John Heard: An Appreciation

We know him as "the dad from Home Alone."

He stands in the middle of his house after taking the morning flight down to Chicago with the rest of his family and spots something. He leans down to pick up a shiny gold tooth that gleams off the wooden floor. "Honey, what's this?"

There's a dozens of character actors who I geek out whenever they appear in a movie. They elevate the movie they are in. Today I want to focus on John Heard. A charming wit with a hardened edge. More specifically, I want to shine a light on 5 roles of his I single out as his best. 2 of which have him as lead. So many of my favorite character actors give me a what-if? vibe in terms of how they would do as the lead actor. Chilly Scenes of Winter and Cutter's Way show Heard as not only being more than capable of delivering the goods, but painfully under utilized in future roles.


5 ROLES

1. Alex Cutter in Cutter's Way (1981)

Cutter's Way came at the beginning of the 80's but it feels like a 70's picture. The cynicism about waking up to find the American Dream was a lie. The neo-noir that it's more well known brother Chinatown help kick off. John Heard's Alex Cutter is the last American hero. A boozehound living in the shadow of Vietnam who, along with his friend (played by the always great Jeff Bridges) come to terms that they self-actualized people they hate without even realizing it along the way. More than just Heard's best, a great film with an ending up there with Chinatown and Electra Glide In Blue.


2. Charles in Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979)

Romantic comedies are a genre I find myself liking the older they are. 30s and 40s specifically. Chilly Scenes approaches the genre with a firm hand in realism. John Heard's Charles is the hopeless romantic head over heels in love with Mary Beth Hurt's Laura. Even knowing she is married. "Why would you choose someone who loves you too little over someone who loves you too much?" Rarely have I seen a movie that approaches its subject with an adult understanding of relationships. Joan Macklin Silver's film is severely underseen. Look out for a fantastic cameo from Griffin Dunne.


3. Peter McAllister in Home Alone (1990)
Home Alone is a film that, if it was a part of your childhood, changes with you. You grow to realize that the performances of John Heard and Catherine O'Hara were the gold tooth in this crown of teeth. Catherine's impeccable comic timing was something I knew of from Beetlejuice. As with many people of my generation, Home Alone is where I first saw John Heard. There wasn't any notable mainstream movie he was in before this. So if I ever was to track his career, I was going to have to dig.


4. Detective Vin Makazian in The Sopranos (1999)

It takes talent to play someone as downtrodden as a character as Vin Makazian. Especially in gangster related projects. Actors love the meaty "tough guy" role. Makazian is Tony's informant in the FBI. A detective riddled with his own problems, Tony goes out of his way to dress him down and insult him at every turn. "Ya know, you got an amazing ability to sum up a man's life in a single sentence. A degenerate gambler with a badge. You're a pisser. You're a real pisser."

5. Bartender Tom Schorr in After Hours (1985)
Griffin Dunne's nocturnal odyssey through the streets of SoHo lead him to many an interesting character actor. Dick Miller, Patricia Arquette, Catherine O'Hara (she's back!), Teri Garr, Linda Fiorentino, Cheech and Chong. In one scene, Heard does what all of the best character actors do- he steals it.

Exploitastic: Vice Squad

Bill Lustig once noted that the theater scene from Midnight Cowboy is the most accurate representation of the grindhouse theaters on 42nd Street at the time. There's a mood that tumbles outward from the screen and onto your skin. A foul odor that makes you immediately makes you want to take a shower. While Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Devils Rejects captured this feel through their sun baked sadism, the movies we're talking today took to the streets. Where puddles on the sidewalk would reflect the neon glow of XXX theaters.

There's a a group of exploitation film from the 70s to early 80s that focused on how grimy the streets of New York City can be. Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Friedkin's Cruising, Jerry Schatzenberg's Panic In Needle Park, Abel Ferrera's Driller Killer and Ms. 45, Bill Lustig's Maniac, Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case, Buddy Giovanazzo's Combat Shock just to name a few of my favorites.

Movies that make you feel dirty.

What sets this movie apart from the pack is the location. Los Angeles. The particular brand of neon slime we are talking about today is Gary Sherman's Vice Squad.

Gary Sherman got his first major directing job on a film called Raw Meat. Or as it's properly known in the UK, Death Line. A much cooler title if you ask me. Death Lines deals with diggers of the London Underground who get trapped inside during the turn of the century and are now out for 'raw meat.' Sherman ended up smuggling in commentary on social structure in the genre. Donald Pleasance gives one of his best performances as Inspector Calhoun. It did well in Europe but bombed in the States because AIP ended up buying it and completely fucked up the release.

Sherman had such an unpleasant experience with the release of Death Line, he wouldn't return to directing until 1981 with Dead and Buried. From a script by Alien scribe Dan O'Bannon and makeup effects from Stan Winston. It managed to cause social guardians in the UK to hit the panic button and put it on the now infamous Video Nasties list. Though if they had any foresight, they would realize that this was an art film compared the film Sherman was preparing to do next.



With two now classic horror films under his belt, he wanted to get away from horror movies. Both of his cuts for the respective films being butchered. The experiences left a bad taste with him. So he turned to action. Sherman's method of pre production was taking an accelerated police course for 8 weeks where he would follow cops on their beats. John Alcott, the cinematographer behind A Clockwork Orange and The Shining shot the movie and brings out the ever present glistening scuzz of a night on the early 80s Los Angeles streets.

The plot deals with Princess (Seasons Hubley), a single mom who is a prostitute by night. A cop named Tom Walsh played by Gary Swanson uses her to trap a vicious pimp named Ramrod (Wings Hauser) who murdered one of her friends. When Ramrod escape police custody, he goes on a hunt for Princess. Now the cops must find Princess or Ramrod before Ramrod can get to Princess.

