Unsung Heroes: The Technical Advisor on 'The Hustler'

Willie MosconiSerious Film's Michael C. here. 2011 will mark the 50th anniversary of Robert Rossen's classic The Hustler, so in this episode of Unsung Heroes I thought it a great opportunity to tip my hat to a man who is a large part of why the film is still watched and loved five decades later.

There is a vibe you get from certain films, a vibe that tells you “this movie knows what it’s talking about. This is how it really is.” The film's subject may be totally unfamiliar, space travel or gourmet cooking, but you can still sense when a film has done its homework and when it’s faking it. It’s the difference between the poker movie which simply gives the hero a royal flush, and the poker movie that knows it is more impressive to watch the hero play an average hand brilliantly.

Robert Rossen’s The Hustler is a movie you can feel knows its business cold from its first seconds. The Hustler had as technical advisor pool playing great Willie Mosconi, a man whose impact on the game of pool is comparable to Wayne Gretzky’s on hockey. His mastery seeps into every frame of this movie.

From the way the players screw their cues together to the way they call their shots this film has every detail in place. The Hustler is especially skilled at showing what happens when two competitors at the top of the game come up against each other.  A lesser movie would simply have billiard balls spinning and hopping all over the table but The Hustler is wiser than that. Thanks to Mosconi’s know-how, and the great script by Rossen, it makes clear that the game is won or loss on stamina and concentration, not on show-off displays and trick shots.

Rather than bogging it down with technical info this level of detail opens the story as a battle of personalities. The Hustler understands not only how pool is played, but how different characters types manifest themselves on the table. In one memorable exchange George C. Scott informs Newman's Fast Eddie he has the talent to be the best. When Newman asks why it was he lost anyway, Scott smirks that it was a lack of character. It's a testaments to the depth of the film's portrait of the game that we know exactly what he’s talking about.

Beyond creating a fully realized battlefield for the characters to clash, the technical know-how achieves something even more crucial to the film’s lasting success: It makes the movie incredibly cool. This is what I responded to most strongly when I first found this film as a teenager. These guys weren’t just hotshots. They were religiously devoted to the game. The question of the best was as weighty in the pool hall as it was in the world of chess or dance. With the aide of Mosconi, Rossen was able to show, for the first time to most of the public, that the pool hall was a worthy arena for this level of drama.

Unsung Heroes: Alec Baldwin in 'The Royal Tenenbaums'

Michael C. here from Serious Film for this week’s episode of Unsung Heroes. When Nathaniel first contacted me about a weekly column I remember him encouraging his contributors to delve into their cinematic obsessions. Well, in that spirit, my cinematic obsessions don’t get any more obsessive than my love for this film. I give you The Royal Tenenbaums.

Alec Baldwin’s vocal performance as the Narrator in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenebaums is one of those things that makes a film lover like myself shake his head and smile, it is just so damned perfect. It is a casting decision that can appear random on paper, but which becomes instantly indelible as soon as it's heard. Of course pretty much every choice in Tenenbaums is dead on – from the Dalmatian mice to the briefly glimpsed posters for Margot’s plays - but this choice has always stood out to me as particularly inspired.

For one thing, this was well before Baldwin was racking up the awards as Jack Donaghy so Wes’s casting of him as the voice of his film was quite the out-of-the-box choice. He has a fantastic voice, but it doesn’t have that storybook quality that you normally associate with narrators. It lacks that soothing gentleness that voices like Morgan Freeman's or Roscoe Lee Brown's (Babe’s narrator) have in spades. Baldwin recounts the story of the Tenenbaums in perfectly neutral tones but still manages to slip the smallest edge into his delivery. An almost imperceptible spin that would have been lacking in another narrator. When, for example, Royal declares that the recent days with his family were probably the happiest of his life, Baldwin is able to deliver the line,

Immediately after making the statement, Royal realized that it was true.

in a way that is somehow both without inflection and overwhelmingly sad. Come to think of it, Baldwin’s flat delivery which comes freighted with heavy emotional baggage is the perfect aural equivalent for Wes’s visual style.

One of the most pleasant surprises of the past decade or so was watching the metamorphosis of Alec Baldwin from straight-forward leading man to the invaluable character actor who pops up in Scorsese movies and steals every scene not nailed down. As an action hero he was good, but as a supporting player he is priceless. His memorably subtle work as the narrator in Tenenbaums is actually a pretty accurate demarcation line between the two phases of Baldwin’s career. It was around that time that he let go of his matinee idol looks and relied instead on his flawless comic timing and apparently bottomless supply of priceless line readings. I would love to see Baldwin go all the way and appear on screen in an Anderson film. His dead pan could go stone face to stone face with any in Wes's stock company.

It is often said that there are so many obstacles to getting a film made, so many opportunities for things to go wrong, that it’s a wonder any films get made at all. When a film arrives that is not just good but is an example of every detail going exactly right it is borderline miraculous. The Royal Tenenbaums is in my view such a film, which is doubly amazing because I can think of no film more richly detailed than The Royal Tenenbaums.

