Let's talk about Penny Marshall.
Penny Marshall is best known as one-half of Laverne & Shirley (she was Laverne) alondside Cindy Williams, characters they originated on the television sitcom Happy Days. Her brother Garry Marshall (who would eventually direct Pretty Woman) created Happy Days, having been a veteran of the TV side of show business; it was he who pushed her into acting, but it was her own independent work with writing partner Williams that inspired the Laverne and Shirley characters. A popular show, Laverne & Shirley ran eight seasons, during which time Marshall received three Golden Globe nominations and started directing: first a pilot of a different, then four episodes of Laverne & Shirley. Set to make her cinematic directorial debut with Peggy Sue Got Married, she left due to creative differences, but the same year got another directing job: the comedy-thriller Jumpin' Jack Flash with Whoopi Goldberg - a modest hit! She followed it up with the fantasy Big with Tom Hanks - an insane hit, and an Academy Award nominee for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Her next film: Awakenings.
Awakenings tells the incredible true story of catatonic patients who miraculously, albeit temporarily, became active and aware after decades of no progress, possibly due to a treatment administered by their new physician. Robin Williams is the doctor, Robert De Niro is the first test subject - both were named Best Actor by the National Board of Review. A hit film based on a best-seller, it grossed over $100 million, was named among the best films of the year by a number of critical bodies, and was a no-brainer for a Best Picture nomination.
Marshall, however, never received any accolades for the film. Not an Oscar nod, not a DGA nomination, not a Golden Globe. And this is part of two problems the Academy had throughout this decade. The first, obviously, was their lack of nominations for female directors - you can’t say they just weren’t good enough, their films kept making money and getting into Best Picture (Randa Haines, anyone?). The second was, as far as I can see it, snobbery. Awakenings is not a comedy. Marshall, however, was a comedienne, a sitcom star. It didn’t matter that her films kept making money or received critical acclaim, just as it didn’t matter that Jerry Zucker - of Airplane!, Police Squad, and Top Secret! fame - brought in the biggest moneymaker of the year. Just as it didn’t matter in 1995, when Ron Howard won the DGA Award for Apollo 13 but blipped with Oscar! They weren’t in the club…yet.
Awakenings came out December 19th, amidst these eleven other eventual nominees and awards season hopefuls:
Edward Scissorhands
release: December 7
nominations: Best Makeup (Ve Neill / Stan Winston)
dir: Tim Burton
pr: Tim Burton / Denise Di Novi
scr: Caroline Thompson, story by Tim Burton & Caroline Thompson
cin: Stefan Czapsky
A family takes a most unusual person into their home: an unfinished man-made young man with scissors for hands. A fairy tale fable set in the modern-ish world, a gothic castle atop a mointain overlooking a suburban pastel paradise. Having grown up watching this film again and again, can I look at it through an adult lens, unbiased? No. I don't know if it's his best, but it's my favorite Tim Burton film, the movie that introduced me to Dianne Wiest, Alan Arkin, Kathy Baker and Winona Ryder, the movie that helped cement Vincent Price as My Guy. Danny Elfman's score is immortal, exquisite. It's Makeup, cinematography, and Johnny Depp's performance come together beautifully: sometimes, Edward is the most beautiful, fragile thing you've ever seen; sometimes, he looks the very picture of the unknowable monster the neighborhood turns on. And as someone who grew up never knowing a white Christmas, I'm a sucker for the romance and magic of the ending.
The Sheltering Sky
release: December 12
dir: Bernardo Bertolucci
pr: Jeremy Thomas
scr: Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci
cin: Vittorio Storaro
American tourists arrive in the North African desert to rediscover something, only to find themselves in increasingly alienating environs. Great work from the leads: John Malkovich is perfectly inscrutable and petty, Debra Winger is, ahem, turbulently brilliant. Bertolucci achieves a dreamlike state, the hotels and tents and buses in ever more desolate deserts, appearing more and more as mirages; the malaise is inescapable. Storaro's oranges, yellows, golds, clays - whew! I think it's a tough mood to get into, certainly, but it's well-made and, I think, honest.
Havana
release: December 14
nominations: Best Score (Dave Grusin)
dir: Sydney Pollack
pr: Sydney Pollack / Richard N. Roth
scr: Judith Rascoe and David Rayfiel, story by Judith Rascoe
cin: Owen Roizman
A professional gambler gets caught up in romance and intrigue on the eve of the Cuban Revolution. On a craft level, it's something to behold, the huge, detailed sets capturing a pre-Communist Havana, the costumes and lighting making everybody beautiful, the music perfect. Maybe I missed something, though, as it hinges on double-crosses and political machinations but is so vague I'm not sure what those machinations are or why they're happening or who's a Commie or what. Lena Olin and Robert Redford have a surprising lack of chemistry, two beautiful people going through the motions.
