how to get away with murder
by Douglas Messerli
Michael Tolkin (writer, based on his
fiction), Robert Altman (director) The
Player / 1992
The other morning I watched Robert
Altman’s excellent film The Player on
a Netflix disk. I had seen the film when it first appeared in April or May in
1992, and I was now amazed by the fact that I could still call up the scenes in
my memory so specifically; obviously the film had had a significant impact when
I first witnessed it.
In recalling this, it struck me that some of that kind of same
“regeneration” of life and love occurs in Altman’s Hollywood satire. Before
murdering screenwriter David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio), in a furry of anger
for being stalked and having his own life threatened, movie studio executive
Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins)—a company guardian (half lion and half eagle, both
logos for major studios) of the filmmaking “mill”—is suffering from a career
that is on the skids. Mill, who serves the studio as the selector of 12 scripts
annually from over 50,000 submissions, according to the rumor mill, is about to
be replaced by former story executive Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher), a mindless
hack who—like many a studio executive before him—argues that good stories can
be obtained free through newspaper articles, which obviate the need for
screenwriters. As Mill snaps back, why not get rid of actors and directors as
well?
Even more troubling for Mill, however, is the postcards relaying threats
upon his life he daily receives, some even without a postmark. Obviously, he
has offended a would-be script-writer, but, given the vast number of
well-meaning if self-deluded individuals he has abused—in true studio form,
encouraged and ignored in the repeated phrase “I’ll get back to you”—who is the
potential murderer? Leafing back into imaginary period of time in his daily
schedule, he comes to the conclusion that it must be Kahane, and, looking up
the man’s address, adventures out to Pasadena to confront him.
Just previous to that series of events, Mill, outside the writer’s
house, has a cellphone conservation with Kahane’s girlfriend, June
Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi), a painter to whom he immediately takes a
liking. And despite the anxiety and efforts to remain out of range of police
suspicion which Mill inevitably must face (as opposed to Hitchcock’s figures),
an intense relationship between the two quickly begins to change his life.
Although the death threats continue—culminating in an actual murder attempt in
the form of a gift of a live rattlesnake—and Levy’s assault on the studio executive’s
job intensifies, after the murder Mill suddenly seems to come alive, finally
cutting off (although he takes the coward’s way out) his relationship with
Bonnie and besting Levy by hooking him up an improbable script, Habeas Corpus (the story of which is
revealed in a hilarious send-up of a film pitch by actors Richard E. Grant and
Dean Stockwell).
Although Kahane has previously described his girlfriend as the “ice
queen,” Mill quickly melts her in a desert spa, as the two combine underwater
sex with a far more shocking attempt at confession by the man who previously
would admit nothing. Mill’s sudden quick-thinking and just plain luck (a
would-be witness to the murder mistakenly choses the cop, played by Lyle
Lovett, in a line-up), result, just as suddenly, in a turnaround in his career
and in the marriage to and pregnancy of June Gudmundsdottir. She, clearly—given
her own hazy view of moral precepts—is the perfect partner for the now redeemed
“hero.”
Just as his would-be killer ultimately rewards Mill with a story that is
the very movie we are watching, so too does he truly kill him, by pointing out
his role: he is not a real person, but a “player,” one of the cast of actors
whom, as Altman so brilliantly reveals throughout his artwork, are just as
unreal when they are playing themselves as they are when playing others. The
vast cast of cameos roles (Steve Allen, Cher, Harry Belafonte, Robert
Carradine, James Coburn, Peter Falk, Teri Garr, Jeff Goldblum, Buck Henry,
Anjelica Huston, Malcolm McDowell, Julia Roberts, Nick Nolte, Lily Tomlin, and
Bruce Willis among dozens of others) are even less fully-dimensional figures in
their appearances in this work than they are in their performances in other films.
Despite the titillation they may offer, they remain merely names. Just as Mills
as Robbins is a player, so too is his “happy” life a myth (like a griffin) a
concoction of the mind. Once “The End” is scrolled across the screen and the
screen goes black, the player is dead.
If that is also true, of course, of every figure in The Trouble with Harry; but the significance of these characters’
lives, I suggest, has the potential, at least, to remain in the mind and effect
the viewers’ real-life being. And, in that sense, Harry’s survivors remain
stolidly “alive,” despite the fact that we know they, too, are simply imitative
figures dancing across the flickers of light we have just witnessed.
After witnessing Griffin Mill’s life, I suggest, no one but the already
dead among us (the future simple-minded studio executives-in-making) would want
to emulate his experiences. While I’d gladly travel through time, if I could,
to be “ignited” by that Vermont fall skyline. Howard even suggested that he
would love to live in that little community for rest of his life.
No, we won’t move to Vermont! With winter coming on we’ll stay warm in
Los Angeles, living out a version of our own happy lives—without, one hopes,
the lies involved in making motion pictures, and with the recognition that,
mostly, it’s only in the movies that you can get away with murder.
Los Angeles, October 4, 2014, Howard’s birthday
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2014).
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