priscilla (Season Hubley), in whom he confides his fears that he's gotten old and might not be able to perform like he used to. As if Elvis isn't worried enough, TV news is there to scare him, asking aloud if he is still able to hack it. Elvis can't do much about his personal feelings, but he he can shut off the TV...with a gunshot.
Being a television piece about a real-life person, the prologue inevitably leads us back to the past, to 1945 when Elvis is just a boy strumming a guitar. Elvis' takes flowers and candy to his stillborn twin brother's grave. Local kids think he's a bu]it nuts, and he gets beaten up for it, but his mother Gladys (Shelley Winters, looking utterly ridiculous trying to hide her figure under a sweater and her hair under a wig), is very supportive. She tells him that "they say when one twin dies, well, then, the other one grows up with all the strength and good sense of both," before the family sits on the porch and sings hymns, in full harmony. It's the televised equivalent of cotton candy.
Teenage Elvis is awfully particular about his looks, primping in the school mirror while the other kids make fun of him, saying his hairdo makes him look "like a squirrel." As they try to chop it off, he's saved by Red West (Robert Gray), who scares the pack off (I think it's because Robert looks like a student who has been forced to stay behind for about 25 years). Elvis goes out under a tree and starts singing, which attracts a crowd of worshipful girls.
"The future is in electricity," Elvis' father (Kurt's real-life father Bing Russell) says right before the housing authority arrives and tells the family they are being evicted for making too much money (roughly $70 a month). "Ain't this family never gonna have no luck?" Shelley blubbers, literally puffing her face out to full volume to try to force tears to fall. Elvis is determined to help the family with its financial troubles by singing. Geez, maybe Mickey and Judy can help by putting on a show in the barn and singin' along to raise the money!
Cute blond Bonnie (Melody Anderson) loves Elvis' talent and wants him to do the school variety show, but he says he's "chicken." However, after Red's trumpet solo, just his sideburns could get a standing ovation. He sings a ballad about a dead dog to the kids, with Bonnie gazing steadfastly and the rest of the girls jumping up and down at the song's end. "They really liked me!" a shocked Elvis says before being sent out for an encore. Elvis loves the applause and as he and Bonnie sit talking by a lazy river, Elvis confesses the adulation, Bonnie and even the wildflowers "are making my heart go kind of funny." He says he wants to marry her and the two kiss in a very chaste fashion (more so as not to smear the incredible amount of make-up caked on both their faces). Those wildflowers are hornier than these two.
After graduating, Elvis wants to sing, and his parents both support it. Hell, even Bonnie supports him, "peculiar" though he dresses. He hangs around music stores listening to black men singing in his spare time, waiting until he has the $4 it takes for Sun Records to let you record your own album. Sitting in the waiting room, suspicious Marion (Ellen Travolta) keeps wanting to know which singer he sounds like, but of course we know he doesn't actually sound like anyone. Sun Records founder Sam Philips (Charles Cyphers) isn't so sure, thinking Elvis' guitar sounds like a drum. Oh, coincidentally, Sam needs a back-up singer who sounds black "to make some blues" and when Elvis is offered the gig, he's so excited, he forgets to hang up the phone on Marion, racing over as fast as he can. Singing to Ronnie McDowell's vocals, Kurt's Elvis neither sounds nor looks black, but that's just it, isn't it? Elvis was like no one else, blurring racial boundaries musically. Except the movie isn't brave enough to bring up the racial issue in more than a hurried sentence.
Elvis rushes off to the movies before his song is put on the radio for the first time, forcing his parents to chase him into the theater. You see, Mrs. Presley isn't particularly quiet (maybe she was in real life, but Shelley Winters whispers like hail on aluminum siding), and Elvis has to miss the rest of the movie to avoid the "ssshhhh" sounds from the audience.
And with his song on the radio, Elvis is a small-time hit. The girls at the little gigs he plays go wild over his sound, his look and of course his gyrations. As film Elvises go, Kurt Russell is as good as they get. Having worked with Elvis as a kid, he must have studied him, because he has the moves down pat. In a full face of Max Factor (with an umbrella to protect it from the rain), Elvis, Red and the boys go off to Nashville to audition at The Grand Ole Opry. At first, no one can believe this kid and his back-up goofs are the ones on the record, but the sound is undeniable once he starts up. However, the Opry isn't interested and Elvis throws a (rather polite backstage) fit. His effect on kids is hypnotic. He sings and they go wild. Hell, he curls his lip and they go wild. Red has to pull him from the stage or the girls will tear him apart. Just not at the Opry.
After one gig, Elvis is punched out by a male who is not an admirer and the gang hits the gas going after him (with tricked up hillbilly music making the scene play like silent movie footage), Mrs. Presley waking up just as it's happening, knowing something is wrong (though Shelley's look could be read as gas). During the chase, the car overheats and the guys almost lose their luggage and instruments as the car burns. "Those guys out there, they are always mad at me," he tells Red, who reminds a still-naive Elvis that these punks are just jealous because their girlfriends react so strongly to him. Elvis calls his mother, who relates her dream to him, just as it happened in real life, and then tells him Bonnie has found "another beau." As the sun sets and the guys are stuck at a gas station, this is one of those scenes meant to evoke tears. I'll be the heavy here: Bonnie wasn't waitin' around for Elvis forever. She's a young lady with needs! Okay, back to the purity of the fantasy...
Enter the villain, or hero, or whatever people consider him from decade to decade, Col. Tom Parker (Pat Hingle). Puffing on a stogie, he's convinced to watch Elvis perform and he certainly knows a cash cow when he sees one. "Son, in 29 years of show business, I've never seen anybody do what you did tonight," he tells Elvis. What does Elvis do with his new money? He buys his mother a big fancy car. "I don't even know how to drive!" she roars, looking like she's about to re-suffer her "Poseidon Adventure" heart attack. He's making $2000 a week now, and he spends it all on his mother, with the car and jewels, not to mention wigs and make-up.
Col. Parker picks the very moment when Elvis his making his mother happiest to lower the boom that he's sold the Sun Records contract to RCA. Sam and Marion are less upset than Elvis, because they stand to make a fortune, but Elvis feels loyal to the people who got him started. No bitterness, just hands squeezed. Come on, that's not even HALF believable! Over at RCA, Elvis records "Heartbreak Hotel," but he has problems recording it and then collapses during a concert from exhaustion. Hee refuses to rest because he's doing it all for his parents. "I'm gonna be an actor in the movies," he tells his mother from a hospital bed.
He's not a natural in front of the camera, slouching and basically just being the hick he is. His parents are there to support him, but he's more dazzled by actor Nick Adams, who has worked with his idol James Dean (or more, if you read some books). "Mrs. Presley, the director can be replaced, Elvis can't," Col. Parker says when Mrs. Presley notes that the director is being tough on Elvis. Was that a hint of sarcasm in "Elvis?"
But enough of that, it's time for the Ed Sullivan Show. "Remember, above the waist," the men in the booth say as Elvis starts singing, but the audience goes hog wild. This defining moment in 20th Century pop culture cannot ever be equalled by any imitator, and especially on a strangely cheap looking set, but Kurt's imitation holds very solidly and the time is kept to a minimum to avoid too much comparison.
The media is rough on Elvis, calling him a "sausage" and saying his moves are vulgar, but he only wants the approval of his parents. So, he buys them Graceland, where his mother feeds chickens on the front lawn. "Mama decorated everything," he shows off, telling his parents that they can invite the whole Presley clan to live there. But, there is a "price of fame," in that he has no privacy, so he has to buy out movie theaters or arcades for a whole night in order to just have fun with Natalie Wood and his posse.
Mrs. Presley, lording it up in Graceland, thinks Elvis should retire, just settle down and be normal. "He could open up one of those spare rib restaurants," she clucks after wondering if Elvis minds her weight gain. Wait, whose dream are we living? These two scenes together are supposed to show us that all is not perfect for Elvis Presley, but it's done so tamely that it still seems like an ideal way to live. And Shelley just wants ribs, admit it.
Elvis colors his hair jet black for Christmas (or to go in the Army or whatever), but his focus is still on his mother, who is now sporting enough make-up for three actresses. She doesn't know what to do with herself in her opulent surroundings and she is worried about the whole Army thing. "It's peacetime," he tells her, then scooting off in a red silk shirt to downtown Memphis with his friends. He watches his mother take a pill. Uh oh. That's never good.
In 1958, Elvis did indeed go into the Army (if you missed that biographical point, just watch "Bye Bye Birdie"), having his hair cut for real. He tells Col. Parker that he's worried he'll lose his status by not working for two years. "You are a phenomenon!" Col. Parker tells him. Parker has it all figured it, having stocked up on Elvis movies and songs so his fans will never notice he's gone. "I consider it my patriotic duty to keep you in the 90th percentile tax bracket," he cracks to Elvis. Mrs. Presley moves to a trailer on base to cook for her boy, but she keeps having spells. She can't seem to remember that Elvis has told her he's being sent to Germany. The scary music swells up as Shelley swoons and is taken to the hospital, though all she can think of are the lights left on in the trailer. The movie so worships Elvis' adoration of his mother (it's 1979, just about the last year guys were allowed to love their mothers), but Shelley's over-the-top performance is so difficult to digest it makes the relationship silly rather than touching. She's in a hospital bed done up with a wig, lashes and make-up enough to hop out of bed and run for the Emmy podium just in case, though Shelley Winters' days of touching gold statuettes were loooooooong gone by this point. Thankfully, after an hour and a half, we're done with Shelley as Mrs. Presley dies from hepatitis (not offense to Mrs. Presley, who I'm sure was a lovely woman, but if the character hadn't died, history might have needed some reinvention to bump off Shelley).
Elvis goes off to Germany, where starts that karate chopping crap as graffiti on the wall says, "Elvis Uber Alles." Mr. Presley wants to get married again, but Elvis is such a loyal son, he's okay with it. He understands his father's loneliness. Twenty seconds later, Priscilla walks in the room and Elvis is smitten. Hell, she's the only person in his life with longer eye lashes than him! Elvis goes over to introduce himself, as if Elvis needs introduction, and the two hit it off immediately. He sits at the piano and plays for her, just for her. We get a montage of "nothing exists but us" footage, driving through the hills, having a picnic, swapping daffy powdered sugar dialogue.
Just because Shelley Winters has left the building doesn't mean she took all the kitsch with her. At a beer hall in Germany, the polka band invites Elvis up to perform, "Tutti Frutti" of all things. In his uniform, he can still do the moves, and the whole place, from the ancient extras done up to look like Von Trapp cast-offs to the ancient extras done up to look like beer hall furniture, claps along. Oh, but I should mention it takes a black piano player to make it all possible. Of course it does.
Elvis returns home from the Army to cry some more about his dead mother in the bedroom that hasn't been touched since she died. Back in civilian clothes, which mean a lot of silk and bedazzled belts, Elvis tries to get a model airplane to work. He goes to light a cigarette, and every member of his entourage holds up a lighter. "Thank you very much," he says for the first time in the movie. What any of this has to do with anything, I can't quite say. We seem to be filling time before the next big event in Elvis' life.
As he's playing the piano with all the cheer of an undertaker, Red asks him how he feels. "I feel alone. I feel like a prisoner," he complains. "I'm sorry," Red says with half a smile and then leaves Elvis to return to his dirges. Now we're going to extreme lengths to cover up Elvis' dark moods. What would be so wrong with a little tiny hissy fit? Instead, Elvis just plays the piano and croons, sounding like Perry Como on a really slow day.
Elvis calls Priscilla's father, a Captain in the Army, asking to let her come to Graceland. They will be chaperoned. Hell, even his grandmother (Meg Wyllie, who was playing old ladies even in 1979, nearly 25 years before her death in 2002) lives there. Of course Elvis gets Priscilla, but only if she stays in school. "Sometimes it's hard for me to think of you as a little girl," he tells her as he's dropping her off at Immaculate Conception. "Then don't," she says, a little too knowingly for the kid she is.
And get this one: in his next scene, performing on stage in one of his gold sequined get-ups, he's wearing a cross. That's how pure and untouched he is. His body is still moving in ways that make the girls faint, and at the end of a song, he rips off his tie and throws it to the ladies, who rip at each other for it. Some little girl doesn't grab it fast enough, so he has her brought up to the stage, where he places the cross around her neck! And the concert continues.
Want to love Elvis even more? He has nothing but hatred for Lee Harvey Oswald when he sees him on TV. What's next, beatification? Who didn't hate Lee Harvey Oswald? We need a scene for that?
Priscilla, still just a teenager, glides down the stairs in a gorgeous outfit, one that covers her nearly from head to toe, but Elvis is transfixed. None of the other party guests exist for them. "You wish they wouldn't do that...stop everything when we come in?" he asks her. He wants not to be special, "just go to Europe, be like a tourist and see the world." It's yet another "I want to be free" speech, the umpteenth of the past thirty minutes, and Priscilla listens contently, asking only two questions. The first comes near the onset of the quiet tirade, the Europe part, when she asks if he would take her with him. Yes, of course, he just wants the rest of the world to go away. And the second question? "Do you like my hair?" Does he ever! He's ga-ga for it because...sit down for this one...it's the same color as his mother's. This leads into more mama-lovin' and then he plants an open-mouthed kiss on Priscilla (but a tame open-mouthed kiss).
Elvis and Priscilla get married, but loyal Red isn't invited to the ceremony, only the reception. What the hell? He's been with Elvis since high school. Upstart crony Joe Espito (played by a young Joe Mantegna, whose name is misspelled in the credits) gets to go, so why not Red? I don't even see Granny, though Mr. Presley is there. Red is pissed as hell about it, so he waits until the whole gang is at...I hope you are still sitting...a roller skating rink to check Elvis against the wall and tel him how angry he is. Elvis says he had no idea who was at the wedding, that Col. Parker arranged it all.
