Paul Verhoeven To Direct The Last Express?

Can it be true?

Paul Verhoeven was recently interviewed by MTV about his next project. Verhoeven told them,

"I am working on a movie now that is... situated in 1914. Basically, Indiana Jones-ish you could say, but also Hitchcockian... we are scripting it. It's an idea that exists already... from another medium, and so we are making it now into a film narrative."

Then Verhoeven was asked what medium he was scripting the project from. "A game, a video game".

Of course, he wouldn't say what the game was. "The writer of the video game has asked me to keep [the identity of the game] secret until he has a script."



If I had read this interview back when it was first conducted, I would have known right away which game it was, and who the writer of the game is. But SlashFilm writer Peter Sciretta and Screenrant writer Sandy Schaefer already beat me to it. DAMN! But that doesn't damper the great news. If what we are to believe is true, Jordan Mechner's The Last Express (1997), my favorite computer game of all time, is finally going to be getting a film adaptation.

I have been waiting for this for years. I first played The Last Express in late 2000, when I was in fourth grade. My parents had just returned from a cruise and had bought the game for me after they saw a quote on the cover box comparing the game to Hitchcock. I didn't officially beat the game until well into my middle school days (thanks, admittedly, to online walkthroughs; the game is so difficult!), but I immediately began daydreaming about possibilities for a film adaptation. Last year I even began foolishly writing my own 200-page screenplay adaptation, and sent it to Jordan Mechner (I don't expect it to fall in Verhoeven's hands, sadly).



But what IS The Last Express, you ask? It's an adventure game, set in Europe on the brink of World War I, onboard the Orient Express as it travels from Paris to Constantinople. The main character (the guy in the green coat, in the above picture) is Robert Cath, an American doctor who illegally boards the train without a ticket...



...only to find his American friend, Tyler Whitney, murdered inside his compartment.

I don't really want to go any further into the plot; knowing that this game may very well be turned into a movie pretty soon, I want everybody to go to the movie surprised. Let me just say that during the game, while playing Cath, you assume Whitney's identity in order to get to the bottom of his murder. And this involves communicating with the passengers and conductors, which- believe me- is a hell of a lot of fun. Who ever heard of an adventure game where acquiring knowledge is more important than fighting?



Granted, the game has its fight scenes (for example, Cath's knife fight with the Serbian terrorist Milos, as seen above), but such interludes only come with the genre. The game is part adventure and part international thriller mystery. Think Twin Peaks crossed with Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express and Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, with a little of Warren Beatty's Reds thrown in, and that may give you a general idea.



And who is Jordan Mechner, you ask? Jordan Mechner is the creator of the Prince of Persia franchise. Ever since my obsession with The Last Express, I've made it a point to remember Mechner's name, and whenever he's in the news, I usually stop to read or listen. I visit his website regularly, mostly to see what he's up to, and if he's got any more interesting games planned. Really, though, I'm a huge fan of two of his games: The Last Express and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The latter is one of my favorite Nintendo Gamecube games, and which I played almost nonstop last summer. I haven't beaten it yet, but I intend to any day now.



This is also why I'm sort of looking forward to Mike Newell's film adaptation of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time being released in late May. I don't expect it to be a masterpiece, but I plan to attend- because I'm a fan of the game, and also because Jordan Mechner is one of the co-writers of the screenplay. Regarding Mike Newell, I'm not as familiar with his work as I ought to be, although I admire what I've seen of Donnie Brasco on IFC. Furthermore, the casting decision of Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince is excellent. I, personally, think he's a great actor (Zodiac, anyone?).



I mentioned my excitement that Mechner is helping write the Prince of Persia screenplay. I trust any of his contributions to that script will stand out- because the script that he and the late Tomi Pierce wrote for The Last Express (the game, I mean) is by far one of the greatest scripts ever written for a game, if not the best. Mechner and Pierce went through painstaking lengths to capture the dialogue, and the absolute realism, of the early 1900's and, specifically, the pre-war era. The internal conflicts of the game surrounding the slaughter in the Balkans, the Irish independence movement, and the Russian Revolution are nothing short of staggering.



