Movie Shelf: The Grifters, Page 2

MOVIE SHELF: COMPARING FILMS TO THEIR LITERARY COUNTERPARTS

christopher funderburg

STEPHEN FREARS' THE GRIFTERS

based on the novel THE GRIFTERS by JIM THOMPSON

page 2

One thing they excised that I just can't get over is the recurring "just one tooth?" motif of the novel. There would have been obvious logistical challenges to including it, but it's nonetheless an essential element that got entirely jettisoned. Growing up as both a smart kid and the son of painfully young woman posing as his sister, Roy would get beaten up by his peers on the reg. When he would come home with an injury and complain "the kids broke my tooth!" Lilly would simply reply "Just one tooth, Roy?" Just one tooth, just one hand, just one eye, Roy? When Roy reached maturity, Lilly took an uncomfortably sexualized maternal interest in him. When he announced he was leaving and never wanted to see her again, she protested that he was breaking her heart. "Just one heart, Lilly?" In the end, after she smashes a glass of water into him to sever his jugular, she watches him clutch helplessly at his throat. Just one throat, Roy? I understand why filming that backstory would be difficult, but it's the hallmark of the novel and, I think we can all agree, pretty awesome. In a fucked up Jim Thompson kind of way.

While we're on the dual subjects of Fucked Up Jim Thompson and subplots eliminated from the book, it would be an opportune time to discuss Carol Roberg because, jesus christ, this character. In the credits of the film, the character is listed as "Nurse Carol Flynn" and the filmmakers have gone out of the way to strip her of her Jewish identity because I suppose they don't want anyone thinking about Carol Roberg under any circumstances. Roy's convalescence takes up just a few scenes in the film, but a lot of the book plays out over the recovery - the active plot "holds" on the recovery even as certain back-stories and discussions of various scams are developed. Carol is a crucial part of the recovery: she's the lynchpin in Lilly's oblique psycho-sexual battle with Moira for Roy. Lilly encourages Carol's feelings for Roy and arranges for her to take on the role of his home-duty nurse as a way of blocking out Moira, with whom she feels an active competition - some of that is in movie, but in the novel it plays out a lot more slowly and with a much more detailed discussion of Roy's recovery schedule and Carol's excitement at getting a full-time job, taking more time to explore Roy's awareness of Lilly's manipulation and genuine fondness for Carol. Roy's recovery breezes by in the film, but you feel its weight in the book. It's a heavy sequence anchored by Roberg. It also really drives home that Roy nearly died, that by sheer dumb luck he was on death's doorstep. The agony of his injury is felt through the extended recovery. Roberg's presence, the opportunity for going straight that she presents, comes at moment when he is feeling the heaviness, the risk of the grift most clearly.

What ultimately convinces Roy to give Carol a chance is, again, his indecision on how straight he actually wants to live. A sweet-natured immigrant, Roberg's innocence and good heart tempt him in the way a legit job tempts him. Now, here's where it takes the Thompson turn: it's ultimately her virginity that draws Roy in. He obliquely quizzes her on her sexual history, misinterprets some of her answers and gets wrapped up in the idea of deflowering a pure woman, he gets caught up in the idea of becoming a solid citizen and having a girlfriend who couldn't conceive of whoring herself out, a point-blank contrast to his mother and Moira. But surprise: she's a Holocaust survivor who was victimized by Nazi doctors seeking to find the minimum age at which a female could be impregnated! So she's not a virgin, she was sterilized after being raped by Nazis at age 8! Roy's reaction is to be sickened and horrified and kick her to the curb. This is one of those moments where Thompson is talking out of both sides of his mouth: he's making a point about sexual purity, double-standards and men's self-destructive idealization of women, but he also clearly wants us to be sick to our stomachs and puke at the very thought of sleeping with a woman who was the victim of titillating Nazi sex experiments. Thompson's exact lines about Roy's immediate sickened regret are pointed: "It was their own fault. It was her own fault." It's totally out of left field, deeply unpleasant and inappropriately lurid; when I say Thompson makes a good argument against profligacy, it's these kind of sequences I'm talking about - a few drafts could have been used to make the Roberg material fit in better with the rest of the novel and give it more coherency as anything other than a cheap-shot gut-punch. That the movie can lose this character so easily demonstrates how weirdly disconnected it is from the rest of the material.

