366 - Short Cuts, United States, 1993. Dir. Robert Altman.

Monday, January 1, 2018

366 - Short Cuts, United States, 1993.  Dir. Robert Altman.

It is 1992 and fruit flies are on the loose.

Or medflies.  A type of fruit flies.

News helicopters buzz over Los Angeles as if they were the flies.  Medflights are on the loose.  Heliflies.

So many people live in the City of Angels.  Sometimes their lives cross paths.  Sometimes they just miss each other.

Human life is messy.  Disorganized.  Desperate.  Lonely.

People have needs.  They have desires.  Sometimes their needs are not met.  Sometimes when they pursue their desires, they hurt others.  The person you are angry at for hurting you is angry at someone for hurting him.  The person who hurt him is angry at someone for hurting her.  Et cetera.  Ad infinitum.

Matthew Modine and Julianne Moore play Dr. Ralph and Marian Wyman.  Marian is a painter.  She paints her sister.  Her husband Ralph enters the room while she is painting her.  Her sister is nude.  He pays no attention.  He is a doctor.  His wife is a painter.  Nothing to see here.

Fred Ward and Anne Archer play Stuart and Claire Kane.  Claire works as a clown for hire at children's birthday parties.  They meet Ralph and Marian Wyman at a classical music concert where Zoe Trainer plays the cello.  Alex Trebek is sitting in the audience.

Tim Robbins and Madeleine Stowe play Gene and Sherri Shepard.  Sherri is Marian's sister.  Gene is a motorcycle police officer who cheats on Sherri.  He is having an affair with Betty Weathers.  He pulls over Claire when she is dressed as a clown to ask for her phone number.  He gets rid of the family dog.  When his children beg for it back, he goes and takes it away from the family who found it and tells his children that he found the dog again.

Cassie, Dustin, and Austin Friel play the children, Sandy, Will, and Austin Shepard.

Gene is not so happy when he learns his wife posed for her sister.  That her sister's husband entered the room.  And that she could possibly sell the painting to Alex Trebeck.

Peter Gallagher and Frances McDormand play Stormy and Betty Weathers.  Stormy is a helicopter pilot and weather reporter.  Betty is divorcing him.  He comes over to the house pretending to retrieve his mother's clock.  But while she is out he takes a chain saw to the furniture and cuts it all to pieces.

Jarrett Lennon plays their son Chad Weathers.  He comes home with his mother to find the house destroyed.  The television is set to his favorite show and a single toy sits in the middle of the empty floor.  Chopped-up debris surrounds the perimeter of the room.

Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin play Earl and Doreen Piggot.  Earl is a limousine driver.  Doreen is a waitress.  Earl is a great husband when he is sober.  Earl is often not sober.

Robert Downey Jr. and Lili Taylor play Bill and Honey Piggot Bush.  Honey is the daughter of Earl and Doreen Bush.  Bill is a make-up artist.  They play a game where he makes up Honey as if she is beaten and bruised, and then he takes pictures of her lying on the bed with a knife under her armpit.  They laugh at their game.

Lori Singer plays Zoe Trainer.  Zoe plays the cello.  Zoe wraps her legs around her cello when she plays.  When she plays on the stage, things go well.  When she plays in the garage, with her car running, well . . .

Annie Ross plays Zoe's mother, Tess Trainer.  Tess is a cabaret singer.  Tess is an alcoholic.  Zoe has already threatened Tess by trying to drown herself in the pool.  Tess finds Zoe in the garage.

Bruce Davison and Andie MacDowell play Howard and Ann Finnigan.  Howard is a news anchor.
Zane Cassidy plays their son Casey Finnigan.

Doreen Piggot bumps into Casey Finnigan with her car the day before his eighth birthday.  He falls to the pavement.  She tries to help him, but he refuses, stating that his parents do not allow him to talk to strangers.  She could get him immediate help, but instead he walks home alone.  She loses contact with him.  He loses consciousness until his mother comes home to find him.