Am I glad that Verhoeven may be the director of The Last Express? Yeah, I guess I am. If I'm not quite thrilled to the edge of my seat, it may be because my own personal choice would have been Brian De Palma (who really could use the income that this movie would no doubt make, considering that his post-1996 films- Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars, Femme Fatale, The Black Dahlia and my precious Redacted- have all been flops). I would think that the Hitchcockian material of The Last Express would have tipped off Mechner to realize that this story is right up De Palma's ally.

Still, Verhoeven is probably as good as it gets. Not that I'm complaining- not whatsoever. I love Total Recall. However, I haven't seen any of Verhoeven's other films; I've seen bits and pieces of Robocop, Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers, but never the films in their entirety. As for Showgirls, I would check it out were it not for the fact that Blockbuster Online evidently refuses to rent it out. So, this means I've got some serious jamming to do with my familiarity with Verhoeven. I do trust that he will do The Last Express justice; after all, if he could evoke the WWII era romantically with Black Book (which, again, I've never seen), he should be able to reinvent the World War I era of this game just fine.

Maybe I should hold my horses, though. Fact is, we don't even know if this project is going to be a reality; Verhoeven didn't reveal the title of the game he is adapting. I find it hard to believe it could be anything else, though. For those of you who are interested in playing The Last Express (and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!!!!!), you can download the game's demo here. For those of you who aren't gamers, however, you can go to YouTube and watch the game's chronological clips- this I recommend even more, since it's a faster way of getting down the game's storyline (and why I love it as much as I do).

Anyway, I'm done rambling now. I don't usually talk about games on this site, but this was one occasion when I absolutely had to. Like I said, I have always dreamed of The Last Express becoming a movie. The game itself, unfortunately, was a financial disaster, and without the continued success of the Prince of Persia series it's likely that Jordan Mechner's career would have been over. Certainly the game's failure canceled out all chances of the story being turned into a movie. Ironic, considering that it's a very cinematic game.

With luck, a Last Express movie is what Verhoeven and Mechner have in store for us. At last, this great story is going to be released all around the world.

And remember, people- you heard about it HERE, first! :)

The Adventures of Milo and Otis (1989)

The magic of The Adventures of Milo and Otis begins almost immediately, with the first notes of the strumming guitar over the 1989 Columbia Pictures logo. Then fade to black, as the music transitions into pleasant piano notes until, finally, climaxing with Dan Crow’s singing voice. The song is “Walk Outside”, and I make an effort to describe these moments that open the film because they bring back so many old memories, and evoke so much nostalgia that I can say without a doubt that my earliest memories of the film begin with this song.

The film has become increasingly controversial today, mostly with animal rights activists -- who suspect that director Masanori Hata was enforcing animal cruelty on the set, despite a notice in the end credits that the animals used “were filmed under strict supervision with the utmost concern for their handling.” But some of the sequences in the film are so perilous- most notoriously the scene in which a wooden box plunges down a waterfall with a helpless cat trapped inside- that they do not appear as though they could have been accomplished without cruelty. Years later, the American Humane Society would try to investigate the conditions of the making of the film, only to come up empty-handed. There have always been stories of cats dying during the production, as well as that dreaded rumor of a female assistant breaking a cat’s paw in order to get it to limp onscreen, but they have never been validated. The Human Society's website sums up the results of their investigation in frank disappointment: “Everything has led to a dead end."

I, like most, am curious to know if anything serious happened to any of the animals on the set, but I am also worried that such truths would affect my appreciation for the film -- the kind of appreciation that would be better left unspoiled. Illegally carried out or not, The Adventures of Milo and Otis is a masterfully crafted little film: gorgeous cinematography by Hideo Fujji and Shinji Tomita; brisk editing by Walt Mulconery, Chizuko Osada and Peter H. Verity; enchanting music by Michael Boddicker; and, yes, tremendous directing by Masanori Hata. Believe it or not, it took him and his crew four years to complete this film, and, as a result, The Adventures of Milo and Otis, in its finalized 76-minute running time, is something unique: one of the best family films ever made.

