The Dannys

The Oscars were announced this week…and please excuse me while I go yawn. I’m not a snob on the subject. For a long period I used to greet this moment on the calendar with all the reverence and revelry the Academy of Arts and Sciences hoped for—making a point of seeing all the nominated films, reading the reviews, and filling out mock ballots to unveil before friends at Oscar night parties. But no more. I’m up to here with awards, and now that the Academy has decided to treat the nominations with the promiscuousness of elementary schools handing out those “My Kid is Student of the Month” bumper stickers. I mean, really? Nine best picture nominees! That’s almost a best picture a month…even the greatest year in motion picture history* wasn’t so golden an age. (While some Americans live in fear of dictatorship, I fear the opposite—one day our proclivity for rewarding everyone will result in an election where we let the one who comes in second be President so nobody’s feelings get hurt. Hang on, Mitt.)
So my problem is not with the movies. Wife Lorna and I still view a movie virtually every night of the week, continuing a tradition from when we started dating back in college and both worked in a movie theater five nights a week. On the sixth, Lorna joined me in the projection booth where I worked as projectionist for the college film series, and for the seventh night we took the passes our theater manager gave us and visited other movie houses in Hartford. 
Of this year’s nominees, I’ve seen Argo and Lincoln and loved them both. I’ve read about the roiling controversies surrounding Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty and can’t wait to see them. And I plan to add Life of Pi, Amour, and Silver Linings to my Netflix queue. Question is, will any of them have lasting enough impact on me to one day win a Danny? A Danny is an award I’ve just invented to fill the void created by my indifference to the Oscars. To win a Danny a film has had to dazzle me enough through multiple viewings (at least three) and make me shake my head at least once in the most recent viewing at how well it stands up. There may be 30 films I could give this award to, but this is the Dannys, not the Oscars, and moderation is still a virtue. So without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to present for the first time ever The Danny Awards…
The Wizard of Oz—From that best ever movie class of 1939. Like so many American families, we made this a Thanksgiving Day tradition when CBS ran it every year, and no one in the house ever whined, “Oh, not this again.” And here’s a tidbit for all those out there who envision us as the Ritzy Rileys hobnobbing with the One Percent: we watched this little masterpiece for 20 years on the black and white Philco my folks gave us as a wedding gift, and didn’t even know it turned into luminous color until I went to work for a company that gave me a deal on an RCA color monitor. (So, yes, cry for me, Argentina.) Anyway, from our current era where kids films are actually made for adults, it’s hard to pick one that for all its technical virtuosity could provide a young generation with the memorable songs, lines, and life lessons that Oz did. Yes, my pretties, if I only had a brain, there really is no place like home (for better and worse).
Casablanca—On a Valentine’s Day a few years ago, Lorna and I decided to watch this in our PJ’s during breakfast. At the end, she realized she had never seen it from beginning to end…but had seen so many clips of it over time that she thought she had. I suspect she’s not alone. It’s most famous scenes reprocessed over the years in commercials, comedy skits, and Woody Allen films are pretty much cinematic clichés by now.  And yet, when you give into it from the opening credits to the teary end, its pull is irresistible—the iconic cast, the unforgettable song, the shimmering black and white (Ted Turner be damned), and the enduring conflict—self vs. the greater good. Like the Grand Canyon, it has to be seen in whole to be fully appreciated.
Juliet of the Spirits—I think there may be Fellini films I like more, but this was my first so it’s most important for introducing me to a filmmaker whose films have entertained, inspired and provoked me for most of my life. Lorna and I saw it on one of those days off we had from our theater job. It was part of a matinee double feature with Morgan (a film that would’ve won a Danny about 30 years ago, but like many of those viewed-through-a-purple-haze movies of the 60s doesn’t really stand up well with time). We also had the theater all to ourselves that day, which made it a valuable introduction to entertainment not particularly made for the masses.    
2001, A Space Odyssey—Speaking of purple haze movies—watching the audience during this one was almost as much fun as the movie itself. That theater job of ours was at the reserve seat Cinerama in Hartford, which means we (the ushers and usherettes) had to lead the patrons to their seats like it was the goddamned opera. By the time Kubrick’s soaring bone changes into a spaceship, half the totally stoned audience had abandoned their premium seats to move down front and stretch out on the sticky floor right in front of the giant screen. Our theater manager—one of the great, real-life comic characters of my life--hated that he didn’t understand the damn thing, and whenever he was assaulted by straight members of the audience who didn’t get it either and were demanding their money back, he would call me over to settle them down. “Dan, explain the film to our unhappy customer here.” And I’d immediately go into my undergraduate exhibitionist spiel about Ulysses and Nietzsche and metaphor, until the poor folks would raise a hand in surrender and stagger out looking for a drink. God, how I loved the Sixties. (except for the war, the racism, and the assassinations). And 2001 was an epitome of it…the cinematic equivalent of Sgt Pepper...and I've seen it about as many times as I've played that album.
