A hypothetical themed repertory cinema season...
Melanie Griffith's Tess in a moment of third act doubt. Working Girl (1988), directed by Mike Nichols.
In February 1989, Time Magazine interviewed writer Tom Wolfe, buoyant on The Bonfire of the Vanities rampant publication success. Acclaimed as the savvy societal chronicler of the moment, with a flair for having caught the tone of the 1960s and 70s, Wolfe was asked how he would define the 1980s. Wolfe concluded that:
“It is the decade of money fever. It's almost impossible for people to be free of the burning itch for money. It's a decade not likely to produce heroic figures… Money, greed, reaches all through society.”
After the distrust and paranoia of the 1970s, America repositioned itself in the 1980s as haven of opportunity and hedonism.
Money Fever: Dreamers and Schemers in the 1980s American Cinema discusses some of the films that captures this, featuring characters wrestling with the changing morals of America.
Talent but unlucky in love Holly Hunter oversees William Hurt's shallow but stylish news anchor. Broadcast News (1987), directed by James L. Brooks.
At the start of the 1980s, the leading lights of New Hollywood would face different challenges in the upheavals of a changing industry. In the wake of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) an industry trend of power shifting from director’s to powerhouse producing teams such as Bruckheimer and Simpson who tapped into MTV and advertising aesthetics to reflect the way America was sold to the world, and Steven Spielberg’s impact both of artistically brilliant and commercially stratospheric films as both director and exec producer.
However, alongside these films that bestrode the decade there was also other writers and directors who overlapped with previous decades that were attuned to these shifting landscapes and could capture it on film in a different manner.
This season would draw together 5 films of the period which feature characters navigating the landscape in which greed, for lack of a better word, was seen as good. These films on the surface are part of the same era but also seem to have the wise ability to step out of their moment and take read the temperature of that fervent atmosphere.
From the richest man in the world meeting an everyday blue collar worker (who dreams of being ‘milkman of the month’ at his work to win a television), a Vietnam veteran who becomes convinced that the richest man in town has gotten away with murder and that justice should be paid, a pair of Yuppie’s who want to drop out just like Easy Rider (1969) but decide against dropping out after 2 weeks on the road, to a pair of romantic workplace comedies that take screwball comedy-type situations and brought them into the contemporary aspirations for upwardly mobile professional businesswoman in media and business, Money Fever captures a frantic era with these films savvy enough to both capture their moment and comment upon both the haves and have not’s.
As Mary Steenburgen leaves in a taxi, Paul Le Mat sits in a luxury he can't afford - a new speedboat. Melvin and Howard (1980), directed by Jonathan Demme.
My suggestion for the opener of this strand is Jonathan Demme’s under-rated Melvin and Howard (1980). The story of milkman Melvin Dummar’s chance meeting with Howard Hughes in which they bond during a trip from the desert back into town with Dummar teaching Hughes his self-penned opus Santa’s Souped-Up Sleigh, this film feels very much part of the previous decade’s character studies with a very warm and smart character study of Melvin and the 15 minutes of fame - where a more conventional story would focus on Hughes. The brush with fame after what appears to be Hughes’s legitimate will leaves Dummar a substantial amount of his fortune, breaks up Melvin’s cycle of repossessions, over-spending when his wife Lynda wins money on the game show Easy Street.
At the end of the film as the legal cases turn against Melvin, he philosophically tells his lawyer “Do you think Melvin Dummar is going to get $156 million dollars? Or anything like it? Nah, I’m not going to see that money. That’s alright. Cause you know what happened? Howard Hughes sang Melvin Dummar’s song. He sang it.”
John Heard, a vietnam vet who pieces together that the rich man in town is going to get away with murder. Cutter's Way (1981), directed by Ivan Passer.
Set in sunny coastal city Santa Barbara, Cutter’s Way (1981) is acclaimed as one of the very last New Hollywood-style studio pictures to be released in the early Eighties. With this neo-noir, Vietnam veteran Alex Cutter leads friend Richard Bone into a theory that the crime Bone has witnessed was committed by the most powerful person in town, a local tycoon named J.J. Cord.
