Quote of the Day (Catherine Deneuve, on the ‘Charming’ Burt Reynolds)

“He was a charming man. He had a great sense of humour. I remember going to his trailer and everything was monogrammed. He said: 'If I could have, I would have put it on my toilet paper.'”—French actress Catherine Deneuve, on working with Burt Reynolds on Hustle, quoted in Nick Foulkes, “I Was a Symbol, I Suppose,” The Financial Times, Jan. 12-13, 2019

Burt Reynolds—born on this day 85 years ago in Lansing, Mich.—occupies a niche in film somewhere between Steve McQueen and George Clooney, two other actors who made the transition from TV regular to big-screen star. Reynolds possessed considerably more skill and self-mocking humor than McQueen, but did not display often enough Clooney’s ambition and daring. At its best, his career amply reflected his laid-back charm, but at the time of his death in 2018, I was dismayed that it could have been so much more.

The dominant theme of Reynolds’ career was a refusal to take the game seriously, starting with his appearance in Cosmopolitan Magazine, where he wore a grin and little else. It was burnished by approximately 60 Tonight Show appearances in which he might say or do anything—shaving half his moustache, spraying whip cream down Johnny Carson’s pants, even joking about how bad some of his films were.

He certainly appeared in movies that any actor would have been proud to have made—notably Deliverance (the one that put him on the map), Starting Over (my favorite of his, when he was inexplicably deprived of an Oscar nomination), and Boogie Nights (which did get him a nomination, along with a short-lived second comeback). But out of 63 films—and given the power he enjoyed at his career height—that list seems paltry.

Every actor in the business long enough will have stinkers in his resume, so Reynolds can’t be faulted for that. An entertainer also makes the most of his assets, and Reynolds maximized his good looks and that ever-present twinkle in his eyes, to such an extent that he ranked only behind Robert Redford as the top male box-office star of the 1970s, according to the Web site Ultimate Movie Rankings.

So, why did his star sink in the Eighties? Several factors account for it, I think:

*Taking the easy paycheck and easy way out. In one sense, Reynolds only mirrored what Hollywood as a whole has done, increasingly so in recent years: go for the seemingly easy score, especially through sequels. Make Smokey and the Bandit? Fine. But by the time he got to Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, the well had surely run dry. The same thing happened with Cannonball Run II. It didn’t help that his screen persona carried over insistently, with little variation, to yet other films.

*Poor career choices. Reynolds admitted he made a big mistake in turning down the chance to appear as James Bond, but his errors didn’t end there. A 2018 article in Variety catalogued roles that others rode to career triumphs, including Harrison Ford (Star Wars), Richard Gere (Pretty Woman), Bruce Willis (Die Hard), and Jack Nicholson (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest AND Terms of Endearment—both of which won the actor the Oscar that forever eluded Reynolds).

*Bad health. While filming City Heat with old buddy Clint Eastwood, Reynolds suffered a broken jaw when he was hit in the face with a metal chair. Instead of going to the hospital, he took painkillers. Before he received a diagnosis of temporomandibular disorder and was treated appropriately, he lost considerable weight, leading to rumors that he had AIDS. That put an additional chill on his career prospects for two crucial years in the mid-1980s.

*Sexism. The Cosmopolitan photo session that made Reynolds notorious—and, he suggested with some justification later, kept him from being taken more seriously—may have been sparked when the magazine’s editor, Helen Gurley Brown, taunted him by asking him before a Tonight Show audience if he was sexist. (Later, off camera, she made the offer of the session, according to Brooke Hauser’s 2016 biography of Brown, Enter Helen.) Moreover, as I discussed in this prior post on the making of the disastrous Switching Channels, Reynolds exacerbated what already promised to be a complicated production by telling co-star Kathleen Turner “something about not taking second place to a woman,” as she recalled. With her star then in the ascendant and his close to nadir, it was a foolish thing to say and irredeemably disrupted their chemistry on the film.

Maybe the best concise description of Reynolds, with all his virtues and faults as an actor, came in this statement, released after his death, from TV showrunners Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who created their early ‘90s comedy Evening Shade for him: “Burt won the Emmy for best actor during our first season. He was sweet, brash, exasperating, hot-tempered, generous and wickedly talented. To be sure, it was a wild ride. R.I.P. Burt. May your star never go out."