Movies like this are rarely ever regarded as art. The “live-action animals” genre more or less kicked off with The Incredible Journey (1963), Fletcher Markle’s Disney fable about two dogs and a cat who trek across Canada to reunite with their owners (remade in 1993 as the crass Homeward Bound). In the 1970’s, the genre made vast improvements with Joe Camp’s immortal Benji (1974) and Hall Bartlett’s surreal, unfairly-maligned Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973). In the 1990’s, George Miller and Chris Noonan perfected the problem of animal voiceovers with their splendid Babe pictures.

Yet perhaps the 1980’s produced the two single-greatest titles the genre has ever conceived. If Samuel Fuller’s White Dog (1982) remains the finest film ever made from the point of view of an animal, then The Adventures of Milo and Otis is certainly the most beautifully naturalistic. What makes it so different from other films about animals is that there are no human presences -- anywhere in the film- with maybe the exception of a rumbling train that almost runs over Milo during his long trek to nowhere. It is a film about friendship, and yet it is also a wrenching film about the survival of the fittest, told from the animal point of view in ways that Jack London and George Orwell never thought of.

Being a Japanese production, The Adventures of Milo and Otis was released in its home country in 1986, but didn’t get its U.S. release until 1989 --- the 1989 version is the version I’ve grown up with and, thus, choose to critique. The priceless English narration by Dudley Moore (hilariously described by Ty Burr as “drunken uncle narration”) has always stuck with me, and it is hard not to imitate the peculiar way Moore tries to assume Milo and Otis’ personalities.

Consider the scene in which Milo, an orange cat, and Otis, a pug, first meet. One is a kitten at the time, and another is a puppy, and because of Milo’s mischievous behavior (tumbling out of bed against his Mother's wishes), he meets Otis purely by accident- and, as if by impulse, starts wrestling with him. "You're a strange-looking cat!" he squeals (at least, according to Moore's daffy narration and the Mark Saltzman script). When Otis explains that he is a dog, Milo replies, "Well, alright, a dog, I understand! But deep down inside, we're all cats, right?" But Otis stands his ground: "No... no! Deep down inside, I'm a dog!" Pretty bizarre for a first meeting, but somehow Milo and Otis have already become best friends.

We get introduced to some of Milo and Otis' friends and family members around the farm at which they live (somewhat poorly taken care of by whoever owns the place, seeing as how each of these animals is always constantly misbehaving), but these brief scenes are merely a setup for the scene that everybody remembers from the film: the sequence in which Milo gets inside a wooden box buoyed calmly on the nearby river, and "hides" from Otis until the box inadvertently begins floating down the river, thus triggering Milo and Otis' magnificent, dangerous adventure. And this, in turn, eventually leads to the infamous moment in which Milo miraculously survives a plunge down a waterfall.

I want to pause to talk more about this scene in greater detail. Halfway through the sequence, the river suddenly transitions into a series of rapids; at one point, there is a gap that jerks the wooden box over into the next section of the rapids so violently that Milo ought to have fallen out- but he doesn't. Then, Masanori Hata pulls us back into a birds-eye view of the rapids, and we realize that the box is headed straight for a waterfall. After that, Hata cuts to a closeup of Milo, cuts back to the waterfall, cuts back to Milo one last time, and then proceeds to show the box as it glides perfectly down the waterfall's face. Again, it is impossible to believe that a cat could have survived this stunt -- much less kept from falling out of the box -- but Milo does it. The box splashes to the bottom of the river, and, sure enough, there is Milo. Inside the box. Safe, alive, meowing, and all in one piece.

That scene is quite a thrill, but the scene that follows is in some respects even more captivating. Night has fallen, and Milo is fearfully peering from the box as it continues to float down the river, while unknown creatures make noises out in the darkness. Moore hauntingly narrates: "His trip down the river wasn't fun any more. It had turned into something lonely and frightening. He began to wish he had never jumped into this box. He began to wish... he was home." And then Moore segues into a truly mystifying coda: "In the water, Milo could see the reflection of the moon. It seemed to be trembling as much as he was, in the chilly, misty night. Sleep was not possible. He drifted on through the darkness, hoping to find the morning waiting just around the bend."