"Hold me," Priscilla inevitably says as they are happily hugging in the garden when he's told it's time to zoom off to Hollywood. As he's grumbling his way through the shoot, Priscilla is at home practicing her ballet among the gilt-drenched surroundings. Take your pick as to which is cheesier: Elvis complaining that the movies aren't fun anymore while getting a pie in the face, or Priscilla twirling around the living room.
Neither scene has anything to do with the story because when Elvis returns from the shoot, it's Priscilla who gets to moan about being lonely. She doesn't get any time with Elvis anymore. Oh, right, the neglected wife bit. That's in every movie about a successful man, so if you didn't expect it shame on you. But, Elvis has a twist on it. You see, he has to spend time with the guys for a reason. "You see their wants. I have to look beyond their wants and see their needs." You can pause and read that again. I rewound the movie to hear it again, but trust me, it doesn't make any more sense the second time. If we were allowed to show anything but Elvis-as-The-Pope, we wouldn't need to invent drama. Literally. Elvis goes outside with a sandwich and in order to fire the whole gang, pretends one of the guys said something about him. You can rewind that too, but it won't do you any good this time either. Feeling bad a half-second later, Elvis offers the guy he fired a few hundred dollars. Why did he fire them all? "I don't know, I just did. Well go get 'em all back," he tells an underling who was out of earshot during the trumped-up dissolution of Team Elvis. In case you don't understand that the past for Elvis was better than the present, he ends this section by going into the garage and looking at the now-old car he bought for his mother with his first success.
Then he screens "Rebel Without a Cause," saying Dean's lines about not fitting in along with him, but Priscilla interrupts his cine-karaoke session to tell him she's pregnant. Elvis is now into his ludicrous plumage phase, at home in satin shirts and rhinestone everything, but he's so darn happy, he, his friends and even Priscilla sing cheery songs around the piano. Elvis spends a fortune on the baby that isn't even born yet, as both he and Priscilla agree that they want the baby to "have a normal life." How'd that turn out for ya, Lisa Marie?
Two hours and fifteen minutes into the movie, Elvis gets angry enough to smash a lamp. "What's happening to me?" he asks Priscilla. The anger was about the remixing of his songs. "It's my music. It ain't theirs, it's mine," he whines. Priscilla isn't much help, telling him to call Col. Parker, because Elvis' fears are beginning to run deeper, or at least less shallow. "I don't want to be 40 and up on some stage singing 'Heartbreak Hotel,'" he tells her. His crystal ball wasn't too good. He would be up there at 40 singing it, but with a whole new bag of trick! If he knew about the Liberace outfits, maybe he wouldn't be so scared. He may have been drunk the whole time, but the public ate it up!
Priscilla gives birth while Elvis is in the yard doing karate moves. Talking to his dead twin brother in the next scene, with a convenient storm raging outside, he stills feels "something is missing, you know? Somewhere deep inside me, there's an empty place." Quit the bitching! You have a hot wife, a gorgeous baby and a great career. I know, I've been asking for actual drama for over two hours, but now that we have it, it's unintelligible and, I might add, annoying. He just seems like a spoiled child.
He wakes Priscilla up in the middle of the night to read her some passage from a philosopher who said the dead (his brother, his mother) aren't really dead. "What are your running from?" she asks. "Why did everything in my life happen the way it did...ain't no such thing as coincidence," he responds, not that it answers her question. She tries to end the conversation in a very schoolmarmish manner, by telling him she would like to read the passage, at some time that isn't the middle of the night, before she is forced to understand it all.
Hiding out in Graceland, afraid of his shadow, Elvis is upset when Priscilla asks to bring a friend to the house. She wants her own friends. Makes sense. "I can't live in a bubble...I want to have my own friends, not hand-picked ones. Having my own life will not do anything to us," she sagely tells him. She's awfully smart, this Priscilla (which is proof that the real Priscilla approved this tripe). The argument, like all of their others, doesn't actually GO anywhere. It just happens, in a bubble, kind of like the life she's leading. To either work out her frustrations or try to understand the life Elvis lives, she goes to the karate room and smacks around the bag a bit, just for a few moments before...before nothing happens. We truly are just filling the movie with footage to meet the time requirement.
To that end, take a bathroom break while Elvis holds a jam session, complete with a black female quartet of back-up singers, more instruments on the soundtrack than are being played in the room and what seem like fits of apoplexy from Elvis, all in preparation for the Las Vegas gig. I say send the show to Vegas as is, because the cornball factor is off the charts. No, wait a minute, let's take it a step further...let's doll Elvis up in a velvet shirt and have him explain to Priscilla, who has just now been told about Vegas, about how much he needs his audience. You mean the audience that he's ignored for nearly a decade? "Nobody can mess with his music," he says. Ah, so it's to protect the music, not really please the people? Priscilla, of course, sees the lapse in common sense, and starts another fight. She feels like another old lady, like her life is slipping by, but Elvis insists on the tour. "I love you Elvis, but if anything happens to us, I can make it without you," strong girlfriend chirps to her man. But, let's temper her threat with a big hug. Another scene lost to syrup.
Elvis really only has one person to talk to: his wall. Or, his brother as he insists on addressing the wall. He wishes he could talk to his mother, go back in time, redo it all, blah, blah, blah. "If I make it in Las Vegas. If I can just get up on that stage and feel those people one more time, just one more time..." he whispers to the wall, I mean his brother, in another stalling moment of self-created drama. Here's the problem about writing a movie about a problem-free Elvis: when the problems actually arise, you can't feel sorry for the man. Live has been damn good and he's bitching and moaning for reasons that don't make sense. If we saw the warts-and-all Elvis, we would know not only was he a very insecure person, but, by this point in his life, nippin' the bottle more than now and then.
Back in 1969 in Vegas, we pick up where we left off: Elvis shooting the TV that had melodramatically suggested this was either "the beginning or the end of a great career." Even The Beatles, they tell us, are passe. But, Elvis decides to go on, tossing on a jumpsuit filled with shiny beads and buckles, defying the advice of his father and hangers-on that he does not go on. He calls Lisa Marie, promising to "come home soon" and cries buckets as the "2001: A Space Odyssey" music cues up loudly on stage. Pants flared, crotch barely contained, Elvis goes out and performs for the crowd. Now, Kurt Russell in 1979 certainly looked a whole lot healthier and sexier than Elvis in 1969, but it's understandable that this fluff would keep the thin Elvis flame alive, but more noticeable is the audience. Elvis performed in GIANT arenas in Las Vegas, but the set here is about as big as a junior high auditorium and it seems that all of Elvis' fans were 150 years old. I would be willing to accept middle age, but old? As in wheelchair-check-at-the-top-of-the-ramp old? Come on! We're simply repeating extras to save costs. Look closely and you'll see some of those wacky Germans from the beer hall.
Anyway, Elvis tears through two songs to a frantic audience and then as he goes into "Battle Hymn of the Republic," Kurt freezes. I say Kurt, because it's not the film, but only Kurt, who has to stand in a frozen pose for a really uncomfortably long time as we get the also-inevitable montage of past highlights, as if we haven't been watching the movie since the beginning. By the end, Kurt looks like he's going to pass out and I feel for him. Why not just freeze the film?
It's over. What happened to Priscilla? She went on to make pots of gold selling Elvis memorabilia, I guess, but the movie gives us no hint. What happened to Col. Parker? He stopped showing up around 1958 and never reappeared (perhaps Pat Hingle got a better gig and bolted while he could. Red? Mr. Presley? The movie just leaves us hanging. It doesn't even give one of those "Elvis Presley died from..." title cards that biopics usually toss in before credits. According to this movie, Elvis might actually still be performing on a stage in Vegas somewhere.
I know that by blasting apart the holes in "Elvis," I've spilled the truth for legions that Elvis' life was more substantial than his beloved marshmallow. I know that no Elvis Fan Club will be sending me birthday presents (and let's not even guess what the Shelley Winters Fan Club people must think of me) this year, but if you base your knowledge on Elvis on this miniseries, then go on believing he's still alive. That belief is as much rooted in reality as this production. I will admit that Kurt Russell gives one hell of a performance, a towering achievement in a movie that doesn't ask him to do anything but an imitation of The King. I can also surmise that this movie is played on permanent loop in Priscilla's mansion, because she's actually the heroine somehow. Other than that, I can only recommend any other Elvis film but this one, even one of Elvis' actual movies, which are a heady lot. As I promised at the start, when we get to the 2005 version, things will have much improved (and by that, I mean honesty will surface).
Sunday, February 13, 2011
NOT QUITE A MINISERIES: Bella Mafia (1997)
"Bella Mafia" really is not a miniseries, clocking in at under two hours and it's also a bit beyond the 20-year span of the Great American Miniseries, but it's so much fun, I can't allow it to be ignored. It plays like a miniseries, is cast like a miniseries and if it had been produced a decade earlier, would have been a miniseries. But, based on a novel written in 1991, it was unfortunately too late and it was simply a movie-of-the-week. Actually, not so simply. Get comfy, this one is one of a kind. Once you have seen "Bella Mafia," you will never forget it.
In Sicily in 1977, Nastassja Kinski, trying her best to look young and Italian, but not succeeding at either, is madly in love with Michael Hayden, young, yes, but as WASP-y as they come. She wants to meet his family, but instead they have sex on the beach.
Tony LoBianco has a very sick son in a monastery that he wants no one to know about.
Dennis Farina, Italian, sure, but with that unique American accent of his, is the Don of an Italian family and Tony LoBianco is there to get him interested in a drug business deal from America. Tony leaves the meeting spitting and cursing, and it's decided that Michael may not be safe in America, going off to Harvard. Michael, by the way, speaks with an Italian accent (now and then), though no one else around him does. After promising Papa Dennis that he will be careful, he sneaks out of his bedroom to go to Nastassja and profess his love once again. On his way back, Tony's limo happens to be on the street, so he offers him a ride, beats the hell out of him and takes him to a meeting with some high-powered Mafioso. Tony is awfully dumb to have taken Michael to the meeting where he could see every one's faces, which means he's just played his last scene.
Michael's papa is understandably upset, but his mama, Vanessa Redgrave, is even more shaken, actually trying her best for about half a scene to act by speaking Italian and collapsing in a heap while shouting without sound. Don't expect our resident slumming Oscar winner to keep up that pace. Dennis makes his remaining sons swear an oath, in both English and Italian, to kill Tony. They actually pierce their fingers and make it a blood oath. Vanessa stands aside, saying, "he was my son too!"
Off in NYC, Dennis tries to kill Tony himself, as if a powerful Mafia Don would actually dirty his hands like that. The rest of the Dons tell Dennis he has to go back to Sicily and cannot carry out the vendetta in NYC. He's somehow fine with that, as long as Tony never sets foot in Palermo. Geez, not much of a vendetta is it?
Meanwhile, Nastassja gives birth to Michael's son and rehearses how she's break the news to Dennis and company in the mirror. I suggest she pick one accent and stick to it, but somehow that seems already impossible. She shows up at the compound and is first tossed aside by the guards and then moved down by brother Richard Joseph Paul's sports car. She survives, to be taken in by motherly Vanessa.
About a year later, Nastassja is still at the compound, having made quite an impression on stuttering goofball Richard. "I like her," Vanessa says, hoping to marry Nastassja off to one of her sons, but Dennis is angry that she's the daughter of a domestic who "scrubbed floors in a convent." That sounds absolutely respectable to me, a convent! Anyway, Vanessa not only wants to give her dimwit son a lovely bride, but wants to use the wedding as a way to make everyone think the vendetta is over. "We can wait," she says, as if she's running the family. The parents split up the two and work on them to agree to marriage. Richard is fine because he's in love, but Vanessa merely asks Nastassja, "can you love him?" "One day all this could be yours," Vanessa says, pricking her finger on a fake flower in the garden. All of what can be hers? A well-lit set?
No worries about Nastassja's son, because the nuns at the orphanage where she left him are strict: since she has been gone more than three months, they have given him away for adoption. Wait, where is that in the Bible? I guess we don't have the money for a baby actress.
We also don't have the money for a proper wedding, because there isn't a guest in anything fancier than a sun dress, except Jennifer Tilly, dressed up in a black number that shows off her considerable assets. She's pissed because "no one will speak English to me," as she tells her boyfriend, a man in Dennis' employ. "We are in Italy," her boyfriend says, no one laughing at the irony that not a word of Italian has been spoken in decades. Another of Dennis' sons hits on Jennifer, taking her away with a big bottle of wine. "I'm sure you can take it all," he tells her without a trace of irony. However, this brother has been assigned to Ileanna Douglas by Vanessa, the family matchmaker. Jennifer is determined to catch the bouquet, but Ileanna's mother pushes her out of the way so that Ileanna can catch it.
Let's skip to Atlanta City, where Jennifer is working as a blackjack girl in one of Dennis Farina's casinos. She once again bumps into brother W. Earl Brown and they go at it right on the dinner table in his hotel suite. There's still the matter of Illeana Douglas, saying with a straight face that she's 25 years old. She's rather gloomy, but not as gloomy as the son who has to take her to dinner when Earl goes off with Jennifer. The two have an exceedingly depressing conversation about being a less-preferred sibling, but their mutual loser society act ends in a wedding by the next scene, where Earl is squiring around Jennifer in a shag coat that came off the casino floor. "You don't bring a whore to a wedding," Dennis rails at Earl, and tells him to dump her. If this were "The Godfather," poor Earl would be Fredo Corleone, but this isn't "The Godfather."
