Do not miss a chance to watch "Hollywood Wives." I'm warning you now. A riot from beginning to end, this is pure 1980s Americana, Reagan years excess, schlock to end all schlock.
Perhaps because it was her first book turned into a miniseries, but I can't think of any reason this one is not called "Jackie Collins' Hollywood Wives." It really should be, because it would alert us immediately that we are about to jump into Ms. Collins' unique world of camp trash. I'll take Jackie's books over those of Danielle Steel or Judith Krantz any day (I'll take a book in Swahili about waiting for a rock to move over Judith Krantz) because Jackie Collins knows exactly what she's writing, never pretending it's anything but exactly what it is.
Jackie had the exquisite bad taste (I mean that in the best way, Jackie), to turn to Aaron Spelling to produce "Hollywood Wives." Having given her sister's career a lift in the 1980s, Spelling was as smart as Jackie Collins, always aware of just what he was giving his vast audiences. Not subtle or artistic, he wanted ratings the old-fashioned way: sex and sin. With two intelligent smut experts at the wheel, it's no wonder "Hollywood Wives" was such a success, but not for the same reasons as, oh, say, "Roots" or "North and South."
The combination of these two makes "Hollywood Wives" easily one of the most outrageously hysterical hootfests in the miniseries cannon. Try making it though any scene without exploding in laughter. "Lace" will forever be the campiest miniseries, but "Hollywood Wives" is more expansive and more ridiculous, it's just that the plot of "Lace" is unmatched in sheer lunacy while "Hollywood Wives" derives its hokey brilliance from every beloved cliche expected.
The fun starts with just the credits, a montage of Hollywood excess (shopping, spas, jewels, furs, perfume, and lots of Rodeo Drive) and an actual theme song, croaked out in grand 80s pop fashion with such delicious lyrics like "it's not like the movies out there on the street." It's a long song because this is a once-in-a-lifetime cast of vets, wanna-bes, never-quite-got-theres and actual stars, enough for about 13 verses of the song.
Where else should the movie start but on a red carpet? Mary Hart, playing herself, of course, is handling interviewing duties. First to arrive is that glamorous platinum plaything Suzanne Somers, as the "most beautiful sensuous sexy symbol in United States today," who has a role in the new movie "Tigress" where, and I hope you are ready for this laugh, she plays "an anthropologist who gets captured by a gang of pygmies." Only a minute into the movie! I am in heaven.
Starting the laughs at the banquet is emcee studio head Rod Steiger, who cracks bad jokes and announces a new film, must to the chagrin of Stefanie Powers and her director hubby Anthony Hopkins (did you ever think you would see those three names in the same sentence?) who were promised the film would not be announced. Getting the honorary award for money raised is Robert Stack, wearing the third of the horrible toupees of the male cast members (and we've only met three). Wooden as ever, he accepts the award while seeming bored at the same time.
When it's time for dinner and dancing, tough-as-nails agent Angie Dickinson makes a bee-line to Robert, who thanks her for actually giving money to the wing at the old actors home charity being supported that night, but that's a secret, because it wouldn't do for her image if people knew.
Two of the titular wives are seated together. Joanna Cassidy, in a stunning off-the-shoulder Nolan Miller creation, whines that when Anthony Hopkins was married to her, they never danced like he's dancing with current wife Stefanie. Her pal Candice Bergen, in her biggest hair ever, sarcastically tells her, "don't think of it as dancing. Think of it as a script conference." In another part of the room, Robert and wife Frances Bergen (yup, Candy's mom) are trying to wrangle his slutty daughter Mary Crosby from telling lewd jokes and making nasty comments about them.
Not at the party is a Charles Manson look-a-like trashing his house as his parents try to calm him down. As they discuss locking him away again or giving him meds, we find out that he's upset because he's found a document saying they are not his real parents. Nearly strangling his mother, he asks who his real mother is. "We only know she's someone in Hollywood," she says. Well, if it's a woman we're looking for, of the cast members we've met so far, only one or two stand any chance of being biologically old enough. He kills his adopted father with a letter opener (not even 15 minutes into the movie--I'm beyond heaven!).
Back at the party, 80s soap heartthrob Andrews Stevens is a waiter and former gigolo because he's still trying to break into the biz. A smarmy dowager tells him he shouldn't be doing part time work, hinting that returning to the life would be a much better cash cow for him, like one of his old friends who is there scoping out Joanna. As for Joanna, she is still pining for Anthony, who is being hit up for a part in his new movie by Suzanne, much to Stefanie's dry amusement. Candy takes a moment to call her hubby, Steve Forrest, who is in Italy making a cheap picture in a Roman costume. He's tired of these types of parts. Oh, but Steve, your legs look to sexy! He's got a young make-up girl he can flirt with while on the other side of the ocean, Candice has to pretend to Joanna that all is well with their marriage. Stefanie wants to leave the party for a "chili cheeseburger," and Anthony agrees, but they don't get out cleanly. First, Mary caustically congratulates Stefanie for being a woman screenwriter, saying about a new script, "it doesn't matter if you wrote it or not, as long as they think you wrote it," and then lecherous Rod wants a word before dragging a columnist off to get an introduction to Linda Evans (who, thankfully, does not make an appearance).
Also not at the party is Andrew's curvy new wife, Catherine Mary Stewart, who is accosted in a supermarket parking lot by a creep who actually says, "you ought to be in movies" before grabbing at her. Luckily, a supermarket employee saw the guy follow Catherine out and has called a security guard to help. "Don't let appearances fool you," the bag boy says, "day or night, Hollywood can be a dangerous place." Okay, that line is downright hysterical because it's in the wrong place, a supermarket parking lot where a woman has just been assaulted. Shouldn't an ironic zinger like that be saved for one of the wits at the party? Honestly, who needs drugs to get high when writing like this exists? I'm over the moon!
The guy who killed his parents decides to hitch his way to Hollywood, meeting a talkative truck driver who says that he's ferried a lot of people that way, and nothing ever became of any of them. "I'm different. They are never going to forget me in Hollywood. Never," the scary man says.
Oh, it gets better and better! A hunky pool guy straight out of a gay porn script sizes up Candice and says, "the manager told me you need service twice a week." "The POOL needs service twice a week," she replies icily. Undaunted, he offers her swimming lessons, something he does for lots of rich women. Who? He can't say, "professional confidentiality." He claims swimming is easy, "you just have to hold your breath." "Well, don't hold yours," Candice retorts. ZING! Having made it through crap like "The Adventurers" over the years has given her the ability to nail the lines with her wonderful deadpan.
One of Andrew's old hooker buddies has given him his house while he's away, but Catherine pouts because she doesn't get to spend any time with him. He reminds her that he's doing this for her too. "One of these days, you are going to see me up there on the screen, or doing Shakespeare..." Wait, Shakespeare? What did he do to deserve being mentioned here? Couldn't they have gone with Neil Simon or Sid Kroft or someone far more believable? Well, they are our tender young lovers, so they get the twinkly music while all of the hot shots are out for blood. But, that doesn't mean the babes can't still lust after him. A bimbo at the pool in a bikini says, "you're married? What a waste!"
Angie and Suzanne are having a spa day and Suzanne wants better parts. Angie claims there's nothing wrong with being a sexy symbol, but Suzanne wants to be Jane Fonda. She wants into the big "Final Reunion," Anthony big new picture. "Isn't being a star enough for you?" Angie asks. "Not anymore!" Suzanne insists.
Our three leads go out shopping at Neiman-Marcus, where Candice tries on an insane leather outfit with a father coat and fur hat. Mary and Joanna are worried that she's been without her husband too long. Mary doesn't believe that Steve is pining for Candice the way she thinks. "He's not a liar!" Candy insists. "No, but he is an actor," Joanna adds, "and they are used to be catered to all their lives...meaning that actors are children and it doesn't matter who provides the toys. They are certainly going to play with them and I just imagine he's having a fabulous time on location." In my wildest dreams, I couldn't write a line like that. From now on, I will refer to her as The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins for doing so. "I'm a happily married woman. We don't play around," Candice insists as we cut to Steve in bed with his make-up girl. He rather harshly pushes her out the door so he can learn his lines, but in reality it's so he can study himself in a mirror and worry about his age.
Everyone wants a part of "Final Reunion." Mary suggests to Candice that Steve would be perfect for a part "if he plays he age" and Joanna thinks he should get Angie as an agent because she can get him the part. Even more, don't wait for Steve to do it, go do it yourself. "After all, what are Hollywood wives for?" Joanna reminds Candice.
Just to catch you up on the murderous stranger on his way to Los Angeles, he's now in Indiana in the car of a reverend who is excited that he's going to be part of a family reunion. "Yeah, I'm gonna take care of my whoooooole family," the stranger tells the preacher. A few scenes later, he kills the reverend, steals his money and car.
Candice tarts herself up in sexy lingerie and furry heels to welcome Steve home from Italy. Romantic that he is, he chirps "hi, babe" when she opens the door. Question: why do they have no servants to open the door? Question: why does Steve ring the doorbell? Instead of the much-expected sex, Candice has to unpack Steve's bag as he sets up meetings on the phone.
After pounding the pavement trying to get a job, Andrew runs into Roddy McDowell, his former pimp. "You were the best stud in my stable. Any time you want..." Roddy tells him, looking him over like a piece of, well, this is Roddy McDowell, so he's gone right to mentally undressing him. Andrew refuses to get back into that line of work. But, he does take Roddy's card, just in case. Roddy McDowell as a Hollywood high-end pimp? C'mon, people, this is too much. I can't stop laughing!
The story moves to Palm Beach. You see, without Robert Stack, apparently the biggest movie star in the world (the biggest movie star in the world is 110 years old?), "Family Reunion" may not get made, so Rod sends Anthony to Palm Beach to woo him, but Stefanie has to stay in Hollywood and finish rewriting the script. When he checks into his hotel room, Suzanne is draped across his bed in a towel. Anthony isn't the least bit interested, but Suzanne asks, "how do I go about seducing [you]?" "I'm happy married and don't drink anymore," Anthony says. "What else don't you do anymore?" Suzanne asks before getting up real close to him. "Do you enjoy being a mattress?" he asks. WHAT A GREAT LINE!!!!! Ultimately, he succumbs and her towel is dropped as she goes in for a big kiss.
Candice can't catch a break with her husband. After puffing up his ego about his dwindling star status, they fall into bed, where Candy coos his name way too loudly, and I guess that's what distracts him, because he rolls off of her to call is agent again.
Speaking of agents, Angie is dying to see the "Family Reunion" script, which no one has seen. She tells her lackey that even bribery is allowed in getting it. He tells her that Steve wants to leave his agent and they should sign him, and Angie barks, "not if he walked in here on his hands and knees and offered me his first-born son!" Those following the plot and not just the great lines can guess why, though Steve tells Candice that it's because she was his agent once, but when he became a big star, he dropped her and she's never forgiven him.
In Florida, not only has Anthony slept with Suzanne, but he's drinking, though he says "it's only a bracer" he needs to meet with Robert. Suzanne still wants in the movie. "Family Reunion" is not a movie. It's a film. There is a difference," he says before telling her a) she should think of doing comedy (slam #1) and b) she needs to be "out before the maids come in and splash us all over the tabloids" (slam #2). As soon as he leaves, Suzanne digs through his luggage and finds the script. Those following the cliches can guess where she's going plot-wise. She calls Angie to brag about her conquest and lies, saying Anthony has promised her a role. Don't see where she's going yet? Do I have to spell it out? B-L-A-C-K-M-A-I-L.
Suzanne makes sure she's on the same flight as Anthony and mentions having read the script. She wants the lead. "You're not, um, exactly, unspoiled," as the script calls for, he notes. "You don't have to be a virgin to play a virgin," Suzanne oozes before suggesting they join the "mile high club," which he's never heard of. But, they don't need the bathroom. They go for it right there in the seats!
Shameless Mary makes a play for her best friend's husband, meeting Steve on the street and ordering him in the car so she can show him "my house in the hills." Candice won't know. She's off playing tennis with Joanna, who, once again, can only talk about Anthony, her ex-husband who dropped her because she's not a "creative" person. At Mary's, Steve and Mary massage each other by the pool, but that quickly turns sexual, which is just gross, because he's old enough to be her grandfather. "It's true what they say about you. You are so damn sexy," she whispers. That must have been a tough line to get out for our poor Mary. I wonder how many takes it took. He's at home with flowers for Candice when she returns, promising him she'll get him the "Family Reunion" script just to spend time with him. "If I get it, I want a weekend alone with you," she says in desperation. "Get that script and a weekend won't be long enough," he replies, smacking her on the ass.
Just as Andrew is informed he's being kicked out of the apartment because his friend is returning, Catherine bounds in with the news that she's pregnant. He can't get any acting roles and all of his scenes in various states of undress show he's clearly in great shape, so can you guess where he's going to get some quick cash? You can't? Then I'll wait, FINE!
There was a clue to it previously, but I chose not to mention it. However, we can no longer avoid discussing the fact that Candice is...wait for it...a kleptomaniac! Yes, she steals expensive things from the finest Beverly Hills stores. And gets quite a rush from it, I might add.
Dimwitted Andrew thinks he can fake his way into Stefanie's office by pretending he's pals with Warren Beatty, but she figures it out very quickly (Stefanie is so wonderfully smart!) and decides to give him a chance. She allows him to read for her and she's impressed, but won't make any promises because he doesn't have an agent.
At the racetrack, Candy, Joanna and Mary are picking horses and Mary says she has the perfect horse for Joanna, "Major Stud." "Actually, names don't mean a thing. Only performance," she says, and talks about the stamina of her latest stud. Thankfully the race is about to start, cutting off the puns, and Joanna admires the wallet Candice just stole. Candice needs her pals because Joanna's father runs a studio and Mary's is a legend and only their help can make her party a success, the party she's planning that will put Steve back on top in Hollywood. How can a party do that? I don't know, but for over an hour, it's been discussed ad nauseum, so it's going to be a big event and when big events happen in stories like these, well, it will be a whopper!
The killer? He's made it to Iowa, where he has a stupid conversation with a little girl trying to give away a cat about how important adoption is. Yes, we get it. He's angry to have been given up for adoption. That's been obvious since his first scene. He then helps a woman fix her car and she offers him a ride with her kids to Cedar Rapids. He leaves the dead cat on the side of the road before getting in.
While a clearly uninterested Steve suns himself at the pool, Candice rattles off her guest list, which includes everyone from Gregory Peck to John Travolta. She tells Steve that Joanna is going to get them the script and reminds him of his promise. She wants to go skinny dipping, but he brushes her off. "Why is it you always make me feel like an intrusion on your life?" she asks. He says he has "important things" on his mind. "I'm important. At least you used to think so!" she snaps before walking away.
With doors slamming all over the place, Andrew finds Roddy's card and can't avoid the inevitable any longer (can you really say you didn't see that coming? I know I promised to wait until it happened to tell you, but I know you didn't REALLY need me to tell you where his plot--or any plot for that matter--was headed).
Suzanne and Anthony do it in the shower, which gives Suzanne a chance to model yet another towel, but she's serious about the part in his movie. "I know what this town thinks of me. They wouldn't even let me test for Joan of Arc last year," she pouts, in another Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins line. Anthony concedes that Suzanne is a good actress (and how many takes did you need to say that without laughing, Sir Anthony?), but she's "about as right for the part as Sylvester Stallone." Suzanne then plays her trump card. "Think about this," she says, going over to the wall and revealing a hidden camera behind the mirror. "That's blackmail!" Anthony says. "I think of it as a negotiating posture," Suzanne says, employing her biggest words yet. "Yeah, a negotiating position for a whore!" he rails. But, she has the upper hand and my guess is she will get her screen test.
As expected, Andrews trots off to Roddy's interior decorating/antique shop (as if Roddy isn't gay enough just by appearing in the scene wearing a cravat, we drop him in an antique shop as an interior decorator) to ask for his old job back. Andrew is hesitant to take the work, but he has to find a place to live first. Roddy says he has a place for him, so Andrew agrees to squire around the Texas ladies Roddy has ready for him. When Roddy takes Andrew and Catherine to the house, Catherine falls in love with it and Roddy changes the story so that Andrew has to sleep with the women from Texas. Incensed, Andrew refuses, but Roddy has him over a barrel (a position, I have it on good authority, that Roddy himself used to prefer), because all he has to do is mention Andrew's past to squeaky clean Catherine.
For pure cheese, you can't beat the scene where (a clearly guilty) Anthony takes Stefanie out on the town for their anniversary...to the hot dog stand where they met. Only he's had it done up with a red carpet, a violinist and all the formal trappings. The limo whisks them off to the top of the Hollywood Hills where the driver disappears for two hours.
At a conference with Stefanie and Rod, Anthony nervously suggests Suzanne for the role of the virginal heroine, noting that she would even be willing to test for the part. Rod is thrilled, because she's "big box office," but Stefanie, after learning it's not a joke, is outraged, suggesting Burt Reynolds for the part of virginal male in the script.
Andrew and Catherine play their next scene walking on the beach in Malibu with Andrew wearing a leather vest to show off his body. Let me guess, now Roddy is dressing him too? With a bottle of poppers, he could get laid in any gay bar in West Hollywood. Catherine asks to meet Andrew's mother, and he refuses. He has to leave her to go meet Roddy's women, always dressing that up as "making contacts." Get this! She offers to go with him. Oh, that would be cute. "In this heat, forget it" is his way of getting out of that one. A kiss and more twinkly music doesn't hurt.
In an attempt to, I don't know, intersect some of the various plots, or perhaps just because of budget reasons, Roddy and Andrew have lunch before meeting the Texas women and Candice and Joanna are at the next table discussing the party. Mary has guaranteed Robert will be there, Angie has signed on and even Suzanne, whom Joanna jokes has been rumored to be a "stand-in for porno queens." Joanna cautions Candice that Suzanna "might even make a play" for Steve at the party, but Candice is confident that he never strays. He's had more women than she has hairdos in "Hollywood Wives," and that's a lot! Joanna manages to turn the conversation back to Anthony leaving her for a creative woman, spitting out a few sentences like they were hot coals in her mouth. She asks Candy what she would do if Steve ever cheated. "I'd kill him."