I’m afraid it has already dimmed, though, and it may continue to do so.

Bandit’s Speedbump: Reynolds, Turner Feud Over ‘Switching Channels’

“Working with Burt Reynolds was terrible. The first day Burt came in he made me cry. He said something about not taking second place to a woman. His behavior was shocking. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t someone’s equal. I left the room sobbing. I called my husband and said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ He said, ‘You just do the job.’ It got to be very hostile because the crew began taking sides. But as for the performance, I was able to put the negativity aside. I’m not convinced Burt was.”—Actress Kathleen Turner, interviewed by David Marchese, “In Conversation: Kathleen Turner,” New York Magazine, Aug. 20, 2018

Don't let this cozy photo fool you. The stars--two of the most charismatic of their time--looked daggers at age each in their one chance working together, and they continued lobbing spitballs at each other in the 30 years since.

Burt Reynolds’ death a few days ago reminded me of Kathleen Turner’s scathing comments on him in New York a few weeks ago. I doubt if the ‘70s Smokey and the Bandit box-office king was bothered by them in these last few weeks—he may have even precipitated them, since, not too long before, when asked by Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live who was the most overrated actor of the Seventies and Eighties, he had responded with two words: “Kathleen Turner.” 

It was like this for the past three decades, as Reynolds gave as good as he got—especially when it came to Switching Channels, a misbegotten reworking of The Front Page and His Girl Friday for the cable news era that fell catastrophically short of its classic inspirations.

Amazingly, Reynolds was only one of the actors that Turner tore apart in her sit-down with David Marchese—and, despite what you might think about the quote I used here, he might not have come off the worst of the entertainers at the receiving end of her cutting tongue. 

Also lying in the ditch with their reputations shriveled were Elizabeth Taylor (“She has a bad voice, badly used”), Michael Douglas, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty (the trio competed to see who would bed her first), Nicolas Cage (“very difficult”), William Hurt (“very odd…God, you did not want to get Bill talking too much”), and the entire cast of Friends (“I didn’t feel very welcomed”).

No wonder, when asked what she felt “f------g angry” about, Turner answered simply, “Everything.”

The temptation, as Marchese seemed to do, is to ascribe much of her—your choice—outspoken or burn-all-bridges style to the rheumatoid arthritis that afflicted Turner after 1992—leaving her unable to work for long stretches, swelling her face because of the drugs prescribed for the condition, and spurring false rumors that her altered state resulted from alcoholism.

But it was one thing for Turner to express annoyance at colleagues who made her job difficult. It was another to insult someone who did her no harm. During her marriage to real estate entrepreneur Jay Weiss in the late Eighties and early Nineties, she occasionally sang back-up in his side gig fronting a rock ‘n’ roll band. When pop music writer Deborah Wilker, for instance, likened her to Linda McCartney, Kat got catty: ``No. There`s a difference. I can sing.``

Keep that in mind as you read the following:

In her 2008 memoir, Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles, Turner referred to Switching Channels as “my most unhappy film experience.” It all began as a dream project, then devolved into a shotgun wedding that all concerned wished had turned into a quickie divorce.

If prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, then acting may be the most insecure one. Anxiety and fraught nerves played an outsized role on the set of Switching Channels. It started with a woman—Turner—looking to continue her streak as one of the sexiest, successful movie queens of the Eighties. It worsened with a man--Reynolds--struggling to recover his wobbly foothold in Hollywood.

In her next project, Turner planned to play a hard-charging cable news reporter, the modern answer to Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht’s prototypical scoop-chaser, Hildy Johnson. Her wily boss—and ex-husband—would be Michael Caine, fresh off his triumph in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters.  The interplay between the two called for the kind of rapid-fire dialogue characteristic of screwball comedies, and Turner and Caine had rehearsed it carefully before shooting began.

But with production delays involving wayward mechanical sharks, Caine couldn’t complete shooting of the infamous Jaws: The Revenge in time for Switching Channels. At that point, Turner had her own impending deadline: the birth of her first baby with Weiss. The producers decided to substitute Reynolds for Caine.