When Earl tries to get Jennifer out of the wedding quietly, she goes into a fit, revealing she's his wife and also pregnant...oops, not pregnant, because she goes into labor during the argument! In the hospital, Jennifer complains about all the jobs she's had working in high heels, and one stint in a "poodle parlor." Unfortunately, the baby dies, a perfect excuse for the family to have her dumped, but Nastassja takes pity on her, because she can't get pregnant. "I want my son. I want my son," she whispers, the truth lost on her husband.
Back in Italy, Nastassja's kid is now in a monastery and do you want to guess that it's the same one housing Tony's crippled kid? Trust me, guess it. The friars there, seemingly from the same hood as Dennis, have a screeching howling brat on their hands, dumped on them by his foster family for being such a rotten kid. "Go to the Devil," he yells at the main man, grabbing his mother's necklace (the one Michael gave her the night he died) and biting the priest. The kid runs into Christopher Shaw's room (yup, Tony's son). Little Alec Plummer is fascinated by the mutant in the sunglasses and ascot. "You're a gargoyle. I like you pink face," Alec chirps. The sons of enemies are friends. I'm letting you know that in case you missed the intense subtlety of the scene.
Nastassja has opened a dress shop. Dennis wants to take her global, but Nastassja and her business partner just want to start small. Oh, and to go along with the great news of her dress shop, she's pregnant! Her hubby stutters, "you...you...you...have a grandson!" to Dennis a few months later (remember, time means nothing in this piece), and turns to Vanessa, saying, "you have one too" because there are twins. Vanessa is a modern Mafia wife. She takes the pictures in the hospital.
We jump ahead in time, again, where some of the grandchildren have aged and some have only kind of aged. The whole family has a meal together, wives and all, as Dennis tells a stupid story to make everyone laugh. Though Nastassja's boys are about four, her first son, still in with the fathers, is now about 20 and gorgeous James Marsden, still pals with snobby smart Christopher, and still wearing the girly heart necklace around his neck. James shows Christopher a gun and Christopher wants to know where he got it. "Mail order, like everything we get here," he replies. Wait, so UPS delivers to monasteries in Italy? How many bells do you have to ring to get in there?
Tony comes to see his dying son. "Together, we have been one being," Christopher tells his father, noting that James has been the body and Christopher the mind. Uh huh. That makes as much sense as the constantly shifting time periods. Let's wrap this in a nice package and have Christopher tell his father to take care of James always. That would be James, the grandson of his sworn enemy Dennis, though no one knows it. Christopher has a grand "the happiest moments I've ever known have been with you speech" as he grasping for breath and finally dies. James runs around the abbey screaming, overturning wheel barrows and generally knocking himself out of contention for any role offered to handsome young actors that year with his howling badness. "Take me to America," is all he can think of to say to Tony, promising to help him, brushing the dirt from his face and hugging him close. "I have a son...you're gonna be my son, you're gonna be Giorgio," Tony says with an odd lilt in his voice. "Luca. My name is Luca," he says (no, he doesn't live upstairs from you, not that Luca).
Two years later, or so the title card says, because they are as reliable as the acting in "Bella Mafia," Tony is arrested and James goes to another Don, Carmen Argenziano, for help. James wants to take care of the men who did this to his father. Apparently, Tony and James must have agreed on how he is to present himself. He's Luca Giorgio, therefore both himself and Tony's dead kid. And a friggin' psychopath, but a damn pretty one. I know this is supposed to be bella about the dames, but James is the most bella of all. In prison, Tony tells James that the man behind his arrest is Dennis, about to throw another wedding, this time for his granddaughter. Has this family not learned that weddings bring only bad news? People end up giving birth or dead or jinxing everything.
James creeps into the house to kill the male heirs, starting with Nastassja's twin boys, who also happen to be his half brothers. This is done in slow motion as the bride spins around in her dress, as happy as can be. Dennis has his sons join him around a table to get killed...oops, I mean, for a toast "to my son Michael. At last, justice." Timing really sucks for this family.
It's Grandma Vanessa who discovers her dead grandsons, but Nastassja comes in right behind her. As for the men, they have been poisoned by the wine and are also dead, news Vanessa gets only moments later. She's told her whole family is dead, but she insists on asking about them one by one. The widows gather in a scene guaranteed to make you double over with laughter. First Nastassja breaks down, then Jennifer does it, in high camp, but Vanessa outdoes them all. Wearing her husband's ring, she makes them all swear vengeance. Then in good Italian fashion (which applies to no one in the church, not an Italian among them), everyone wails up a storm and the opera music is blared full tilt. The wives, veiled, walk down the church aisle, beautifully lit, as if The Supremes were about to play The Vatican. All of the American Mafia men travel to the funeral, but they order loyal family retainer Franco Nero (what European-set miniseries would be complete without him?) to give them the deeds to all of Dennis' businesses or they will kill the widows too. Instead of letting that happen, Franco burns them all and shoots himself.
James goes back to his father and reports on the funeral with a big smile, also bragging that it was his idea to kill the little boys. "You're insane. I wish to God I had never set eyes on you," Tony rages, cursing him. Tony goes into overacting heaven ranting that at least his dead son had a brain, but James tries to match him by wishing him a long life behind bars and walks away while Tony shouts for him.
Carmen and company are upset that no papers can be found and order Tony killed.
In perhaps the oddest scene yet, James talks to an American tourist on the side of a road and boasts that he's a killer for the Mafia.
No, sorry, that's not the oddest scene yet. The oddest scene yet would follow immediately, with Vanessa, in her mourning black, using a tree as target practice. The other widows try to stop her, but she will not be stopped. That bullet is intended for Tony.
At Tony's trial, the loyal guards let Vanessa and her girls, in their mourning black (Jennifer is in black, but a boa rather than a veil). The have gotten a gun inside and Vanessa aims it at Tony as the proceedings start, but she merely shatters a lamp. Tony is killed, but not by her. Could it be James dressed as a monk, cowl, rosary beads and all? Seems likely. As he's running away, the widow's car hits him, so they take him to the house. Suddenly we're in a slapstick comedy as Ileanna and Jennifer snap at each other. Should we guess if granddaughter Gina Phillips will fall in love with James?
"Who's gonna tell Mama that we have a house guest? It's not gonna be me," Jennifer chirps, leaving James to rest in the very bed where he killed his two half-brothers. Even he sees that grand bit of irony before passing out. Jennifer goes through James' bag and finds a gun, "hundreds of dollars" and "this thing, what do you think it is?" I know she's daffy, but everyone knows a monk's costume. We've all done Halloween.
The police show up at the compound and tell the ladies that they think the killer was dressed as a monk. Abbott and Costello, sorry, Jennifer and Ileanna, go through a very unconvincing routine denying having seen anyone like that. It's Nastassja who plays the drama, angry that there is no justice for her boys, but they are seeking a killer's killer.
James escapes to Carmen's, where he hears Carmen on the phone vowing to "get rid of him" personally. "I could have killed them all if I wanted to," James tells Carmen, giving him a poison drink. "You have a loud voice," he notes, as if that was the actual crime he committed. James kisses Carmen and lets him die.
Nastassja is desperate to get to America because she knows their American holdings can be of value. So, off the black brigade goes, in first class, no less. Not to worry, James is on the same plane, but in coach. When the widows get back to Gina's place in New York City, James is there, having taken the identity of the American tourist. He spins quite a yarn for the widows to convince them he was acting on behalf of some crazy guy who paid him to do everything. He wants to thank the widows for saving his life. "Come to dinner," Vanessa says, the ultimate sign of misplaced belief.
Just as the widows are wondering how to raise some cash, hired guns come bursting through the door to kill them, but don't worry, James is right behind them to blow holes in them. Vanessa recognizes one of the killers as the brother of one of the American Dons and bangs his head against the floor until he's dead. Ileanna and Gina help James put the dead body in the car and Nastassja and Jennifer take the one still alive. James tells Nastassja to clean up all the blood and then wipes some off her face.
But wait.
Wait.
Wait.
It happens. Yes, this movie hits an all-time high when James then plants a kiss on Nastassja...HIS MOTHER! Oh, yeah! James confesses his love to her a scene later, but when did he have time to fall in love with her?
James takes the widows to a country house, but Nastassja stays in NYC to talk to the police. She finds out James is not who he says he is, but rather the son of her family's sworn enemy. "He's not been here," she tells the cops, who wait about 10 minutes to hear an answer as to whether she knows him or not. The police are tough on her, but hidden in shadows to play the scene, she sticks to her story. You see, she's gotten good at this vendetta thing.
Nastassja goes to Peter Bogdanovich to arrange a deal. She wants to marry off her niece Gina to his son, in exchange for protection from his mafia family. Peter salivates over her holdings. Monetary holdings. She promises him Tony LoBianco's fortune.
The widows are delighted at the country house James has snagged for them. "You got a wine cellar?" Jennifer squeaks? James goes there just long enough to get two bottles of wine for Nastassja to tell the rest who he really is. "Talk a lot, like you usually do," she tells Jennifer before the meal, now that they are all nervous. She parks him at the head of the table for the grand meal she is serving. Vanessa is poisoning it in the kitchen as they speak.
We're back to farce as James doesn't die from the poisoned pasta. Not to worry, Vanessa has poisoned the pudding too. You know those great Italian cooks! The widows tie him to the chair. "Is this a game?" he asks, half gone from the poison. I'm not sure what poison this is, something between dead and drunk in the poison aisle at the supermarket. Nastassja names him as Tony's son and he goes wild, speaking pretty much the first Italian we've heard all night. The poison leaves him howling in his chair, regressing to his past, which has all the women vacillating about his fate, until he spits on little Gina. Then Nastassja comes in alone and he tells them they should kill the rest and take all the money in the house. There's another passionate kiss between them, which she has to deliver as part of a bargain. Whatever, the bargain means nothing, but the kiss sure as hell does. James goes ape shit talking about killing Nastassja's boys, flapping his tongue like the devil is inside him. So, she thrusts a knife into his heart and THEN discovers the heart pendant around his neck, the one his father gave to her mother.
Better than a Greek tragedy! Put this one in a time vault and let future generations know American TV for what it really was!
Anyway, the widows bury James and then Nastassja strips down to her negligee to burn her clothes. For what she's done for the family, Mama Vanessa asks Nastassja to be "head of the family," to wear her husband's ring and then kneels in front of her. All of the American Dons are corralled, kissing the ring, of course. Nastassja begs for no more blood, no more vendettas. The Dons want to buy the American holdings, but Nastassja trumps them by announcing Gina's wedding to Peter's son. Another wedding? Who is left to die this time, except all of the American Dons, of course?
"She has evil eyes, like the devil," one Don says to another about Nastassja. Jennifer bumps into Peter and is immediately smitten. Using her boa and breasts, she snares him. "This is a day we'll never forget," Vanessa coos as they hand one of the Dons a glass of champagne. As he leaves the wedding cackling about "la bella mafia," he feels the now-familiar stomach cramps. Nastassja heads inside to X him out of a picture of the Dons she has left to assassinate.
"Bella Mafia" ranks among the looniest ideas EVER to be filmed. Not only filmed, but with a great cast. I would like to hope everyone did it for the money, rather than thinking there was a great script, because if the latter is the case, well, let's not even think it. Vanessa Redgrave as a mob wife? Nastassja Kinski as an Italian? Jennifer Tilly as...okay, skip her. James Marsden worked again after this? So many questions!
It's so stupid, but so laughable. "Bella Mafia" never fails to make me cackle with glee. This is required viewing for any funfest fan.
In Sicily in 1977, Nastassja Kinski, trying her best to look young and Italian, but not succeeding at either, is madly in love with Michael Hayden, young, yes, but as WASP-y as they come. She wants to meet his family, but instead they have sex on the beach.
Tony LoBianco has a very sick son in a monastery that he wants no one to know about.
Dennis Farina, Italian, sure, but with that unique American accent of his, is the Don of an Italian family and Tony LoBianco is there to get him interested in a drug business deal from America. Tony leaves the meeting spitting and cursing, and it's decided that Michael may not be safe in America, going off to Harvard. Michael, by the way, speaks with an Italian accent (now and then), though no one else around him does. After promising Papa Dennis that he will be careful, he sneaks out of his bedroom to go to Nastassja and profess his love once again. On his way back, Tony's limo happens to be on the street, so he offers him a ride, beats the hell out of him and takes him to a meeting with some high-powered Mafioso. Tony is awfully dumb to have taken Michael to the meeting where he could see every one's faces, which means he's just played his last scene.
Michael's papa is understandably upset, but his mama, Vanessa Redgrave, is even more shaken, actually trying her best for about half a scene to act by speaking Italian and collapsing in a heap while shouting without sound. Don't expect our resident slumming Oscar winner to keep up that pace. Dennis makes his remaining sons swear an oath, in both English and Italian, to kill Tony. They actually pierce their fingers and make it a blood oath. Vanessa stands aside, saying, "he was my son too!"
Off in NYC, Dennis tries to kill Tony himself, as if a powerful Mafia Don would actually dirty his hands like that. The rest of the Dons tell Dennis he has to go back to Sicily and cannot carry out the vendetta in NYC. He's somehow fine with that, as long as Tony never sets foot in Palermo. Geez, not much of a vendetta is it?
Meanwhile, Nastassja gives birth to Michael's son and rehearses how she's break the news to Dennis and company in the mirror. I suggest she pick one accent and stick to it, but somehow that seems already impossible. She shows up at the compound and is first tossed aside by the guards and then moved down by brother Richard Joseph Paul's sports car. She survives, to be taken in by motherly Vanessa.