In the film, the Carol Roberg subplot gets more or less replaced with what would be the weakest sequence in the film if it weren't saved by the actors: the story of Myra and the scam she used to run with Cole "not the farmer" Langtry (J.T. Walsh.) Moira occupies a distinctly minor role in the book and this subplot is used to beef up Bening's place in the film, but it also does the most damage to the coherency of the artwork. The scam they run is purely Westlake's insertion and the filmmakers alter the Cole Langtry character so much, they shouldn't even be considered the same character: he goes from a creepy, erratic yokel to a dead-eyed Wall Street type. The scam Myra and Cole run on a gullible oilman played Charles Napier is the biggest chunk of original material in the film, so maybe it was inevitable that it would feel very little like something Thompson would write. Perhaps to drive the point home, the office where they run the scam is labeled as "Coe, Stark, Fellowes and Associates," the joke being that Westlake also wrote novels under the pseudonyms Richard Stark and Tucker Coe. The name of the office stakes his claim to that section of the film. And the long con scam run by Myra and Cole has that signature Westlake cleverness and near-implausibility - it involves staged deaths, phony offices, silly disguises and fake "computer hackers." The basic set-up is a variation on the wire, another well-known con that claims to exploit a seconds-long loophole in long-distance communication: we, the con artists, need you, Mr. Mark, to give us cash funds so the moment this brief seconds-long opportunity arises, we can exploit it. But here's where everything gets tripped up and what drowns the film in a pervasive weirdness: the wire as Myra and Cole run it involves computer hackers, oilmen going bust because of international competition and empty high-rise office buildings - it indisputably sets the film in the mid-80's at the earliest.

But up until that point, the era in which everything is taking place is weirdly indeterminate. In an early flashback, when we see Roy get taken under the wing of a wizened con man, Roy is dressed up like a greaser with slicked back hair and a leather jacket. The con man wears an all-white seer-sucker suit and hat. The other occupants of the train station where the scene takes place are equally dressed up to look like the scene is taking place in, well, the mid-1950's, the time it takes place in the book. Thompson published The Grifters in 1963 and his book feels a little stuck in the recent past - the flashbacks to Roy and Moira's mid-western exploits in particular feel unrelated to anything like the modern era and young Carol Roberg's story of course involves the Holocaust. It's a book about a specific era and the film intermittently feels like it wants to belong to that era. A big source of that weird effect is that Frears and Westlake have chosen to import big chunks of dialog verbatim from the novel. Roy, Myra and Lilly all talk in a slang-riddled hard-boiled speak that simply doesn't match up with a world of computer hackers - Thompson's dialog is also some of the most notorious pungent hard-boiled talk this side of Dashiell Hammett, which makes the incongruity all the more glaring. The characters talk like characters out of something written in the 50's and almost no attempts have been made to revise the slangier out-moded phrases or to massage Thompson's clipped, stylized cadences.

Beyond that, the filmmakers retain Moira's weird enthusiasm for ad copy, but never explain it - in fact, they so revise her relationship with Cole Langtry there's really no way for them to explain it. In the book, Cole and Moira would sit in the two-hole privy of their mid-western farm and crack each other up by reading out loud some of the more ludicrous ad copy about "wiry zones" and "you too can learn to dance, all you need is the magic step!" I get the sense that these scenes took place in the WWII or even pre-war era and the ad copy definitely has an ancient quality that, again, doesn't synch up with the time-frame established by the wire con. Furthermore, when Myra begins to quote the ad copy, it sounds absolutely insane and the film makes no effort to connect it to anything. When, during sexual transaction with her landlord, she begins to giggle to herself about a menu item she recent saw and stifles her laughter over "broiled hothouse tomato under generous slice of ripe cheese" it doesn't sound like anything that would have been a luncheon special on any menu in Los Angeles in the 1980's - it's some weird dish from a bygone era, its pathetic simplicity bringing to mind the desperation of the Great Depression. Even her yelling "gangway!" as she charges into his hotel room naked has an archaic quality that doesn't square up with a supposedly stylish, calculating modern women. What are we supposed to make of it when she has the following exchange, taken verbatim from the book, where she reveals to Roy that she knows what he's up to: "I know you're a short-con operator. A good one, apparently." "You talk the lingo. What's your pitch?" This is the discussion of con artists working L.A. in the 80's? Somewhere nearby while they are having this conversation, Bo Jackson is scoring touchdowns and Motley Crue is motorcycling down the strip?