So, cut to Steve and Mary in her hot tub. Mary tells him that if he left Candice, he could have a whole lot more money with her, especially when Robert kicks and leaves her everything. She wants to be married, but he's enjoying the fact that they aren't, right as a photographer in the bushes starts snapping pictures of them.
Let's take a moment to see more cracks in two of the wives' marriages and how they handle them. First, there's Stefanie, certainly not stupid, who adds up some clues and thinks Anthony is drinking again, as he shakes his way through a glass of orange juice. Of course not! She's the one who dried him out the first time, but she won't do it again, laying down the law, but nicely. She is Stefanie Powers, after all. Not as nice is Candice Bergen. Not only does Steve bait her by telling her the party is ridiculous, but he also calls her by...gasp...her real name! "Etta is dead. I told you never to call me that again!" she seethes and stalks off.
With the women from Texas, Andrew is the dumbest hooker on record. Hell, he even uses his own name. The women are salivating over him. They make sure he's not gay first and then refuse a trip to Rodeo Drive? "All those foreigners?" one clucks. They want one thing from him, and he's very nervous. He has theater tickets for them and they find the theater "boring...very boring." I had trouble containing my wild glee when the two old broads suggest a threeway and actually use that world. Oh, the Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins is fearless! They will double Roddy's price if he agrees. He insists on $1000. "Well, what are we waitin' for?" they say in agreement. Breaking the news to Catherine isn't easy. She cries on the phone, the whole works. I'm all for a good threeway, but watching my poor darling Andrew actually get it on with two elderly ladies is tough to watch.
It is tough to manage, as well, because Andrew can't do it. He breaks away from them, throws the money back and leaves in a huff. He best get home soon because a mysterious man is watching Catherine through binoculars.
While waiting at lunch for Mary (who is having sex with Steve), Candice tells Joanna the whole story of her friend "Etta," a fat ugly school joke who was raped and had to give up the baby, but moved to Hollywood to work in a studio make-up department. "A studio joke," Joanna laughs. But, "Etta" lost all the weight and changed her name. Yup, Candice spills it all to her true pal Joanna. "It hasn't been so easy for me to get to this point in my life and I want to stay," she assures Joanna. Joanna assures her she will never have to go back to "Etta" because every man "in this town needs us, depends on us. They couldn't do anything without us!" We've needed some out-in-the-open feminism. That's what built The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins--making her readers feel like queens. "What about her baby?" Candice rhetorically asks.
We catch up with our mother-seeking killer in Las Vegas, boarding a bus for Los Angeles.
The mysterious man with the binoculars is none other than...Rod Steiger, who has become so infatuated with Catherine (in the day or so she's lived in Malibu) that he wants her to play Nikki (the role Suzanne wants) in "Family Reunion." Being pregnant, she's no virgin, and she's definitely not an actress, so she's stunned into silence.
The private investigator taking pictures of Mary and Steve is working for Mary's father, Robert Stack. Robert orders all the photos destroyed, but the wicked laugh the PI gives means he's got other plans for those pictures.
Stefanie and Anthony have an annoyingly cloying scene on a pier where Anthony tries to apologize. Stefanie accepts it, but for the life of me, I'm not sure for what he's apologizing. She doesn't know about the drinking or the cheating. After he finishes, he then cons her into letting Suzanne do a screen test, allowing her to think it will be awful and put them in the clear.
It's finally the day of Candice's party. Today, she seems to have a maid, because after telling Steve to "stay out of everybody's way" by going to the gym (which he needs) and getting a hair cut, we hear her tell someone that the caterers are due to arrive shortly. As soon as she buzzes out, Steve calls Mary. When she calls him, the machine picks up and if you were alive in 1985, you'll know that if you picked up the phone while the machine was recording, your conversation was recorded. It will be so much fun when Candice eventually hears such lines as, "all I need to do is dry off and I'm on my way" from Steve or "don't bother, I'm only going to get you all wet again" from Mary.
Our killer has made it to Hollywood and Vine, the only place in Hollywood where he shouldn't stand out. He's stopped by a drug dealer and asks, "did you ever see 'Dirty Harry'?"
"I don't want to hear anything about 'creative control!' I'm fed up with 'creative control!' There's no such thing as 'creative control!' This line is shouted by Rod, but honestly, it sounds like something Aaron Spelling would say after someone told him to cut down on sex or glitz in one of his TV shows. He's upset because Stefanie keeps standing her ground on this, her first picture, having told him that "the only thing wrong with this movie is you!" Rod then asks Anthony about his affair with Suzanne. "She was a hooker when I met her," Rod says, explaining that they have a session "once a week...it keeps the old ticker in shape," and also that he's her "father-confessor."
Our young married couple has moved back in with Andrew's hooker buddy Stephen Shellen, but since Catherine doesn't understand why, he's upset and when she's upset, she cleans. The kitchen area, the living room, with a scrub brush, whatever is needed. With nothing else to clean, she hauls Andrew outside for a conversation we knew was inevitable, but frankly I don't understand why it's in this place. It's the "what happened to the man I married?" speech. Sure, the unsuspecting wife of the guy doing wrong always gets one in a miniseries, but in actuality, Andrew hasn't been acting that strange. Married only two months, she also doesn't know him that well anyway. He spends all of his time looking for a job, so on the one "date" he was sent on, that time away from her was easily explained. Okay, there are the apartments and houses constantly popping up and being yanked away, but Andrew has maintained his personality. He's never gotten angry at her, never hit her, hasn't started drinking or doing any of the behavior that warrants that speech in this place in the story.
As expected, Candice hears the message on her machine and cries (but without tears). So, she does what any self-respecting Hollywood wife would do, makes herself a drink and goes to summon the pool boy (good luck to him getting that fringe costume off her--I'm not even sure how it's on in the first place). But, there's a hitch. The pool boy leaves before she can get him! So, she does the second thing any self-respecting Hollywood wife would do, goes to Beverly Hills and shoplifts.
Casting agent Dorothy Dells, who only speaks in innuendos, has heard about Andrew's luck maybe possibly perhaps kind of sort of getting a shot at a screen test for "Family Reunion" and decides he should "meet the right people." She offers to take him to Candice's party as her "young handsome escort" and when he asks if he can bring his wife, she replies, "maybe you can bring your in-laws too." When she starts to drop names, he suddenly forgets his wife and agrees to go. "It's black tie. Your waiter's outfit will be just fine," Dorothy says as she shoves Andrew out the door.
Unfortunately, the eagle-eyed people at Gucci see Candy steal the necklace and arrest her (which means taking her to the manager's office, not jail), where she threatens to cancel her account. Since she has no ID on her, they are not willing to let her put the necklace on her account. She switches tactics and mentions her husband's name, having the manager call the barber shop, where, get this, she leaves a message with the barber to have Steve call her at Gucci! "There's one other place," she says mournfully before dialing Mary's. Mary doesn't answer, as she's in bed with Steve and "forgot to turn the machine back on after" Steve called earlier. Oops.
The killer buys an illegal handgun, "the one that Clint Eastwood used in 'Dirty Harry'" according to him and "the most powerful handgun ever made" according to the drug dealer.
Catherine has left Andrew and after being offered a job by a street pimp, she finds a store looking for a receptionist, a dream job she mentioned to Andrew a while back when offering to help with the income. Suitcases in hand, she goes inside to apply. It's a hair salon, so of course it's run by James "Gypsy" Haake, a flaming queen (named Koko, no less--not Coco, Koko). She lies about her age. "Chutzpah!" James declares and hires her. He even has a place for her to live, so she's hired on the spot. "You gotta start workin' today, because the phones are drivin' me crazy!" Koko says. Without so much as an explanation of how the salon works, she answers the phone and starts booking appointments.
Mary has two problems. The first is that her father Robert Stack wants to spend more time with her. The other is Candice, who now knows about her husband's infidelity. And if she cannot provide any ID, she'll go to jail.,
The detective who has been following and filming approaches him on the street so he can blackmail him. Suzanne, in a gigantic bath, calls Anthony to find out when her screen test is happening. See, her blackmail works too!
The hot chick from the pool where Andrew and Catherine lived tells Catherine that Andrew "needs action, and a lot of it." That's why she slept with him. The bitchy woman plays both sides, telling Andrew that Catherine never calls. For some reason, hair client Meg Wylie has taken a shine to Catherine and invites her to Candice's party. "My husband is still on safari," she tells us. But what will Catherine wear? Her caftan-loving boss says he has "dresses I haven't worn yet!" before marshaling the entire salon to help find glamour.
Steve bails Candice out of the Gucci manager's office and can't understand why she would shoplift. She gives him the "I want to be noticed" speech that crackpots often do, but he has no right to judge as he's sleeping with Mary, a fact Candice knows.
The only line in a scene where Angie tells her assistant of her past association with Steve, who dropped her soon as he became famous is "boy meets agent, boy loves agent, boy loses agent."
Here's news: Candy and Steve have a son. I only know this because in Candice's big monologue she mentions taking him to school every day. The rest of the conversation is cliche. "I gave you the best years of my life." "You don't know how sorry I am." As she leaves, she turns and says, "oh, and after tonight, I'm leaving you."
Party time! Steve is nowhere to be found, Angie is snippy, Joanna caustic and Candice handles it all well. Stefanie arrives in a VW bug, and Robert tells her he's "impressed by her sense of economy." Anthony can't go with Stefanie because he first has to get the blackmail tapes from Suzanne. But, Suzanne has heard that the part is already cast (Catherine), so made plenty of copies. If he doesn't get her the screen test, "I'll go to the movies with [Stefanie]. Then comes a moment so ludicrous, it can only have happened in Hollywood. Anthony chokes Suzanne, looking like he's going to stoke out any minute and then kisses her so they can have sex. Outside of the bondage world, you just don't expect to see such things.
Back at the party, zingers are shot so fast that nearly everyone gets wounded in under an hour. Take this exchange: Robert asks "what should we toast to" and Steve replies "talent." "And to those who don't have it! Meow! Andrew shows up on the arm of the casting director and everyone loves Catherine. Angie snubs Steve every chance she can get. Oh, and of course, Joanna is still pining for Anthony.
Since Stefanie has been relegated to the role of den mother to all of Hollywood, she finds Andrew at the party and tells him not only did she get him an appointment with Angie, but told the latter that he's as good as Pacino. Across the room, Andrew sees Catherine, but before he can ask why she is there, Rod barrels over, having found his elusive goddess for the picture. There is a lot of arguing, but it ends with Catherine saying, "I don't want a role in your movie. I don't want a role in any movie." There's a girl who knows what she wants," clucks Stefanie as Catherine makes a dramatic exit. I think we're supposed to understand that Stefanie sees some of herself in Catherine.
Mary finds a way to get Steve to dance with her and she puts her hands all over him. He tells her to cool it, but she has this 14-carat line: "The proverbial cat is out the proverbial bag" and then kisses him wildly in front of everyone. Robert has to go break them apart. An uncomfortable dance between Steve and Angie, who has a grand revenge plan in her head, wants him in her office at 9am on Monday.
Father and daughter have a heart-to-heart. He wants her to calm down and she just hates him. But why? Well, apparently Mary caught him "making love to a 15-year old girl on your dressing room floor." Robert knows Mary is repeating his mistakes, and he also tells her he's always loved her. He's not good at showing emotion. As Mary falls into his arms wailing "Daddy" Robert tells her he's coming home "for good." Fifteen years of misery can finally be buried. When Frances congratulates Mary on the detente, Mary tells her she's pregnant with Steve's child, so tempers are bound to erupt soon enough.
Rod has good news for the crowd. Robert Stack has agreed to come out of retirement and to "Family Reunion," which is good news for everyone but Steve. Robert goes over to Steve with the double whammy of "you could do television" and "next time you touch my daughter, I'll kill you."
A drunken Stefanie (after drying out Anthony, she still drinks?) baits Rod one too many times, so he tells her that Anthony is at Suzanne's. Indeed he is, doing what a lot of aging leading men did, especially on TV. While having sex with Suzanne, he has a heart attack (if The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins had not written this, I would have assumed it was an Aaron Spelling twist since he used it a few years before when Cecil Colby died in bed with Alexis). Suzanne can't think of anything better to do than ask "are you okay" at a high decibel level. "Forgive me [Stefanie]" are his last words before collapsing.
Andrew offers to take Stefanie home because she's so drunk. "I don't want to go home." "Where do you want to go?" Eye contact. Everything but the porn music.
True to her word, things are over between Candice and Steve. The moment the last guess and staff leave, she brings him a suitcase and orders him out.
Stefanie and Andrew spend the night together in a motel, but purely as friends. Stefanie groans about her problems and he does the same. In the morning, he has to get to Angie's, and while he's showering, Stefanie hears about Neil on the news and they rush over. Rod doesn't want to let anyone in, but Stefanie say, "for God's sake, I'm his wife!" Anthony is unconscious, but that doesn't stop Stefanie from crying big as she apologizes. Outside the door, Joanna shows also claiming to be his wife. When she sees Stefanie, the latter tells her he had a heart attack in the bed of another woman. "Who?" Joanna wants to know. "Neither of us," Stefanie says and flounces off.
Andrew leaves the hospital to meet with Angie, who asks if he has a wife, because it will be hard to make him a "sex symbol" so he lies and says he's not married. She invites him to her house for dinner that night and then extends the same invitation to Steve. The pieces are falling into place!
Just FYI, I haven't forgotten our killer. He's in LA now, skulking around vacant lots and houses, apparently with some sort of plan in mind, though crazy pants hasn't revealed it to us yet. He goes to the adoption agency and holds a gun on the woman who sold him, gets the name of his mother and then kills the woman.
Mary and Steve meet for lunch. She thinks it's because he wants to move in with her and he wants to brush her off. Mary lowers the boom that she's pregnant and refuses to get an abortion. She wants them to get married. He says, "I just can't turn my back on [Candice]."
As proof of how lousy she feels, Candy has gone from fringe and leather to terrycloth. Joanna tries to cheer her up, telling her she's an independent woman and can live without Steve! They then agree to go to the hospital, which is where Joanna thinks she should be.
Angie's dinner from hell is exquisitely trashy. She doesn't miss a trick. The campaign of "who is Ross Conti" that she used for Steve is now "who is Buddy Hudson," and Andrew's picture is far sexier. "He's going to be the biggest star in this town since, well, since you," she acidly notes. Just as Angie was telling Steve how much she's hated him for 25 years, her assistant comes in with the news that Anthony has died. At the blackmailing photographer demands his money from Steve or he'll go to the National Enquirer. "Show all the pictures you want and then GO TO HELL!" Steve roars. Come on, not even a process server would show up at a funeral! Oh, Hollywood. Oh, The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins.
Wait, it gets better! Only steps from the grave, Rod tells Stefanie that Anthony "was like a brother...but now that he's gone, I'll have to renegotiate your contract." Ever elegant, Stefanie whispers her response into his ear. This is camp classic HEAVEN!
Looking wonderfully homeless, our killer decides it's time to shore his locks. He goes to a beauty college where it's cheap. Koko's would be too expensive.
Candice arrives home from the funeral to find Steve sitting among a jungle of apology flowers. "Do you think I'm going to forgive you 'like that'? You are some baby," she stings, using the word that Joanna always uses for the men in Hollywood. But, she has the upper hand, telling him he can have the house, that she has already packed up and is leaving. Where will she go? "I don't know. Someplace where there are real children to take care of." Get it? She lavished attention on her husband because her baby was taken from her. Deep, huh? Well, not really, but since when does The Great Unbeatable Jackie Collins need to be deep?
As things are wrapping up, we go into the Land of Convenient Lunacy. Throughout the movie, Andrew and Catherine have made mention of his mother, but so little that it goes by unnoticed. Well, now with his wife back, he decides to go see K Callan and confront her about some molestation that happened between mother and son. "But I'm not your mother," she explains. He's adopted, as if that makes the childhood trauma is any less horrible just because he's adopted? They simply leave that alone and don't discuss it before Andrew runs away. I assume in the book, this plot had far more to it than a casual mention and a two minute scene.
The killer shows up at Angie's dinner party from hell, part 2. The assistant answers the door and is horrified at what Andrew has done to his hair. Okay, folks, it's finally time I came clean. The actor playing the killer is Andrew Stevens. One role wasn't enough for such an actor of his caliber, so they found him a piece that had TWO roles for such an actor of his caliber. Angie and the assistant think it's actor Andrew going for a role when he shows up acting strangely. Even after the killer announces he's not Andrew, they still think he is. When he pulls out proof of her having delivered twins, she tells him, "they told me the babies were stillborn," that she would never have given up her own sons. The assistant tells him to blame the lady at the agency, but he's already killed her.
Catherine's appearance at Angie's is a shock to Killer Andrew, who kills the assistant and grabs Catherine, leaving Angie enough time to call the police. Catherine refuses to believe he's not actor Andrew. Catherine makes a run for it just as Steve is arriving and of course Killer Andrew and Steve fight for the gun. Steve is shot just as actor Andrew arrives. "Nobody ever cared about me. I would have been a good boy...you should have been a better mother to me," the mad twin says, with Angie swearing again she didn't know he was alive. The two Andrews struggle for the gun and thankfully it's the good twin who plugs the bad one.
Get out the hankies, folks. Dying, Bad Andrew says to Angie, "why didn't you love me, mother?" "I never knew I had a brother," Bad Andrew says to Good Andrew in the midst of death twitching. "You're my mother?" "I guess I am," she says, as if there's something to be unsure about. Why would they give the kids away? "Maybe your father can help you understand," she says, nodding to Steve. Now you can see why the title of the movie's "Family Reunion" is so ironically apt.
Candy shows up at the hospital to take Steve home after recuperating from his gunshot scratch. Why? "I got jealous. If anybody is going to shoot you, I want it to be me," is her terrific reply. However, she puts him into the limo and goes her own way.
The movie ends with Rod Steiger talking to the reporters assembled at the hospital, but about the movie he's planning. Something about the wilds of Africa and WWII and Suzanne Somers.
Impeccable trash. That's what "Hollywood Wives" is. There is no masquerading here, no attempt to gloss over the idiocy of Hollywood folk, just a blatant expose and that's what makes it so much damn fun. Jackie Collins, who had an inside track for years, no doubt based the character on people she knew, and what better location to use than Hollywood, where nothing is real?