Jack Lemmon plays Paul Finnigan, Howard's estranged father.  Paul comes to the hospital to check on his grandson Casey.  While there, he tries to make up with his son Howard.  He explains that Howard's aunt, Paul's wife's sister seduced him by getting him drunk and wearing a bathrobe.  Howard's mother found Paul with her sister and left him.  Then she kept him away from their son.  Paul loves Howard and wanted to be there for him.  He appeals to Howard to understand.

Lyle Lovett plays Andy Bitkower, a baker.  Howard and Ann Finnigan order a birthday cake from him for Casey's birthday.  When he calls to tell them the cake is ready, Howard hangs up on him to keep the line open for news of Casey's status.  Andy is offended and calls back.  He loses his temper and keeps calling, not realizing the situation the Finnigans are in.  He thinks it was a prank call.  He is going to lose money.

Chris Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh play Jerry and Lois Kaiser.  Jerry is a pool cleaner.  Lois is a phone sex performer.  She does her job without caring, changing her children's diapers, reading magazines.  Her husband wishes he would talk to her like that.  She never thought about it.  It means nothing to her.

Joseph C. Hopkins and Josette Maccario play Jerry and Lois' children, Joe and Josette Kaiser.

Buck Henry plays Gordon Johnson.

Huey Lewis plays Vern Miller.

Gordon Johnson and Vern Miller are friends with Stuart Kaiser (Fred Ward).  The three men have breakfast at the diner and ogle Doreen Bush.  Then they go on a three-day fishing trip.

While on their fishing trip, the three men find the body of a dead woman under water.  They ask each other what they should do.  They decide that since she is already dead, they will report it to the authorities on their way home.  Then they resume their fishing.  The men are drinking, so they take pictures.

Honey Bush and Gordon Johnson go to pick up their pictures at the same time.  The photo developer clerk accidentally switches them while handing them out.  Honey gets Gordon's pictures and Gordon gets Honey's.  Gordon sees the pictures of Honey appearing to be beaten, battered, and bruised with a knife in her.  Honey sees pictures of a naked dead woman under water.

Oops.

They look at each other.

They approach each other.

They trade the pictures back.

Awkward.

Bill Bush and Jerry Kaiser go on a hike.  They run into two women and start following them.  They meet up with them.  Flirt with them.  Split up into pairs.

Deborah Falconer plays Barbara.  Susie Cusack plays Nancy.  Yes, she is John and Joan Cusack's (and Bill and Ann Cusack's) sister.

Hey, you know what's a hundred yards away?  You know the Bat Caves?  You ever watch Batman?  Remember the show Batman?

Bill takes Barbara to see the Bat Caves.  As they approach, thousands of bats come flying out of the cave.  As they start to enter, they hear a scream.  What?  They return running.  Jerry has hit Nancy.  What!  She is lying on the ground with blood on her face.  Why?  What happened?

Earthquake.

Everybody everywhere feels the shaking.  Responds to the shaking.  In a city where earthquakes are a part of life, where The Big One is eminently imminent, where images of falling off the continent into the ocean have been prevalent for decades, this is nothing new.

In fact, it is pretty much how their lives go from day to day anyway.

Falling.  Unbalanced.  Rumbling.

The wise man built his house upon a rock.
The foolish man built his house upon the sand.
The Angeleno built his house upon tectonic plates.

And the continent drifted.  And the lithosphere shifted.  And the plates subducted.  And, well, their lives just got messed up.

This is bigger than the one in '71.

Robert Altman loosely bases his film on nine short stories and one poem by Raymond Carver.

It runs for three hours and nine minutes.  Follows the lives of twenty-two principal players.  And leaves the audience wanting more.  More time with the people.  More involvement with their lives.  That is the mark of a storyteller.  An artist.

And as the earth quakes and people clutch their loved ones, grasping for life, the man who destroyed his ex-wife's home gives comfort from his helicopter on TV.  Comfort that transcends the irony on which it is based.

Every Angeleno says to himself or herself
just how lucky he or she is
to be living in L.A.