In the peculiar dynamics of Hollywood at the time, it might have seemed an inspired idea. By the late ‘70s, Reynolds’ nonchalant style had made him #1 at the box office, and he had delivered an unusually restrained but assured performance at the end of the decade in James L. Brooks’ Starting Over. 

Nearly a decade later, though, after going to the well once too often with a sequel (Cannonball Run II) or a variation of his good-ol’-boy persona (Stroker Ace), Reynolds had seen his box-office clout diminish. Moreover, an accident on location while shooting City Heat had left him looking so unhealthy that false AIDS rumors spread about him.  

The producers of Switching Channels probably figured they could snag Reynolds on the cheap, and the film was his first in over a decade when he didn’t receive top billing. He was acutely aware of his lost mojo, which he registered, in the most awkward way possible, when he told Turner that he had never taken second place before to a woman. 

Stung by a statement that seemed like male chauvinism but that in retrospect looks like a cry of wounded male vanity, Turner had a crying fit. Matters didn’t improve when it became clear that Reynolds would be unable to replicate Caine’s mastery of the rapid repartee he had developed with Turner.

At this point, it might have been better for everyone concerned if the producers had simply bought Reynolds out. Instead, they decided to muddle through, using the film’s third star, Christopher Reeve (himself chagrined over not being able to work again with his Deathtrap co-star Caine) as the reluctant and uneasy mediator between Turner and Reynolds.

None of it worked. Switching Channels not only did not make anyone forget The Front Page or His Girl Friday, but also underperformed at the box office. (It surely didn’t help its critical and popular reception that another movie with a similar setting and characters, James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News, had been released several months before.)

What may have fueled Turner’s anger was not just Reynolds’ sexist behavior, but the fact that he appears to better advantage than she did. While she comes off manic and forced as the ambitious reporter, Reynolds looks more relaxed. She may have cared about her work more than he did, but she tried too hard, and the effort shows.

In later years, Reynolds would appear on one talk show after another and claim that, every day during filming, Turner had tried to get him fired. The actress, while never exactly denying it, made clear that his sexism and inability to measure up to the role more than justified any measures she took.

(Before feeling too sorry for Reynolds, it might be good to remember that he was not above throwing his weight around, too, even before achieving full stardom. In a post last week for The Daily Beast, journalist Christopher Dickey contended that during the filming of Deliverance,  the actor, feeling threatened by Dickey’s father James, had influenced director John Boorman to toss the poet-novelist off the set of the film made from his work.)

One wishes that, years later, Reynolds and Turner had tried to talk through their differences rather than continue sniping, for they might have found some intriguing commonalities. Both had created their screen personas by carefully cultivating their physical sides in a breakthrough role: Reynolds in Deliverance, Turner in Body Heat. Both used their acute body awareness to ride box-office waves; and both saw their careers collapse at least partly because of mysterious illness.   

Finally, an honest talk might have led each to realize how ambition and anxiety put them at cross-purposes. both would have realized, in middle age, how shabbily Hollywood could act toward stars once considered the hottest thing on the block. If the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have made any difference in desirability as the principal criterion in casting leads, it hasn’t become apparent yet. 

What also wasn't apparent, on the set of Switching Channels, was an elusive quality in casting that is absolutely essential to making romantic comedies: chemistry. Screwball comedy especially depends exquisitely on timing and the comfort level that romantic leads feel with each other. Good chemistry between the leads produces a magical, enduring element onscreen: It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The More the Merrier, Adam’s Rib. Bad chemistry, as seen in Switching Channels, produces explosions and destruction, with wreckage and recriminations for years afterward.           

Movie Quote of the Day (“Body Heat,” on Proper Attire for a Lady Out on the Town)

Ned Racine (played by William Hurt): “Maybe you shouldn't dress like that.”
Matty Walker (played by Kathleen Turner): “This is a blouse and a skirt. I don't know what you're talking about.”
Ned: “You shouldn't wear that body.”—Body Heat (1981), written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan

It’s that body, strolling outside on a hot, muggy summer night in Florida, that grabs the attention of seedy, incompetent small-time lawyer Racine. But it’s the voice coming from that lissome form that, like the sirens of ancient Greek literature, lures him to destruction in Body Heat, which premiered on this date in 1981.