Proving that there was little reason to dress this up as anything but a gigantic royal cheesefest, why not go out and hire the weirdest assortment of actors? Rod Steiger is so loud in all of his scenes I wondered if perhaps he wasn't starting to go deaf. Between them, Robert Stack and Steve Forrest were about 204 years old in 1985, and one as bad an actor as the other. Yes, we're supposed to believe that they are the biggest stars in Hollywood? Angie Dickinson's super agent is well-played. Candice Bergen has the hardest role, really the linchpin role, and she's a smart actress, so she knows here when to pull back and when to lay it on thick. I wish the same could be said for Mary Crosby who acts only in oversized emotions. Poor Joanna Cassidy has nothing to do. Stefanie Powers plays the role she always played. Remember, in 1985, Anthony Hopkins was not the megastar he would be a decade later, more known for his British stage work than anything else. So, this must have seemed like a plum role, though he treat it like the plum has turned into a prune. Andrew Stevens, sexy as ever, is fine in two roles. The few vets tossed in (like Roddy McDowell) certainly understand this ain't Chekhov. In that vein, it's really Suzanne Somers who comes off best. Playing a bimbo was something she did well from the beginning of her career, but this bimbo knows how to rig a house with camera systems. She has the worst lines and the worst plot, but Suzanne gives it everything she has and is delightfully daffy here.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Out on a Limb (1987)
I must make a confession: I'm a sucker for actors playing themselves. It does not happen often (Fantasia did it most recently), but when it's done, it's a guaranteed hoot (even stories as sad as Fantasia or Ann Jillian). However, of the handful of stars who have played themselves in these colossal shows of ego, one ranks above all of the others:
Shirley MacLaine
In "Out on a Limb," based on her 1983 bestseller, Shirley plays herself, but it's the story that makes it such a bizarre treat. It's not just Shirley's life or career, which, let's face it, were both pretty damn good. This is where she came out with all of the information of past lives, trances, UFOs and all that wonderful stuff. "Out on a Limb" is impossible to categorize as a miniseries, but just try turning this one off! Believe what you want, be skeptical or don't believe at all. It doesn't matter. Just watch it for the sake of seeing Shirley act out her own wackadoo story.
"Malibu Beach at sunset. 'Magic time,' we call it in the movies. It's that that time of day between light and dark that always makes me wonder who I am and where I fit in," Shirley says while walking on the beach to start the movie. Then Shirley is suddenly on her balcony, saying, "I'm going to tell you a story that changed my life. When I passed 40, I began to ask myself some serious questions because I felt something was missing. Something I knew was there but couldn't quite touch. Questions like 'why are we here?' 'do we really die...'" you get the point. Oh, this is going to be GOOD! Never has a miniseries started like this.
All of this happened because of a "love affair." Let's go back in time to Shirley's opening at the London Palladium, "some years ago" (in Hollywood autobiography fashion, dates are of less concern than the truth, not that I'm saying this isn't the truth, just a general observation). We get the treat of watching Shirley on stage dancing and singing with her boys, still kicking it and showing us the fabulous dancer she was (and maybe still is). She gets to live this wonderful opening nights, with the applause, critical bouquets and all that lovely stuff a star can't resist reliving.
It's at this opening night, with the pearls and furs and people telling her how great she is, that she is introduced to Gerry Stamford (Charles Dance), a dashing British MP, "finally our very own JFK," Shirley's friend tells her (and a character given a pseudonym). Shirley is smitten by this handsome man. Their small talk is, I hope, purposely stilted, because if it's not, it's proof that stars are every bit as bad as chit-chat as the rest of us when we encounter someone we like. Their quick meeting is interrupted by Shirley's agent Mort Viner (Jerry Orbach).
Back in New York after a successful European tour (of course) where she "had almost forgotten" about Gerry, she's cooking in her kitchen with Bella Abzug (Anne Jackson). So we are clear that this is THE Bella Abzug, Shirley's great famous friend, instead of the other Bella Abzug, the one who lives in a house coat somewhere in Queens with that deadbeat son of hers who steals hubcaps and the husband who broke a leg on the job, she tells Bella, "take the hat off. You're not running for Senate in the kitchen!"
Bella can tell something is wrong with Shirley and I would quote the line, but I had the same reaction as Bella, "can you run that by me again?" Shirley is unfulfilled. "I'm not talking about fame, money or success," she says, reminding us that she has all three, but feels a lack of purpose in her life. This rather grating conversation is interrupted by a phone call from long-forgotten Gerry Stamford, which impresses Bella, who loves his intelligence. "Intelligence has become my new erogenous zone," Shirley responds with a smile.
Our Socialist PM doesn't let us forget his passion in life is financial equality for all, though he squires fur-drenched Shirley in a limo to a chic dinner. He does compliment Shirley on her performance in "Around the World in 80 Days," and even she has to knock that one, where she played Hindu. "I admire your work, and your energy, but you seem to be a happy person and I lack that," Gerry says when Shirley asks why he asked her out. "People such as yourself are in a position of power to help change people's lives for the better and I find that extremely attractive" is her reason. They both thank each other for the compliments. Shirley is fascinated by his Socialism, but in the conversation, he drops the bomb that he's married with teenage kids, but Shirley is fairly undaunted by this fact. "I felt some comfortable with him, he seemed so familiar to me. It's as if I had known him all my life. This mysterious attraction was part of the puzzle I would put together later," she narrates as they go in for a big clinch.
After spending the night together, Gerry treats Shirley rather like her Charity Hope Valentine character might have been treated, dashing off quickly, though telling her he wants to see her again when she's next in Europe, but once again, Shirley is casual enough about it, though she does wince a few times. Wouldn't you know, Mort calls Shirley with a potential part, which requires her to go to London to meet with the director.
Staying at a friend's flat, Shirley is incognito, "employing the first of my many Greta Garbo disguises." Shirley the star reminds in that sentence reminds us recognizable she is, but Shirley the person schleps her own luggage inside. She makes dinner for Gerry. After sex, she wants him to eat, but he has to leave. He can tell Shirley is disappointed, so he says he is too, that "this is new to me too," but invites her to a French weekend. At a dinner in Paris, permanent goober Jerry asks about how real film love scenes are, spills a glass of wine and then spots four journalists in the restaurant, which scares him. "Stop acting so strange. People can be friends," Shirley says. "I think we should move at a slower pace," Gerry says, and Shirley agrees, becoming quite the doormat. She agrees to his cloak-and-dagger routine, and though clearly disappointed, she lets him have it his way. Good sex? The next time they see each other, that's the first thing they do. This is followed by one of those inevitably stupid walking-around-a-quaint-French-town montages and of course a picnic.
"Can you find your way back?" Gerry asks Shirley as he packs to go the next morning. "I've found my way back from wilder places from the French countryside," she remarks with just the right touch of acidity. He gives her back a present she gave him and doesn't even kiss her on the way out.
Back in NYC, Bella drags Shirley to an art gallery since the owner is a potential financial contributor of hers. They look at a piece of art, and Bella snaps, "what is it, the Washington Monument after a flood?" Shirley is more high-minded, asking what it means. The gallery owner introduces her to David Manning (John Heard), a composite character who admits to being fans of both notable women, and an expert on this artist. He knows his art, but Bella is only concerned that it's a feminist painting so Shirley will buy it.
Shirley gives Gerry the painting because "the yin energy will guarantee you the female vote," which even she doesn't understand, but that's how David kind of explained it. Gerry is only concerned, that because she was with Bella when she bought it, Bella knows about them. Meeting at an outdoor grocery in London, they have to pretend not to know each other when the grocer introduces them. Dump him, Shirl!
Unfortunately, Shirley goes the other way, rushing to London whenever she can in a series of ludicrous get-ups that she says "would be rejected by a bag lady." Going to see him at Parliament, she's not pleased with his "combative" behavior. He defends himself, saying he hates the "hypocrisy" of his colleagues, but Shirley chides him for not looking at his own bad behavior. He says his affair with her is personal and therefore not the same. The argument escalates and ends with Gerry leaving (let's hope for good, he's one of the most odious characters this side of Philip Casnoff in "North and South").
Her concentration shot over not hearing from Gerry, she rehearses for a new tour and is offered one of the leads in "The Turning Point." Luckily, she runs into David, who invites her to see his work and dinner. "I can eat two beans on a leaf," she jokes, but agrees. She's most fascinated by his photographs of Peru, and her interest is piqued by his talk of spirituality.
During a walk on the beach, David says he is the man who gave her stones in East Africa ten years earlier. A freak coincidence? "There's a purpose in everything," he tells her. She keeps wondering what all of his little spiritual phrases mean. He mentions past lives at one point, and Shirley is skeptical, but he invites her to a book store to learn more. "From that day on, I began reading everything metaphysical I could get my hands on, Shirley narrates. She devours books and is so impressed by what she reads. She's so fascinated by it, there's a montage of her reading: at rehearsal, during a dress fitting, getting out of a limo at an awards ceremony where she drops her book on the red carpet.
Reincarnation makes it into her act, with "Where or When?" no less! I'm not sure Rodgers and Hart were thinking quite as metaphysically as Shirley, but I suppose an argument could be made. She puts it in during an engagement where she still sees Gerry. She tries to explain "New Age thought" to him, but Gerry is definitely the last person who would believe. He openly sneers at her, "it's for people who can't accept life as it is."
Perusing a book store, a book literally falls into her hands from an upper shelf and the woman who owns the store is quite the expert on mediums. Thinking she's met Shirley before, Shirley assumes it's because she's playing a theater nearby. "Oh, yes, Shirley Jones," the old lady says. "No, MacLaine." "Oh, yes, you're wonderful." Good cover! Anyway, they get to talking metaphysics and the lady tells her, "no one really dies. All souls are alive. Some are in this physical dimension and some are not." She doesn't even make Shirley pay for the books!
"I don't believe in accidents anymore," Shirley tells Gerry when they arrange to meet in Hawaii. He will be there for a conference and she just happens to have two dates free because a booking was changed. Though she's annoyed that she has to sneak around "like Mata Hari," the minute Gerry shows up, she caves all over again. After a frolic in the water, Gerry asks, "what do you want from me?" in a plain way, sounding sweet, and Shirley just wants to be happy, but then adds that she feels they have met before. This is the launch into her new way of thinking and Gerry starts to cry and then confesses his love for her, the first time he's done so.
If it weren't for Bella, there wouldn't be a counter to Shirley's New Age learning. When Shirley mentions reincarnation, Bella snaps, "oh, brother, these are the guys I see on the corner with the shaved heads and the orange sheets ringing their little bells. Shirley, let's get serious here. You're a practical person with a practical problem," referring to Shirley's issues with Gerry, even joking that Gerry's wife may be part of their past lives together. "Oy vey," Bella sighs.
Then comes a history lesson. Back with David in Malibu, he tells her that all of the great religious teachers were "politicians" trying to make people understand the truth, that all religions boil down to the same thing (I think). "Why isn't reincarnation in the Bible," Shirley understandably asks. David has an answer for that, about the Emperor Justinian booting it out of canonical thinking and then later on, Church fathers "didn't want people to assume responsibility for their own karmic destiny." Ouch! The first moment of catharsis comes when David tells her to stand up, stretch out her arms and say, "I am God."
A friend tells Shirley to go visit her teacher, a man who "is not incarnate right now," but speaks through a "simple carpenter" (where have we heard that before?) in Stockholm. Shirley poo-poos it, but then Gerry calls and asks her to meet him in Stockholm. He brings her all the way there to perhaps break up with her, because "I don't want to lose my seat in Parliament." Gerry makes it even worse. "I don't understand why you love me," he says, creep that he is, but Shirley has a new argument ready. She tells him, "if you just loved yourself more, you'd be free to love me, your wife, your family and your work too." The conversation makes so little sense that Shirley actually utters a line of dialogue that says, "okay, to recap..." They don't decide anything there, which means unfortunately Gerry isn't going away, as great as that would be.
Now it's time for the trans-channeller. The voice behind it all is thousands of years old and speaks a language Shirley cannot understand, but her friend is there to translate. We know the spirit has entered the simple man's body when his arm starts to twitch and his eyes close because the spirit wants to see for himself, not through the trans-channeller. During a two-hour session, Shirley learns a lot and I won't pretend I understood it all, but this is the point in the movie where the story becomes only a convenient device through which to speak of the metaphysical, which is why the miniseries format is so wrong for something like this! The miniseries is about heightened emotion in there here and now. It's about love and heartache, war and fear, larger-than-life characters dealing with larger-than-life issues, but it's not about outside-of-life issues. The miniseries is not about anything spiritual.
Anyway, someone asks about Atlantis. The spirit says that "it disappeared because their technical knowledge exceeded their spiritual wisdom." And all along you thought it was a tsunami! The pyramids at Giza? "A library of stone which we would soon learn to read." The body is tired, so the spirit gives one last blessing and leaves.
As exciting as her new knowledge base is, Gerry is still a major ass, brushing her off because his wife is in town. So, she writes. She writes about everything. "I ate only Swedish crackers and butter" as she writes about everything she sees, feels, understands, etc. There comes a speech that is quite interesting, but probably worked better on the page than on the screen. At the end of a week, she tells Gerry that the answers to their relationship lie in trans-channelling. Gerry refuses to even try to understand, calling mediums, "psycho" and "weird." Now, I will state here that I do not understand what Shirley MacLaine understands, nor do I really believe the little I do understand, but I'm willing to at least hear her out (a book would be better than a miniseries, which, as I've said, is just plain wrong). Gerry? He goes on the attack so furiously that it's obvious Shirley is clawing not only at him, but at everyone who has ever refused to listen to her. No one can possibly be as heavy-handed as Gerry, so there has to be another motive here, and I think it's to shut up anyone who isn't the slightest bit open-minded. It's in a departing tirade that he gives the book and the miniseries its title, beating us over the head with irony, telling her he is not prepared to go so far "out on a limb."
Shirley wants an English-speaking medium, so Kevin Ryerson (playing himself) is sent to her. In a wacky bit, she offers him a drink and he refuses, saying it gets in the way of the channelling. "So he isn't into drinking spirits," she says internally. I think we're meant to groan at that one. Kevin describes the four spirits who may pop in through him, and Shirley is somewhat skeptical. The experience in Sweden seemed to fit the bill, but this guy in the fancy suit seems all wrong to her. "See you in a little while," Kevin says before going into his trance. Shirley gives the spirit a really rough time with her questions, but when he asks her why she yelled "I am God" at the ocean, she's suddenly more of a believer, and then a man with an Irish accent comes through Kevin and asks for a blindfold. Since he's Irish, he wants the tea served in a beer mug and finds a hidden bar in her living room. Regarding Gerry, the first spirit returns to tell her that she and Gerry knew each other in Atlantis 300,000 years ago, when Gerry was a do-gooder even then, which was detrimental to their relationship. Oh, and there are extra terrestrials. Kevin leaves, and on the way out, Shirley admits to him "I don't understand it," but she really wants to learn.
When Shirley next visits David, she finds him painting and drawing UFOs, just as the spirit had mentioned. "When are you really going to tell me what's going on?" she asks. "When the time comes," David replies, which doesn't upset Shirley. Bella arrives to shoot holes in what Shirley has been working on, delightfully unbelieving. When Shirley mentions ETs, Bella is about to explode. David's call interrupts Bella and he invites her to go to Peru with him. "I cannot go to your fundraising garden party next week," she tells Bella, "because I am going to Peru to look for UFOs." The look on Bella's face says it all.
In Peru, David and Shirley take a crowded bus and a local man with a goat has seen people from "other worlds." David says everyone at these high altitudes "take it for granted" that these beings exist. Maybe it's the altitude itself. The go to Machu Pichu, they ponder how it could have been built, and David says he feels that he was there when it was built. There are other inexplicable wonders to be seen in Peru that have baffled thinkers for centuries. In a rare moment of verbal constipation, David says merely, "it really makes you think, doesn't it?" Wait, this is the man with all the answers and THIS is all he can come up with?
When the car stalls up in the Andes, David shows Shirley a mountainside where buses go over all the time and everyone has died. "There aren't any victims in the world. Everything happens for a reason," he tells Shirley, who is very upset at his "detached" way of thinking of the dead. They aren't dead, according to David, because no one ever dies. Their "hotel" is a shack with all sorts of animals and no electricity or hot water. "I must have done something in a past life to deserve this!" Shirley cracks.
David takes Shirley to a hot spring where he tells her to stare at a candle until she becomes "one with the candle." This "first attempt at meditation breathing" really impresses Shirley. This is another one of those sections that works better in a book because film is too literal and the sequence just plays like Shirley MacLaine looking at a candle for a few minutes. David says he's been coming to this remote outpost in Peru for eight years because of something that "changed my life," but as usual, he won't divulge what it is. Their evening ends with another schtick moment. "Goodnight, David." "Goodnight, Chet." "And that's the way it is."
They go to a sulphur spring bath where a local man is in a trance and David slips into one immediately. "Was he actually there? Is it possible that he was out of his body?" Shirley asks herself. This reminds her of working with Peter Sellers, who discussed an out-of-body experience during a heart attack. David answers her question, that he did leave his body, going into "God's universe."
Up in the Andes, Shirley does her best to understand it all, but she's frustrated, not getting it all the first time, not being able to be happy, not in control, a discussion of "self-doubt" versus "self-righteous." She starts crying about Gerry (who has almost been blissfully forgotten), and David tells her, "real friends are people who let you have your own truths, whatever it is." She's upset at her part in this "psychic play," but David says her part will be better "next time."
It's finally time for David to spill some secrets, though not easily. There was once a woman he met who knew everything about him and everything in the world, but he didn't know why as she said she would tell him later. He gets hysterical as he tells the story, which continues with the woman telling David to pass his knowledge onto a person who would write it all down: Shirley. The woman was from another planet, which shocks Shirley. "I would like to go home," Shirley says, angry that everything David has taught her may just be craziness.