About a year later, Nastassja is still at the compound, having made quite an impression on stuttering goofball Richard. "I like her," Vanessa says, hoping to marry Nastassja off to one of her sons, but Dennis is angry that she's the daughter of a domestic who "scrubbed floors in a convent." That sounds absolutely respectable to me, a convent! Anyway, Vanessa not only wants to give her dimwit son a lovely bride, but wants to use the wedding as a way to make everyone think the vendetta is over. "We can wait," she says, as if she's running the family. The parents split up the two and work on them to agree to marriage. Richard is fine because he's in love, but Vanessa merely asks Nastassja, "can you love him?" "One day all this could be yours," Vanessa says, pricking her finger on a fake flower in the garden. All of what can be hers? A well-lit set?
No worries about Nastassja's son, because the nuns at the orphanage where she left him are strict: since she has been gone more than three months, they have given him away for adoption. Wait, where is that in the Bible? I guess we don't have the money for a baby actress.
We also don't have the money for a proper wedding, because there isn't a guest in anything fancier than a sun dress, except Jennifer Tilly, dressed up in a black number that shows off her considerable assets. She's pissed because "no one will speak English to me," as she tells her boyfriend, a man in Dennis' employ. "We are in Italy," her boyfriend says, no one laughing at the irony that not a word of Italian has been spoken in decades. Another of Dennis' sons hits on Jennifer, taking her away with a big bottle of wine. "I'm sure you can take it all," he tells her without a trace of irony. However, this brother has been assigned to Ileanna Douglas by Vanessa, the family matchmaker. Jennifer is determined to catch the bouquet, but Ileanna's mother pushes her out of the way so that Ileanna can catch it.
Let's skip to Atlanta City, where Jennifer is working as a blackjack girl in one of Dennis Farina's casinos. She once again bumps into brother W. Earl Brown and they go at it right on the dinner table in his hotel suite. There's still the matter of Illeana Douglas, saying with a straight face that she's 25 years old. She's rather gloomy, but not as gloomy as the son who has to take her to dinner when Earl goes off with Jennifer. The two have an exceedingly depressing conversation about being a less-preferred sibling, but their mutual loser society act ends in a wedding by the next scene, where Earl is squiring around Jennifer in a shag coat that came off the casino floor. "You don't bring a whore to a wedding," Dennis rails at Earl, and tells him to dump her. If this were "The Godfather," poor Earl would be Fredo Corleone, but this isn't "The Godfather."
When Earl tries to get Jennifer out of the wedding quietly, she goes into a fit, revealing she's his wife and also pregnant...oops, not pregnant, because she goes into labor during the argument! In the hospital, Jennifer complains about all the jobs she's had working in high heels, and one stint in a "poodle parlor." Unfortunately, the baby dies, a perfect excuse for the family to have her dumped, but Nastassja takes pity on her, because she can't get pregnant. "I want my son. I want my son," she whispers, the truth lost on her husband.
Back in Italy, Nastassja's kid is now in a monastery and do you want to guess that it's the same one housing Tony's crippled kid? Trust me, guess it. The friars there, seemingly from the same hood as Dennis, have a screeching howling brat on their hands, dumped on them by his foster family for being such a rotten kid. "Go to the Devil," he yells at the main man, grabbing his mother's necklace (the one Michael gave her the night he died) and biting the priest. The kid runs into Christopher Shaw's room (yup, Tony's son). Little Alec Plummer is fascinated by the mutant in the sunglasses and ascot. "You're a gargoyle. I like you pink face," Alec chirps. The sons of enemies are friends. I'm letting you know that in case you missed the intense subtlety of the scene.
Nastassja has opened a dress shop. Dennis wants to take her global, but Nastassja and her business partner just want to start small. Oh, and to go along with the great news of her dress shop, she's pregnant! Her hubby stutters, "you...you...you...have a grandson!" to Dennis a few months later (remember, time means nothing in this piece), and turns to Vanessa, saying, "you have one too" because there are twins. Vanessa is a modern Mafia wife. She takes the pictures in the hospital.
We jump ahead in time, again, where some of the grandchildren have aged and some have only kind of aged. The whole family has a meal together, wives and all, as Dennis tells a stupid story to make everyone laugh. Though Nastassja's boys are about four, her first son, still in with the fathers, is now about 20 and gorgeous James Marsden, still pals with snobby smart Christopher, and still wearing the girly heart necklace around his neck. James shows Christopher a gun and Christopher wants to know where he got it. "Mail order, like everything we get here," he replies. Wait, so UPS delivers to monasteries in Italy? How many bells do you have to ring to get in there?
Tony comes to see his dying son. "Together, we have been one being," Christopher tells his father, noting that James has been the body and Christopher the mind. Uh huh. That makes as much sense as the constantly shifting time periods. Let's wrap this in a nice package and have Christopher tell his father to take care of James always. That would be James, the grandson of his sworn enemy Dennis, though no one knows it. Christopher has a grand "the happiest moments I've ever known have been with you speech" as he grasping for breath and finally dies. James runs around the abbey screaming, overturning wheel barrows and generally knocking himself out of contention for any role offered to handsome young actors that year with his howling badness. "Take me to America," is all he can think of to say to Tony, promising to help him, brushing the dirt from his face and hugging him close. "I have a son...you're gonna be my son, you're gonna be Giorgio," Tony says with an odd lilt in his voice. "Luca. My name is Luca," he says (no, he doesn't live upstairs from you, not that Luca).
Two years later, or so the title card says, because they are as reliable as the acting in "Bella Mafia," Tony is arrested and James goes to another Don, Carmen Argenziano, for help. James wants to take care of the men who did this to his father. Apparently, Tony and James must have agreed on how he is to present himself. He's Luca Giorgio, therefore both himself and Tony's dead kid. And a friggin' psychopath, but a damn pretty one. I know this is supposed to be bella about the dames, but James is the most bella of all. In prison, Tony tells James that the man behind his arrest is Dennis, about to throw another wedding, this time for his granddaughter. Has this family not learned that weddings bring only bad news? People end up giving birth or dead or jinxing everything.
James creeps into the house to kill the male heirs, starting with Nastassja's twin boys, who also happen to be his half brothers. This is done in slow motion as the bride spins around in her dress, as happy as can be. Dennis has his sons join him around a table to get killed...oops, I mean, for a toast "to my son Michael. At last, justice." Timing really sucks for this family.
It's Grandma Vanessa who discovers her dead grandsons, but Nastassja comes in right behind her. As for the men, they have been poisoned by the wine and are also dead, news Vanessa gets only moments later. She's told her whole family is dead, but she insists on asking about them one by one. The widows gather in a scene guaranteed to make you double over with laughter. First Nastassja breaks down, then Jennifer does it, in high camp, but Vanessa outdoes them all. Wearing her husband's ring, she makes them all swear vengeance. Then in good Italian fashion (which applies to no one in the church, not an Italian among them), everyone wails up a storm and the opera music is blared full tilt. The wives, veiled, walk down the church aisle, beautifully lit, as if The Supremes were about to play The Vatican. All of the American Mafia men travel to the funeral, but they order loyal family retainer Franco Nero (what European-set miniseries would be complete without him?) to give them the deeds to all of Dennis' businesses or they will kill the widows too. Instead of letting that happen, Franco burns them all and shoots himself.
James goes back to his father and reports on the funeral with a big smile, also bragging that it was his idea to kill the little boys. "You're insane. I wish to God I had never set eyes on you," Tony rages, cursing him. Tony goes into overacting heaven ranting that at least his dead son had a brain, but James tries to match him by wishing him a long life behind bars and walks away while Tony shouts for him.
Carmen and company are upset that no papers can be found and order Tony killed.
In perhaps the oddest scene yet, James talks to an American tourist on the side of a road and boasts that he's a killer for the Mafia.
No, sorry, that's not the oddest scene yet. The oddest scene yet would follow immediately, with Vanessa, in her mourning black, using a tree as target practice. The other widows try to stop her, but she will not be stopped. That bullet is intended for Tony.
At Tony's trial, the loyal guards let Vanessa and her girls, in their mourning black (Jennifer is in black, but a boa rather than a veil). The have gotten a gun inside and Vanessa aims it at Tony as the proceedings start, but she merely shatters a lamp. Tony is killed, but not by her. Could it be James dressed as a monk, cowl, rosary beads and all? Seems likely. As he's running away, the widow's car hits him, so they take him to the house. Suddenly we're in a slapstick comedy as Ileanna and Jennifer snap at each other. Should we guess if granddaughter Gina Phillips will fall in love with James?
"Who's gonna tell Mama that we have a house guest? It's not gonna be me," Jennifer chirps, leaving James to rest in the very bed where he killed his two half-brothers. Even he sees that grand bit of irony before passing out. Jennifer goes through James' bag and finds a gun, "hundreds of dollars" and "this thing, what do you think it is?" I know she's daffy, but everyone knows a monk's costume. We've all done Halloween.
The police show up at the compound and tell the ladies that they think the killer was dressed as a monk. Abbott and Costello, sorry, Jennifer and Ileanna, go through a very unconvincing routine denying having seen anyone like that. It's Nastassja who plays the drama, angry that there is no justice for her boys, but they are seeking a killer's killer.
James escapes to Carmen's, where he hears Carmen on the phone vowing to "get rid of him" personally. "I could have killed them all if I wanted to," James tells Carmen, giving him a poison drink. "You have a loud voice," he notes, as if that was the actual crime he committed. James kisses Carmen and lets him die.
Nastassja is desperate to get to America because she knows their American holdings can be of value. So, off the black brigade goes, in first class, no less. Not to worry, James is on the same plane, but in coach. When the widows get back to Gina's place in New York City, James is there, having taken the identity of the American tourist. He spins quite a yarn for the widows to convince them he was acting on behalf of some crazy guy who paid him to do everything. He wants to thank the widows for saving his life. "Come to dinner," Vanessa says, the ultimate sign of misplaced belief.
Just as the widows are wondering how to raise some cash, hired guns come bursting through the door to kill them, but don't worry, James is right behind them to blow holes in them. Vanessa recognizes one of the killers as the brother of one of the American Dons and bangs his head against the floor until he's dead. Ileanna and Gina help James put the dead body in the car and Nastassja and Jennifer take the one still alive. James tells Nastassja to clean up all the blood and then wipes some off her face.
But wait.
Wait.
Wait.
It happens. Yes, this movie hits an all-time high when James then plants a kiss on Nastassja...HIS MOTHER! Oh, yeah! James confesses his love to her a scene later, but when did he have time to fall in love with her?
James takes the widows to a country house, but Nastassja stays in NYC to talk to the police. She finds out James is not who he says he is, but rather the son of her family's sworn enemy. "He's not been here," she tells the cops, who wait about 10 minutes to hear an answer as to whether she knows him or not. The police are tough on her, but hidden in shadows to play the scene, she sticks to her story. You see, she's gotten good at this vendetta thing.
Nastassja goes to Peter Bogdanovich to arrange a deal. She wants to marry off her niece Gina to his son, in exchange for protection from his mafia family. Peter salivates over her holdings. Monetary holdings. She promises him Tony LoBianco's fortune.
The widows are delighted at the country house James has snagged for them. "You got a wine cellar?" Jennifer squeaks? James goes there just long enough to get two bottles of wine for Nastassja to tell the rest who he really is. "Talk a lot, like you usually do," she tells Jennifer before the meal, now that they are all nervous. She parks him at the head of the table for the grand meal she is serving. Vanessa is poisoning it in the kitchen as they speak.
We're back to farce as James doesn't die from the poisoned pasta. Not to worry, Vanessa has poisoned the pudding too. You know those great Italian cooks! The widows tie him to the chair. "Is this a game?" he asks, half gone from the poison. I'm not sure what poison this is, something between dead and drunk in the poison aisle at the supermarket. Nastassja names him as Tony's son and he goes wild, speaking pretty much the first Italian we've heard all night. The poison leaves him howling in his chair, regressing to his past, which has all the women vacillating about his fate, until he spits on little Gina. Then Nastassja comes in alone and he tells them they should kill the rest and take all the money in the house. There's another passionate kiss between them, which she has to deliver as part of a bargain. Whatever, the bargain means nothing, but the kiss sure as hell does. James goes ape shit talking about killing Nastassja's boys, flapping his tongue like the devil is inside him. So, she thrusts a knife into his heart and THEN discovers the heart pendant around his neck, the one his father gave to her mother.
Better than a Greek tragedy! Put this one in a time vault and let future generations know American TV for what it really was!
Anyway, the widows bury James and then Nastassja strips down to her negligee to burn her clothes. For what she's done for the family, Mama Vanessa asks Nastassja to be "head of the family," to wear her husband's ring and then kneels in front of her. All of the American Dons are corralled, kissing the ring, of course. Nastassja begs for no more blood, no more vendettas. The Dons want to buy the American holdings, but Nastassja trumps them by announcing Gina's wedding to Peter's son. Another wedding? Who is left to die this time, except all of the American Dons, of course?
"She has evil eyes, like the devil," one Don says to another about Nastassja. Jennifer bumps into Peter and is immediately smitten. Using her boa and breasts, she snares him. "This is a day we'll never forget," Vanessa coos as they hand one of the Dons a glass of champagne. As he leaves the wedding cackling about "la bella mafia," he feels the now-familiar stomach cramps. Nastassja heads inside to X him out of a picture of the Dons she has left to assassinate.
"Bella Mafia" ranks among the looniest ideas EVER to be filmed. Not only filmed, but with a great cast. I would like to hope everyone did it for the money, rather than thinking there was a great script, because if the latter is the case, well, let's not even think it. Vanessa Redgrave as a mob wife? Nastassja Kinski as an Italian? Jennifer Tilly as...okay, skip her. James Marsden worked again after this? So many questions!
It's so stupid, but so laughable. "Bella Mafia" never fails to make me cackle with glee. This is required viewing for any funfest fan.
