I would never have guessed I’d spend so much time listening to Alec
Baldwin. The decline in his film career didn’t seem like a great reason for
regret at the time, and there was ample apparent reason to dismiss him as an
undisciplined boor. Actually, you still sometimes wonder about that, but
Baldwin has at the very least demonstrated engaging relish at the possibilities
available to him, and a skill at cracking them open. He’s introduced movies on
TCM and radio broadcasts from the New York Philharmonic, been politically
active, and launched a very enjoyable podcast, where the menu might be Rosie
O’Donnell one week, an expert on the New York prison system the next (I
listened to every single episode). He’s now taken that format to MSNBC, more or
less unaltered except for the pictures. Also in the last year, he acted on
Broadway in Orphans (where the behind
the scenes conflicts helped to maintain the darker side of the persona) and in
one of the year’s most highly regarded films, Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. And then there’s 30 Rock, seemingly endless appearances
on Letterman and SNL, oh, and a new
baby daughter.
Seduced and Abandoned
All of this constitutes an obvious danger though – when there’s so much Alec
Baldwin around, how much would you pay for the chance to see him again? He good
naturedly puts this question at the centre of the new HBO documentary Seduced and Abandoned, directed by James
Toback (whose last project was Tyson).
Toback and Baldwin evolve a proposal for a sexually charged drama set against
the Iraq war, which they provisionally call Last
Tango in Tikrit, with Baldwin and Neve Campbell lined up as stars; they
then take off to the 2012 Cannes festival in search of the required $15 to $18
million budget. It rapidly becomes clear that the money guys don’t see the
appeal of the project: two of them say exactly the same thing, that they could
maybe be talked into $4 to $5 million at the most. Others propose changes of
location for the sake of tapping other pots of money, or changing various
aspects of the package, such as Baldwin (now perceived as a TV actor) or
Campbell (yesterday’s news) or both. Along the way, the pair hangs out with a
grand selection of classic directors, a varied bunch of actors, and some seriously
rich people who could finance such a movie as a rounding error in their
accounts (but of course, would rather not).
It’s a very entertaining creation, merging lots of good interactions and
storytelling with immaculately chosen reference points from old movies; Toback
and Baldwin make a highly appealing double act. The title alerts you to the
underlying direction of the adventure, that cinema almost never lives up to its
promise. At the outset, it quotes Orson Welles about spending 95% of his time
running round in search of money, and 5% actually making films (which, thinking
over Welles’ career, might actually understate the former number); and then
once you get past that, there’s a pervasive sense that the 5% isn’t as
scintillating as it used to be, that contemporary technologies and
sensibilities have all but sucked the artistic soul out of it.
Last Tango in Paris/Tikrit
Looked at one way, it’s rather surprising how easily Seduced and Abandoned goes down. Toback certainly sublimates his
creative personality here – there’s not much sign of the one-of-a-kind
nerviness that powers such films as Fingers
and Exposed (and even less of
Toback’s own personal legend, encompassing just about every kind of addiction
and compulsive behaviour known to science). But maybe this is exactly the point
– that there’s almost no remaining room for that kind of character. This isn’t
all about loss of nerve and vision by decision-makers. When he appeared on
Baldwin’s podcast, Toback told a remarkable story about how, in the early 80’s,
he persuaded a studio boss to put up the company money for Exposed only by personally paying him $2 million under the table;
probably not the kind of governance that characterizes a sustainable business
model. And Toback and Baldwin aren’t giving their prospective investors much to
go on. Last Tango in Tikrit is barely
more than a concept, apparently in no way nailed down as to form or style or
content: of course, this works well as an engine for their adventures through
Cannes, but it’s reasonable to ask: why would anyone realistically say yes to
them?
The film avoids then becoming a mere screed at the avaricious ways of the
financiers, spending just as much time charting a broader shift in film
culture. The four directors interviewed – Bertolucci (whose Last Tango in Paris provides a
particularly apt reference point for the film’s themes of cinematic bliss and
pain), Coppola, Scorsese and Polanski – are all exemplars of accessible art
cinema, their bodies of work overflowing with astonishing, indelible feats of
composition, acting and revelation. Ryan Gosling (somewhat surprisingly) best
sums up the difference when he describes much filmmaking now as a lifeless
process of starting with a wide shot and moving mechanically in for the close-ups,
progressively sapping whatever creative energy might have existed at the
outset. Baldwin contrasts the confidence of Allen, happily letting actors
change his scripts as they see fit, with directors of much less accomplishment
who insist on sticking exactly to what’s on the page. The underlying dilution
in character and confidence seems plain, reflecting the greater significance of
big-budget films as corporate investments of strictly calculated risk. It’s
worth noting though that this devolution isn’t just a story of cinema – you
could chart much the same thing in politics, business, and perhaps most other
areas of human accomplishment.
Resemblance to Death
But of course, for whatever reason,
the ins and outs of cinema seem to receive disproportionate attention. And the
film ultimately works its way to a metaphysical meditation on this attraction,
citing Norman Mailer’s claim that “Film is a phenomenon whose resemblance to
death has been ignored for too long.” This leads to a series of reflections on
one’s readiness to die, and to an ending that puts a facet of Mailer’s
observation into action. More broadly though, Seduced and Abandoned lacks the sense of confrontation and
full-blooded on-the-edge commitment that the writer seems to have had in mind,
making the citation seem a bit opportunistic. Actually, the whole project has a
similar catch-as-catch-can quality about it – presumably the only reason the
interviewees include Diane Kruger, for instance, is that she was available.
But on this occasion, the somewhat ramshackle quality works. If you can’t
make Last Tango in Tikrit, you can
have more fun pretending to make it than in doing most other things in life, in
conducting life itself as a creative act. In the end, despite the failure of
the immediate goal, the seduction counts for more than the abandonment; you
could easily imagine the two of them heading off on another adventure, whether
it be to charm Rosie O’Donnell together, or to reform the New York prison
system.
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