Cool Hand Luke—I’ve blogged about this favorite before. That earlier post dwelled on the film’s mythic power, which for me--lover of myth that I am--is the prime reason for granting it a Danny. But it succeeds on more temporal levels as well. It gave us one of the most enduring and useful lines in movie history: "What we have here is a failure to communicate." It gave us one of the two or three greatest performances by one of our most attractive and accomplished actors of all time. And it gave us a virtual 1927 Yankees batting order of character actors. That’s one cool hand.
All The President’s Men—The hysteria over Zero Dark Thirty comes from fear that it will give the last word on America’s recent infatuation with torture to our homegrown torture cult, which is the exact opposite reaction All the President’s Men received. At the time, it was so convincingly well done that it made it impossible for someone to come along years hence and offer a revisionist version of Watergate. All the President’s Men is a smart, brilliantly crafted version of the American myth that hard, diligent work combined with good conscience and our founding Constitutional virtues will ultimately triumph over evil. There will one day be its equal in answer to Zero Dark Thirty, which makes it the most indispensable Danny Award winner. 
Body Heat—Perfect name…damn-near perfect film, filled with perfectly beautiful actors before age, plastic surgery and overexposure took their toll. Kathleen Turner at the height of her Jessica Rabbit sensuality. William Hurt emerging as a sexy, blue-eyed Bogart. Mickey Rourke announcing in about five minutes of screen time: I’m going to have a fucking career, morons, and probably fuck it up in the end. Just watch me.  Ted Danson effortlessly gliding through a role that would set him up for a non-stop career. And Richard Crenna in one of the neatest bits of casting against type of all time. All that and a plot that never stops twisting and sex that never stops sizzling (I’ve never been able to look at an ice cube the same since…) And hell, this is The Nobby Works where it’s all about Love’s Body…even when the body's bad.
Il Postino—With this vast movie watching experience of mine, I can state with total confidence that the hardest thing to do in cinema is make a really fine movie about human kindness. Mind you, I am not talking about a schmaltzy movie, which is a freaking paint by numbers enterprise. I’m talking about a movie with well-drawn characters in clearly exposed difficult situations acting out of kindness that seems neither contrived or “miraculous.” I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of such films—The Elephant Man was one. Manon of Spring another. Il Postino is my favorite though, and add the fact that it was also a film about metaphor and you double the degree of difficulty--and double the shame on the Academy for giving its Oscar that year to Mel Gibson’s bloody, blue-faced Braveheart…oooh, mass armies butchering each other…never saw that before.  
Lost in America—Making up this list actually helped me realize why Oscar has been so dismissive of comedies over the years. When you get into the frame of mind to consider the best of something, you’re really calling on your analytical thinking—or System 2 thinking as chronicled in five earlier posts. Comedy appeals to our System 1 thinking--it’s off the top and visceral. So I had to literally stop myself and say Time Out of the Heavy Thinking for a comedy break before all the allotted spots are filled. And if it has to be just one, it’s going to come from this group—Heartbreak Kid (featuring one of the choicest performances by the most underrated comic actor of our time--Charles Grodin), Tootsie (one of the great performances by one of the greatest actors of our time—with supporting performances to match), What About Bob?/Groundhog Day (maybe the most overrated comic actor of our time doing his best to earn the benefit of the doubt), and Lost in America. And The Danny goes to Lost in America as representative of the inimical Albert Brooks oeuvre.  Here’s the thing about Brooks--of all the films on this list, his are the least likely to end up in remake hell. Even the sublime Tootsie is just one Hollywood obit away from being another Jim Carey “vehicle.” 
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—Speaking of Jim Carey…I don’t like him. For years he was on my personal No Fly list, and let me tell you that the TSA has nothing on my hard ass when it comes saying No (I still have not seen either New York New York, despite my admiration for Scorsese and DeNiro, or Cabaret because Liza Minelli is at the top of that list—and oh, if I could only get my memory cleansed of Arthur…) Anyway, my addiction for all films Charlie Kaufman drove me to see it, and I loved it, and it remains one of my favorite films of all time, not the least for its challenging proposition: If you could cleanse your mind of all its painful memories, would you? As happens, this week’s blog was supposed to deal with all the painful historical memories raised by these recent Academy Award nominations—from the slavery issue in Lincoln to the torture issue in Zero Dark Thirty. But I became so overwhelmed by the subject that I decided I had to ease into it with this little exercise in narcissism. After all, who should really care what my favorite films are? Well, nobody really. But here’s the thing…now that I’ve shown you mine, if you show me yours, it’s no longer narcissism…it’s sharing--which would be so very Academy Awards of us. So let's share, people!