After a night of thinking, Shirley decides, cautiously to follow-up on what David said because, "I consider you to be a friend and in your right mind." He says he did not believe what the woman had told him, but "she kept turning up" and eventually told him to go to the base of a hill where she revealed a UFO to him. But there's more! The alien told David a lot about Shirley, that they had "met each other in previous lives," and that she told him to deliver the stones to Shirley. That's when Shirley realizes he's been leading up to asking her to write about it, but Shirley is incensed. She is supposed to write about past lives and all of the rest? She's fine with her own personal search, but she draws the line at public humiliation over writing about ETs and such. "It's metaphysical Twilight Zone mumbo jumbo," she rails at David. "You're a nut," she says and stalks off, but David says he was told to tell her "in order to get the fruit of the tree, you have to go out on a limb," the exact phrase Gerry had used when telling Shirley he couldn't accept her new interests. Shirley doesn't get it even then and wants to "go back to my old way of thinking."
"That was probably the most confusing period of my whole life," Shirley narrates. She doesn't know what to believe, but she sure as hell asks herself a whole lot of questions. She takes the car to go off thinking by herself and of course it dies as night falls. This had happened before with David, but the car started after they talked about some truths. I guess that means she has to learn something for the car to start. She concentrates very hard and whispers, "David, see me" over and over and he's woken up in order to rush to her. She wants to know how he found him, and he says the alien guided him.
There's more. During the car ride back, David tells Shirley to "trust me and don't touch the wheel." He goes into a trance while driving and takes his hands off the wheel. Shirley shrieks in horror as they almost crash, but then the car actually follows the road and all seems fine. "If they could see me now," Shirley sings, with some new lyrics.
Back in the hot spring, Shirley has her first out of body experience, attached to her body by a thin (animated) "silver cord." She goes up, up, up, beyond the mountains, off to the moon. "I felt like a spiritual astronaut," she says. Wondering if her cord will go to a far nebula kills the soaring and she's back in her body. She's no longer afraid of dying because now she understands what it will be like, or, as David describes, what she just felt without the cord.
David and Shirley see news of the big blackout in New York City and Shirley wants to know about Bella's campaign for mayor, so he takes her to a psychic. The psychic tells her Bella will not win, so Shirley asks "are there any good movie scripts coming up for me?" to laughter from David.
Having brought Shirley where she needed to be, David tells her he's staying in Peru. "You've got your notes, your tapes. You decide what to do," he tells her, "but you've gotta do it alone." She's upset, but it definitely makes sense plot-wise because now she will never have to produce this mysterious man should anyone ask about him should she have to go out on a book tour (that's my assumption, she doesn't say that). "When will I see you again?" she asks David? He gives her a whole litany of catchy phrases about love and such without actually answering her question.
Back in NYC, Shirley tells all to Bella regarding what the psychic said, so Bella commissions a new poll "and concentrate on Ed Koch," the bald man with the long fingers that the psychic mentioned winning the race. They go to a function where Gerry is speaking and he won't even hug her. It's definitely over. She goes home and writes, "Malibu Beach at sunset..."
I doubt very much if watching "Out on a Limb" will convert you to Shirley MacLaine's way of thinking. Its few hours are not nearly enough to guide someone on a path of learning, and that's exactly why it never should have been made! What is the purpose of filming the book? Truly, why? The movie just skims the surface of the metaphysical. It's not a big and brash event. Hell, there are only four characters with more than ten or so lines. If anything deserves NOT to be a miniseries, it's "Out on a Limb," which, even as a book, can only make one a bit curious in the hopes of following up. The only reason I can think of is that Shirley MacLaine got a little high on the controversy her book caused and decided to ride the crest. I realize that's not exactly the nicest thing to say, but if she was looking to preach her ideas, this movie does a very poor job of it, making one laugh instead of ponder. Forever a movie star, there is no attempt by Shirley to downplay Shirley in order to improve the discussion of the metaphysical. This almost seems like one very long episode of a gigantic 100-hour miniseries where the rest of the footage is lost and we're stuck with just this chapter in her life.
How does it fare as a movie itself? Eh, adequate. Because it's so narrowly focused, it does tend to drag, though the last third, the part filmed in Peru is gorgeous to see. Shirley plays herself well enough, but the best performance is by Anne Jackson as Bella. She at least knows she's in a movie and not a treatise, so she has a grand time playing a grand character. So far, Shirley MacLaine has not returned to playing herself, and I hope she doesn't, or at least if she does, she does it with a bit more flair.
Shirley MacLaine
In "Out on a Limb," based on her 1983 bestseller, Shirley plays herself, but it's the story that makes it such a bizarre treat. It's not just Shirley's life or career, which, let's face it, were both pretty damn good. This is where she came out with all of the information of past lives, trances, UFOs and all that wonderful stuff. "Out on a Limb" is impossible to categorize as a miniseries, but just try turning this one off! Believe what you want, be skeptical or don't believe at all. It doesn't matter. Just watch it for the sake of seeing Shirley act out her own wackadoo story.
"Malibu Beach at sunset. 'Magic time,' we call it in the movies. It's that that time of day between light and dark that always makes me wonder who I am and where I fit in," Shirley says while walking on the beach to start the movie. Then Shirley is suddenly on her balcony, saying, "I'm going to tell you a story that changed my life. When I passed 40, I began to ask myself some serious questions because I felt something was missing. Something I knew was there but couldn't quite touch. Questions like 'why are we here?' 'do we really die...'" you get the point. Oh, this is going to be GOOD! Never has a miniseries started like this.
All of this happened because of a "love affair." Let's go back in time to Shirley's opening at the London Palladium, "some years ago" (in Hollywood autobiography fashion, dates are of less concern than the truth, not that I'm saying this isn't the truth, just a general observation). We get the treat of watching Shirley on stage dancing and singing with her boys, still kicking it and showing us the fabulous dancer she was (and maybe still is). She gets to live this wonderful opening nights, with the applause, critical bouquets and all that lovely stuff a star can't resist reliving.
It's at this opening night, with the pearls and furs and people telling her how great she is, that she is introduced to Gerry Stamford (Charles Dance), a dashing British MP, "finally our very own JFK," Shirley's friend tells her (and a character given a pseudonym). Shirley is smitten by this handsome man. Their small talk is, I hope, purposely stilted, because if it's not, it's proof that stars are every bit as bad as chit-chat as the rest of us when we encounter someone we like. Their quick meeting is interrupted by Shirley's agent Mort Viner (Jerry Orbach).
Back in New York after a successful European tour (of course) where she "had almost forgotten" about Gerry, she's cooking in her kitchen with Bella Abzug (Anne Jackson). So we are clear that this is THE Bella Abzug, Shirley's great famous friend, instead of the other Bella Abzug, the one who lives in a house coat somewhere in Queens with that deadbeat son of hers who steals hubcaps and the husband who broke a leg on the job, she tells Bella, "take the hat off. You're not running for Senate in the kitchen!"
Bella can tell something is wrong with Shirley and I would quote the line, but I had the same reaction as Bella, "can you run that by me again?" Shirley is unfulfilled. "I'm not talking about fame, money or success," she says, reminding us that she has all three, but feels a lack of purpose in her life. This rather grating conversation is interrupted by a phone call from long-forgotten Gerry Stamford, which impresses Bella, who loves his intelligence. "Intelligence has become my new erogenous zone," Shirley responds with a smile.
Our Socialist PM doesn't let us forget his passion in life is financial equality for all, though he squires fur-drenched Shirley in a limo to a chic dinner. He does compliment Shirley on her performance in "Around the World in 80 Days," and even she has to knock that one, where she played Hindu. "I admire your work, and your energy, but you seem to be a happy person and I lack that," Gerry says when Shirley asks why he asked her out. "People such as yourself are in a position of power to help change people's lives for the better and I find that extremely attractive" is her reason. They both thank each other for the compliments. Shirley is fascinated by his Socialism, but in the conversation, he drops the bomb that he's married with teenage kids, but Shirley is fairly undaunted by this fact. "I felt some comfortable with him, he seemed so familiar to me. It's as if I had known him all my life. This mysterious attraction was part of the puzzle I would put together later," she narrates as they go in for a big clinch.
After spending the night together, Gerry treats Shirley rather like her Charity Hope Valentine character might have been treated, dashing off quickly, though telling her he wants to see her again when she's next in Europe, but once again, Shirley is casual enough about it, though she does wince a few times. Wouldn't you know, Mort calls Shirley with a potential part, which requires her to go to London to meet with the director.
Staying at a friend's flat, Shirley is incognito, "employing the first of my many Greta Garbo disguises." Shirley the star reminds in that sentence reminds us recognizable she is, but Shirley the person schleps her own luggage inside. She makes dinner for Gerry. After sex, she wants him to eat, but he has to leave. He can tell Shirley is disappointed, so he says he is too, that "this is new to me too," but invites her to a French weekend. At a dinner in Paris, permanent goober Jerry asks about how real film love scenes are, spills a glass of wine and then spots four journalists in the restaurant, which scares him. "Stop acting so strange. People can be friends," Shirley says. "I think we should move at a slower pace," Gerry says, and Shirley agrees, becoming quite the doormat. She agrees to his cloak-and-dagger routine, and though clearly disappointed, she lets him have it his way. Good sex? The next time they see each other, that's the first thing they do. This is followed by one of those inevitably stupid walking-around-a-quaint-French-town montages and of course a picnic.
"Can you find your way back?" Gerry asks Shirley as he packs to go the next morning. "I've found my way back from wilder places from the French countryside," she remarks with just the right touch of acidity. He gives her back a present she gave him and doesn't even kiss her on the way out.
Back in NYC, Bella drags Shirley to an art gallery since the owner is a potential financial contributor of hers. They look at a piece of art, and Bella snaps, "what is it, the Washington Monument after a flood?" Shirley is more high-minded, asking what it means. The gallery owner introduces her to David Manning (John Heard), a composite character who admits to being fans of both notable women, and an expert on this artist. He knows his art, but Bella is only concerned that it's a feminist painting so Shirley will buy it.
Shirley gives Gerry the painting because "the yin energy will guarantee you the female vote," which even she doesn't understand, but that's how David kind of explained it. Gerry is only concerned, that because she was with Bella when she bought it, Bella knows about them. Meeting at an outdoor grocery in London, they have to pretend not to know each other when the grocer introduces them. Dump him, Shirl!
Unfortunately, Shirley goes the other way, rushing to London whenever she can in a series of ludicrous get-ups that she says "would be rejected by a bag lady." Going to see him at Parliament, she's not pleased with his "combative" behavior. He defends himself, saying he hates the "hypocrisy" of his colleagues, but Shirley chides him for not looking at his own bad behavior. He says his affair with her is personal and therefore not the same. The argument escalates and ends with Gerry leaving (let's hope for good, he's one of the most odious characters this side of Philip Casnoff in "North and South").
Her concentration shot over not hearing from Gerry, she rehearses for a new tour and is offered one of the leads in "The Turning Point." Luckily, she runs into David, who invites her to see his work and dinner. "I can eat two beans on a leaf," she jokes, but agrees. She's most fascinated by his photographs of Peru, and her interest is piqued by his talk of spirituality.
During a walk on the beach, David says he is the man who gave her stones in East Africa ten years earlier. A freak coincidence? "There's a purpose in everything," he tells her. She keeps wondering what all of his little spiritual phrases mean. He mentions past lives at one point, and Shirley is skeptical, but he invites her to a book store to learn more. "From that day on, I began reading everything metaphysical I could get my hands on, Shirley narrates. She devours books and is so impressed by what she reads. She's so fascinated by it, there's a montage of her reading: at rehearsal, during a dress fitting, getting out of a limo at an awards ceremony where she drops her book on the red carpet.
Reincarnation makes it into her act, with "Where or When?" no less! I'm not sure Rodgers and Hart were thinking quite as metaphysically as Shirley, but I suppose an argument could be made. She puts it in during an engagement where she still sees Gerry. She tries to explain "New Age thought" to him, but Gerry is definitely the last person who would believe. He openly sneers at her, "it's for people who can't accept life as it is."
Perusing a book store, a book literally falls into her hands from an upper shelf and the woman who owns the store is quite the expert on mediums. Thinking she's met Shirley before, Shirley assumes it's because she's playing a theater nearby. "Oh, yes, Shirley Jones," the old lady says. "No, MacLaine." "Oh, yes, you're wonderful." Good cover! Anyway, they get to talking metaphysics and the lady tells her, "no one really dies. All souls are alive. Some are in this physical dimension and some are not." She doesn't even make Shirley pay for the books!
"I don't believe in accidents anymore," Shirley tells Gerry when they arrange to meet in Hawaii. He will be there for a conference and she just happens to have two dates free because a booking was changed. Though she's annoyed that she has to sneak around "like Mata Hari," the minute Gerry shows up, she caves all over again. After a frolic in the water, Gerry asks, "what do you want from me?" in a plain way, sounding sweet, and Shirley just wants to be happy, but then adds that she feels they have met before. This is the launch into her new way of thinking and Gerry starts to cry and then confesses his love for her, the first time he's done so.
If it weren't for Bella, there wouldn't be a counter to Shirley's New Age learning. When Shirley mentions reincarnation, Bella snaps, "oh, brother, these are the guys I see on the corner with the shaved heads and the orange sheets ringing their little bells. Shirley, let's get serious here. You're a practical person with a practical problem," referring to Shirley's issues with Gerry, even joking that Gerry's wife may be part of their past lives together. "Oy vey," Bella sighs.
Then comes a history lesson. Back with David in Malibu, he tells her that all of the great religious teachers were "politicians" trying to make people understand the truth, that all religions boil down to the same thing (I think). "Why isn't reincarnation in the Bible," Shirley understandably asks. David has an answer for that, about the Emperor Justinian booting it out of canonical thinking and then later on, Church fathers "didn't want people to assume responsibility for their own karmic destiny." Ouch! The first moment of catharsis comes when David tells her to stand up, stretch out her arms and say, "I am God."
A friend tells Shirley to go visit her teacher, a man who "is not incarnate right now," but speaks through a "simple carpenter" (where have we heard that before?) in Stockholm. Shirley poo-poos it, but then Gerry calls and asks her to meet him in Stockholm. He brings her all the way there to perhaps break up with her, because "I don't want to lose my seat in Parliament." Gerry makes it even worse. "I don't understand why you love me," he says, creep that he is, but Shirley has a new argument ready. She tells him, "if you just loved yourself more, you'd be free to love me, your wife, your family and your work too." The conversation makes so little sense that Shirley actually utters a line of dialogue that says, "okay, to recap..." They don't decide anything there, which means unfortunately Gerry isn't going away, as great as that would be.
Now it's time for the trans-channeller. The voice behind it all is thousands of years old and speaks a language Shirley cannot understand, but her friend is there to translate. We know the spirit has entered the simple man's body when his arm starts to twitch and his eyes close because the spirit wants to see for himself, not through the trans-channeller. During a two-hour session, Shirley learns a lot and I won't pretend I understood it all, but this is the point in the movie where the story becomes only a convenient device through which to speak of the metaphysical, which is why the miniseries format is so wrong for something like this! The miniseries is about heightened emotion in there here and now. It's about love and heartache, war and fear, larger-than-life characters dealing with larger-than-life issues, but it's not about outside-of-life issues. The miniseries is not about anything spiritual.
Anyway, someone asks about Atlantis. The spirit says that "it disappeared because their technical knowledge exceeded their spiritual wisdom." And all along you thought it was a tsunami! The pyramids at Giza? "A library of stone which we would soon learn to read." The body is tired, so the spirit gives one last blessing and leaves.
As exciting as her new knowledge base is, Gerry is still a major ass, brushing her off because his wife is in town. So, she writes. She writes about everything. "I ate only Swedish crackers and butter" as she writes about everything she sees, feels, understands, etc. There comes a speech that is quite interesting, but probably worked better on the page than on the screen. At the end of a week, she tells Gerry that the answers to their relationship lie in trans-channelling. Gerry refuses to even try to understand, calling mediums, "psycho" and "weird." Now, I will state here that I do not understand what Shirley MacLaine understands, nor do I really believe the little I do understand, but I'm willing to at least hear her out (a book would be better than a miniseries, which, as I've said, is just plain wrong). Gerry? He goes on the attack so furiously that it's obvious Shirley is clawing not only at him, but at everyone who has ever refused to listen to her. No one can possibly be as heavy-handed as Gerry, so there has to be another motive here, and I think it's to shut up anyone who isn't the slightest bit open-minded. It's in a departing tirade that he gives the book and the miniseries its title, beating us over the head with irony, telling her he is not prepared to go so far "out on a limb."
Shirley wants an English-speaking medium, so Kevin Ryerson (playing himself) is sent to her. In a wacky bit, she offers him a drink and he refuses, saying it gets in the way of the channelling. "So he isn't into drinking spirits," she says internally. I think we're meant to groan at that one. Kevin describes the four spirits who may pop in through him, and Shirley is somewhat skeptical. The experience in Sweden seemed to fit the bill, but this guy in the fancy suit seems all wrong to her. "See you in a little while," Kevin says before going into his trance. Shirley gives the spirit a really rough time with her questions, but when he asks her why she yelled "I am God" at the ocean, she's suddenly more of a believer, and then a man with an Irish accent comes through Kevin and asks for a blindfold. Since he's Irish, he wants the tea served in a beer mug and finds a hidden bar in her living room. Regarding Gerry, the first spirit returns to tell her that she and Gerry knew each other in Atlantis 300,000 years ago, when Gerry was a do-gooder even then, which was detrimental to their relationship. Oh, and there are extra terrestrials. Kevin leaves, and on the way out, Shirley admits to him "I don't understand it," but she really wants to learn.
When Shirley next visits David, she finds him painting and drawing UFOs, just as the spirit had mentioned. "When are you really going to tell me what's going on?" she asks. "When the time comes," David replies, which doesn't upset Shirley. Bella arrives to shoot holes in what Shirley has been working on, delightfully unbelieving. When Shirley mentions ETs, Bella is about to explode. David's call interrupts Bella and he invites her to go to Peru with him. "I cannot go to your fundraising garden party next week," she tells Bella, "because I am going to Peru to look for UFOs." The look on Bella's face says it all.