Lonsesome Dove (1989)
I remember watching the 1989 Emmy Awards and when the winner for "Outstanding Miniseries" was announced, not only did I register shock, but it seemed so did everyone in the audience. "War and Remembrance" was the winner, but who was expecting that? It's certainly one of the biggest and most expansive, but 1989 was the year of "Lonesome Dove." Everyone watched it. Everyone talked about it. Everyone loved it. Okay, I can't prove the middle statement, but the ratings show that everyone watched it and the reviews show that critics loved it. Sure, "War and Remembrance" is literally almost five times the length of "Lonesome Dove," but might does not make right in this situation. However, time has taken care of the error: "Lonesome Dove" is regarded as a classic while "Wand Remembrance" is, well, almost five times the length of a classic.
The town is Lonesome Dove in Southern Texas, as dusty and sleepy a Western town as they come, if you can call the few ramshackle buildings a town. The chow bell rings for dinner, bringing Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Timothy Scott and Ricky Schroder together. Robert is serving and when Tommy Lee jokingly suggests he get a job as a waiter instead of a "loafer," he says he once had a job on a riverboat. "I was too pretty and the whores wouldn't let me alone," he says to make Ricky laugh. In just a few minutes, we race through a discussion of slavery ending and the chase of the Native Americans into virtual extinction.
It seems that craggy Robert and equally craggy Tommy Lee have a cantankerous relationship, full of jabs at each other. Tommy Lee is the worker, while Robert is the old-timer with a piece of wisdom for every occasion. Robert goes off to the saloon where D.B. Sweeney begs him for money, but Robert and the gang spend their time playing cards all night long. After, Robert loans D.B. the two dollars, which D.B. wants to use for the one woman in town before sleeping on Robert's porch.
Just as breakfast is starting the next morning, Danny Glover returns to town with Robert Urich in tow, the latter reuniting with the others after many years. Robert Urich has returned to get his friends with some colorful stories and can't believe how big Ricky has gotten. Ricky's mother was a whore, dead many years now, and one of the guys is the kid's father, obviously Tommy Lee, who won't admit it.
Arkansas Sheriff Chris Cooper is told by a local woman to arrest Robert Urich, who is a known murderer on the run. The lady means business, snapping the neck of a rooster she's holding, scaring Chris into action, but Chris knows Robert Urich is living in Texas now with his friends Robert and Tommy Lee, who are ex-Texas Rangers and therefore not an easy man to arrest. Chris tells his wife Glenne Headley that he probably should go after Robert Urich, but as a newlywed of five months, she's not thrilled, and insists he take her young son.
Robert Duvall asks Robert Urich about Clara, a woman he loved, who is apparently now married with children somewhere in Nebraska. It's obvious he still pines for her. Tommy Lee wonders why they don't take Robert Urich up on his offer to clear Montana of Native Americans and drive cattle into the area. "I wanna see that country before bankers and lawyers," he wistfully tells his old pal. D.B. has spent all day working off the two dollars, only to show up at the saloon to find Robert Urich making the whole place rock with the whore upstairs. D.B. gets drunk to forget.
Everything so far has been working up to what the men really do for a living, which is slip over the border to Mexico at night and steal horses. With the most picturesque sunset to guide them, the seven men set off, easily crossing the river and making their way into Mexico. When they find the herd, Danny hears "white folks" singing, doing some recon to find there are two men on guard, but they are drunk Irishmen (in the Old West, the two always go together) and no harm (Travis Swords and Bradley Gregg). In fact, they don't even know they are in Mexico and decide to join our posse as they all drive the horses back across the river. They manage to steal over 100 horses.
Chris heads off with Glenne's son to go after Robert Urich, but Glenne has also slipped away, much to the consternation of the town gossips, who insist that Deputy Barry Corbin go after Chris to tell him. Glenne boards a "whiskey boat," full of drunken toughs who lust after her since she's the only woman around. In fact, one of them kills another because he has it in his mind to marry her, despite the fact that she's already married...to a man who is not Chris, and that's where she's heading.
The idea of going up North has really gotten to Tommy Lee, and it appeals to everyone else as well, though Robert Duvall has his doubts. Biding his time, he goes to the local hooker (Diane Lane) and asks to "buy a poke," but she says she's with Robert Urich now, she's his girl and he's promised to take her to San Francisco. But, after Robert pulls a higher card than her, she takes him upstairs. Robert Urich, who's idea the cattle drive was in the first place, but "he's too leaky a vessel for anyone to put too much hope in," Robert Duvall cracks, knowing Robert Urich has no intention of going. Robert Urich goes over to Diane's and when he finds out she's been with Robert Duvall, he smacks her. She insists on going wherever he goes, though she would prefer San Francisco. She begs him to take her now, not wanting to go with the herd, and she has him buy her a horse with the $50 Robert Duvall paid her. "Money well spent...both times," he says. Seeing Robert Urich and Diane Lane leaving, Robert Duvall decides it's time to leave. No use waiting for a few days.
Robert Duvall says goodbye to Lonesome Dove, to the empty shacks, to the pigs even to the saloon keeper who is crying over shots at the loss of Diane. The saloon piano player is the last to join the gang of misfit cowboys.
The cattle drive starts. The pigs refuse to be left alone and actually join. Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, in their easygoing way, are actually excited to drive 2600 head of cattle and a whole lot of stolen horses up North. Robert Urich gets a thorn in his thumb and it's infected, but Danny helps get it out, also telling them to move their camp to the opposite side of the river before the storm comes. The storm is a giant one and comes on fast, miles of dust moving at top speed. Ricky is amazed when lightning comes and actually seems to hit the entire herd (with some particularly bad special effects). Robert Urich and Diane are almost killed by a falling tree.
The next day is spent undoing the damage. The wagon is stuck in a ditch, but no men are lost, and only about 20 cows. The pigs are okay. Bradley is afraid of rivers, though he's "crossed an ocean" and doesn't understand his fear. Robert Duvall comes to make sure Robert Urich and Diane are okay, but Robert Urich is in a particularly surly mood. Robert Urich decides he and Diane will go to San Antonio to make money gambling, but she refuses to go.
What makes "Lonesome Dove" work so well is the writing, which makes sure to infuse the characters with subtle relationships. These are not men of many words, but the words they do use, jokes mainly, are actually proof of their friendship, strong and unyielding. Something as simple as Bradley being afraid to cross a river, which he confesses to Ricky, bonds them immediately. Ricky says he'll cross first to show him there's no reason to worry. Ricky makes it, but as Bradley crosses, he's attacked by water moccasins as Ricky watches in horror.
The second part of the series starts with the attack, but Bradley isn't dead, at least not yet. "Not much we can do, he's been bitten too many times," Robert Duvall says a minute before he finally expires. The entire gang had gone into river to save him, nearly a complete stranger, and though Robert remains philosophical about the death, Ricky is sad to lose his new friend, who is buried with appropriate reverence. Travis tries to sing an Irish song, but he breaks up, so Robert Duvall steps in with a few choice words and then urges the gang on. "The best thing you can do about death is ride out from it," Tommy Lee says. It's time to move on.
In the other part of the plot, Barry Corbin is still trying to track down Chris Cooper and comes across a horrible old man who refuses to share his possum and strikes the woman he "bought and paid for." That girl, Nina Siemaszko, has seen Chris and the boy, but refuses to guide Barry unless he takes her with him. So, she hobbles the old man and convinces Barry to let her come along. "I'm gonna follow you anyway," she says, adding that she can catch their food. Glenne is on her way to Ogalalla, with Steve Buscemi along for the ride. Chris writes Glenne a letter, not knowing she won't be at the house to receive it.
Since the cattle drive's cook left, they need a new one, and find one in a small town, Jorge Martinez de Hoyos. Jorge will not ride an animal, which he says "is not civilized," so he will walk alongside everyone. In the same town, Robert Duvall knocks the bartender into the bar when he's disrespectful, not recognizing Tommy Lee and Robert from the picture on the wall, back in the day when they were famous Indian chasers. They are somewhat upset that they have been forgotten, wondering if they won't end up like Indians, extinct, in a few years.
"When were you the happiest?" Robert asks Tommy Lee, who doesn't think like that. Robert remember exactly, sitting by the creek where he is with his one true love. The thought of it even brings him to tears as he admits "letting her slip away like I did" was the biggest mistake he ever made. To diffuse the emotion, Tommy Lee says, "you still have your whores," but that only brings Robert to another issue: the fact that Ricky is Tommy Lee's son and that he never treated his mother well. Tommy Lee can't even look at Robert as they discuss it. This scene runs less than five minutes, but it shows exactly why "Lonesome Dove" is so appealing. It's certainly not the plot, which barely holds together. It's about the characters. This is a true novel (a Pulitzer Prize winner by Larry McMurtry no less) filmed. They creators have not abandoned the characters in favor of spectacle. In fact, they have emphasized them so much that in two hours of running time so far, there has been barely any excitement, other than a brief dust storm that lasted moments and one death. The story here is the bonds of friendship, not the actual cattle drive or the myths of the Old West.
The comic relief plot, which is admittedly a bit goofy, churns on with Nina telling Barry that she'll cook frogs for dinner, but that their feet jump around as they are being cooked. She hears men approaching and runs off. The two want tobacco from him, but he has none. So, they want his gun and his horse...and his clothes! Lucky for Barry Nina didn't run far, because she throws rocks at them and Barry is able to run off. Just as the bandits are about to shoot Barry, again, Chris rides over with a gun and between him and Nina, they get the bad guys to ride off scared. When Chris is told of Glenne's running away, little Adam tells him that his father isn't dead, as Glenne told Chris and Barry chimes in that Glenne is pregnant. It's a whole lot of news to take in at once.
Robert Duvall sees Diane alone again and goes to keep her company, much to the annoyance of Tommy Lee, who wants to get to Montana with the cattle. Diane knows Robert Urich has left her and he's not taking her anywhere, so Robert tries his best to cheer her up. He gives her some good philosophy, to learn to like the "everyday things," rather than dreaming big. To get her laughing, he strips down to his long underwear and tosses her into the water. But, her sights are set on California and he aims for Ogalalla and his true love. He then spots an Indian approaching. The Indian is Frederic Forrest, who recognizes Robert from his Indian killing days. He would love to kill "two wore out Rangers," but since Tommy Lee isn't around, he'll hunt for other white men to kill. And off he goes. Diane will not budge, so they send Ricky to protect her, though he gets knocked out by an unseen assailant. His horse makes it back to camp without him.
Robert Urich arrives soon after with Ricky, but Diane is gone, which means Frederic has taken her. Robert is pissed at everyone for letting Diane be taken. He rails at Ricky and almost fights with D.B., but Robert Duvall takes bullets and trails Frederic. He's the only one who can get him. Indeed Frederic has Diane, whom he deal with rather abusively, but he's less scary than a bunch of his friends, who are willing to trade horse and hides for her. Or maybe he is, shooting a man just for holding up a game of dice.
Robert Duvall rides in search of Diane, but encounters way too many Indians and they all have guns. Knowing just what to do, he stops, kills his horse and uses it as a defensive wall, now able to shoot at the Indians and have then running scared. He's not completely safe, alone in the desert behind a dead horse. The marauders stay where they are, with some scary looking guns and Robert throws them off the trail by shooting far from them, making them think he can't shoot, of course picking the exact right moment to knock off the most annoying of them.
Tommy Lee is worried about his best friend, and so are the other men. Jose says that Robert will never catch Frederic and D.B. sings his familiar refrain about how it's Robert Urich's fault. He's so in love with Diane that he intends to marry her if she returns without Robert Urich. This starts another fight, but Tommy Lee steps in to stop it quickly.
Night is beginning to fall and Robert is still fairly defenseless, with just the rotting horse between him and the bad guys, but sensing they are gone, he takes his saddle and gear and walks until he finds a group of people: Barry, Nina, Chris and Adam. Our plots have finally intersected. Robert recognizes Chris as the Sheriff chasing Robert Urich, and also as the guys who started shooting to scare off the bad guys. They are a motley band, no match for the gang, but Robert says he can do it alone.
Diane is still being mistreated by Frederic, whose friends want her, but he decides she's not worth it and leaves her for the coyotes to get. The bad guys want her, but he warns them that if they stay with her and Robert comes, all will be lost. They all get drink and Robert rides into their campsite, plucking them off one by one with single bullets. He's able to rescue the traumatized Diane. Chris is amazed that Robert could kill all of those men so easily. He didn't have to do a thing! However, Frederic had left the camp and the next we see of him, he's stabbing Barry and then kills Nina and Adam too. That's fiendish! Chris digs them graves with just a bowl and Robert helps him bury the three unfortunate souls. Chris wants to help Robert track him down, but Robert says, "I guess we have to let him go this time." He advises Chris to search for Glenne, and promises to kill Frederic should he encounter him again.
Speaking of Glenne, noticeably pregnant (time seems to have gone faster for her), she's somewhere in Kansas with Frederick Coffin and Steve Buscemi. Steve tries to rape her, but Frederick, who has been killing men who wanted to touch her since the whiskey boat, pulls Steve off her and offers to kill him, throwing him against the wheel over and over, but Glenne wants him alive "in case the Indians come." He will not tolerate anyone trying to "marry" her as he thinks of sex.
Robert Urich has been gambling for days and is convinced to help some local lowlifes rob banks in Kansas.
Having sent Chris off on his personal mission, Robert Duvall has to protect Diane, beaten and frightened. He makes his way to Adobe Walls, in Northern Texas, a tiny little shelter from the rain. Sweet man that he is, he tries to snap her back to life by playing cards with her, but she's too traumatized and breaks down. As she cries on his shoulder, the second part ends.
Part Three begins with Robert Duvall rejoining his men as the Canadian River is crossed. "You have become this gal's caretaker," Tommy Lee says, somewhat annoyed at this increasing diversion from the work. Diane still has not really recovered. She still cries. She asks Robert why he doesn't ask "for a poke no more?" He says he's being respectful of her situation.