In another one of the film's more controversial sequences, Milo leaps off a cliff into the ocean, in order to escape an outraged flock of seagulls. I have studied this particular scene, which is shot in slow-motion, and cannot tell whether the figure falling is a real cat, or a special effect, or even a toy. Regardless, Milo appears alive and well once he rises back up to the ocean's surface. With that being said, all of the criticisms of this sequence (and, also, the waterfall sequence) are completely valid.

The film's scarier moments are burned in my memory. I have never forgotten the disturbing image of an innocent field mouse being snatched up from the forest ground by a ravenous screech owl, to Milo's horror. Or Otis' brave effort to distract a hungry bear from attempting to devour Milo during his trip down the river, in one of the earlier scenes. Or the vicious duel between a raccoon and another bear over Milo's newly-caught fish (there is a humorous moment when the struggle between the raccoon and the bear becomes so heated that Milo is knocked back into the weeds). Or Milo's game of cat-and-mouse with another bear (all told, Milo runs into about three bears on his journey) when he is cornered in an abandoned shack on the beach. These scenes made me anxious as a child: they forced me to think long and hard about whether or not Milo and Otis' family members are worrying about them back home. And not just that, but whether or not they are even aware of their absence, much less care. Indeed, if they would even recognize Milo and Otis once they return. Such an emotional response is only a further confirmation of the film's unexpected power, especially for juvenile audience members.

Otis, of course, runs into some troubles of his own in his quest to rescue Milo; there is a wonderful sequence in which he literally rides across ocean shores on the shell of a grumpy sea turtle. Another sequence in the film that looks equally impossible, but is real, is the scene in which Milo and Otis finally reunite, after Otis finds Milo helplessly trapped in a deep pit. Amazingly, Otis is able to pull Milo out with a rope -- how this sequence plays out, I will leave for you to discover.

The Adventures of Milo and Otis has always been a film I have treasured. I believe it will continue to be treasured for years and years- and, in time, perhaps even Masanori Hata will be recognized as a sort of forgotten great filmmaker. It's too bad that his filmmaking career never took off after this film; maybe it has something to do with the animal cruelty rumors. They are likely going to follow Hata and his crew members to the grave.

Do the rumors bother me? Maybe a little. I condemn any acts of cruelty that Hata may or may not have inflicted onto his animals. However, that will never erase my overall appreciation for his film, and how his visualizations so spectacularly came to life. When The Adventures of Milo and Otis begins, Milo and Otis are pesky little farm offspring. By the time the film rolls towards its conclusion, they have both matured into grown, sexually-active animals. Milo finds a mate in the angelic white cat "Joyce", while Otis, out of sheer luck, finds a female pug ("Sandra", with French pronunciation) up in the snowy mountains. Both Joyce and Sandra produce litters.

Hence, Milo and Otis become fathers. And once they bring their two new families together for the very first time, that serves as a lovely finish for Masanori Hata's charming story about a cat and a dog whose adventures take them down a road less traveled by. Or, as Dudley Moore so eloquently sums it up in his closing narration, "The road that would take them to the place where their lives had begun. The road that would take them... home."

The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Imagine you're Norman Jewison. You've been spending the first half of the decade as a director-for-hire, directing studio vehicles for Tony Curtis, James Garner and Doris Day. So far, it's a modest filmmaking career; indeed, it's the kind of career that usually befalls young filmmakers trying to get into Hollywood's big time. You're not exactly recognized as an artist at the moment, although you have made a friend in Sam Peckinpah, the breakthrough artist who crafted Ride the High Country -- one of the greatest Westerns ever made. There is some question as to whether or not you will ever achieve that level of success. Then Peckinpah is fired from a movie he has been working on with Steve McQueen, and suddenly you have been hired to replace him.