But it's not just the dialog with a weirdly out-of-time quality: the entire production seems designed with indeterminate origins. Lilly's trapped-out Cadillac looks like it came straight out of the 70's. Her and Myra's dresses have a classic quality meant to evoke the 40's and 50's, but don't entirely get there: shoulder pads and stretchy spandex give away their 80's assemblage. As I mentioned, Roy's outfits in the flashbacks look decidedly greaser-ly in style, but some of his sharp suits have skinny ties and stylish (at the time) cuts that evoke no memories of that bygone era. It's kinda like watching a Highlander movie. Even the idea of renting a hotel room for a year belongs to a different era of room and board - by the mid-80's hotels weren't used for regular living spaces in all but the rarest of circumstances, certainly not run-down shady joints like Roy's digs. The Grifters is a film in which characters execute computer hacker scams while using speech thickly laced with 50's slang, driving vintage 70's Caddy's, dressed up like greasers, quoting pre-war ad copy. That's why Westlake's addition of a very specific modern version of the wire screws with the world of the movie so much. In those scenes, we see Myra, Cole and the mark played by Charles Napier dressed in very 80's clothing and speaking explicitly and directed about subjects that place the film in the 80's, but the rest of the movie doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.

Now, I can imagine fans of the film (and, to be sure, I count myself among them) grinding their teeth and sighing in exasperation as they read this article. So now allow me to make the case for the film's greatness. If I've dwelled so much on the differences between the book and the film and the changes the film makes, well, that's the idea with this series. If I make it seem like the film suffers in comparison to the book and even because of the book, that's not actually the case. I don't think it's one of Thompson's best novels. It's enjoyable enough: its picture of a very specific underground world of men and women on the make, of the mechanics of their scams, is fascinating. The film leaves behind much of the dramatic thrust of the novel and doesn't seem overly concerned with fidelity to its push, but it's not exactly desecrating a masterpiece: I think we might have heard the story before, the one in which a particularly crafty criminal wants to get out of the life but gets dragged back in by a sexy lady and then suffers deadly consequences. The plot is more or less a matter of convenience to Thompson himself; he's using it as an excuse to explore a milieu - dropping key elements of his story isn't as indefensible (and pointless) as all of those adaptations of Anna Karenina that all but eliminate Levin. What we have here is a case of filmmakers twisting around a pretty good book in order to make an excellent film, and I tend to think of the movie as an original artwork created as almost a "found" piece assembled from the wreckage of Thompson's novel.

The film's weird ahistorical setting not only gives it a frequently ethereal, other-worldly feel, it makes the proceedings play almost like an alternate reality sci-fi film - Man in the High Castle, but instead of the Japanese winning WWII, it's the grifters and greasers who got to call the shots for the next half century. The film doesn't feel like an inaccurate rendering of reality, but a detailed portrait of a reality that never existed, one in which Roy Dillons still "talk the lingo" and gaggles of On the Town-style sailors still swarm our thriving and popular rail system on their way to La Hoya for the races while computer hackers run international stock exchange scams with the help of their lovely assistants in heavily shoulder-padded pants-suits. It's a world out of time, an amalgamation of things that were placed alongside each in a way that never happened. The anachronistic slang even takes on a quality not dissimilar from that found in sci-fi and fantasy novels where the authors invent their own words and phrases. It reminded me of Anthony Burgess' unforgettable Russian-flavored youth cultural phraseology in A Clockwork Orange: words intelligible in their context, just close enough to recognizable language to be both understandable and bizarre. The world of The Grifters isn't L.A. in 1989, but an L.A. that somehow could have been.

A major reason this "off" reality works so well is that the actors involved are uniformly excellent - you don't have to suspend your disbelief in light of its weirdness because they're so comfortable within it. I mentioned Anjelica Huston already, but John Cusack kills it as Roy. He's just flawless. He never stumbles with any of the dialog, although to be fair he isn't given anything as unwieldy as Huston's notorious "p-p-p-permanent damage" line which finds her contending with both a slew of outmoded slang and exposition-turned-dialog where Westlake has converted an expository Thompson passage explaining the oranges and made it into an awkward verbal exchange. Cusack has an innate verbal agility that allows even Thompson's hard-boiled worst flow out of him without hesitation - there isn't a false note in Cusack charming, low key, smart-ass performance. You don't question Roy's uncertain decade-spanning reality in large part because Cusack so effortlessly occupies his space within it. Bening (who is excellent) probably rates the worst of the lead trio, but only because her role most nakedly bares the brunt of both the reorganization of the plot, and is also the absolute most difficult to reconcile of the ahistoricality of the piece: she's the one who has to deliver lines both about hothouse tomatoes and stock exchange computer scams. She's also written most directly as a noir stereotype, a hypersexual femme fatale with no discernible conscience. I'm not sure any actress could have seamlessly covered for the confusions of the adaptation's approach, but she comes pretty damn close.