Robert Urich is running with a really bad crowd. They surprise him by wanting to rob horse wranglers instead of a bank. During the gun battle, one is shot and the leader callously kills him because "it was just his unlucky day, huh," as Robert puts it, now terrified of this bunch.
Only one of the horse wranglers lives and Danny finds him. So, the leads have to go off and track down the guys who did this. That means Robert Duvall has to leave Diane and she's afraid. The guys follow birds until finding the dead bodies, which they take the time to bury. Danny follows the tracks and knows there are four of them, but that also Robert Urich is with them. They suggest that it's just Robert's horse, but Danny knows the tracks "his horse makes with him on it." Geez, that's some excellent skill! They better find their wayward friend soon, because his crazy new pals are giving innocent farmers, or "sod busters" just to go through their house. The leader finds only a watch. Killed two men for a watch and then he hangs and burns the bodies! Two more graves for the heroes to dig.
Danny spots the bad posse only a little bit away and they surprise them. Tommy Lee orders them tied up, and that means Robert Urich too, because he participated. His longtime friends have to go with the credo that "you ride with an outlaw, you die with an outlaw." That means they all have to hang from trees. They kill the bad guys and then it's only Robert Urich left. Robert Duvall tells him he has Diane safe and then says goodbye to his friends. "I'd rather be hung by my friends than by strangers," Robert Urich says. He doesn't wait for anyone to whip his horse from under him. He digs his spurs in and does it himself. They are all upset, but Tommy Lee reminds them they have the cattle, so a grave has to be dug. They leave only the leader on the tree with a sign that says "Man Burner and Horse Thief."
At long last, we meet Robert Duvall's long lost love, Anjelica Houston. She's caring for an injured husband kicked by a horse and unable to move, as well as two young daughters. All of her other children have died. It's Glenne and her cohorts who arrive at Anjelica's farm and are invited to stay. "This woman's going to have a baby," Anjelica says and one is born. That was mighty quick! When she left Arkansas, no one could even tell she was pregnant! Glenne has serious post-partum depression, but Anjelica is understanding and she and her daughters will help her. Her gentleman friends push on to Ogalalla and take Glenne, but leave the baby. Her beloved is in jail, about to be executed for the murder of a boy. She passes out at the jail.
Coincidentally, Chris now shows up at Anjelica's farm. Anjelica is gently rocking the baby when he arrives. Ever hospitable, Anjelica invites Chris in for a meal, just inches away from his son. Anjelica figures out he's Glenne's husband (both being from Arkansas) and tells the baby is his, but that she left. Chris breaks down and Anjelica tells her daughter, "men have tears in 'em, just like you" when they wonder why a man can cry. Anjelica is honest with Chris: Glenne wants neither Chris nor the baby. She never even looked at the baby before leaving. To make it worse, Anjelica admits "loves new things" and is getting "attached" to the baby. She asks him if he wants the baby, and if he does, take him now, because she can't "go through the heartsick of losing another one." Chris asks for the chance to find Glenne first.
The cattle drive nears Ogalalla and Anjelica too. Diane is worried about how she'll be introduced and she's suddenly ashamed of who she is, which Robert tells her not to be. Robert admits he would like to marry Anjelica. He goes to Jose, who can tell fortunes, and asks if he'll marry again. "No more wife for you," Jose says.
With Frederick keeping watch over Glenne as always, Chris arrives to see her. "The doctor said you are strong enough to talk. You don't have to talk, though, if you don't want to," he gently tells her. He then has to break the news that her eldest son is dead, along with Barry and the girl too. Glenne reacts to none of it, only that her love has been executed. Chris is very upset by her reaction and when he returns for her in the morning, he finds that she and Frederick have left. Anjelica offers him a job so he can stay with his son and then we see briefly that Glenne and Frederick have been killed by Indians.
In Ogalalla, Robert buys some new duds and some finery for Diane. The rest of the boys want some whores for their free time and they go to D.B. for advice, but the discussion is interrupted by the US Army, requisitioning horses for their ongoing fight against Indians. They beat D.B. when he refuses and then go after Ricky when he holds to the horse. Tommy Lee finally comes to their rescue and beats the man who attacked Ricky with a branding iron until Robert pulls him away. Robert tells Ricky that the reason Tommy Lee reacted so strongly was because he was protecting his son. The boys then return to their question to get laid.
Apparently more time has passed because Chris has become quite the horse trainer at Anjelica's. More strangers arrive at this farm, but this time it's the ones we expected. Robert and Anjelica run to each other's arms with a big kiss, in front of her daughters, Tommy Lee, Ricky and Diane. Robert is surprised to see Chris again. Tommy Lee and Ricky go with Chris to look at the horses Anjelica has for sale and Tommy Lee tells Chris that Robert Urich is dead. Robert and Anjelica talk over old times during a picnic for everyone. "I was never so married I couldn't have managed a friend," Anjelica chides Robert when she tells him she needed him over the years. She wrote him, but tore up the letters. Anjelica is also not judgmental about Diane. In fact, the only person she doesn't like is Tommy Lee, and only because he has had more time with Robert than she has. She takes quite a shine to Ricky too, hoping that he'll return and maybe marry her daughter in a few years.
The only thing about Diane that Anjelica doesn't like is that she's young and beautiful and she no longer is. "It sure was nice pretending you loved only me," Anjelica says, but Robert says he loves only her too. He claims he would kill Anjelica's husband and send Diane to hell just to stay with Anjelica, but Anjelica knows Diane is very much in love with Robert, so she tells Robert she would never marry again.
Knowing that Anjelica is out of his reach now, Robert decides to leave and Anjelica asks Diane to stay. The cow trail is "no place" for her. Robert promises to return, so Diane agrees. Anjelica has taken in a baby, a new hired hand and a young girl in a matter of weeks. Diane asks if Robert still wants to marry Anjelica and he says no, that time has changed them too much. As Robert leaves, Anjelica begs him one more time to stay, not to go to Montana and get killed by Indians, but Robert wants "to see one more place before I take up the rocking chair." Off he goes and rejoins the cattle push.
Tommy Lee is determined to keep going, despite being 80 miles from water. Danny asks Robert why Tommy Lee is so insistent, and it's simply because he wants to be the first man to raise cattle in the area. But, going 80 miles without water is tough on the men, who don't bear up well. Even the cattle look miserable. When the last of the water is doled out, none of the cowboys will take it. Luckily, they do make it 80 miles to water and everyone is revived. While they sleep, Indians steal their horses, so Tommy Lee insists they follow them. Danny says the Indians stole the horses for meat because they are so desperate for food, mostly women and children anyway. But, Tommy wants his horses back! Tommy Lee scares everyone away so they can get to the horses, but a blind child is left wandering around. Danny scoops him up, but an Indian kills him. "I guess it's our fault. We should have shot sooner," Tommy Lee says, cradling the baby.
As the final portion of the story begins, Danny is buried, but the rest press on. In Montana, even Robert has to admit it's exciting to be in a new country, but he cautions Ricky not to mention to Tommy Lee they think so. Robert then gives Ricky the psychological explanation of why Tommy Lee won't acknowledge he's Ricky's father: it would be admitting he's human.
Back in Nebraska, Anjelica's husband finally dies. "Sometimes grave diggin' is the only thing we do around here," she tells her Mexican hired hand. She then wonders about the afterlife.
Robert and Timothy decide to chase buffalo, just for the heck of it, because, as Robert notes, soon there won't be any of them left. Before Timothy can think about it, Robert rushes off and does it, unfortunately bringing a whole pack of Indians back with him. This is not good, especially since Robert has taken a few arrows to the leg and Timothy gets shot. The Indians leave, but our boys know they will be back, in greater numbers. They have to attend to the arrows in Robert's leg, which do not come out so easily. When the Indians return, Timothy wonders why the heck the ever left Texas.
The men are still trapped in their tiny cave, surrounded by Indians and now a rainstorm. They decide that Timothy should float down the creek, now swelled by rain water and head back to the camp to bring help. Robert can't move in his condition. Timothy makes it through the storm, his shoulder aching a bit, no doubt from the gunshot that went right through it. He has no idea which direction he's going, so he falls to the ground and tries to sleep. That's when he sees the ghost of Danny Glover and says, "I'm coming, wait for me."
Ron Weyand, who looks like a hippy 100 years before they existed, comes to Robert's rescue. Robert's leg is so badly infected that it looks like it needs amputation, but Ron let's him ride his horse. Timothy isn't dead yet. He's sitting in the middle of a field when Tommy Lee and D.B. find him. Tommy Lee decides to go after Robert alone. Robert has somehow made it to a Montana town where he can finally have a doctor tend to his wounds. Once Robert wakes up, he finds his leg has indeed been amputated, joking with the doctor that he hopes he saved the leg so he could use the bone as a crutch. The doctor insists the other leg has to go too, or else he'll die. Robert puts him off by sending him out for whiskey and to tip the whore playing the piano so he can have pretty music.
Tommy Lee arrives at the cave where Robert had been hiding out and follows Robert's trail all the way to the Montana town and Robert's bedside. Robert has a gun cocked and ready for anyone who tries to take his other leg. "I'm the one man you don't boss," Robert tells Tommy Lee. In their bantering way, Tommy Lee wonders what Robert needs his legs for, since all he does is sit on the porch, but Robert says he "likes to kick a pig every now and then." Robert admits it's vanity that is making him keep the leg, and they also discuss what kind of funeral Robert would want. His ideal burial spot is "Clara's Orchard," the spot in Texas where he tearily told Tommy Lee of his love for Anjelica. Tommy Lee has to haul him all the way back to Texas? Robert tells him, "I'm sending you on another adventure so you don't get bored being a rancher." And one last request: Robert wants Tommy Lee to admit to Ricky that he's his father. Robert writes notes for Anjelica and Diane, but he's "so lightheaded" he "forgets which is which." This scene bursts with tenderness, but in character. The two don't get sloppily emotional, but they do get to say their goodbyes in their own special way.
Because it's winter, the doctor suggests they keep Robert's body in Montana and take it back to Texas in the spring. The doctor assumes Tommy Lee will forget to come back for the body, but he doesn't know that Tommy Lee would never promise something he didn't intend to do to the fullest. He then has to gather the men and tell them that Robert is dead. For the winter, however, they still have to man the cattle, even in snowy cold conditions. Tommy Lee pretty much keeps to himself until they reach a spot by a river where he decides to build his ranch, bringing the cattle drive to a stop.
D.B. wants his wages so he can go chase after Diane, who he refers to as a whole, much to Tommy Lee's consternation. The rest of the men stay to construct a ranch, though Tommy Lee sends a few of the boys, under the command of Ricky, to go sell some cattle to a nearby Army camp. Not all are thrilled to be taking orders from the youngster, and a fight even breaks out, but his resolve is strong.
The months tick by and a ranch takes shape. Ricky is able to tame horses, "just like you," Timothy notes to Tommy Lee, who says nothing, but looks on with pride. When Tommy Lee leaves to fulfill his promise to Robert to take his body back to Texas, he almost tells Ricky he's his father, but the words choke in his throat, though clear to everyone. He does leave him in charge of the ranch, though.
Because D.B. had brought the news, Diane and Anjelica know Robert is dead and that Tommy Lee is taking his body all the way back to Texas. Even Anjelica tries to convince him to leave the body at her little cemetery, but Tommy Lee intends to keep his promise. He also gives both women the letters Robert wrote on his death bed. Poor D.B. has been working at Anjelica's ranch, pining for Diane the whole time, even when she skips dinner to spend the whole night standing by Robert's coffin. Anjelica reads her letter, in which Robert asks her to take care of Diane, but Diane cannot read. Anjelica offers to read Diane's letter to her, but she doesn't need to hear it. That it has her name on it in his handwriting is enough for her. Anjelica tries one more time to convince Tommy Lee to leave the body, full of hate for him. He's keeping that promise, but not the other one she knows Robert would have asked of him: give Ricky his name. Anjelica says she "despises" him, but what she's really angry at is that Robert and Tommy Lee had the closeness and tight bond she could never have with Robert.
Alone, Tommy Lee actually hauls the body back down, encountering small towns that have heard of his exploit, Indians who thankfully leave him a lone and even a bad wheel that needs fixing in New Mexico. The local blacksmith even knows about Tommy Lee's promise. By coincidence, it's in the New Mexico town that Frederic is awaiting execution for killing a family. Naturally, Tommy Lee wants to see him. Frederic is still unrepentant, not surprised that Tommy Lee brought Robert's "stinking corpse" to see his funeral.
Frederic avoids hanging by trying to escape and falling out the window with a guard to his death, the "flying" he told Tommy Lee he was taught to do. The wagon carrying Robert's body is destroyed in a river, along with the coffin, but Tommy Lee pushes on, dragging just the body behind his horse. Birds of prey eat at the body and Tommy Lee looks like he ages 20 years by the time he reaches the promised spot, a man with a determined soul, but a broken body. He finally buries the body. "Well, there you are," he says when it's done, now unable to hold back the tears. "I guess this will teach me to be more careful about what I promise in the future."
Actually, Tommy Lee makes it all the way back to Lonesome Dove, where the Mexican cook is ringing the dinner bell, though no one is around to eat. Tommy Lee notes where all the dead men are buried, but the rest are safe in Montana building a ranch. Not much is left of Lonesome Dove. The saloon burnt down, with only the piano recognizable in the char, a suicide by the owner who missed Diane too much to go on. A reporter from San Antonio wants to interview Tommy Lee, a taciturn man who does not rest on the laurels of his many accomplishments.