This is what was happening behind the scenes during the making of The Cincinnati Kid. Before Jewison came onboard, the end result was destined to be something completely different from what it is now. Peckinpah's original vision for The Cincinnati Kid was to shoot the film in black-and-white, and fill the story (in typical Peckinpah fashion) with visceral sequences of sex and violence. But Hollywood was not yet ready for Peckinpah's “fascist works of art” (as dubbed by Pauline Kael in her Straw Dogs review), and with Jewison replacing Peckinpah as director, Steve McQueen's next anti-heroic vehicle was about to become something more passive, less aggressive. Arguably, it ultimately became a better film.

Let me put it this way: wouldn't The Cincinnati Kid feel a lot like a rip-off of Robert Rossen's The Hustler if it had been shot in black and white? The stories of the two films are definitely similar: both are about hotshot sports talents who get in over their heads, womanize their female companions, are excruciatingly tested by their opponents and, tragically, manipulated by their own mentors. But The Hustler was a film about pool, whereas The Cincinnati Kid is about stud poker; and what was so wise about Jewison's decision to shoot The Cincinnati Kid in color instead of black-and-white was the fact that the many colors of red, yellow and green seen throughout the picture could then be illuminated to striking effect. Such memorable images as a glowing lamp fading to a golden blur, the provocative red dress of a girl in attendance at a cockfight, and the illustrated graphics of the actual poker cards, would never have endured if Jewison and his cinematographer, Philip H. Lathrop, had not been afforded the wonders of Metrocolor photography. To be sure, Jewison has fun with some shots that probably could have looked just as great as they do without color, from the camera's constant habit of peering through curtains (in doorways and on beds), to the startling transitional image of an antagonist pointing a gun straight at the camera (for the purpose of target practice).

The screenplay for the film, based on a novel by Richard Jessup, was originally written by Ring Lardner Jr.; when Jewison found it overly serious, he brought in Terry Southern to polish it up with more humor, particularly towards the monologues of the film's villains that threaten McQueen's protagonist. Jewison himself was responsible for the film's remarkable narrative framing device. The film begins with McQueen's character, the Kid (his real name is “Eric Stoner”, although he is rarely ever referred to by that name during the picture) passing through a lively African-American funeral in New Orleans. He is then approached by a beaming young African-American Shoeshine boy (Ken Grant), who challenges him to a quick game of penny-pitching on the sidewalk, and who will challenge him again in the middle of and at the end of the film.

“Hey, man, hey Cincinnati- come on, man!” exclaims the eager boy. “I'm gonna get you one more time! Come on, man!” We presume that the Kid and the boy have been at this before, and that the boy has always been unsuccessful in the past. The Kid consents, but of course, being the experienced poker player with the fast hand, he ends up winning. “You're just not ready for me, yet!” he reminds the boy. Normally this would be a crushing experience for a young child, but it is not: the little boy is filled with a sense of awe. In the course of this film, the characters will suffer a multitude of crushing disappointments and losses, but in this opening sequence between McQueen and the boy lies the film's ambition, as well as its undying love of the game. This scene is followed by a sequence in which the Kid ends up fleeing from thugs running a shady game of poker; we watch, exhilarated, as he beats the living heck out of the bad guy, runs across a platform spinning over a gorge (McQueen did this stunt himself), and dodges some moving trains on the way. Already, Jewison and McQueen have us intrigued.

The internal conflict of The Cincinnati Kid springs forward when poker legend Lancey Howard (an excellent Edward G. Robinson, who literally enters the picture through a cloud of steam) comes into town for a lunchtime poker game with the wealthy gangster Slade (a young, unrecognizable Rip Torn), who -- with his homely wife and children, menacing bodyguard and exotic mistress- doesn't seem like he necessarily needs to be wasting his money losing thousands at stud poker, but no matter. When the crusty old Lancey easily beats him in the lunchtime game, Slade vows revenge.

“I wanna see that smug old bastard gutted!” Slade hisses to his loyal dealer, Shooter (Karl Malden). He then informs Shooter of a nasty plan he is hatching: in the upcoming, much-anticipated game that will take place between Lancey and the Kid, Slade will bet on the Kid -- and, to ensure that things go his way, he wants Shooter to deal the game and secretly fix it so that the Kid wins. Shooter initially refuses, but then Slade blackmails him, reminding him that he's “carrying markers” on Shooter, while adding that he can always recognize his markers as “null and void, if I happen to suddenly realize that you are not of sound mind.”