The hangover of the 60s and 70s is reflected in Cutter’s physical and psychological wounds from the war, and how there must be some justice served in people like Cord getting away with their crimes. The settings in which Cutter and Bone put together their clues include tennis courts and country clubs. They stand out against the community they drift in and out of, either ignored or forgotten about until the events of the film. Czech director Ivan Passer’s absorbingly cynical film ends with the confrontation of the heel in which the final line’s arrogance shrugs off Cutter and Bone’s search for facts, for truth.
Albert Brooks starts his dropout from society. Lost in America (1985), directed by Albert Brooks.
Contrasting with Hopper and Fonda’s iconic dropping out of society in Easy Rider (1969), Albert Brooks takes a scalpel to the mid-Eighties with Lost in America (1985). Contrasting the eras, yuppies David and Linda drop out of society - while keeping their ‘sacred god’ of a nest egg - in their deluxe Winnebago for 2 weeks before realising their mistake and returning to the creature comforts and big city lifestyle they can’t leave behind.
The brilliant dialogue captures the theme throughout. When early on we meet David, he is obsessing over a perceived promotion, the benefits that entails and lining up buying a new top of the range Mercedes car. When talking to the salesman on the phone for a quote for the new car, and having agonised over the best decor to choose for the interior the conversation goes like:
DAVID
That’s a lot of money for a car, isn’t it?
HANS (Mercedes Salesman)
It’s not a car, Mr. Howard. It’s a Mercedes. And that’s the truth.
This scene contains what David and Linda temporarily escape from but also gratefully run back to after their road movie interlude.
The late 1980s update on the screwball comedy workplace romance. Broadcast News (1987), directed by James L. Brooks.
In Broadcast News (1987) writer-director James L. Brooks captures an adult romantic comedy-drama tone that has been attempted and, in my opinion, rarely bettered.
Broadcast News stills feels under-valued at that given the stellar performances by the cast across the board with Holly Hunter’s Jane Craig a memorable and unique presence. Towered over by men in a busy workplace, holding her own and agonising over a love triangle featuring heartthrob of the moment William Hurt and Albert Brooks (again) in the go-getting workplace.
This captures an era and lead character concerned about fake news, everything must be accurate and truthful with a love story that turns on a duplicitous character choice by Hurt’s Tom Grunick - nowadays, Tom’s moment of fakery would be a drop in the ocean compared to topical ways fake news infiltrates our lives.
In a previous filmmaking era, Jane would likely have ended the film in the arms of one of the suitor’s, however this still bright and funny film plays with a more ambigious story of work and life relationships to update screwball comedy story-telling for it’s era.
Two women are in this wide shot of a business negotiation but only one gets to sit at the table - Tess in Working Girl (1988), directed by Mike Nichols.
The film I’d close this proposed strand with is Working Girl (1988). This Cinderella with shoulder pads story has a mixture of satire on the cuthroat nature of the New York business world Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) fights using her intelligence and swagger to move up from her secretary position.
Mike Nichols directs with the satire of The Graduate (1967) and the existentialism of that late-60s moment turned to face the late 80s. Whereas Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross end sitting on the bus thinking ‘now what?’, Melanie Griffith meets her Prince Charming, Harrison Ford, and lands an impressive business role. However, allayed to the striving of the moment is the exuberance of Griffith’s performance, Tess treating HER new secretary underling as an equal to hopefully help someone else up the chain. Nichols own personal life was on the upward turn (he had met Diane Sawyer, who could have been the star of both Broadcast News and Working Girl) and the ambiguity of a final shot that pans back to reveal Tess as a worker bee in the hive as Carly Simon’s anthemic Let the River Run on the soundtrack sings out ‘let all the dreamers wake the nation’.
This felt like the perfect image and film to end Money Fever on.
The closing shots of Working Girl (1988), directed by Mike Nichols. This shot feels aligned with Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960).
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