In Peru, David and Shirley take a crowded bus and a local man with a goat has seen people from "other worlds." David says everyone at these high altitudes "take it for granted" that these beings exist. Maybe it's the altitude itself. The go to Machu Pichu, they ponder how it could have been built, and David says he feels that he was there when it was built. There are other inexplicable wonders to be seen in Peru that have baffled thinkers for centuries. In a rare moment of verbal constipation, David says merely, "it really makes you think, doesn't it?" Wait, this is the man with all the answers and THIS is all he can come up with?
When the car stalls up in the Andes, David shows Shirley a mountainside where buses go over all the time and everyone has died. "There aren't any victims in the world. Everything happens for a reason," he tells Shirley, who is very upset at his "detached" way of thinking of the dead. They aren't dead, according to David, because no one ever dies. Their "hotel" is a shack with all sorts of animals and no electricity or hot water. "I must have done something in a past life to deserve this!" Shirley cracks.
David takes Shirley to a hot spring where he tells her to stare at a candle until she becomes "one with the candle." This "first attempt at meditation breathing" really impresses Shirley. This is another one of those sections that works better in a book because film is too literal and the sequence just plays like Shirley MacLaine looking at a candle for a few minutes. David says he's been coming to this remote outpost in Peru for eight years because of something that "changed my life," but as usual, he won't divulge what it is. Their evening ends with another schtick moment. "Goodnight, David." "Goodnight, Chet." "And that's the way it is."
They go to a sulphur spring bath where a local man is in a trance and David slips into one immediately. "Was he actually there? Is it possible that he was out of his body?" Shirley asks herself. This reminds her of working with Peter Sellers, who discussed an out-of-body experience during a heart attack. David answers her question, that he did leave his body, going into "God's universe."
Up in the Andes, Shirley does her best to understand it all, but she's frustrated, not getting it all the first time, not being able to be happy, not in control, a discussion of "self-doubt" versus "self-righteous." She starts crying about Gerry (who has almost been blissfully forgotten), and David tells her, "real friends are people who let you have your own truths, whatever it is." She's upset at her part in this "psychic play," but David says her part will be better "next time."
It's finally time for David to spill some secrets, though not easily. There was once a woman he met who knew everything about him and everything in the world, but he didn't know why as she said she would tell him later. He gets hysterical as he tells the story, which continues with the woman telling David to pass his knowledge onto a person who would write it all down: Shirley. The woman was from another planet, which shocks Shirley. "I would like to go home," Shirley says, angry that everything David has taught her may just be craziness.
After a night of thinking, Shirley decides, cautiously to follow-up on what David said because, "I consider you to be a friend and in your right mind." He says he did not believe what the woman had told him, but "she kept turning up" and eventually told him to go to the base of a hill where she revealed a UFO to him. But there's more! The alien told David a lot about Shirley, that they had "met each other in previous lives," and that she told him to deliver the stones to Shirley. That's when Shirley realizes he's been leading up to asking her to write about it, but Shirley is incensed. She is supposed to write about past lives and all of the rest? She's fine with her own personal search, but she draws the line at public humiliation over writing about ETs and such. "It's metaphysical Twilight Zone mumbo jumbo," she rails at David. "You're a nut," she says and stalks off, but David says he was told to tell her "in order to get the fruit of the tree, you have to go out on a limb," the exact phrase Gerry had used when telling Shirley he couldn't accept her new interests. Shirley doesn't get it even then and wants to "go back to my old way of thinking."
"That was probably the most confusing period of my whole life," Shirley narrates. She doesn't know what to believe, but she sure as hell asks herself a whole lot of questions. She takes the car to go off thinking by herself and of course it dies as night falls. This had happened before with David, but the car started after they talked about some truths. I guess that means she has to learn something for the car to start. She concentrates very hard and whispers, "David, see me" over and over and he's woken up in order to rush to her. She wants to know how he found him, and he says the alien guided him.
There's more. During the car ride back, David tells Shirley to "trust me and don't touch the wheel." He goes into a trance while driving and takes his hands off the wheel. Shirley shrieks in horror as they almost crash, but then the car actually follows the road and all seems fine. "If they could see me now," Shirley sings, with some new lyrics.
Back in the hot spring, Shirley has her first out of body experience, attached to her body by a thin (animated) "silver cord." She goes up, up, up, beyond the mountains, off to the moon. "I felt like a spiritual astronaut," she says. Wondering if her cord will go to a far nebula kills the soaring and she's back in her body. She's no longer afraid of dying because now she understands what it will be like, or, as David describes, what she just felt without the cord.
David and Shirley see news of the big blackout in New York City and Shirley wants to know about Bella's campaign for mayor, so he takes her to a psychic. The psychic tells her Bella will not win, so Shirley asks "are there any good movie scripts coming up for me?" to laughter from David.
Having brought Shirley where she needed to be, David tells her he's staying in Peru. "You've got your notes, your tapes. You decide what to do," he tells her, "but you've gotta do it alone." She's upset, but it definitely makes sense plot-wise because now she will never have to produce this mysterious man should anyone ask about him should she have to go out on a book tour (that's my assumption, she doesn't say that). "When will I see you again?" she asks David? He gives her a whole litany of catchy phrases about love and such without actually answering her question.
Back in NYC, Shirley tells all to Bella regarding what the psychic said, so Bella commissions a new poll "and concentrate on Ed Koch," the bald man with the long fingers that the psychic mentioned winning the race. They go to a function where Gerry is speaking and he won't even hug her. It's definitely over. She goes home and writes, "Malibu Beach at sunset..."
I doubt very much if watching "Out on a Limb" will convert you to Shirley MacLaine's way of thinking. Its few hours are not nearly enough to guide someone on a path of learning, and that's exactly why it never should have been made! What is the purpose of filming the book? Truly, why? The movie just skims the surface of the metaphysical. It's not a big and brash event. Hell, there are only four characters with more than ten or so lines. If anything deserves NOT to be a miniseries, it's "Out on a Limb," which, even as a book, can only make one a bit curious in the hopes of following up. The only reason I can think of is that Shirley MacLaine got a little high on the controversy her book caused and decided to ride the crest. I realize that's not exactly the nicest thing to say, but if she was looking to preach her ideas, this movie does a very poor job of it, making one laugh instead of ponder. Forever a movie star, there is no attempt by Shirley to downplay Shirley in order to improve the discussion of the metaphysical. This almost seems like one very long episode of a gigantic 100-hour miniseries where the rest of the footage is lost and we're stuck with just this chapter in her life.
How does it fare as a movie itself? Eh, adequate. Because it's so narrowly focused, it does tend to drag, though the last third, the part filmed in Peru is gorgeous to see. Shirley plays herself well enough, but the best performance is by Anne Jackson as Bella. She at least knows she's in a movie and not a treatise, so she has a grand time playing a grand character. So far, Shirley MacLaine has not returned to playing herself, and I hope she doesn't, or at least if she does, she does it with a bit more flair.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
A.D. (1985)
From most of the gang who brought us "Jesus of Nazareth" (discussed here back in December), now we have "A.D.," the less familiar story of the Apostles as they spread the gospel. This one is even more drenched in guest stars, more drenched in sets and costumes and more drenched in silliness, and I say that with all reverence. If you are looking for a religious message, stick with the Good Book. If you want pomp and pageantry in the world of ancient Rome, settle in for six hours of it!
Let's be honest: for good storytelling, you can't beat the Passion story. Other than sex, it really does have everything a truly great story should have. Before there ever was an official New Testament, the story of Jesus, with its heroes and villains, miracles, violence and redemption, and even perhaps the hint of a prostitute (with the biggest heart of gold of them all) is just the kind of thing with which to take around the Roman Empire and hope for conversion. Very few organized religions can match it.
However, the story loses steam after the resurrection. The next few hundred years couldn't hope to match the 33 Jesus spent on Earth (and most of his years are even missing--it's a very condensed story), and that is the main problem with "A.D." You can have all the trappings money can buy, but without a whiz-bang story, even the trappings look thin. Note here that most of the guest stars (slumming and otherwise) play Romans, who were far more exciting than the Apostles. Why be post-crucifixion Mary when you can be Agrippina?
(Note: the DVD prints of "A.D." cut out a lot, meaning the guest stars, so be prepared to do without Colleen Dewhurst, Ava Gardner's Agrippina and Jennifer O'Neill's Messalina, Fernando Rey's Seneca and of course Susan Sarandon's Livia, most mentioned, but not shown, though they certainly are in the original TV airing--the DVD is put out by a group more interested in religion than fun.)
So, keep that in mind as we slog through some of the slowest parts. The history of Christianity is fascinating, but most of the best stuff happened right up front and then not for a few centuries. The stuff in between, well, it means well, and it tries its hardest, but Christianity definitely had what the theater would call "second act trouble." Oh, sure, comic Roman Emperors and Paul's outrageous sense of self-worth are amusing, but watching it all happen convert by convert can become tiresome at times.
It's two days after the crucifixion. The scaffold is being dismantled, but otherwise, Jerusalem seems back to normal. Two too-late-for-Passover visitors are scampering away from the city, soon joined by an awfully serene man who wants to hear their story. "We got there in time for the bad news," one says, that they not only missed joining "the 12," but that Jesus is dead. So, they went to the tomb, "but the body wasn't there...nothing is left, not even his body." They are told not to be afraid, but to be "cheerful," because this has all been foretold. The serene man tries his best with the two frightened men, who bleat, "there is nothing in the scriptures about the power of Rome!" but when the serene man finally shows them his hands, with big holes through them, their attitudes change. He is, of course, Jesus (Michael Wilding Jr.).
Jesus can't stay for dessert, despite the prodding of his new converts, who seem to understand all once he is gone and have no more fears. This first sequence is extremely long and extremely pious, but a slow start isn't a miniseries first.
It's time to meet the Apostles, hiding in Jerusalem. One claims he has been renamed "Peter, the rock" (Dennis Quilley). In rush our two newly calm converts Cleopas (Todd Durham) and Zacchaeus (Anthony Pedley) with their story. Thomas (Davyd Harries), doubts that it's true (yes, that's a Doubting Thomas joke) because he hasn't seen him yet. Peter does not understand how he's supposed to move forward, but Jesus appears and says, "on your shoulders, strong enough to bear the weight of your mission" and now everyone sees him. No trap doors, no fog, no smoke and mirrors. Here he is folks, get your believing on! Jesus gets in a second Doubting Thomas reference, but only so Jesus can prove to the naysayer that he is there and make him believe. He tells them to stay in Jerusalem for a few days because soon enough will come the time to start spreading the word.
The Jews in Jerusalem are arguing. Luckily, they have the slow steady Gamaliel (John Houseman, who did everything slow and steady in the 80s) to guide them. He defends the action of turning in Jesus to keep the Romans placated. Stephen (Vincent Riotta), Samuel (Ralph Arliss) and Caleb (Cecil Humphreys) are all present to join in with witty barbs back and forth. Paul (Philip Sayer), isn't quite trusted by the rest because Rome has honored his family. Gamaliel tries to calm everyone by saying despite their differences, they are all one people, but Jesus and his teachings have stirred them up and they don't know what to think anymore. Paul is particularly vitriolic against the notion of "love" that Jesus had preached, but no one really knows if he was the Messiah or not. "We firmly reject any claim that Jesus was anything but a good man. We all need unity and heart. Let us pray for this now," Gamaliel says to bring the meeting to a close.
Freed from thinking, Stephen and Caleb wrestle in the street with everyone cheering them on. It's all done in friendliness, but the Romans break it up and arrest Caleb. Paul tries to save him, but the Roman soldiers merely sneer at him.
Remember Pontius Pilate (Anthony Zerbe)? He's still the head Roman in the area, and he has still has the problems of rebels in Judea. He is told they are stockpiling gems, but he's unconcerned. He knows the Romans will rout them in the end and tells his aides to simply rejoice in the majesty of Emperor Tiberius. That said, there is still the pesky problem of the new zealots. "They are like weeping willows," he tells his aides, "they bend until they snap back with more power." Everyone is thrilled with the expediency of the way he handled Jesus, but they need to set more examples. Regarding Jesus, "his case puzzled me; his death relieved me," Pilate says, but does not ask for Caleb immediately, preferring to wait two days until another Jewish celebration to pronounce sentence. "They shall have another solemn date on their calendar," he says, now just a nasty old man who loves his power. Oh, wait! It gets worse. With both eyebrows raised, he asks if Caleb has any relatives and told he has a mother and two young sisters, he has them sent to Rome as slaves to thank Sejanus for "his consideration."
I'll skip ahead more briskly than the movie, which delights in sweating the small stuff. One of Caleb's sisters, Ruth (Rebecca Saire) is betrothed to Samuel, who informs the family that Caleb is certain to be crucified. Samuel tries to tell Ruth to leave the house with him, sensing "it isn't safe," but she refuses. Meanwhile, Steven wants Paul to intervene because he's a Roman citizen, but it's too late for that. How about Uncle Matthias? He has money. Nope, he won't give any of it up because he believes in the teachings of Jesus. "Ugh," Paul says, with a roll of the eyes that can be seen miles away. "The Lord who is one will guide us," Paul says, stressing "one" to remind everyone it's still the Jewish God in whom they need to have faith. Roman guards take the sisters, and Samuel is understandably upset. He wants to strike at the Romans, but Steven says "violence breeds violence," stressing belief in God, who has "seen us through harder times." "He's deaf!" Samuel yells.
As the Apostles are delighting in baby stories from Mary (Millie Perkins), a wind kicks up, but only in their room. It's followed by a bright light that causes them to form a circle and dance in delight before leaving Mary alone in the secret room. Gathered outside are tons of people shouting "hallelujah" and waving palm branches. It's the celebration day Pilate had mentioned, and everyone gathers at the Temple in high spirits. Peter quiets them down to speak. It turns out he's quite the preacher. "That great and notable day is upon us. Jesus of Nazareth...God has raised up...let all know that God has made him both Lord and Messiah!" he tells all. He says all they have to do is be baptized and turn away from the Jewish priests who have gathered with hostile faces, including Paul.
Meanwhile, Caleb is saved in a brave attack as he's on his way to be crucified, but Samuel is killed in the melee. Stephen begs Caleb not to take revenge and seek out some Jewish aesthetics who are are big into water wells and "obsessed with cleanliness" but otherwise live cut off from the world. They are definitely not followers of any new religious ideas. Caleb gets to argue a bit with them and then we visit his sisters on the boat to Rome, where Ruth is depressed, but remembering Uncle Matthias, who is a follower of Jesus' teachings, so we get a little gospel before she's killed.
Peter, thinking he's Jesus because he's seen a crippled man with a cross-shaped stick, touches him and tells him to rise, and it actually works! This is seen by the Jewish priests and everyone gathered at the Temple. No one is more surprised than Peter that it worked. "I'm nobody, I'm nothing. It's the power of our Lord," he says. However, he does have a bit of ego going, so he goes a-baptizin'. Stephen shows up to take the waters.
The action moves to Rome. Let's face it, as nasty as Pilate is, Judea is a backwater and the story is only going to pick up steam when we transplant at least some of heroes to the sinful capital city. We arrive in the Senate where Sejanus (Ian McShane) is making a speech, having just survived an assassination attempt. A note from Emperor Tiberius makes him Consul. Valerius (Neil Dickson), son on a low-born successful soldier, has come to Rome as a spy for Sejanus because there is another plot against him, but when he falls in love with slave girl at first sight, he suddenly doesn't want to spy anymore. The slave girl belongs to Sejanus, who is pursuing her to beat her. "I thought I was serving Rome," he tells his mother, "but I suspect I'm serving an unscrupulous tyrant." We've only just met Valerius, but he's awfully dim-witted already. Oh, oops, did I mention the slave girl is Sarah (Amanda Pays), the sister of Ruth and Caleb? Yeah, but you figured that out already. It's good storytelling. Someone in her family deserves it. Caleb is banished to the desert and Ruth is dead.
Speaking of Caleb, he's in Samaria now. He's there working the locals into a lather to overthrow the local government. "You must all think in terms of national freedom," he tells everyone, as if that's a concept with ANY meaning to small-town people in the first century A.D. He explains how the Romans have ordered the military, down to the numbers in each garrison. Geez, don't piss off Caleb! Have him drag a cross halfway through Jerusalem and you've got an enemy on your hands!
Lo and behold, it works. He gets the local men to agree and they dispose one-by-one of the troops, stealing their armor as a way in. Well, as one can expect, this does not sit well with Tiberius (James Mason, having graduated to a flashier role since "Jesus of Nazareth"), who, historically, probably would never even have heard of rebellion in Samaria. "Have I not done more for these Jews than...than...than...than..." he sputters, having no idea what he's given then, only to get a saucy reply from Nerva (Jack Warden), who feels that this one revolt is a symptom of weakening leadership in Rome since Tiberius has gone into self-imposed exile on Capri.
We are jumping around very quickly, where the Apostles are facing the Jewish leadership. Gamaliel, and particularly our old pal Caiaphas (Harold Kasket) are annoyed by the gains of the "zealots," snapping at Peter, whom he deems "the son of a fisherman" with bile. Peter can give as good as he gets, accusing Caiaphas of putting Jesus to death, but Gamaliel urges everyone to "leave these men alone." If it is the work of man "it will collapse" and if it is the work of a higher power, "you cannot overthrow it." I think John Houseman had the same speech in "Winds of War," no? Alas, Caiaphas is in no better a mood than he was when Jesus was alive and he orders the whipped and to speak of Jesus no more. The man so far called Paul (to be fair, he hasn't settled on that yet, as he's referred to as both Paul and Saul) is livid at Gamaliel for his "lenient" attitude toward the Apostles and they have a really dry doctrinal argument, though Paul has one good point at the end: a divided Jewry is only good news for the Roman Empire.
Stephen takes that theory one step further, telling the Apostles that it's time to go empire-wide with their message. Peter's response? "We're not ready for THAT yet!" to a chorus of laughter. But, Stephen is all for pan-Judaism that stretches across the empire. He wants to go to Greece himself, but Peter says no, the work is in Jerusalem. "Me? I've had enough of water," says the fisherman. To be fair, not all the kinks of theocracy are worked out so that it's easy to swallow Christianity, but the believers are awfully good at hobbling it together on the fly. Stephen is preaching when Paul says nothing is higher "than the law of Moses," and Steven agrees that all of that is the foundation of what they are teaching, but that Jesus came with a new law, "the law of forgiveness, of love." Sounds pretty good, huh? Who wouldn't be at least interested in hearing a little about it? It's even starting to have an effect on Paul, though he claims otherwise over and over again. Stephen emerges as the best voice of the new religion, the most eloquent and the best with a ready argument.