In actuality, "Lonesome Dove" is just a collection of rather tame vignettes strung together by the personality of its characters. It really shouldn't work as well as it does. It's missing most of the elements of a typical miniseries: epic thrust, high emotion and even higher drama. Hell, there's not even a slumming movie star in sight! But, due to exceptional writing and exquisite acting, "Lonesome Dove" is a shining example of American television at its best, no matter kind of genre label it is given.
The town is Lonesome Dove in Southern Texas, as dusty and sleepy a Western town as they come, if you can call the few ramshackle buildings a town. The chow bell rings for dinner, bringing Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Timothy Scott and Ricky Schroder together. Robert is serving and when Tommy Lee jokingly suggests he get a job as a waiter instead of a "loafer," he says he once had a job on a riverboat. "I was too pretty and the whores wouldn't let me alone," he says to make Ricky laugh. In just a few minutes, we race through a discussion of slavery ending and the chase of the Native Americans into virtual extinction.
It seems that craggy Robert and equally craggy Tommy Lee have a cantankerous relationship, full of jabs at each other. Tommy Lee is the worker, while Robert is the old-timer with a piece of wisdom for every occasion. Robert goes off to the saloon where D.B. Sweeney begs him for money, but Robert and the gang spend their time playing cards all night long. After, Robert loans D.B. the two dollars, which D.B. wants to use for the one woman in town before sleeping on Robert's porch.
Just as breakfast is starting the next morning, Danny Glover returns to town with Robert Urich in tow, the latter reuniting with the others after many years. Robert Urich has returned to get his friends with some colorful stories and can't believe how big Ricky has gotten. Ricky's mother was a whore, dead many years now, and one of the guys is the kid's father, obviously Tommy Lee, who won't admit it.
Arkansas Sheriff Chris Cooper is told by a local woman to arrest Robert Urich, who is a known murderer on the run. The lady means business, snapping the neck of a rooster she's holding, scaring Chris into action, but Chris knows Robert Urich is living in Texas now with his friends Robert and Tommy Lee, who are ex-Texas Rangers and therefore not an easy man to arrest. Chris tells his wife Glenne Headley that he probably should go after Robert Urich, but as a newlywed of five months, she's not thrilled, and insists he take her young son.
Robert Duvall asks Robert Urich about Clara, a woman he loved, who is apparently now married with children somewhere in Nebraska. It's obvious he still pines for her. Tommy Lee wonders why they don't take Robert Urich up on his offer to clear Montana of Native Americans and drive cattle into the area. "I wanna see that country before bankers and lawyers," he wistfully tells his old pal. D.B. has spent all day working off the two dollars, only to show up at the saloon to find Robert Urich making the whole place rock with the whore upstairs. D.B. gets drunk to forget.
Everything so far has been working up to what the men really do for a living, which is slip over the border to Mexico at night and steal horses. With the most picturesque sunset to guide them, the seven men set off, easily crossing the river and making their way into Mexico. When they find the herd, Danny hears "white folks" singing, doing some recon to find there are two men on guard, but they are drunk Irishmen (in the Old West, the two always go together) and no harm (Travis Swords and Bradley Gregg). In fact, they don't even know they are in Mexico and decide to join our posse as they all drive the horses back across the river. They manage to steal over 100 horses.
Chris heads off with Glenne's son to go after Robert Urich, but Glenne has also slipped away, much to the consternation of the town gossips, who insist that Deputy Barry Corbin go after Chris to tell him. Glenne boards a "whiskey boat," full of drunken toughs who lust after her since she's the only woman around. In fact, one of them kills another because he has it in his mind to marry her, despite the fact that she's already married...to a man who is not Chris, and that's where she's heading.
The idea of going up North has really gotten to Tommy Lee, and it appeals to everyone else as well, though Robert Duvall has his doubts. Biding his time, he goes to the local hooker (Diane Lane) and asks to "buy a poke," but she says she's with Robert Urich now, she's his girl and he's promised to take her to San Francisco. But, after Robert pulls a higher card than her, she takes him upstairs. Robert Urich, who's idea the cattle drive was in the first place, but "he's too leaky a vessel for anyone to put too much hope in," Robert Duvall cracks, knowing Robert Urich has no intention of going. Robert Urich goes over to Diane's and when he finds out she's been with Robert Duvall, he smacks her. She insists on going wherever he goes, though she would prefer San Francisco. She begs him to take her now, not wanting to go with the herd, and she has him buy her a horse with the $50 Robert Duvall paid her. "Money well spent...both times," he says. Seeing Robert Urich and Diane Lane leaving, Robert Duvall decides it's time to leave. No use waiting for a few days.
Robert Duvall says goodbye to Lonesome Dove, to the empty shacks, to the pigs even to the saloon keeper who is crying over shots at the loss of Diane. The saloon piano player is the last to join the gang of misfit cowboys.
The cattle drive starts. The pigs refuse to be left alone and actually join. Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, in their easygoing way, are actually excited to drive 2600 head of cattle and a whole lot of stolen horses up North. Robert Urich gets a thorn in his thumb and it's infected, but Danny helps get it out, also telling them to move their camp to the opposite side of the river before the storm comes. The storm is a giant one and comes on fast, miles of dust moving at top speed. Ricky is amazed when lightning comes and actually seems to hit the entire herd (with some particularly bad special effects). Robert Urich and Diane are almost killed by a falling tree.
The next day is spent undoing the damage. The wagon is stuck in a ditch, but no men are lost, and only about 20 cows. The pigs are okay. Bradley is afraid of rivers, though he's "crossed an ocean" and doesn't understand his fear. Robert Duvall comes to make sure Robert Urich and Diane are okay, but Robert Urich is in a particularly surly mood. Robert Urich decides he and Diane will go to San Antonio to make money gambling, but she refuses to go.
What makes "Lonesome Dove" work so well is the writing, which makes sure to infuse the characters with subtle relationships. These are not men of many words, but the words they do use, jokes mainly, are actually proof of their friendship, strong and unyielding. Something as simple as Bradley being afraid to cross a river, which he confesses to Ricky, bonds them immediately. Ricky says he'll cross first to show him there's no reason to worry. Ricky makes it, but as Bradley crosses, he's attacked by water moccasins as Ricky watches in horror.
The second part of the series starts with the attack, but Bradley isn't dead, at least not yet. "Not much we can do, he's been bitten too many times," Robert Duvall says a minute before he finally expires. The entire gang had gone into river to save him, nearly a complete stranger, and though Robert remains philosophical about the death, Ricky is sad to lose his new friend, who is buried with appropriate reverence. Travis tries to sing an Irish song, but he breaks up, so Robert Duvall steps in with a few choice words and then urges the gang on. "The best thing you can do about death is ride out from it," Tommy Lee says. It's time to move on.
In the other part of the plot, Barry Corbin is still trying to track down Chris Cooper and comes across a horrible old man who refuses to share his possum and strikes the woman he "bought and paid for." That girl, Nina Siemaszko, has seen Chris and the boy, but refuses to guide Barry unless he takes her with him. So, she hobbles the old man and convinces Barry to let her come along. "I'm gonna follow you anyway," she says, adding that she can catch their food. Glenne is on her way to Ogalalla, with Steve Buscemi along for the ride. Chris writes Glenne a letter, not knowing she won't be at the house to receive it.
Since the cattle drive's cook left, they need a new one, and find one in a small town, Jorge Martinez de Hoyos. Jorge will not ride an animal, which he says "is not civilized," so he will walk alongside everyone. In the same town, Robert Duvall knocks the bartender into the bar when he's disrespectful, not recognizing Tommy Lee and Robert from the picture on the wall, back in the day when they were famous Indian chasers. They are somewhat upset that they have been forgotten, wondering if they won't end up like Indians, extinct, in a few years.
"When were you the happiest?" Robert asks Tommy Lee, who doesn't think like that. Robert remember exactly, sitting by the creek where he is with his one true love. The thought of it even brings him to tears as he admits "letting her slip away like I did" was the biggest mistake he ever made. To diffuse the emotion, Tommy Lee says, "you still have your whores," but that only brings Robert to another issue: the fact that Ricky is Tommy Lee's son and that he never treated his mother well. Tommy Lee can't even look at Robert as they discuss it. This scene runs less than five minutes, but it shows exactly why "Lonesome Dove" is so appealing. It's certainly not the plot, which barely holds together. It's about the characters. This is a true novel (a Pulitzer Prize winner by Larry McMurtry no less) filmed. They creators have not abandoned the characters in favor of spectacle. In fact, they have emphasized them so much that in two hours of running time so far, there has been barely any excitement, other than a brief dust storm that lasted moments and one death. The story here is the bonds of friendship, not the actual cattle drive or the myths of the Old West.
The comic relief plot, which is admittedly a bit goofy, churns on with Nina telling Barry that she'll cook frogs for dinner, but that their feet jump around as they are being cooked. She hears men approaching and runs off. The two want tobacco from him, but he has none. So, they want his gun and his horse...and his clothes! Lucky for Barry Nina didn't run far, because she throws rocks at them and Barry is able to run off. Just as the bandits are about to shoot Barry, again, Chris rides over with a gun and between him and Nina, they get the bad guys to ride off scared. When Chris is told of Glenne's running away, little Adam tells him that his father isn't dead, as Glenne told Chris and Barry chimes in that Glenne is pregnant. It's a whole lot of news to take in at once.
Robert Duvall sees Diane alone again and goes to keep her company, much to the annoyance of Tommy Lee, who wants to get to Montana with the cattle. Diane knows Robert Urich has left her and he's not taking her anywhere, so Robert tries his best to cheer her up. He gives her some good philosophy, to learn to like the "everyday things," rather than dreaming big. To get her laughing, he strips down to his long underwear and tosses her into the water. But, her sights are set on California and he aims for Ogalalla and his true love. He then spots an Indian approaching. The Indian is Frederic Forrest, who recognizes Robert from his Indian killing days. He would love to kill "two wore out Rangers," but since Tommy Lee isn't around, he'll hunt for other white men to kill. And off he goes. Diane will not budge, so they send Ricky to protect her, though he gets knocked out by an unseen assailant. His horse makes it back to camp without him.
Robert Urich arrives soon after with Ricky, but Diane is gone, which means Frederic has taken her. Robert is pissed at everyone for letting Diane be taken. He rails at Ricky and almost fights with D.B., but Robert Duvall takes bullets and trails Frederic. He's the only one who can get him. Indeed Frederic has Diane, whom he deal with rather abusively, but he's less scary than a bunch of his friends, who are willing to trade horse and hides for her. Or maybe he is, shooting a man just for holding up a game of dice.
Robert Duvall rides in search of Diane, but encounters way too many Indians and they all have guns. Knowing just what to do, he stops, kills his horse and uses it as a defensive wall, now able to shoot at the Indians and have then running scared. He's not completely safe, alone in the desert behind a dead horse. The marauders stay where they are, with some scary looking guns and Robert throws them off the trail by shooting far from them, making them think he can't shoot, of course picking the exact right moment to knock off the most annoying of them.
Tommy Lee is worried about his best friend, and so are the other men. Jose says that Robert will never catch Frederic and D.B. sings his familiar refrain about how it's Robert Urich's fault. He's so in love with Diane that he intends to marry her if she returns without Robert Urich. This starts another fight, but Tommy Lee steps in to stop it quickly.
Night is beginning to fall and Robert is still fairly defenseless, with just the rotting horse between him and the bad guys, but sensing they are gone, he takes his saddle and gear and walks until he finds a group of people: Barry, Nina, Chris and Adam. Our plots have finally intersected. Robert recognizes Chris as the Sheriff chasing Robert Urich, and also as the guys who started shooting to scare off the bad guys. They are a motley band, no match for the gang, but Robert says he can do it alone.
Diane is still being mistreated by Frederic, whose friends want her, but he decides she's not worth it and leaves her for the coyotes to get. The bad guys want her, but he warns them that if they stay with her and Robert comes, all will be lost. They all get drink and Robert rides into their campsite, plucking them off one by one with single bullets. He's able to rescue the traumatized Diane. Chris is amazed that Robert could kill all of those men so easily. He didn't have to do a thing! However, Frederic had left the camp and the next we see of him, he's stabbing Barry and then kills Nina and Adam too. That's fiendish! Chris digs them graves with just a bowl and Robert helps him bury the three unfortunate souls. Chris wants to help Robert track him down, but Robert says, "I guess we have to let him go this time." He advises Chris to search for Glenne, and promises to kill Frederic should he encounter him again.
Speaking of Glenne, noticeably pregnant (time seems to have gone faster for her), she's somewhere in Kansas with Frederick Coffin and Steve Buscemi. Steve tries to rape her, but Frederick, who has been killing men who wanted to touch her since the whiskey boat, pulls Steve off her and offers to kill him, throwing him against the wheel over and over, but Glenne wants him alive "in case the Indians come." He will not tolerate anyone trying to "marry" her as he thinks of sex.
Robert Urich has been gambling for days and is convinced to help some local lowlifes rob banks in Kansas.
Having sent Chris off on his personal mission, Robert Duvall has to protect Diane, beaten and frightened. He makes his way to Adobe Walls, in Northern Texas, a tiny little shelter from the rain. Sweet man that he is, he tries to snap her back to life by playing cards with her, but she's too traumatized and breaks down. As she cries on his shoulder, the second part ends.
Part Three begins with Robert Duvall rejoining his men as the Canadian River is crossed. "You have become this gal's caretaker," Tommy Lee says, somewhat annoyed at this increasing diversion from the work. Diane still has not really recovered. She still cries. She asks Robert why he doesn't ask "for a poke no more?" He says he's being respectful of her situation.
Robert Urich is running with a really bad crowd. They surprise him by wanting to rob horse wranglers instead of a bank. During the gun battle, one is shot and the leader callously kills him because "it was just his unlucky day, huh," as Robert puts it, now terrified of this bunch.
