Disaster, sex and death

A LOT of people in Hollywood will be glad 1993 is over. There were a few too many ominous rumblings, too many run-ins with disaster. And I’m not talking about the distinct possibility that the whole of the dream factory could disappear down a gargantuous crevice at any moment, as the San Andreas fault finally fulfills its poisonous promise, opening up to swallow the Beverly Hills mansion, trophy wife, Oscar cabinet and all.

No. Superstars and movie moguls don’t worry about little things like natural disasters. It’s the man-made ones that concern them. Like Michael Jackson’s nose. Heidi Fleiss’s diaries. And Arnold Schwarzenegger’s turkey.

1993 was the year big, bad Arnie got butt-fucked by a prehistoric monster. Nobody is safe anymore. This time last year Arnie was considered the only cast-iron guarantee in the movies, but all bets were off after the biggest star in the known universe failed to flog so much as a t-shirt for his latest blockbusting would-be-franchise, The Last Action Hero.

Right up to the last minute Arnie was boasting that he had done it again. “I’ve made another great movie, and the critics have already said it’s a great summer hit,” he announced confidently at Cannes, handing out cigars to journalists like the perennial proud father. Nobody ever found out who these particular critics were. Presumably they had just smoked the cigars and told Arnie what he wanted to hear, which is what any reasonable person would do if a man with biceps bigger than their head was canvassing opinions. Back at their word processors, the hacks started kicking sand in Arnie’s face like regular Mr Atlases.

“Take the word BLOCKBUSTER. Dynamite the beginning, chop off the end and what’s left? BUST!” said the Hollywood Reporter. “A joyless, soulless machine of a movie,” said Variety. But what did reviews matter? As the executives at Columbia who had sunk $80 million into The Last Action Hero knew, this wasn’t just any soulless machine of a movie. This was a soulless machine of a movie with Arnie in it. Not one of his recent films had failed to break the $100 million mark on domestic release alone. Despite the critics, poor test previews, frantic re-editing and terrible word of mouth, it was still considered a safe bet to open the same weekend as Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.

The rest is movie history. Spielberg’s Jaws-on-legs grossed

more that weekend than Arnie’s Naked Gun-on-steroids managed the whole year. It was an all too graphic demonstration of William Goldman’s golden rule of moviemaking. Nobody knows anything. If you couldn’t trust Arnie to bring home the bacon, who could you trust?

Not Michael Jackson, who found his services as a babysitter no longer in much demand amongst his celebrity friends in Beverly Hills. When allegations of pyjama parties and paedophilia hit the headlines, the superstar pop icon’s multi-million dollar movie deal suddenly looked about as worthless as shares in Pepsi. His long cherished plans to make a musical version of Peter Pan were put on hold. People might start to wonder what Peter really got up to with the lost boys during all those long nights in Never Never Land.

In the face of just that kind of prurient speculation, Michael cancelled his world tour, got on a plane in South America and apparently never got off. Many wondered how one of the most famous and distinctive people on the planet had managed to simply disappear right under the noses of the press, but when you come with as many detachable parts as Michael does, disguise is just a matter of the right accessories. He could have made his getaway on the luggage trolley while Liz Taylor smuggled out his head, legs and arms in her handbag.

While the world rocked from the surprise allegations that the scalpel-moulded, skin-dyed mutant who hung out with monkeys and regularly clutched his cock on prime time television while singing songs about being bad might actually be some kind of pervert, The City of Fallen Angels was still coming to terms with another sex scandal. Heidi Fleiss, purveyor of prostitutes to the stars, was arrested and charged with living off immoral earnings. The key question was, whose earnings? When Heidi hinted at the existence of a little black book, a frantic bidding war started. It was perhaps the first time movie executives were prepared to put up millions of dollars for the rights to a book they didn’t want to make into a film.

Mind you, Hollywood 1993 could have made quite a movie. There was disaster, sex and death. There was the usual sad but inevitable passing away of old time movie stalwarts, including Federico Fellini, Vincent Price, Stewart Grainger, Don Ameche, Yves Montand and Elji Tsuburaya (creator of Godzilla). Genuinely shocking were the deaths by misadventure of two young and upwardly mobile stars.

Brandon Lee, son of the legendary Bruce, was shot with a loaded prop gun while filming his death scene in a cheap kung fu thriller The Crow. Contrary to the script’s directions and the earlier rehearsals, when the gun was fired, Brandon had collapsed gurgling, thrashing and begging for help. Everyone thought it was a brilliant improvisation, until the director finally shouted cut and Brandon just lay gasping in the corner. There is no truth to the rumour that Jeremy Beadle has been trying to get the footage for You’ve Been Framed.

The environmentally conscious 22-year-old vegetarian River Phoenix, who once publicly berated a woman for drinking Diet Coke, collapsed and died outside Brad Pitt’s Hollywood club. The toxicological report showed that there was morphine in Phoenix’s body (thought to have been heroin when it entered his blood), as well as cocaine, Valium, traces of marijuana and cold medication. No sign of Diet Coke though. This was the boy who, when asked about drugs in 1990, replied, “Nancy’s said it all for me: just say no.”