The first hour of the film generally consists of the events leading up to the showdown between Lancey and the Kid. We meet the Kid's girlfriend, Christian (Tuesday Weld), who loves him and maybe even wants to marry him, but feels rather shut out by his poker addiction. Midway through the film is a sequence in which the Kid tries to show how much he cares about Christian by visiting her at her home in the country. In an ordinary film, this kind of sequence might have felt pointless, but there is a wonderful moment when the Kid impresses Christian's socially impaired parents (Karl Swenson and Irene Tedrow) with his card tricks, somewhat miraculously casting off the awkwardness of his being there. Even though the Kid isn't too charismatic a person, there's no doubt about it: he's got a hell of a way with cards.

Knowing that first Peckinpah and then Jewison were involved in the making of The Cincinnati Kid, it's astonishing that another future great filmmaker was also involved: Hal Ashby. At this point in the 1960's, Ashby was an editor, and his editing work on this film is- to put it mildly- sublime. It's the fast-paced last forty-five minutes of The Cincinnati Kid, crisply edited by Ashby and expertly crafted by Jewison, that everybody always remembers. These scenes are so captivating, and so thrilling, that one not even have to be familiar with the rules of stud poker (this writer included) in order to be entertained. We watch as inferior players such as Yeller (Cab Calloway) and Pig (Jack Weston) are forced to drop out of the game, one by one, until only Lancey and the Kid are left. And, of course, there is tension behind the scenes, as we realize that Shooter is under constant pressure by Slade and his gang to keep fixing the game in the Kid's favor. As we watch with some amusement at the silly, laid-back behavior of Lady Fingers (Joan Blondell), who usually switches off with Shooter as dealer, we can sense that Shooter only wishes he could be just as relaxed.

It doesn't help that the Kid is under some pressure of his own. For example, Shooter's flirtatious, puzzle-cheating wife Melba (Ann-Margaret) has got the hots for the Kid, and is continuously trying to steal him away from Christian; earlier in the film, Melba almost succeeds in tempting the Kid, until he gives her a good spanking for stepping out of line (only McQueen could make something as vicious as a spanking look sexy on-screen). Melba's advances are bizarre, considering that she's best friends with Christian, and also when considering that both girls share each other's boy problems on a daily basis. Melba complains that Shooter is too controlling and not a whole lot of fun, but Christian is not convinced. “At least you know how much you mean to somebody”, she sighs. The idea is that Christian's relationship with the Kid will improve eventually, but, sadly, it does not: during the poker climax, Christian comes to the game to show her support... only to find the Kid and Melba in bed together. In the film's final scene, the Kid and Christian reunite on the street after the game, but this cheap, unjustified “Hollywood ending” was forced into the film at the last minute, against Jewison's wishes.

For me, the best performance in the film is by Karl Malden, whose Shooter was unquestionably one of his finest post-On the Waterfront roles. As the film moves along, we actually feel more sorry for Shooter than we do for the Kid; even though the Kid is the one running the risk of losing his money, it is Shooter who is being held tight on a leash by his boss, forced to cooperate, perhaps even in danger of being whacked if things don't go as Slade has planned. Malden has a great scene in which he confronts the Kid in-between rounds, wanting to know why the Kid folded winners in the last hand. Then the Kid, already suspecting Shooter of foul play, grabs him and throws him against the wall. There is a real sense of fear in Shooter's eyes; Malden was reportedly stunned by McQueen's unexpected force. “Kid... you gotta understand,” he tries to explain, “...this wasn't my idea! Slade's got the squeeze on me! You think I wanna deal a phony hand? You think it don't mean something to me?” But the Kid doesn't sympathize with him: “I'm gonna win this game, Shooter! And I'm gonna win it my way! And you ride along with it, or you're out. You're finished!”