Only one of the horse wranglers lives and Danny finds him. So, the leads have to go off and track down the guys who did this. That means Robert Duvall has to leave Diane and she's afraid. The guys follow birds until finding the dead bodies, which they take the time to bury. Danny follows the tracks and knows there are four of them, but that also Robert Urich is with them. They suggest that it's just Robert's horse, but Danny knows the tracks "his horse makes with him on it." Geez, that's some excellent skill! They better find their wayward friend soon, because his crazy new pals are giving innocent farmers, or "sod busters" just to go through their house. The leader finds only a watch. Killed two men for a watch and then he hangs and burns the bodies! Two more graves for the heroes to dig.
Danny spots the bad posse only a little bit away and they surprise them. Tommy Lee orders them tied up, and that means Robert Urich too, because he participated. His longtime friends have to go with the credo that "you ride with an outlaw, you die with an outlaw." That means they all have to hang from trees. They kill the bad guys and then it's only Robert Urich left. Robert Duvall tells him he has Diane safe and then says goodbye to his friends. "I'd rather be hung by my friends than by strangers," Robert Urich says. He doesn't wait for anyone to whip his horse from under him. He digs his spurs in and does it himself. They are all upset, but Tommy Lee reminds them they have the cattle, so a grave has to be dug. They leave only the leader on the tree with a sign that says "Man Burner and Horse Thief."
At long last, we meet Robert Duvall's long lost love, Anjelica Houston. She's caring for an injured husband kicked by a horse and unable to move, as well as two young daughters. All of her other children have died. It's Glenne and her cohorts who arrive at Anjelica's farm and are invited to stay. "This woman's going to have a baby," Anjelica says and one is born. That was mighty quick! When she left Arkansas, no one could even tell she was pregnant! Glenne has serious post-partum depression, but Anjelica is understanding and she and her daughters will help her. Her gentleman friends push on to Ogalalla and take Glenne, but leave the baby. Her beloved is in jail, about to be executed for the murder of a boy. She passes out at the jail.
Coincidentally, Chris now shows up at Anjelica's farm. Anjelica is gently rocking the baby when he arrives. Ever hospitable, Anjelica invites Chris in for a meal, just inches away from his son. Anjelica figures out he's Glenne's husband (both being from Arkansas) and tells the baby is his, but that she left. Chris breaks down and Anjelica tells her daughter, "men have tears in 'em, just like you" when they wonder why a man can cry. Anjelica is honest with Chris: Glenne wants neither Chris nor the baby. She never even looked at the baby before leaving. To make it worse, Anjelica admits "loves new things" and is getting "attached" to the baby. She asks him if he wants the baby, and if he does, take him now, because she can't "go through the heartsick of losing another one." Chris asks for the chance to find Glenne first.
The cattle drive nears Ogalalla and Anjelica too. Diane is worried about how she'll be introduced and she's suddenly ashamed of who she is, which Robert tells her not to be. Robert admits he would like to marry Anjelica. He goes to Jose, who can tell fortunes, and asks if he'll marry again. "No more wife for you," Jose says.
With Frederick keeping watch over Glenne as always, Chris arrives to see her. "The doctor said you are strong enough to talk. You don't have to talk, though, if you don't want to," he gently tells her. He then has to break the news that her eldest son is dead, along with Barry and the girl too. Glenne reacts to none of it, only that her love has been executed. Chris is very upset by her reaction and when he returns for her in the morning, he finds that she and Frederick have left. Anjelica offers him a job so he can stay with his son and then we see briefly that Glenne and Frederick have been killed by Indians.
In Ogalalla, Robert buys some new duds and some finery for Diane. The rest of the boys want some whores for their free time and they go to D.B. for advice, but the discussion is interrupted by the US Army, requisitioning horses for their ongoing fight against Indians. They beat D.B. when he refuses and then go after Ricky when he holds to the horse. Tommy Lee finally comes to their rescue and beats the man who attacked Ricky with a branding iron until Robert pulls him away. Robert tells Ricky that the reason Tommy Lee reacted so strongly was because he was protecting his son. The boys then return to their question to get laid.
Apparently more time has passed because Chris has become quite the horse trainer at Anjelica's. More strangers arrive at this farm, but this time it's the ones we expected. Robert and Anjelica run to each other's arms with a big kiss, in front of her daughters, Tommy Lee, Ricky and Diane. Robert is surprised to see Chris again. Tommy Lee and Ricky go with Chris to look at the horses Anjelica has for sale and Tommy Lee tells Chris that Robert Urich is dead. Robert and Anjelica talk over old times during a picnic for everyone. "I was never so married I couldn't have managed a friend," Anjelica chides Robert when she tells him she needed him over the years. She wrote him, but tore up the letters. Anjelica is also not judgmental about Diane. In fact, the only person she doesn't like is Tommy Lee, and only because he has had more time with Robert than she has. She takes quite a shine to Ricky too, hoping that he'll return and maybe marry her daughter in a few years.
The only thing about Diane that Anjelica doesn't like is that she's young and beautiful and she no longer is. "It sure was nice pretending you loved only me," Anjelica says, but Robert says he loves only her too. He claims he would kill Anjelica's husband and send Diane to hell just to stay with Anjelica, but Anjelica knows Diane is very much in love with Robert, so she tells Robert she would never marry again.
Knowing that Anjelica is out of his reach now, Robert decides to leave and Anjelica asks Diane to stay. The cow trail is "no place" for her. Robert promises to return, so Diane agrees. Anjelica has taken in a baby, a new hired hand and a young girl in a matter of weeks. Diane asks if Robert still wants to marry Anjelica and he says no, that time has changed them too much. As Robert leaves, Anjelica begs him one more time to stay, not to go to Montana and get killed by Indians, but Robert wants "to see one more place before I take up the rocking chair." Off he goes and rejoins the cattle push.
Tommy Lee is determined to keep going, despite being 80 miles from water. Danny asks Robert why Tommy Lee is so insistent, and it's simply because he wants to be the first man to raise cattle in the area. But, going 80 miles without water is tough on the men, who don't bear up well. Even the cattle look miserable. When the last of the water is doled out, none of the cowboys will take it. Luckily, they do make it 80 miles to water and everyone is revived. While they sleep, Indians steal their horses, so Tommy Lee insists they follow them. Danny says the Indians stole the horses for meat because they are so desperate for food, mostly women and children anyway. But, Tommy wants his horses back! Tommy Lee scares everyone away so they can get to the horses, but a blind child is left wandering around. Danny scoops him up, but an Indian kills him. "I guess it's our fault. We should have shot sooner," Tommy Lee says, cradling the baby.
As the final portion of the story begins, Danny is buried, but the rest press on. In Montana, even Robert has to admit it's exciting to be in a new country, but he cautions Ricky not to mention to Tommy Lee they think so. Robert then gives Ricky the psychological explanation of why Tommy Lee won't acknowledge he's Ricky's father: it would be admitting he's human.
Back in Nebraska, Anjelica's husband finally dies. "Sometimes grave diggin' is the only thing we do around here," she tells her Mexican hired hand. She then wonders about the afterlife.
Robert and Timothy decide to chase buffalo, just for the heck of it, because, as Robert notes, soon there won't be any of them left. Before Timothy can think about it, Robert rushes off and does it, unfortunately bringing a whole pack of Indians back with him. This is not good, especially since Robert has taken a few arrows to the leg and Timothy gets shot. The Indians leave, but our boys know they will be back, in greater numbers. They have to attend to the arrows in Robert's leg, which do not come out so easily. When the Indians return, Timothy wonders why the heck the ever left Texas.
The men are still trapped in their tiny cave, surrounded by Indians and now a rainstorm. They decide that Timothy should float down the creek, now swelled by rain water and head back to the camp to bring help. Robert can't move in his condition. Timothy makes it through the storm, his shoulder aching a bit, no doubt from the gunshot that went right through it. He has no idea which direction he's going, so he falls to the ground and tries to sleep. That's when he sees the ghost of Danny Glover and says, "I'm coming, wait for me."
Ron Weyand, who looks like a hippy 100 years before they existed, comes to Robert's rescue. Robert's leg is so badly infected that it looks like it needs amputation, but Ron let's him ride his horse. Timothy isn't dead yet. He's sitting in the middle of a field when Tommy Lee and D.B. find him. Tommy Lee decides to go after Robert alone. Robert has somehow made it to a Montana town where he can finally have a doctor tend to his wounds. Once Robert wakes up, he finds his leg has indeed been amputated, joking with the doctor that he hopes he saved the leg so he could use the bone as a crutch. The doctor insists the other leg has to go too, or else he'll die. Robert puts him off by sending him out for whiskey and to tip the whore playing the piano so he can have pretty music.
Tommy Lee arrives at the cave where Robert had been hiding out and follows Robert's trail all the way to the Montana town and Robert's bedside. Robert has a gun cocked and ready for anyone who tries to take his other leg. "I'm the one man you don't boss," Robert tells Tommy Lee. In their bantering way, Tommy Lee wonders what Robert needs his legs for, since all he does is sit on the porch, but Robert says he "likes to kick a pig every now and then." Robert admits it's vanity that is making him keep the leg, and they also discuss what kind of funeral Robert would want. His ideal burial spot is "Clara's Orchard," the spot in Texas where he tearily told Tommy Lee of his love for Anjelica. Tommy Lee has to haul him all the way back to Texas? Robert tells him, "I'm sending you on another adventure so you don't get bored being a rancher." And one last request: Robert wants Tommy Lee to admit to Ricky that he's his father. Robert writes notes for Anjelica and Diane, but he's "so lightheaded" he "forgets which is which." This scene bursts with tenderness, but in character. The two don't get sloppily emotional, but they do get to say their goodbyes in their own special way.
Because it's winter, the doctor suggests they keep Robert's body in Montana and take it back to Texas in the spring. The doctor assumes Tommy Lee will forget to come back for the body, but he doesn't know that Tommy Lee would never promise something he didn't intend to do to the fullest. He then has to gather the men and tell them that Robert is dead. For the winter, however, they still have to man the cattle, even in snowy cold conditions. Tommy Lee pretty much keeps to himself until they reach a spot by a river where he decides to build his ranch, bringing the cattle drive to a stop.
D.B. wants his wages so he can go chase after Diane, who he refers to as a whole, much to Tommy Lee's consternation. The rest of the men stay to construct a ranch, though Tommy Lee sends a few of the boys, under the command of Ricky, to go sell some cattle to a nearby Army camp. Not all are thrilled to be taking orders from the youngster, and a fight even breaks out, but his resolve is strong.
The months tick by and a ranch takes shape. Ricky is able to tame horses, "just like you," Timothy notes to Tommy Lee, who says nothing, but looks on with pride. When Tommy Lee leaves to fulfill his promise to Robert to take his body back to Texas, he almost tells Ricky he's his father, but the words choke in his throat, though clear to everyone. He does leave him in charge of the ranch, though.
Because D.B. had brought the news, Diane and Anjelica know Robert is dead and that Tommy Lee is taking his body all the way back to Texas. Even Anjelica tries to convince him to leave the body at her little cemetery, but Tommy Lee intends to keep his promise. He also gives both women the letters Robert wrote on his death bed. Poor D.B. has been working at Anjelica's ranch, pining for Diane the whole time, even when she skips dinner to spend the whole night standing by Robert's coffin. Anjelica reads her letter, in which Robert asks her to take care of Diane, but Diane cannot read. Anjelica offers to read Diane's letter to her, but she doesn't need to hear it. That it has her name on it in his handwriting is enough for her. Anjelica tries one more time to convince Tommy Lee to leave the body, full of hate for him. He's keeping that promise, but not the other one she knows Robert would have asked of him: give Ricky his name. Anjelica says she "despises" him, but what she's really angry at is that Robert and Tommy Lee had the closeness and tight bond she could never have with Robert.
Alone, Tommy Lee actually hauls the body back down, encountering small towns that have heard of his exploit, Indians who thankfully leave him a lone and even a bad wheel that needs fixing in New Mexico. The local blacksmith even knows about Tommy Lee's promise. By coincidence, it's in the New Mexico town that Frederic is awaiting execution for killing a family. Naturally, Tommy Lee wants to see him. Frederic is still unrepentant, not surprised that Tommy Lee brought Robert's "stinking corpse" to see his funeral.
Frederic avoids hanging by trying to escape and falling out the window with a guard to his death, the "flying" he told Tommy Lee he was taught to do. The wagon carrying Robert's body is destroyed in a river, along with the coffin, but Tommy Lee pushes on, dragging just the body behind his horse. Birds of prey eat at the body and Tommy Lee looks like he ages 20 years by the time he reaches the promised spot, a man with a determined soul, but a broken body. He finally buries the body. "Well, there you are," he says when it's done, now unable to hold back the tears. "I guess this will teach me to be more careful about what I promise in the future."
Actually, Tommy Lee makes it all the way back to Lonesome Dove, where the Mexican cook is ringing the dinner bell, though no one is around to eat. Tommy Lee notes where all the dead men are buried, but the rest are safe in Montana building a ranch. Not much is left of Lonesome Dove. The saloon burnt down, with only the piano recognizable in the char, a suicide by the owner who missed Diane too much to go on. A reporter from San Antonio wants to interview Tommy Lee, a taciturn man who does not rest on the laurels of his many accomplishments.
In actuality, "Lonesome Dove" is just a collection of rather tame vignettes strung together by the personality of its characters. It really shouldn't work as well as it does. It's missing most of the elements of a typical miniseries: epic thrust, high emotion and even higher drama. Hell, there's not even a slumming movie star in sight! But, due to exceptional writing and exquisite acting, "Lonesome Dove" is a shining example of American television at its best, no matter kind of genre label it is given.
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