Mermaids
release: December 14
dir: Richard Benjamin
pr: Lauren Lloyd / Wallis Nicita / Patrick J. Palmer
scr: June Roberts
cin: Howard Atherton
A teen girl frustrated by her nomadic single mom hopes for permanence in their new town. Never saw it before, instant all-timer, no notes. Bob Hoskins is such a nice guy. Cher is so sexy and fun. Winona Ryder is a star. Christina Ricci, though she is but nine, is on everyone's level.
Hamlet
release: December 19
nominations: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Dante Ferretti / Francesca Lo Schiavo), Best Costume Design (Maurizio Millenotti)
dir: Franco Zeffirelli
pr: Dyson Lovell
scr: Christopher De Vore & Franco Zeffirelli
cin: David Watkin
Another Hamlet. This was the movie that introduced me to Ian Holm, a performance so full of humor, befuddlement, and concern, so detailed and subtle in its workings, that I immediately sought out his other films, which led me to his King Lear, which had a great impact on me. I think Mel Gibson acquits himself without embarrassment. Movie's kind of dull, though, isn't it? Watching it this time around, Glenn Close as Gibson's mother reminded me of that terrific Andrew Rannells interview.
The Field
release: December 20
nominations: Best Actor (Richard Harris)
dir/scr: Jim Sheridan
pr: Noel Pearson
cin: Jack Conroy
A family spending generations tilling a field is on the defensive when the landowner seeks to auction it from under them. I feel like I get it - I was reminded, actually, of Naboth refusing to part with his vineyard, but I do not think we are meant to correlate the widow with Jezebel. My point is land is vital, it is legacy, it is family; a man's blood is in the soil he tills. It goes a little long though, doesn't it? It’s two hours to tell a 90-minute story, and at that point, it feels like the wheels are just spinning.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
release: December 21
dir/pr: Brian De Palma
scr: Michael Cristofer
cin: Vilmos Zsigmond
The book must be insanely different, a great masterpiece, for this film to be dismissed so: it's pretty good, I think. Casting Tom Hanks is clever, we instinctively want to make excuses for him, but he's such a sweaty, opportunistic twerp there's no defending him. Brian de Palma's a great fit for material that looks askance at mortal men (and women) and their use of faith, sex, and reputations to twist things to their end. Melanie Griffith and John Hancock "get" the tone the best; Kim Cattrall overdoes it; F. Murray Abraham treads a fine line. Terrible score!
Kindergarten Cop
release: December 21
dir: Ivan Reitman
pr: Brian Grazer / Ivan Reitman
scr: Murray Salem and Herschel Weingrod & Timothy Harris, story by Murray Salem
cin: Michael Chapman
A detective goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher to find and protect the family of a drug lord. A silly premise executed effectively. Arnold Schwarzenegger once again demonstrates he's one of our finest comedic actors, here meeting a scene partner worthy of him: Pamela Reed as his partner. Interesting layers given to the villain.
The Long Walk Home
release: December 21
dir: Richard Pearce
pr: Dave Bell / Howard W. "Hawk" Koch, Jr.
scr: John Cork
cin: Roger Deakins
A white woman begins driving her maid during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Used to watch this all the time in school, where it was a frequent substitute teacher programmer. Honest about the difficulty in implementing change, even - especially? - in good-hearted people who are nevertheless benefiting from societal iniquities. Whoopi Goldberg is strong, stoic; Sissy Spacek moving. I've rarely heard about it since graduating high school, and I have to imagine its understated complexity in the politics of a household where Black and White are so clearly separate but nevertheless entwined, combined with its willingness to depict things like, oh, a favorite uncle using the n-word liberally or white youths attempting a group assault on a young black girl, I have to imagine all that make it difficult for people to recommend or revisit. There are moments of levity, this isn't some dirge, but nor does it have shit-pies as catharsis. This is about little victories, one soul at a time.
The Russia House
release: December 21
dir: Fred Schepisi
pr: Paul Maslansky / Fred Schepisi
scr: Tom Stoppard
cin: Ian Baker
A British publisher friendly with Russians is summoned by British Intelligence to determine the authenticity of a vital unpublished work with political implications. Charmingly dull. I don't care about any of the Michelle Pfeiffer scenes - I think she actually might be miscast - but every scene with the British and American spy networks gathered together with their cups of tea and saucers planning strategy was a hoot for this viewer.
Green Card
release: December 23
nominations: Best Original Screenplay
dir/pr/scr: Peter Weir
cin: Geoffrey Simpson
Participants in a green card marriage must now fake a relationship to pass muster with a government inspection - and find themselves connecting. She enters the marriage so that she can be a more suitable prospective tenant for the apartment she wants, and it must be said, that apartment is worth any fraud she had to commit. He enters the marriage for his green card, of course. It's a classic "opposites attract" arc, though the stakes - deportation! jail? fines, at least - are insanely high. Asks how well people in a relationship really know each other, challenges the standard questionnaire used to grill "green card marriages," asks if these laws are getting in the way of true love. A celebration, from the beginning to the end, of the melting pot that is New York City. A dream of a movie.
Tomorrow, Christmas comes with a bang.
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