Beyond the lead actors, Frears stacks the deck in his favor with a trio of character actors: Pat Hingle, J.T. Walsh and Charles Napier. All three actors have something of Classic Character Actor feel about them that adds to the time-out-of-joint tone - it doesn't hurt that Hingle and Napier began their screen careers in the 50's and 60's, respectively, and have ageless pitbull faces that would've found them roles even in the 30's or 40's (and allowed them both to keep working right up until their deaths a couple years ago.) There's not only an eternal quality to these character actors, but a versatility; they're Men from Forever who excel as utility players fleshing out small roles. J.T. Walsh counts as one of the few actors so excellent in secondary, throw-away roles that he almost became a star in his own right. He went on a bit of tear in '95 and '96 with breakout parts in Nixon and Sling Blade, and I remember critics tossing around the idea after he died that he should finally receive his due in the form of an Oscar nomination for his role in Breakdown, in which he played that film's memorable villain. According the Playboy magazine, he was "everybody's favorite scumbag" and they're a source I trust on the belovedness of scumbags. All three actors were guys who appeared in a half-dozen films a year for years on end, their mere presence loaning some of the weight of that history to the film. Bringing in Walsh and Napier for the Westlake-penned wire scam flashback smooths out the incongruity of the material. Without actors of their unique stature and ability, I'm not sure there would be any way to pull that section off.

Hingle, as Bobo Jutus of "Jutus Amusement Corp." notoriety, deserves to be singled out for his work. The character's presence looms over the film - Lilly gets immediate medical attention for Roy after threatening a doctor with her connection to Bobo - and Huston's fear and torment over her professional relationship to Bobo drives a plot now willing to drop the novel's central narrative of Roy's disillusionment with the grift. In short, if Hingle can't nail the role of Bobo, the film won't work. Hingle plays all of the character's angles, as Bobo he's menacing and goofy, congenial and terrifying, merciful and brutal. The scene where he works over Lilly and burns her hand with a cigarette counts as the film's most indelible, not just for its shocking violence, but for the warmth and humanity Hingle finds in the role, his ability to reassure Lilly that his retribution is just a business matter and that the threat of being beaten with a sack of oranges and never shitting right again is just part of their business. His affection for Lilly reads as authentic without undercutting the idea that this is a man with whom you should fuck with under no circumstances. When Lilly kills her own son to escape his wrath, her panic has a gravity and intensity derived from her previous interactions with Bobo, but Hingle gives the character a dimensionality and even integrity that prevents him from being nothing more than a one-note, dog-kicking baddie. John Cribbs' excellent article aside, Hingle never got his due as an actor and his turn as Bobo can only be compared to performances like Orson Welles in Compulsion or Alec Baldwin in Glengerry Glen Ross, single scene knockouts that hugely influence the tenor of the overall film. He wasn't nominated for an Academy Award for his work, but we can all agree that Andy Garcia was really good in The Godfather Part III and deserved that slot. And we're still all talking about Bruce Davison in Longtime Companion.*

The actors allow the unnatural reality to function without hiccup. As to why that's a good thing, I think that The Grifters' artistic success ties into the neo-noir movement on the whole. Neo-noir isn't just an attempt to imitate the style and tone of a dead genre, but a way of using an anachronistic style to explore the past and then contrast that past with the present to garner insight about the here and now. The idea isn't just that shadows from venetian blinds, dames with gams up to here and smoke & bullets are cool, but that the genre's tropes tell us something about the history of sex and violence and how well supposedly dead ideas about women and power and money translate to the present and indicate that maybe we're not as far removed from certain brands of misogyny, self-loathing and base impulses to lash out haven't been overcome with time. By compressing decades into a single film and placing types and stereotypes in strange contexts, The Grifters acts as an overarching compendium of a philosophy through time; its violences and fears gaining an ugly, depressing eternal quality: the eternity of the sucker, the easy mark, the man led around by his dick, the man who blames the women in his life for his problems, the mother who warps her son through her loveless love, the woman who buys her way through life with her body, the criminal middle-man slave to the syndicate, the son and the mother and the lover who reflect that timelessly ruinous relationship. The Grifters is the history of those ideas, genesis to revelation. Who cares if Roy is supposed to have a talent for spreadsheets?

* Those kind of "talkin' 'bout serious subjects!" nominations always look so fucking terrible in retrospect don't they? On the other hand, it's kind of awesome that Crash (2005) won Best Picture. Serves Hollywood right.

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