Unsung Heroes: The Props of "This is Spinal Tap"

Michael C here from Serious Film this week to throw a little love to the technical support who help make it possible for the geniuses in front of the camera to change comedy forever.

I do not for one think the problem was that the band was down. I think the problem may have been that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. That tended to understate the hugeness of the object. -  David St. Hubbins

One of the things that makers of Hollywood spoofs and satires seem to have forgotten is that it is important to first establish the reality of the story, and then, and only then, does one proceed to twist and subvert the conventions of the genre. Kubrick knew to let Dr. Strangelove play out with stark simplicity for the whole opening act before the big laughs started to creep in. Mel Brooks knew to let Young Frankenstein feel like a convincing horror classic before the monster started putting on the Ritz. And Rob Reiner clearly knew that his off-the-charts hilarious This is Spinal Tap would be dead in the water if every detail didn’t ring true. The prop work and set decoration placed the bar for mockumentaries at a level that has rarely been approached since.

Everything here is exactly the right level of awful. The crappy plastic pod that captures Shearer’s Derek Smalls and the crappy plastic demon skull that looms over the stage are both just good enough to allow the band to delude itself into thinking they're awesome. The legendary amp that goes to eleven displays that extra level with the perfect degree of carelessness, as if a disinterested roadie hastily tacked on the elevens in order to placate the band. One of my favorite bits is the series of briefly glimpsed past albums. The blindingly tacky cover art lets you know in an instant precisely the type of horrible band Spinal Tap is.

And what words can do justice to Stonehenge? That henge has a lot of buildup to fail to live up to and it delivers spectacularly at failing to deliver. Yet one can still spot the faint glimmer of the awesome spectacle the band imagined it would be.

It occurs to me I may be going overboard handing out credit. The wonderfully cheap look of Spinal Tap’s props may simply be a fortuitous result of the movie’s limited budget and shooting schedule. But even if that were that case what difference would it make? Would it be more praise-worthy if Spinal Tap had a prop department the size of Lord of the Rings and the budget of Avatar? The question comes down to how much more perfect could every minor detail of Tap, from the tiny bread on Nigel’s refreshment tray to the cucumber in Derek’s trousers, be? And the answer is none. None more perfect.

Unsung Heroes: The Music of Amélie

Michael C. from Serious Film returning for a new season of Unsung Heroes and right off the bat I’m going to cheat a little. I went back and forth as to whether it was stretching to label this achievement “unsung” since I know many people who adore it. That said, I’ve never read a tribute to it, and it’s my column, right?

A memorable theme, an original song, a perfectly applied pop song. They stamp a film’s identity on the public consciousness like nothing else can. The Graduate is arguably one of the closest approaches to flawlessness in film history but would the genius of Mike Nichols be so readily apparent were it not for the contributions of Simon and Garfunkel? Would the image of Holly Golightly remain so iconic were it not inextricably wedded to the strains of "Moon River"? 

I would go so far as to say that in some cases the achievement of the composer outweighs that of the director. I don’t think it’s stretching to suggest Rocky might be just another underdog tale, well liked in its day but half-remembered now, were it not for the aural adrenaline that is Bill Conti’s fanfare. Scan the list of the all-time highest grossers and see how few lack a tune you can hum off the top of your head.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that I believe a huge portion of the credit for Amelie’s status as one of the most beloved films of the past decade belongs to the swirling calliope music of composer Yann Tiersen.

Amélie is one of those films like Singin’ in the Rain that its devotees love out of all proportion. Like that musical, Amélie touches a place of pure, undiluted joy that few movies come within miles of. When Amelie is so overwhelmed with love of life that she has to sweep through the streets describing every detail to the blind man the score sweeps us up right along with her. A lot of movies depict happiness. Amélie radiates it.

It is said that director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was considering The Piano composer Michael Nyman until he heard a production assistant pop in one of Tiersen’s albums. Jeunet must have realized instantly what a perfect match it was. Tiersen’s music with its accordions and harpsichords is unavoidably French, but like Amélie’s depiction of Montmarte, it’s a few fanciful degrees removed from reality, more a depiction of the unreachably romantic idea of France than of France as it is. On top of which, Tiersen’s love of found musical instruments like typewriters and bicycle wheels beautifully reflects the hand-made, nostalgic texture of the story.

The finished soundtrack contains both original compositions and previously recorded material, thus preventing Tiersen from receiving a richly deserved Oscar nomination for his work, and once again depriving that category of one of its year’s defining achievements. Shame. As delightful as Amélie’s script is I believe that ten years later the film still has such a firm a grip on the hearts of so many film lovers because of Tiersen's music. 

[Editors Note: Yann Tiersen is currently on tour for his latest CD "Dust Lane". Tonight he's in Santa Cruz, tomorrow at Belly Up in San Diego and the US portion of his tour closes Friday in Los Angeles.]