The characters in Sherman's films are defined not necessarily by their dialogue but by their environments and actions. Look no further than how Princess is introduced.

Now when the bloodthirsty sadist pimp Ramrod shows up, the film takes off into another level. Wings Hauser gives a terrifying performance and is one of the most underrated villains in film. Imagine The Terminator crossed with a cowboy and you'd get a good inkling of what this guy is about. He's a character where you are genuinely scared of because you don't know what the scene is going to turn into once he enters the frame.

There's a story that Gary Sherman tells where there was trouble casting Wings Hauser because he was coming off the show "The Young and the Restless." Wings was tired of playing the milk toast love interest on the show and had much pent up anger he wanted to use on Sherman's film. So before a meeting with the film's production company, Avco Embassy, Sherman told Hauser that he doesn't want him to enter the meeting as Wings Hauser. He wants him to go into the meeting as Ramrod. So he goes into the Avco Embassy meeting and says "I hear you motherfuckers think I can't play this role.", walks up to the head of the studio at the time and starts choking him by his tie. Hauser got the role after that.

There's a story of Martin Scorsese getting into a fight with reviewer Dawn Steele at a restaurant when asked what the best film of 1982 was. He said the best picture of the year is one that's not going to get nominated for anything because they are too scared. And that's Vice Squad.

Quarantine: Days 13, 14 and 15

DAY 13

DOLLS (1987)
Toys are loyal and that's a fact.

Charles Band loves little creatures. The Puppet Master franchise, Ghoulies, Demonic Toys and this Stuart Gordon directed flick. Gordon, Charles and composer Richard Band had a solid run in the mid 80s with Re-Animator, From Beyond and Dolls.

What makes Dolls work is it never overstays it's welcome at a brisk 80 minutes. Great puppet effects with Guy Rolfe stealing every scene he is in.

P.S. I'm taking the two hitch-hikers with me.

B+

RIP Stuart Gordon

CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY (1976)

Cazals brings a documentary realism to this picture. One that, according to Guillermo Del Toro, changed Mexican cinema in the latter half of the 20th century. This event took place in 1968 in the small village of Canoa in Puebla, Mexico. Five young members of the Autonomous University of Puebla spend the night there on their hike up to La Malinche. The villagers, who were manipulated by a local right wing priest to believe them to be Communist infiltrators, take to lynching the students.

A gut punch of a film.

A+


DAY 14

TAMMY AND THE T- REX (1994)
From Wikipedia:
Stewart Raffill says he was approached by a man who owned theatres in South America and had an animatronic T-Rex which was going to a park in Texas. "The eyes worked. The arms moved. The head moved. He had it for two weeks before it was going to be shipped to Texas and he came to me and said, "We can make a movie with it!" I said "What's the story?" and he said "I don't have a story, but we have to start filming within the month!" and so I wrote the story in a week...

Originally intended as a comedy, the gore effects for the T-Rex kills were cut for the release of it. Thankfully, the gods at Vinegar Syndrome restored the gore back into the film. It's entertaining as hell. If you're down in the dumps with all the horror going on in the world, seek this one out.

B+...maybe even an A-


...nah, B+

DAY 15

THE BIG GUNDOWN (1968)
The Western genre was one I just could not get into. John Wayne and the Monument Valley backdrop. John Ford. The Searchers. I could see and appreciate their value toward directors like Spielberg and Scorsese but could never appreciate the genre on its own merits.

It easn't until I watched the spaghetti western that I took notice. A Fistful of Dollars in particular pulls not just from the John Ford westerns of yesteryear, but takes its source material from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. That movie an adaptation of the Dashiel Hammett novel, Red Harvest. When you take all this into account, you start seeing a feedback loop of inspiration that crosses continents. This isn't dissimilar to the way the British (The Who, Led Zeppelin) took American blues and processed it into their own style. Americans then taking those inspirations and ramping it up with the likes of metal genre in the 70s. You see the ball bounce back and forth.

Sergio Leone's Man With No Name trilogy is the most famous of these westerns. The magnum opus, The Good the Bad and the Ugly starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach respectively. Of those three names, Lee Van Cleef is who we're focusing on today. For he is the star of this Sergio Sollima directed The Big Gundown.

The film concerns a bounty hunter named Jonathan Corbett, played by Van Cleef in what may be his best role, summoned by a railroad tycoon to capture a 12 year old girl's accused rapist. The man in question being Cuchillo. Played by Thomas Milian, a star of several Euro crime films afterward.

What immediately made me gravitate toward this genre was the music. Ennio Morricone quickly became my favorite composer of all time. The Big Gundown is easily in his top 5 scores.

"You'll never catch Cuchillo"

A

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

For the longest time, 2001 was in my top 3 favorite films of all time. It wasn't until last year it slipped out of that spot and out of my top ten completely. The Kubrick movie to replace it being The Shining. Many factors went into that change. The reading of the King novel, seeing how a filmmaker was able to take the source material and change it to suit his own creative vision. The viewing of Room 237 and its take on how The Shining was this larger than life movie that, even through its various interpretations and analyses managed to create another piece of art in that documentary.

Reading Michael Benson's Space Odyssey helped me appreciate Kubrick in a whole new light. His intense curiosity toward any subject. His willingness to collaborate with people who had new ideas. The making of 2001 itself is as interesting as the film. Viewing it immediately after reading the book unlocked so many pathways to reconsidering and reassessing its genius. Right down to the sound design. An aspect Benson rightly acknowledges as not often talked about.

A+