But everybody knows that Hollywood eats its young. These are the real reasons Barbra Streisand has given away her house in Malibu. Not fear that the next brush fire could sweep right down from the hills, past the security guards, doormen and flunkies without so much as a how do you do and reduce the multi-million dollar beach-front pied-a-terre into a fine powder distinguishable from cocaine only by the lingering smell of burnt toast.

Maybe Barbra’s got the right idea. Leave Hollywood for the homeless. It is time the movie industry relocated somewhere safer. Like Beirut.

FILMS OF THE YEAR

(1) BAD LIEUTENANT

The story of a coke snorting, crack smoking, heroin shooting, lying, thieving, pimping cop trying to find a way off his elevator ride to hell. Director Abel Ferrara looked into the heart of darkness and found Harvey Keitel. Banned in Ireland, always a good recommendation.

(2) RESERVOIR DOGS

Harvey Keitel gave another in an astonishing series of performances as an armed robber with a moral dilemma in Quentin Tarantino’s powerhouse directorial debut. A funny, violent thriller with genuine emotional power and not a dog in sight.

(3) LES AMANTS DU PONT NEUF

Director Leos Carax spent $30 million on this spectacular and emotional romance set amongst the down and outs of Paris. Never before have all the resources of cinema been employed on behalf of such unpleasant specimens of mankind. But, somehow the almost simian skinhead and his sore-covered bag lady succeed in making your heart leap.

(4) THE PIANO

Your average girl loves piano, girl loses piano, girl sells sexual favours to win piano back story. With a twist. Director Jane Campion brings a lyrical edge to this gothic romance. And who’s that man baring his soul and prancing around in the nude? Why, it must be Harvey Keitel again.

(5) DRACULA

Gary Oldman made the villainous count one of the most romantic figures in cinema in Francis Ford Coppola’s fantastical version of the much told tale. Sure, he raped, he killed, he slaughtered babes (writes Sam Snort? – Ed). But he did it for love!

(6) JURASSIC PARK

Dinosaurs ruled the earth once more. The effects that brought them back from extinction were truly awesome, but it was Spielberg’s ability to turn the screw, then release tension with laughter, that made this a crowd pleaser to outdo even his own ET.

(7) SAVAGE NIGHTS

A breathless, compulsive, deadly sexy account of living with HIV, written by and starring Cyril Collard who died, aged 35, of AIDS related illness just three days before his film swept the French Oscars.

(8) JAMON JAMON

A mad, sexy Spanish melodrama, in which a beautiful cast go through a variety of sexual permutations involving pigs, parrots, naked bullfighting, garlic and ham, lots of ham. Funny and dramatic, this oddball delight was directed by someone called Bigas Lunas (pidgin translation: Big Loony).

(9) FALLING DOWN

Joel Schumacher really puts Michael Douglas through his paces in this savage black comedy about the disintegration of the middle classes. Douglas starts out like the consumer’s avenging angel, Esther Rantzen with an Uzi, but winds up baffled and bewildered, genuinely perplexed to realise he’s supposed to be the bag guy. Mainstream Hollywood’s most provocative movie.

(10) ONE FALSE MOVE

A low budget, beautifully scripted slice of Southern Americana played out with humour and a sad, slow-burning nihilism. Unlike its all-too-human characters, who cannot seem to put a foot right, One False Move rarely makes one.

Special mentions to Man Bites Dog, Leolo, Groundhog Day, In the Line of Fire, True Romance, L.627, The Waterdance, Bad Behaviour and Tango.

TURKEYS OF THE YEAR

(1) DIRTY WEEKEND

Michael Winner”s sleazy vigilante thriller will make you want to have a bath.

(2) COOL WORLD

Gabriel Byrne looks embarrassed acting opposite cartoons that never seem to be quite where he’s looking.

(3) BOXING HELENA

It cost Kim Basinger $8 million to stay out of this grotesque sexual melodrama. And it was money well spent.

(4) CONSENTING ADULTS

Just say no. A thriller with so many twists even the scriptwriter seems to have lost his way.

(5) THE FIRM

A running lawyer movie. Only Tom Cruise’s teeth sustain a thriller so complex you need to take your accountant just to explain the plot.

(6) SPLITTING HEIRS

Eric Idle turns into Benny Hill. Monty Python turns in his grave.

(7) NOWHERE TO RUN

Jean Claude Van Damme does Shane on a motorbike, complete with nude scenes and dialogue by Joe Ezterhas, highest paid scriptwriter in Hollywood. “He’s got a big penis,’ says a cute little girl. “He’s got an average penis,” replies mother Roseanne Arquette, who must have fallen on hard times to have come to this. The camera never even gives us a chance to judge for ourselves.

(8) BORN YESTERDAY

Don Johnson and Melanie Griffiths have already got each other. Why foist them on the rest of us?

(9) BODY OF EVIDENCE

The body of evidence is mounting up against Madonna, who can’t even act with her clothes off. A paen to the pain and pleasure of S&M, this is certainly painful.

(10) YOUNG AMERICANS

Lame British thriller starring Harvey Keitel, which just goes to show nobody’s perfect.