But, when Stephen claims to see Jesus "at the right hand of God," Caiaphas can't take it anymore. Not being able to "see" God is one of the holiest tenets of Judaism. "Your blasphemy cannot be tolerated any longer!" Caiaphas roars, "Get out, Stephen...you have made it impossible for us!" The sentence is death by stoning. He dies asking for the Lord to take his soul. Paul wants more, to imprison the whole lot of the "Greek Jews," as they are now referred to, and let them be judged "according to justice," i.e. more stoning. Caiaphas agrees, so Paul gets to play hatchet man.
To make his point, he arrests an entire praying group, or at least just the men. Thus, the Apostles realize it's time to start spreading the word and send Philip (Gary Brown) abroad. He first goes to Samaria, where he meets Caleb, who learns that his sisters were sent to Rome and his mother died. Caleb also learns that for his role in losing Samaria, Pilate has been "recalled to Rome" and a replacement is being sent. Caleb wants to go to Rome "and strike at the heart." Philip tries to talk him out of it, but Caleb is resolute.
Back in Rome, Sarah and Valerius meet again in a rainstorm, both having tried to forget each other with no luck. Thank goodness for this sudsy plot. It's hackneyed and obvious, but at least it has some dramatic heft. Get this load of bunk as they try to deal with their differences:
He: "Suppose he [Sejanus] loved me. This would change him."
She: "How?"
He: "My freedom would be yours."
She: "You want me to belong to you?"
He: "The two of us should have a chance to find our own way."
She: "The Jewess and the Roman soldier."
He: "A woman and a man. Being a Roman or being a Jew, I know people may find being a difference that can't be reconciled. Me? It's just like this rain. Forgettable."
She: "I'll try to remember."
And then she leaves. Lovestruck male and sassy slave woman. That has possibilities!
The new Procurator in Judea is Marcellus (Roderick Horn), who has ordered Paul's spitefest to end because the Romans don't want bloodshed. "Thank God for that," Gamaliel says, though Caiaphas and the others are upset because "he was doing such good work," and decide to send him to do that work in Damascus with Seth (Bruce Winant). Gamaliel is still the only voice of reason, but the Jewish priests are determined to stamp out the growing Nazarene sect however they can.
On the way to Damascus, Paul is annoyed by the slowness of his men, so he sends three back and continues with just Seth. They are caught in a giant wind storm that scares off the horses. Paul opens his eyes, now blind as he burns with fever. He insists that they continue to Damascus. Paul finally confesses what he heard to Seth. "It was his voice, the Lord. He said, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? We are all by nature children of anger.' I shall persecute no more," he says. "I am to become one of them," he says and asks Seth to bring him Ananais (Barrie Houghton), who baptizes him officially as Paul, now a convert to the new religion and able to see again.
Having helped drive his uncle to insanity and death, Little Boots, known to history as Caligula (John McEnery), is teetering on the brink of madness himself. He orders a soldier to cut off the heads of all the statues of the gods on his property and put his head on them. But the female gods? "Just put more hair," he says matter-of-factly.
Paul is worried that he's not a teacher, with more zeal than knowledge, but the believers of Damascus tell him to simply tell his story of his revelation and people will understand. He has an uphill battle since everyone knows to hate him. "Cannot a man change?" he asks and then goes into the new teachings, but he meets resistance.
Caleb goes to Rome, awed by the city and looking to attend gladiator school, in the wacky notion that once he has a sword in hand, he can get to his sisters and avenge what he sees as his own cowardice for having run to the desert. Hasn't he already taken care of that by helping the Samaritans temporarily rise up. He's offered a good job making tents by Aquila (Tony Vogel) and his wife Priscilla (Angela Morant).
I say it again, thank goodness for the fictional plot going here, because it's ineptness gives us most of the laughs we need. Caleb does indeed go to gladiator school, where the teacher realizes he's Jewish the minute Caleb disrobes and then sends him off to fight some bad ass. They have a good fight and then the bad ass removes his helmet to reveal she's a woman! Caleb is upset, but turned on. Corrina (Diane Venora) is learning to fight so she can protect herself. She doesn't say from what, but Caleb doesn't ask either.
Peter and friends have made it to Samaria, where they show us what might be one of history's first exorcisms. It's witnessed by slimy Simon (John Steiner), who wants to pay to learn their "trickery." They refuse his money and tell him he doesn't understand that it's not magic. This is actually quite an interesting scene because it shows another side of what people must have thought, namely that the power of faith was mere quackery. However, since no one is making money from it (not yet, at least), it has to be honest.
Paul is almost killed and a high-ranking Ethiopian (Ben Vereen, in a ludicrous bit of scenery chewing) is baptized by Philip after taking all of five minutes to convert. Caligula is baffled by the Jews, not understanding their monotheism until he can turn it to himself, saying "There is one god. The Emperor is god," as he's having statues all over the empire made of himself, which is not sitting well with the Jews in Jerusalem.
Speaking of Paul, he goes back to Jerusalem, where his conversion is doubted (yes, by Thomas). He begs to be a minister, but Peter tells him to go back to Tarsus. When he refuses, Peter tries to get rid of him in another way. "You're young, you're strong. You're a traveling man," sending him on the road with the good word. Paul's conversion does not go down well in Tarsus, where his father says, "there's no room for you here. Disinherited and disowned." It gets worse! "A good Jew and a good Roman gets his reward and you will get yours someday. The headman's ax or the stones of the mob or the shame of the cross," his father predicts. "What shame? Don't talk of shame," Paul says, unmoved.
On the northern coast of Gaul, Caligula assembles his troops and gives them a rah-rah speech before they go off to conquer Britannia, but he has a request first. He wants them to pick up all the shells on the beach so they can be returned to Rome. Our old pal Valerius finds this humiliating, "the shame of it!" Even worse for morale, instead of the planned invasion, Caligula decides to send the ships back to Rome with the shells.
In Jaffa, Peter brings a woman back from the dead, much to his own surprise, and he's then besieged by requests from the town to heal and cure. "Go home, it's not me!" he says to them, trying to nap. He then he as a dream that a bunch of animals descended upon him, including some forbidden by law to eat, and he is told to dig into the buffet. "It means you're hungry," Thomas tells him. "It means we shall not be afraid to break bread with the Gentiles," Peter retorts. This is a giant moment in Christianity, the moment when the new religion stopped becoming merely a sect of Judaism. Peter is summoned by Centurion Cornelius (Paul Freeman) and he goes, now convinced that non-Jews can hear the message, though Thomas refuses to enter the "house of the uncircumcised." The Centurion wants to be baptized, the first Roman official in the story to do so.
Back in the fictional plot, Caleb and Corinna have fallen for each other and when he grabs her, she asks if he's "subjugating me or Rome" and he's too confused to make much sense. He certainly wants her, that he admits, but he has to keep his eye on the goal of of destroying Rome. They do get a big kiss as the scene quickly ends. Sarah and Valerius get a moment alone too, with Valerius talking of Caligula's madness. "How will it end?" Sarah wants to know. "With someone sticking a dagger in the divine Caligula," Valerius replies quite openly. He wants to buy her freedom, but he does not have the money. Aquila and Priscilla discuss the problem and then, out of the blue, Aquila tells his wife, "I've just come to accept that the secret of life is hope. That even death may not be the end. I was led by his crucified hand out of darkness." Wait, "just come to accept?" Isn't that a bit strong? However long it took, it works, because Aquila comes up with the money to buy Sarah at an auction. He then grants her freedom and they are married. It took nearly three and a half hours, but finally "A.D." has a happy moment! The only one not happy is Caleb, just told of the fate of his sisters. "Rome," he sneers sarcastically at Aquila, "tears our hearts apart and then fills them with love." Caleb refuses to see his sister until he kills Caligula (it was under the rule of Tiberius that the bad stuff happened, but one Caesar is as good as another).
The appearance of the statue of Caligula proves to be interesting philosophically, once again bringing up the subject of whether the new Christians are still Jews are not. The Jewish argument against the statue is first, with Caiaphas telling the local governor that the Jews will not allow it inside the Temple and will kill to make sure it is not placed there. The sympathetic governor offers to kill himself, but knows that won't make Caligula happy. Then it's Peter's turn. He and the Apostles argue about non-Jews joining them. Some think the Gentiles have to convert to Judaism first, but Peter is playing a numbers game. He wants converts any way he can take them. He even argues that he would take Caligula, should he want to convert. So, should this gang support the Jews against the statue or stay away? Peter says, "the Temple is in our hearts" and they should stay away. But, that will mean breaking definitively with the Jews.
As it appears that "A.D." is about to turn into an Agatha Christie mystery with everyone damning Caligula to death, Caleb and Sarah are re-united, but Caleb refuses to accept her husband. However, neither of them knows that her husband was one of the soldiers who pledged to kill Caligula. Sighs of relief on the part of the governor and Caiaphas greet the news that the deed is done and the hated statue has its head knocked off.
Rome has a new emperor, the timid and awkward Claudius (Richard Kiley), who gives a stuttering speech upon assuming his new role that "the Jews must leave Rome!" He beams with unexpected surprise to find that the Senate agrees with him.
Okay, now I'm getting a bit annoyed at the fictional plot because Caleb, though understandably in a permanent bad mood, really does give Valerius a hard time without getting to know him. For their first meeting, Valerius goes to the trouble of learning the Bible, for goodness sake! "I offer you my friendship, Caleb," he says, but Caleb replies, "I can give you only my hatred in return." On his way out, Valerius earnestly says, "I want to build peace with you," in English and in Hebrew, but Caleb remains unmoved. Due to Claudius' new policy, Valerius has to leave Rome unless his wife renounces her faith and he has to hold a trial with witnesses to prove it. Though Sarah refuses in front of witnesses, the witnesses report all is okay.
We've gotten so lost in our fictional plot that we've neglected our pal Paul, now in Antioch looking for converts, among both Jews and Gentiles. Faith may have to take a back seat to practicality, because a merchant in Antioch tells Paul, "you have an urgent business on your hands" and asks them to sell Antioch grain to Jerusalem, which will be out of supplies in a few months due to failed harvests and bad leadership in Rome. Or vice versa. Or whatever, just know that trade is somehow tempting. Before that, though, he is able to convert Luke (Gerrard McArthur).
Caleb is fired as a gladiator because he's a Jew (though boss Richard Roundtree swears if it were up to him, he would keep him), so he and Corrina have to leave Rome, and Aquila and Priscilla are on their way as well, back to Corinth and teetering close to conversion.
Uh oh. Peter is captured and thrown into jail, and upon finding out that James has been executed, wonders aloud to Jesus how he can be "the rock" if he's dead. Jesus has an answer for him, appearing to him in a burst of light that somehow opens Peter's cell door and allows him to escape. Okay, maybe it's not so much an answer as just a way out. When he hears that Peter has escape, newly-appointed Herod Antipas has an overacting fit that scare the birds right out of the trees and dies. Peter decides it's perfectly okay to convert the Gentiles, and though there is still resistance, "understanding" is more important than circumcision. As long as the converts don't fornicate or kill, they are okay, basically.
Guess who comes up with the idea of a the New Testament? According to "A.D." it's Priscilla. Yup. At dinner with Aquila and visiting Paul, she says that "these tales of the Lord's work must not be lost to the future," turning serious after ribbing him for some of the more outlandish stories being preached. Thank you, Priscilla! Wanna write it too? Is she Matthew? Mark? Where is the Gospel of Priscilla?
Co-opted by Luke, as it turns out. Paul tells them of his flair for the comic and how he's such a good writer. Plautus without a sense of humor, if you ask me, but hey, apparently Paul thinks he's quite the snazzy scribe and the one to put it all down on paper. "I'm to become a character in a Greek tale," Paul says, with Aquila comparing him to Odysseus and other Greek heroes. And Paul, never one to shirk some praise, doesn't argue. Are you kidding? He then preaches in the next scene, listing all the places he's been and all the good he's done, tossing in a bit of guilt and a bit of the fantastic. "When you say the man Paul has cured the sick...you say wrong. It is the power of God working THROUGH Paul," he tells them. It couldn't just be God, could it? Paul has to get his name in there whenever he can.
If Tiberius was a sick fool, Caligula overflowing with a god complex and Claudius a fraud, they don't compare to the man the latter leaves in charge of the Empire, perhaps as some huge joke: Nero. Granted, he allows the Jews back into Rome, where Aquila, Priscilla-the-Ignored, Sarah, Corinna and Caleb enjoy a dinner where they talk about Paul (if he can't be in the scene, at least he's discussed). Paul apparently told Aquila and Priscilla to wait for conversion, like a "slow, lingering" feeling rather than the flash of light he saw. Why? These two have been ready for conversion since the moment we met them! Of all people, we're making them wait?
Paul takes Luke to Jerusalem for Passover and there is immediately anger from the Jews that he may try to bring him into the Temple, which is forbidden. There's a big plaque, "in Green and in Latin," that anyone of another faith entering will be killed. Luke stays outside, but Paul enters to "perform the right of purification" and once he enters, he's mobbed, "as an agent of Rome" of all things. Well, he is still a Roman citizen. Therefore, the Romans in Jerusalem take the threat against his life seriously enough to investigate it.
In the fictional plot, Caleb and Valerius have become good friends and Caleb has his old job back as a gladiator. Valerius is being sent to Palestine with the new governor, but Caleb has softened toward Rome. "I'm married now," is his explanation for having given up his vengeance, which is really all he's had up until now. "Besides, Nero seems willing to make concessions," Caleb chirps ominously.
The new procurate in Palestine is Porcius Festus (David Hedison). His appearance is cheered by Caiaphas, who has thought Rome too lax lately. He wants Festus to judge Paul's case. Festus is furious, feeling that Caiaphas has no right to say there has even been a crime committed. "Did you have summary justice in mind? An accident on the road to Jerusalem, perhaps? I've heard of these tricks before!" he thunders. "We do not perform tricks, procurate. We are at one over our love of justice," Caiaphas says unctuously. Paul is in prison talking about love, getting a speech that goes on a very long time with loads of underscoring. It's a beautiful moment, theologically, but boy does it bring the action to a grinding halt. I mean no disrespect to the gospel of love, just its insertion right here after more than four hours of time gone by. "There are three things that truly last," he says in summary (we could have gone right to that), "faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love."
At Paul's trial, Festus proclaims, "this is an internal matter and does not concern Rome," completely bored until Paul says he's committed no crime against Rome. Festus doesn't care what he's done to anger the Jews, but Paul appeals his case to Caesar. "Okay, you've appealed to Caesar, and to Caesar you shall go," he decides. Phew! Paul is able to slither out of this political morass, avoiding Jewish judgment, which surely would never have gone his way. It's Valerius who has to take Paul to Rome. Discussing the internal struggles between Jews, Festus tells Valerius, "whatever it is, whatever it is, it's...it's...unclean, un-Roman, all too...Jewish." A better summation of the world's attitude at the time has not been spoken in this miniseries. Historically, what was going on in Palestine at the time, whether it concerned the Jews or the newer sect of zealots, none of it really mattered to Rome at large. It was a blip in the Empire, only made to seem historically important by later events and then magnified immensely. The miniseries is certainly on the side of Christianity, but it can't completely ignore historical truth, so it succinctly handles it in a short line like this.
Without going over the entire hysterical conversation, I want to catch up with Paul as he sails to Rome, slowly, with Valerius and Luke. They talk of the fictional characters, how they have changed, etc., and then Paul asks to stop at Sidon. "I persecuted the Jews and they went to Sidon and started a church. You could say I started that church," he says. Once again, there's nothing in the New Testament he won't take credit for, and Luke is there to make sure of it! He also gets off a few famous Biblical quotes during this voyage, tucked in there among the more self-righteous moments. Valerius is a willing convert, so the writers use his thirst for knowledge as a way to let Paul explain all the new tenets of the religion. Before reaching Rome, Valerius is baptized and converted.
In Rome, no one really cares about Paul, so he's allowed to go free, trailed by a Roman soldier whose only problem is "Jewish cooking," though Priscilla aims to change that. Valerius talks to lawyers who say that if Paul makes no fuss for a month, the case will be dropped. And so it is. He's worked wonders, but still hasn't changed Caleb's mind. "The new faith won't do. Not yet, not yet," Caleb says, suddenly a free-Judea radical again after so long as a content gladiator. Paul leaves Rome, but with uncharacteristic modesty. Luke, who is staying, says he will write of all Paul has done for future generations, but Paul demures, "not just Paul, but all the Apostles." Yeah, but does he mean it? After all, Luke doesn't know the others, so Paul's lip service to them may be just that. He then boards a boat out of Rome with his arms raised to the crowds.
What of the other Apostles? Peter is still around, now in Rome, gray and older, at the villa of Linus (David Rintoul), proclaiming Rome needs to be the new center of the religion, for he has had premonitions. It can't be Jerusalem anymore because Jews and Christians are like "siblings who can't live together anymore" and in order to spread the word, they have to do it free of their Jewish kinsman. "You will be a shepherd, a shepherd in the name of Jesus," Peter tells Linus because Linus is a true Roman who understands the faith.
The casting of miniseries favorite Anthony Andrews at Nero is genius. It gives him a chance to dig deep into his hammy bag of tricks and play Nero as an effeminate oddball with an Abe Lincoln beard. When first seen, he's begging the Senate for something unimportant, claiming "the people are ready for an increase in taxation after so long a period of fiscal clemency." It's his idea to allow Jews and Christians freedom of religion as long as they pay full taxes. Sounds reasonable to him, but the Senate would rather spend money to rebuild Pompeii or strengthen their holds in Spain, Gaul and Britain. That sets Nero off big time, and Andrews enjoys spitting out every syllable.