All of this is only a warm-up for the last remaining minutes of the poker game, during which Jewison raises the suspense to almost unbearable levels. It's that moment at which Lancey and the Kid each have only one overturned card left that is the most suspenseful moment of all; Ashby edits the sequence so that we see the various expressions of the spectators watching over the game, their faces enshrouded in shadow. The Kid has an ace of hearts, and thinks he's got Lancey right where he wants him. Then Lancey flips his card over, and... damn it all, it's a jack. The Kid jut sits there with a wide-eyed look of shock on his face; Lancey, meanwhile, happily puffs on his cigar, pleased to have beaten yet another potentially serious player. “You're good, Kid,” he cracks- in the way that only Edward G. Robinson could say it- “but as long as I'm around, you're second-best. You might as well learn to live with it.” As the Kid walks out the door, he thinks he's got a chance at redeeming himself with a final game of penny-pitching with the Shoeshine boy (who, hilariously, appears out of nowhere), but even this simple effort ends in vain. “You tried too hard, man!” pipes the boy, using the Kid's own lines against him. “You just ain't ready for me, yet!”

Listen to Jewison's priceless commentary track on the Special Edition DVD. One of the most interesting aspects of the production he reminisces over is his relationship with McQueen on the set. At first, the star was at odds with his director, and Jewison recalls incidents such as McQueen's bafflement at not being allowed to see the film's dailies, instead being told to concentrate on his own performance. “What are you trying to do, man- you tryin' to twist my mellon?” he allegedly snapped at Jewison at one point, in that hippy action-hero sort of way that McQueen usually talked in. Observing that McQueen was probably in need of a father figure, Jewison eventually came up with something of a peaceful resolution for his star. “Look, Steve, I'm not old enough to be your father,” he claims to have told McQueen, “but I can be you older brother, and I'll always look out for you... you just relax, and do your job- and I'll always protect you.” From then on, things were different between star and director.

Three years after The Cincinnati Kid, Jewison and McQueen made The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) together. On a technical level, it's a superior film, thanks to Pablo Ferro's split-screen imagery, Ashby's advanced editing style (perhaps improved thanks to his winning an Oscar for his editing on Jewison's In the Heat of the Night), and the infamous “chess with sex” sequence (innovatively shot by Laszlo Kovacs) between McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Yet for all of its stylistic accomplishments, The Thomas Crown Affair is awfully shallow in terms of narrative storytelling; if I prefer The Cincinnati Kid by comparison, it's because I cared about its characters more, and because McQueen and Jewison's healthy working relationship comes into stronger focus. On the DVD commentary for The Thomas Crown Affair, Jewison recalls visiting McQueen in the last months leading up to his death; McQueen had grown a caveman's beard by then, and a sort of "wild" expression was starting to grow in his eyes. It's amazing to wonder about the kind of film that they could have made together by the time McQueen was in that state of health and grace.

Think about the amazing effect that The Cincinnati Kid had on the filmmakers involved. In some ways, being fired from the film was one of the best things that ever happened to Sam Peckinpah- it allowed him to spend the next four years recuperating from the embarrassment, before reemerging with the masterwork that is The Wild Bunch. Ashby's editing career led him to further exceptional editing work until he transitioned into becoming one of the best filmmakers of his generation. But by the 1980's, Peckinpah and Ashby had both succumbed to drugs and alcohol, and both had dropped dead.

Fortunately for Jewison, he survived. His legacy, however, has yet to be as respected as that of his two deceased peers. Which is a curious matter, considering what many of his greatest films have in common. When the Kid is beaten at penny-pitching by the African-American boy at the end of The Cincinnati Kid, it is the budding scene in what would eventually flower into some of the most unforgettable sequences in some of Jewison's later films. Could it possibly, for example, have served as the spark for the landmark scene in In the Heat of the Night (1967) -- another film with a Ray Charles theme song -- in which Sidney Poitier slaps the white florist? Isn't this influence also felt during the scene in A Soldier's Story (1984) in which Howard E. Rollins fiercely questions a couple of racist white soldiers? Just as Sam Peckinpah and Hal Ashby once did, after a long and rewarding career in the movies, Norman Jewison has established himself as a born filmmaking artist -- and it all began with McQueen.


Submitted to Jason Bellamy's Steve McQueen Blog-A-Thon.