Whereas Paul gets to preach to huge crowds and important people, Peter is stuck with a kindergarten asking questions that have easy answers, history's first Sunday school with avuncular Peter a benign happy teacher. A Senator warns him to be careful. "Your words have different sounds to different ears," he says, before telling him, "I want to see you again," with a creepy look that makes him seem like a teenager asking for a second date.
The Great Fire of Rome is quite the spectacle. Of course Nero watches, quoting poetry, but, thankfully, not fiddling. It's left to our fictional characters to suffer on screen, but the viewer to suffer through Nero's idiotic ramblings while being fondled by a woman whose only contribution to the dialogue it to look at the burning city and call the new one Nero dreams of "Neropolis."
Peter puts Linus in charge, calling him the Father of the Church, therefore Pope Linus technically. He also reminds everyone that he sees a time when everyone will be "cruelly tested" before having everyone recite an "Our Father."
Nero and his friend Tigellinus (Jonathan Hyde) have cooked up a way to whip the Senate into a frenzy against the Christians in the wake of the Great Fire and decrees that not only will they be rooted out, but with extreme violence. Nero particularly loves the idea of public executions in the arenas, bloodbaths for the fun of it. Peter is arrested and we can cue the lions, or, in this case, leopards (the budget must have been shot by this point and lions don't work cheap). Peter is to face death on the Vatican hill by crucifixion, of which he claims he's not worthy. "Let me die seeing the world as the rest of sinning humanity sees it, twisted, inverted" he tells his jailer.
Most difficult to watch is when the Christian children are dresses as lambs (Caleb and Sarah's daughter among them) and set upon by angry drooling dogs. Even the spectators have trouble watching this display. Caleb and Corinna, with their gladiator training, rush into the arena, in slow motion, and kill the dogs, earning the respect of the crowd and Nero. Valerius goes into the arena to find his daughter and picks up a dead body, but it's not his daughter, who is safe, and angrily denies his past. "I am not a Roman soldier anymore. I will not serve a butcher and a pack of wolves. Rome is not this!...I renounce my rank. I renege my service," he yells at the top of his lungs, but a sympathetic soldier tells him to hide instead of turning him in.
Peter's upside-down crucifixion is no easier to watch, but it's kept short, mercifully. Then it's time for Paul to face the Romans. Expecting to be crucified like Peter, the arresting solder tells Paul that crucifixion is only for non-Roman citizens like "Peter or your...what's his name?" "Jesus," Paul replies. "Learn it. You may meet him someday."
Paul is saucy to Tigellinus in prison, unafraid of death, but Tigellinus is a smart cookie. He feeds Paul's ego. "You are the fish I wanted to catch. The rest are minnows. They will fall back to the right once you're gone," he says and Paul doesn't argue. In prison, he holds one last service, saying he has "run the good race." As he's being led past a line of crucified men, he says, "forgive them Lord, they know not what they do." He has to get all the Biblical lines in, because time is ticking, only Luke is nowhere to be found with his feather and parchment to record it all. Nero himself shows up for the beheading.
"The church is indeed stronger than the Empire that assails it," Linus tells the faithful, and history proved him right. He also has a chance to welcome Caleb and Corinna, saying, "I knew you'd come." He also gives them a recently-orphaned baby. Linus insists the the child be raised a Christian and Caleb says he can't, so Linus says the faith will come to the child, "just allow him to look for it." They are on their way back to Jerusalem anyway, since Caleb feels, "it's time for a son to return to his mother," metaphorically, of course.
There we have it. Early Christianity, with its questions, its bloodshed, it's misunderstandings and it's regal power. It's not the most engaging story, thus the fictional plot, but it does at least provide some answers and fill in some gaps. From here, not much miniseries-worthy happens until all of Rome is converted, but let's just stick where we are for now!
Let's be honest: for good storytelling, you can't beat the Passion story. Other than sex, it really does have everything a truly great story should have. Before there ever was an official New Testament, the story of Jesus, with its heroes and villains, miracles, violence and redemption, and even perhaps the hint of a prostitute (with the biggest heart of gold of them all) is just the kind of thing with which to take around the Roman Empire and hope for conversion. Very few organized religions can match it.
However, the story loses steam after the resurrection. The next few hundred years couldn't hope to match the 33 Jesus spent on Earth (and most of his years are even missing--it's a very condensed story), and that is the main problem with "A.D." You can have all the trappings money can buy, but without a whiz-bang story, even the trappings look thin. Note here that most of the guest stars (slumming and otherwise) play Romans, who were far more exciting than the Apostles. Why be post-crucifixion Mary when you can be Agrippina?
(Note: the DVD prints of "A.D." cut out a lot, meaning the guest stars, so be prepared to do without Colleen Dewhurst, Ava Gardner's Agrippina and Jennifer O'Neill's Messalina, Fernando Rey's Seneca and of course Susan Sarandon's Livia, most mentioned, but not shown, though they certainly are in the original TV airing--the DVD is put out by a group more interested in religion than fun.)
So, keep that in mind as we slog through some of the slowest parts. The history of Christianity is fascinating, but most of the best stuff happened right up front and then not for a few centuries. The stuff in between, well, it means well, and it tries its hardest, but Christianity definitely had what the theater would call "second act trouble." Oh, sure, comic Roman Emperors and Paul's outrageous sense of self-worth are amusing, but watching it all happen convert by convert can become tiresome at times.
It's two days after the crucifixion. The scaffold is being dismantled, but otherwise, Jerusalem seems back to normal. Two too-late-for-Passover visitors are scampering away from the city, soon joined by an awfully serene man who wants to hear their story. "We got there in time for the bad news," one says, that they not only missed joining "the 12," but that Jesus is dead. So, they went to the tomb, "but the body wasn't there...nothing is left, not even his body." They are told not to be afraid, but to be "cheerful," because this has all been foretold. The serene man tries his best with the two frightened men, who bleat, "there is nothing in the scriptures about the power of Rome!" but when the serene man finally shows them his hands, with big holes through them, their attitudes change. He is, of course, Jesus (Michael Wilding Jr.).
Jesus can't stay for dessert, despite the prodding of his new converts, who seem to understand all once he is gone and have no more fears. This first sequence is extremely long and extremely pious, but a slow start isn't a miniseries first.
It's time to meet the Apostles, hiding in Jerusalem. One claims he has been renamed "Peter, the rock" (Dennis Quilley). In rush our two newly calm converts Cleopas (Todd Durham) and Zacchaeus (Anthony Pedley) with their story. Thomas (Davyd Harries), doubts that it's true (yes, that's a Doubting Thomas joke) because he hasn't seen him yet. Peter does not understand how he's supposed to move forward, but Jesus appears and says, "on your shoulders, strong enough to bear the weight of your mission" and now everyone sees him. No trap doors, no fog, no smoke and mirrors. Here he is folks, get your believing on! Jesus gets in a second Doubting Thomas reference, but only so Jesus can prove to the naysayer that he is there and make him believe. He tells them to stay in Jerusalem for a few days because soon enough will come the time to start spreading the word.
The Jews in Jerusalem are arguing. Luckily, they have the slow steady Gamaliel (John Houseman, who did everything slow and steady in the 80s) to guide them. He defends the action of turning in Jesus to keep the Romans placated. Stephen (Vincent Riotta), Samuel (Ralph Arliss) and Caleb (Cecil Humphreys) are all present to join in with witty barbs back and forth. Paul (Philip Sayer), isn't quite trusted by the rest because Rome has honored his family. Gamaliel tries to calm everyone by saying despite their differences, they are all one people, but Jesus and his teachings have stirred them up and they don't know what to think anymore. Paul is particularly vitriolic against the notion of "love" that Jesus had preached, but no one really knows if he was the Messiah or not. "We firmly reject any claim that Jesus was anything but a good man. We all need unity and heart. Let us pray for this now," Gamaliel says to bring the meeting to a close.
Freed from thinking, Stephen and Caleb wrestle in the street with everyone cheering them on. It's all done in friendliness, but the Romans break it up and arrest Caleb. Paul tries to save him, but the Roman soldiers merely sneer at him.
Remember Pontius Pilate (Anthony Zerbe)? He's still the head Roman in the area, and he has still has the problems of rebels in Judea. He is told they are stockpiling gems, but he's unconcerned. He knows the Romans will rout them in the end and tells his aides to simply rejoice in the majesty of Emperor Tiberius. That said, there is still the pesky problem of the new zealots. "They are like weeping willows," he tells his aides, "they bend until they snap back with more power." Everyone is thrilled with the expediency of the way he handled Jesus, but they need to set more examples. Regarding Jesus, "his case puzzled me; his death relieved me," Pilate says, but does not ask for Caleb immediately, preferring to wait two days until another Jewish celebration to pronounce sentence. "They shall have another solemn date on their calendar," he says, now just a nasty old man who loves his power. Oh, wait! It gets worse. With both eyebrows raised, he asks if Caleb has any relatives and told he has a mother and two young sisters, he has them sent to Rome as slaves to thank Sejanus for "his consideration."
I'll skip ahead more briskly than the movie, which delights in sweating the small stuff. One of Caleb's sisters, Ruth (Rebecca Saire) is betrothed to Samuel, who informs the family that Caleb is certain to be crucified. Samuel tries to tell Ruth to leave the house with him, sensing "it isn't safe," but she refuses. Meanwhile, Steven wants Paul to intervene because he's a Roman citizen, but it's too late for that. How about Uncle Matthias? He has money. Nope, he won't give any of it up because he believes in the teachings of Jesus. "Ugh," Paul says, with a roll of the eyes that can be seen miles away. "The Lord who is one will guide us," Paul says, stressing "one" to remind everyone it's still the Jewish God in whom they need to have faith. Roman guards take the sisters, and Samuel is understandably upset. He wants to strike at the Romans, but Steven says "violence breeds violence," stressing belief in God, who has "seen us through harder times." "He's deaf!" Samuel yells.
As the Apostles are delighting in baby stories from Mary (Millie Perkins), a wind kicks up, but only in their room. It's followed by a bright light that causes them to form a circle and dance in delight before leaving Mary alone in the secret room. Gathered outside are tons of people shouting "hallelujah" and waving palm branches. It's the celebration day Pilate had mentioned, and everyone gathers at the Temple in high spirits. Peter quiets them down to speak. It turns out he's quite the preacher. "That great and notable day is upon us. Jesus of Nazareth...God has raised up...let all know that God has made him both Lord and Messiah!" he tells all. He says all they have to do is be baptized and turn away from the Jewish priests who have gathered with hostile faces, including Paul.
Meanwhile, Caleb is saved in a brave attack as he's on his way to be crucified, but Samuel is killed in the melee. Stephen begs Caleb not to take revenge and seek out some Jewish aesthetics who are are big into water wells and "obsessed with cleanliness" but otherwise live cut off from the world. They are definitely not followers of any new religious ideas. Caleb gets to argue a bit with them and then we visit his sisters on the boat to Rome, where Ruth is depressed, but remembering Uncle Matthias, who is a follower of Jesus' teachings, so we get a little gospel before she's killed.
Peter, thinking he's Jesus because he's seen a crippled man with a cross-shaped stick, touches him and tells him to rise, and it actually works! This is seen by the Jewish priests and everyone gathered at the Temple. No one is more surprised than Peter that it worked. "I'm nobody, I'm nothing. It's the power of our Lord," he says. However, he does have a bit of ego going, so he goes a-baptizin'. Stephen shows up to take the waters.
The action moves to Rome. Let's face it, as nasty as Pilate is, Judea is a backwater and the story is only going to pick up steam when we transplant at least some of heroes to the sinful capital city. We arrive in the Senate where Sejanus (Ian McShane) is making a speech, having just survived an assassination attempt. A note from Emperor Tiberius makes him Consul. Valerius (Neil Dickson), son on a low-born successful soldier, has come to Rome as a spy for Sejanus because there is another plot against him, but when he falls in love with slave girl at first sight, he suddenly doesn't want to spy anymore. The slave girl belongs to Sejanus, who is pursuing her to beat her. "I thought I was serving Rome," he tells his mother, "but I suspect I'm serving an unscrupulous tyrant." We've only just met Valerius, but he's awfully dim-witted already. Oh, oops, did I mention the slave girl is Sarah (Amanda Pays), the sister of Ruth and Caleb? Yeah, but you figured that out already. It's good storytelling. Someone in her family deserves it. Caleb is banished to the desert and Ruth is dead.
Speaking of Caleb, he's in Samaria now. He's there working the locals into a lather to overthrow the local government. "You must all think in terms of national freedom," he tells everyone, as if that's a concept with ANY meaning to small-town people in the first century A.D. He explains how the Romans have ordered the military, down to the numbers in each garrison. Geez, don't piss off Caleb! Have him drag a cross halfway through Jerusalem and you've got an enemy on your hands!
Lo and behold, it works. He gets the local men to agree and they dispose one-by-one of the troops, stealing their armor as a way in. Well, as one can expect, this does not sit well with Tiberius (James Mason, having graduated to a flashier role since "Jesus of Nazareth"), who, historically, probably would never even have heard of rebellion in Samaria. "Have I not done more for these Jews than...than...than...than..." he sputters, having no idea what he's given then, only to get a saucy reply from Nerva (Jack Warden), who feels that this one revolt is a symptom of weakening leadership in Rome since Tiberius has gone into self-imposed exile on Capri.
We are jumping around very quickly, where the Apostles are facing the Jewish leadership. Gamaliel, and particularly our old pal Caiaphas (Harold Kasket) are annoyed by the gains of the "zealots," snapping at Peter, whom he deems "the son of a fisherman" with bile. Peter can give as good as he gets, accusing Caiaphas of putting Jesus to death, but Gamaliel urges everyone to "leave these men alone." If it is the work of man "it will collapse" and if it is the work of a higher power, "you cannot overthrow it." I think John Houseman had the same speech in "Winds of War," no? Alas, Caiaphas is in no better a mood than he was when Jesus was alive and he orders the whipped and to speak of Jesus no more. The man so far called Paul (to be fair, he hasn't settled on that yet, as he's referred to as both Paul and Saul) is livid at Gamaliel for his "lenient" attitude toward the Apostles and they have a really dry doctrinal argument, though Paul has one good point at the end: a divided Jewry is only good news for the Roman Empire.
Stephen takes that theory one step further, telling the Apostles that it's time to go empire-wide with their message. Peter's response? "We're not ready for THAT yet!" to a chorus of laughter. But, Stephen is all for pan-Judaism that stretches across the empire. He wants to go to Greece himself, but Peter says no, the work is in Jerusalem. "Me? I've had enough of water," says the fisherman. To be fair, not all the kinks of theocracy are worked out so that it's easy to swallow Christianity, but the believers are awfully good at hobbling it together on the fly. Stephen is preaching when Paul says nothing is higher "than the law of Moses," and Steven agrees that all of that is the foundation of what they are teaching, but that Jesus came with a new law, "the law of forgiveness, of love." Sounds pretty good, huh? Who wouldn't be at least interested in hearing a little about it? It's even starting to have an effect on Paul, though he claims otherwise over and over again. Stephen emerges as the best voice of the new religion, the most eloquent and the best with a ready argument.
But, when Stephen claims to see Jesus "at the right hand of God," Caiaphas can't take it anymore. Not being able to "see" God is one of the holiest tenets of Judaism. "Your blasphemy cannot be tolerated any longer!" Caiaphas roars, "Get out, Stephen...you have made it impossible for us!" The sentence is death by stoning. He dies asking for the Lord to take his soul. Paul wants more, to imprison the whole lot of the "Greek Jews," as they are now referred to, and let them be judged "according to justice," i.e. more stoning. Caiaphas agrees, so Paul gets to play hatchet man.
To make his point, he arrests an entire praying group, or at least just the men. Thus, the Apostles realize it's time to start spreading the word and send Philip (Gary Brown) abroad. He first goes to Samaria, where he meets Caleb, who learns that his sisters were sent to Rome and his mother died. Caleb also learns that for his role in losing Samaria, Pilate has been "recalled to Rome" and a replacement is being sent. Caleb wants to go to Rome "and strike at the heart." Philip tries to talk him out of it, but Caleb is resolute.
Back in Rome, Sarah and Valerius meet again in a rainstorm, both having tried to forget each other with no luck. Thank goodness for this sudsy plot. It's hackneyed and obvious, but at least it has some dramatic heft. Get this load of bunk as they try to deal with their differences:
He: "Suppose he [Sejanus] loved me. This would change him."
She: "How?"
He: "My freedom would be yours."
She: "You want me to belong to you?"
He: "The two of us should have a chance to find our own way."
She: "The Jewess and the Roman soldier."
He: "A woman and a man. Being a Roman or being a Jew, I know people may find being a difference that can't be reconciled. Me? It's just like this rain. Forgettable."
She: "I'll try to remember."
And then she leaves. Lovestruck male and sassy slave woman. That has possibilities!
The new Procurator in Judea is Marcellus (Roderick Horn), who has ordered Paul's spitefest to end because the Romans don't want bloodshed. "Thank God for that," Gamaliel says, though Caiaphas and the others are upset because "he was doing such good work," and decide to send him to do that work in Damascus with Seth (Bruce Winant). Gamaliel is still the only voice of reason, but the Jewish priests are determined to stamp out the growing Nazarene sect however they can.
On the way to Damascus, Paul is annoyed by the slowness of his men, so he sends three back and continues with just Seth. They are caught in a giant wind storm that scares off the horses. Paul opens his eyes, now blind as he burns with fever. He insists that they continue to Damascus. Paul finally confesses what he heard to Seth. "It was his voice, the Lord. He said, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? We are all by nature children of anger.' I shall persecute no more," he says. "I am to become one of them," he says and asks Seth to bring him Ananais (Barrie Houghton), who baptizes him officially as Paul, now a convert to the new religion and able to see again.
Having helped drive his uncle to insanity and death, Little Boots, known to history as Caligula (John McEnery), is teetering on the brink of madness himself. He orders a soldier to cut off the heads of all the statues of the gods on his property and put his head on them. But the female gods? "Just put more hair," he says matter-of-factly.
Paul is worried that he's not a teacher, with more zeal than knowledge, but the believers of Damascus tell him to simply tell his story of his revelation and people will understand. He has an uphill battle since everyone knows to hate him. "Cannot a man change?" he asks and then goes into the new teachings, but he meets resistance.
Caleb goes to Rome, awed by the city and looking to attend gladiator school, in the wacky notion that once he has a sword in hand, he can get to his sisters and avenge what he sees as his own cowardice for having run to the desert. Hasn't he already taken care of that by helping the Samaritans temporarily rise up. He's offered a good job making tents by Aquila (Tony Vogel) and his wife Priscilla (Angela Morant).
I say it again, thank goodness for the fictional plot going here, because it's ineptness gives us most of the laughs we need. Caleb does indeed go to gladiator school, where the teacher realizes he's Jewish the minute Caleb disrobes and then sends him off to fight some bad ass. They have a good fight and then the bad ass removes his helmet to reveal she's a woman! Caleb is upset, but turned on. Corrina (Diane Venora) is learning to fight so she can protect herself. She doesn't say from what, but Caleb doesn't ask either.
Peter and friends have made it to Samaria, where they show us what might be one of history's first exorcisms. It's witnessed by slimy Simon (John Steiner), who wants to pay to learn their "trickery." They refuse his money and tell him he doesn't understand that it's not magic. This is actually quite an interesting scene because it shows another side of what people must have thought, namely that the power of faith was mere quackery. However, since no one is making money from it (not yet, at least), it has to be honest.
Paul is almost killed and a high-ranking Ethiopian (Ben Vereen, in a ludicrous bit of scenery chewing) is baptized by Philip after taking all of five minutes to convert. Caligula is baffled by the Jews, not understanding their monotheism until he can turn it to himself, saying "There is one god. The Emperor is god," as he's having statues all over the empire made of himself, which is not sitting well with the Jews in Jerusalem.
Speaking of Paul, he goes back to Jerusalem, where his conversion is doubted (yes, by Thomas). He begs to be a minister, but Peter tells him to go back to Tarsus. When he refuses, Peter tries to get rid of him in another way. "You're young, you're strong. You're a traveling man," sending him on the road with the good word. Paul's conversion does not go down well in Tarsus, where his father says, "there's no room for you here. Disinherited and disowned." It gets worse! "A good Jew and a good Roman gets his reward and you will get yours someday. The headman's ax or the stones of the mob or the shame of the cross," his father predicts. "What shame? Don't talk of shame," Paul says, unmoved.
On the northern coast of Gaul, Caligula assembles his troops and gives them a rah-rah speech before they go off to conquer Britannia, but he has a request first. He wants them to pick up all the shells on the beach so they can be returned to Rome. Our old pal Valerius finds this humiliating, "the shame of it!" Even worse for morale, instead of the planned invasion, Caligula decides to send the ships back to Rome with the shells.
In Jaffa, Peter brings a woman back from the dead, much to his own surprise, and he's then besieged by requests from the town to heal and cure. "Go home, it's not me!" he says to them, trying to nap. He then he as a dream that a bunch of animals descended upon him, including some forbidden by law to eat, and he is told to dig into the buffet. "It means you're hungry," Thomas tells him. "It means we shall not be afraid to break bread with the Gentiles," Peter retorts. This is a giant moment in Christianity, the moment when the new religion stopped becoming merely a sect of Judaism. Peter is summoned by Centurion Cornelius (Paul Freeman) and he goes, now convinced that non-Jews can hear the message, though Thomas refuses to enter the "house of the uncircumcised." The Centurion wants to be baptized, the first Roman official in the story to do so.
Back in the fictional plot, Caleb and Corinna have fallen for each other and when he grabs her, she asks if he's "subjugating me or Rome" and he's too confused to make much sense. He certainly wants her, that he admits, but he has to keep his eye on the goal of of destroying Rome. They do get a big kiss as the scene quickly ends. Sarah and Valerius get a moment alone too, with Valerius talking of Caligula's madness. "How will it end?" Sarah wants to know. "With someone sticking a dagger in the divine Caligula," Valerius replies quite openly. He wants to buy her freedom, but he does not have the money. Aquila and Priscilla discuss the problem and then, out of the blue, Aquila tells his wife, "I've just come to accept that the secret of life is hope. That even death may not be the end. I was led by his crucified hand out of darkness." Wait, "just come to accept?" Isn't that a bit strong? However long it took, it works, because Aquila comes up with the money to buy Sarah at an auction. He then grants her freedom and they are married. It took nearly three and a half hours, but finally "A.D." has a happy moment! The only one not happy is Caleb, just told of the fate of his sisters. "Rome," he sneers sarcastically at Aquila, "tears our hearts apart and then fills them with love." Caleb refuses to see his sister until he kills Caligula (it was under the rule of Tiberius that the bad stuff happened, but one Caesar is as good as another).
The appearance of the statue of Caligula proves to be interesting philosophically, once again bringing up the subject of whether the new Christians are still Jews are not. The Jewish argument against the statue is first, with Caiaphas telling the local governor that the Jews will not allow it inside the Temple and will kill to make sure it is not placed there. The sympathetic governor offers to kill himself, but knows that won't make Caligula happy. Then it's Peter's turn. He and the Apostles argue about non-Jews joining them. Some think the Gentiles have to convert to Judaism first, but Peter is playing a numbers game. He wants converts any way he can take them. He even argues that he would take Caligula, should he want to convert. So, should this gang support the Jews against the statue or stay away? Peter says, "the Temple is in our hearts" and they should stay away. But, that will mean breaking definitively with the Jews.
As it appears that "A.D." is about to turn into an Agatha Christie mystery with everyone damning Caligula to death, Caleb and Sarah are re-united, but Caleb refuses to accept her husband. However, neither of them knows that her husband was one of the soldiers who pledged to kill Caligula. Sighs of relief on the part of the governor and Caiaphas greet the news that the deed is done and the hated statue has its head knocked off.
Rome has a new emperor, the timid and awkward Claudius (Richard Kiley), who gives a stuttering speech upon assuming his new role that "the Jews must leave Rome!" He beams with unexpected surprise to find that the Senate agrees with him.
Okay, now I'm getting a bit annoyed at the fictional plot because Caleb, though understandably in a permanent bad mood, really does give Valerius a hard time without getting to know him. For their first meeting, Valerius goes to the trouble of learning the Bible, for goodness sake! "I offer you my friendship, Caleb," he says, but Caleb replies, "I can give you only my hatred in return." On his way out, Valerius earnestly says, "I want to build peace with you," in English and in Hebrew, but Caleb remains unmoved. Due to Claudius' new policy, Valerius has to leave Rome unless his wife renounces her faith and he has to hold a trial with witnesses to prove it. Though Sarah refuses in front of witnesses, the witnesses report all is okay.
We've gotten so lost in our fictional plot that we've neglected our pal Paul, now in Antioch looking for converts, among both Jews and Gentiles. Faith may have to take a back seat to practicality, because a merchant in Antioch tells Paul, "you have an urgent business on your hands" and asks them to sell Antioch grain to Jerusalem, which will be out of supplies in a few months due to failed harvests and bad leadership in Rome. Or vice versa. Or whatever, just know that trade is somehow tempting. Before that, though, he is able to convert Luke (Gerrard McArthur).
Caleb is fired as a gladiator because he's a Jew (though boss Richard Roundtree swears if it were up to him, he would keep him), so he and Corrina have to leave Rome, and Aquila and Priscilla are on their way as well, back to Corinth and teetering close to conversion.
Uh oh. Peter is captured and thrown into jail, and upon finding out that James has been executed, wonders aloud to Jesus how he can be "the rock" if he's dead. Jesus has an answer for him, appearing to him in a burst of light that somehow opens Peter's cell door and allows him to escape. Okay, maybe it's not so much an answer as just a way out. When he hears that Peter has escape, newly-appointed Herod Antipas has an overacting fit that scare the birds right out of the trees and dies. Peter decides it's perfectly okay to convert the Gentiles, and though there is still resistance, "understanding" is more important than circumcision. As long as the converts don't fornicate or kill, they are okay, basically.
Guess who comes up with the idea of a the New Testament? According to "A.D." it's Priscilla. Yup. At dinner with Aquila and visiting Paul, she says that "these tales of the Lord's work must not be lost to the future," turning serious after ribbing him for some of the more outlandish stories being preached. Thank you, Priscilla! Wanna write it too? Is she Matthew? Mark? Where is the Gospel of Priscilla?
Co-opted by Luke, as it turns out. Paul tells them of his flair for the comic and how he's such a good writer. Plautus without a sense of humor, if you ask me, but hey, apparently Paul thinks he's quite the snazzy scribe and the one to put it all down on paper. "I'm to become a character in a Greek tale," Paul says, with Aquila comparing him to Odysseus and other Greek heroes. And Paul, never one to shirk some praise, doesn't argue. Are you kidding? He then preaches in the next scene, listing all the places he's been and all the good he's done, tossing in a bit of guilt and a bit of the fantastic. "When you say the man Paul has cured the sick...you say wrong. It is the power of God working THROUGH Paul," he tells them. It couldn't just be God, could it? Paul has to get his name in there whenever he can.
If Tiberius was a sick fool, Caligula overflowing with a god complex and Claudius a fraud, they don't compare to the man the latter leaves in charge of the Empire, perhaps as some huge joke: Nero. Granted, he allows the Jews back into Rome, where Aquila, Priscilla-the-Ignored, Sarah, Corinna and Caleb enjoy a dinner where they talk about Paul (if he can't be in the scene, at least he's discussed). Paul apparently told Aquila and Priscilla to wait for conversion, like a "slow, lingering" feeling rather than the flash of light he saw. Why? These two have been ready for conversion since the moment we met them! Of all people, we're making them wait?
Paul takes Luke to Jerusalem for Passover and there is immediately anger from the Jews that he may try to bring him into the Temple, which is forbidden. There's a big plaque, "in Green and in Latin," that anyone of another faith entering will be killed. Luke stays outside, but Paul enters to "perform the right of purification" and once he enters, he's mobbed, "as an agent of Rome" of all things. Well, he is still a Roman citizen. Therefore, the Romans in Jerusalem take the threat against his life seriously enough to investigate it.
In the fictional plot, Caleb and Valerius have become good friends and Caleb has his old job back as a gladiator. Valerius is being sent to Palestine with the new governor, but Caleb has softened toward Rome. "I'm married now," is his explanation for having given up his vengeance, which is really all he's had up until now. "Besides, Nero seems willing to make concessions," Caleb chirps ominously.
The new procurate in Palestine is Porcius Festus (David Hedison). His appearance is cheered by Caiaphas, who has thought Rome too lax lately. He wants Festus to judge Paul's case. Festus is furious, feeling that Caiaphas has no right to say there has even been a crime committed. "Did you have summary justice in mind? An accident on the road to Jerusalem, perhaps? I've heard of these tricks before!" he thunders. "We do not perform tricks, procurate. We are at one over our love of justice," Caiaphas says unctuously. Paul is in prison talking about love, getting a speech that goes on a very long time with loads of underscoring. It's a beautiful moment, theologically, but boy does it bring the action to a grinding halt. I mean no disrespect to the gospel of love, just its insertion right here after more than four hours of time gone by. "There are three things that truly last," he says in summary (we could have gone right to that), "faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love."
At Paul's trial, Festus proclaims, "this is an internal matter and does not concern Rome," completely bored until Paul says he's committed no crime against Rome. Festus doesn't care what he's done to anger the Jews, but Paul appeals his case to Caesar. "Okay, you've appealed to Caesar, and to Caesar you shall go," he decides. Phew! Paul is able to slither out of this political morass, avoiding Jewish judgment, which surely would never have gone his way. It's Valerius who has to take Paul to Rome. Discussing the internal struggles between Jews, Festus tells Valerius, "whatever it is, whatever it is, it's...it's...unclean, un-Roman, all too...Jewish." A better summation of the world's attitude at the time has not been spoken in this miniseries. Historically, what was going on in Palestine at the time, whether it concerned the Jews or the newer sect of zealots, none of it really mattered to Rome at large. It was a blip in the Empire, only made to seem historically important by later events and then magnified immensely. The miniseries is certainly on the side of Christianity, but it can't completely ignore historical truth, so it succinctly handles it in a short line like this.
Without going over the entire hysterical conversation, I want to catch up with Paul as he sails to Rome, slowly, with Valerius and Luke. They talk of the fictional characters, how they have changed, etc., and then Paul asks to stop at Sidon. "I persecuted the Jews and they went to Sidon and started a church. You could say I started that church," he says. Once again, there's nothing in the New Testament he won't take credit for, and Luke is there to make sure of it! He also gets off a few famous Biblical quotes during this voyage, tucked in there among the more self-righteous moments. Valerius is a willing convert, so the writers use his thirst for knowledge as a way to let Paul explain all the new tenets of the religion. Before reaching Rome, Valerius is baptized and converted.
In Rome, no one really cares about Paul, so he's allowed to go free, trailed by a Roman soldier whose only problem is "Jewish cooking," though Priscilla aims to change that. Valerius talks to lawyers who say that if Paul makes no fuss for a month, the case will be dropped. And so it is. He's worked wonders, but still hasn't changed Caleb's mind. "The new faith won't do. Not yet, not yet," Caleb says, suddenly a free-Judea radical again after so long as a content gladiator. Paul leaves Rome, but with uncharacteristic modesty. Luke, who is staying, says he will write of all Paul has done for future generations, but Paul demures, "not just Paul, but all the Apostles." Yeah, but does he mean it? After all, Luke doesn't know the others, so Paul's lip service to them may be just that. He then boards a boat out of Rome with his arms raised to the crowds.
What of the other Apostles? Peter is still around, now in Rome, gray and older, at the villa of Linus (David Rintoul), proclaiming Rome needs to be the new center of the religion, for he has had premonitions. It can't be Jerusalem anymore because Jews and Christians are like "siblings who can't live together anymore" and in order to spread the word, they have to do it free of their Jewish kinsman. "You will be a shepherd, a shepherd in the name of Jesus," Peter tells Linus because Linus is a true Roman who understands the faith.
The casting of miniseries favorite Anthony Andrews at Nero is genius. It gives him a chance to dig deep into his hammy bag of tricks and play Nero as an effeminate oddball with an Abe Lincoln beard. When first seen, he's begging the Senate for something unimportant, claiming "the people are ready for an increase in taxation after so long a period of fiscal clemency." It's his idea to allow Jews and Christians freedom of religion as long as they pay full taxes. Sounds reasonable to him, but the Senate would rather spend money to rebuild Pompeii or strengthen their holds in Spain, Gaul and Britain. That sets Nero off big time, and Andrews enjoys spitting out every syllable.
Whereas Paul gets to preach to huge crowds and important people, Peter is stuck with a kindergarten asking questions that have easy answers, history's first Sunday school with avuncular Peter a benign happy teacher. A Senator warns him to be careful. "Your words have different sounds to different ears," he says, before telling him, "I want to see you again," with a creepy look that makes him seem like a teenager asking for a second date.
The Great Fire of Rome is quite the spectacle. Of course Nero watches, quoting poetry, but, thankfully, not fiddling. It's left to our fictional characters to suffer on screen, but the viewer to suffer through Nero's idiotic ramblings while being fondled by a woman whose only contribution to the dialogue it to look at the burning city and call the new one Nero dreams of "Neropolis."
Peter puts Linus in charge, calling him the Father of the Church, therefore Pope Linus technically. He also reminds everyone that he sees a time when everyone will be "cruelly tested" before having everyone recite an "Our Father."
Nero and his friend Tigellinus (Jonathan Hyde) have cooked up a way to whip the Senate into a frenzy against the Christians in the wake of the Great Fire and decrees that not only will they be rooted out, but with extreme violence. Nero particularly loves the idea of public executions in the arenas, bloodbaths for the fun of it. Peter is arrested and we can cue the lions, or, in this case, leopards (the budget must have been shot by this point and lions don't work cheap). Peter is to face death on the Vatican hill by crucifixion, of which he claims he's not worthy. "Let me die seeing the world as the rest of sinning humanity sees it, twisted, inverted" he tells his jailer.
Most difficult to watch is when the Christian children are dresses as lambs (Caleb and Sarah's daughter among them) and set upon by angry drooling dogs. Even the spectators have trouble watching this display. Caleb and Corinna, with their gladiator training, rush into the arena, in slow motion, and kill the dogs, earning the respect of the crowd and Nero. Valerius goes into the arena to find his daughter and picks up a dead body, but it's not his daughter, who is safe, and angrily denies his past. "I am not a Roman soldier anymore. I will not serve a butcher and a pack of wolves. Rome is not this!...I renounce my rank. I renege my service," he yells at the top of his lungs, but a sympathetic soldier tells him to hide instead of turning him in.
Peter's upside-down crucifixion is no easier to watch, but it's kept short, mercifully. Then it's time for Paul to face the Romans. Expecting to be crucified like Peter, the arresting solder tells Paul that crucifixion is only for non-Roman citizens like "Peter or your...what's his name?" "Jesus," Paul replies. "Learn it. You may meet him someday."
Paul is saucy to Tigellinus in prison, unafraid of death, but Tigellinus is a smart cookie. He feeds Paul's ego. "You are the fish I wanted to catch. The rest are minnows. They will fall back to the right once you're gone," he says and Paul doesn't argue. In prison, he holds one last service, saying he has "run the good race." As he's being led past a line of crucified men, he says, "forgive them Lord, they know not what they do." He has to get all the Biblical lines in, because time is ticking, only Luke is nowhere to be found with his feather and parchment to record it all. Nero himself shows up for the beheading.
"The church is indeed stronger than the Empire that assails it," Linus tells the faithful, and history proved him right. He also has a chance to welcome Caleb and Corinna, saying, "I knew you'd come." He also gives them a recently-orphaned baby. Linus insists the the child be raised a Christian and Caleb says he can't, so Linus says the faith will come to the child, "just allow him to look for it." They are on their way back to Jerusalem anyway, since Caleb feels, "it's time for a son to return to his mother," metaphorically, of course.
There we have it. Early Christianity, with its questions, its bloodshed, it's misunderstandings and it's regal power. It's not the most engaging story, thus the fictional plot, but it does at least provide some answers and fill in some gaps. From here, not much miniseries-worthy happens until all of Rome is converted, but let's just stick where we are for now!
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