“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man,” coos married socialite Matty Walker to Racine. Most normal people, as soon as they hear a line like that, would probably regard that as a warning, thank the lady for a few minutes of beguiling company and be on their way.

Unless, that is, you’re a horndog that this siren could size up as a sucker from miles away. Or unless, like Racine, you can hear the infinite promise conjoined in the unconcealed contempt, all wrapped up in some vague mid-Atlantic accent that advertises places and adventures you’d love to imagine.

Kathleen Turner’s voice came by way of a nomadic upbringing as the daughter of an American diplomat, where she was not only exposed to different exotic accents (many of which show up in her own smoky tones) but also learned to adapt to endless situations. In other words, she learned to shift identities--providing great technical equipment for an actress, as well as, in this case, a bone-deep understanding of what Turner called her character’s “obsession” and “single-mindedness.”

The fevered, twisty relationship between Turner and William Hurt has always been the selling point of this tribute to classic cinema that now has become classic itself. But don’t miss the fine performances by a pre-Cheers Ted Danson as fellow attorney Peter Lowenstein (a role inexplicably rejected by Jeff Goldblum), J.A. Preston as shrewd but sorrowful detective Oscar Grace (“Everything is just a little askew; pretty soon people start thinking the old rules are no longer in effect"), and, in two scenes where he briefly walks off with the picture, a young and terrific Mickey Rourke as an arsonist who tries to warn the oblivious Racine about his fate. (In the case of the latter, see this YouTube excerpt.)

From the Seventies through today, Hollywood has repeatedly tried its hand at neo-film noir, but outside Chinatown, this might be the best reinvention of classics such as Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice. It was the film debut of both director Lawrence Kasdan and star Turner, and, for all the success they had later on in that decade, in certain ways this marked the high point for both.

Movie Quote of the Day (Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, on Why a Marriage Is Ending, in “The War of the Roses”)

Oliver Rose (played by Michael Douglas): “I think you owe me a solid reason. I worked my ass off for you and the kids to have a nice life and you owe me a reason that makes sense. I want to hear it.”

Barbara Rose (played by Kathleen Turner): “Because. When I watch you eat. When I see you asleep. When I look at you lately...I just want to smash your face in.”—The War of the Roses (1989), written by Michael Leeson, adapted from the novel by Warren Adler, directed by Danny DeVito.

Certain TV series and movies epitomize the Reagan Era, I think, either in specific details or their sense of the time.

The primetime soap Dynasty was an example of the former. Creator Esther Shapiro sold her show as a kind of modern retelling of I, Claudius, but in time many saw her characters as stand-ins for the Reagans.

There was the same powerful paterfamilias; the same loving second wife; the same first wife rather lost without him; the same rebellious daughter; the same son either gay or, like Ron Reagan Jr. in those years (courtesy of his brief ballet career), rumored to be so. Its length almost exactly stretched across the Reagan administration, premiering nine days before the Gipper’s inauguration and ending five months after he left the White House.

In showing liberalism at bay, Family Ties represented the second trend. Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter Birney were the stars when the show premiered in 1982, but viewer interest swung irresistibly toward Michael J. Fox, who made conservative son Alex Keaton a charmer you rooted for even though you knew you shouldn’t.

Parents Steven and Elyse Keaton, Sixties hippies who’d morphed into, respectively, a public-TV exec and an architect, looked old and stodgy, just as liberalism did in that era compared with laissez-faire economics (nowadays, we know, in politics as in life on TV, that father knows best).

But the black comedy The War of the Roses touched a particular national nerve, taking the number-one box-office spot in the U.S. on this date 20 years ago. Oliver and Barbara Rose tortured each other so much that they brought to mind Samuel Butler’s acidic summary of Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane: “Yes it was good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.”

Except, of course, that Butler was not counting children as collateral damage. The two Rose kids become casualties in the couple’s ferocious divorce after 17 years of marriage, just as the children of Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook did and as those of Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren will in the event (increasingly likely) that the golfer and his wife part ways.

Warren Adler’s novel was published in 1981, just as a new mood was sweeping the country. The film came out eight years later, when that initial headiness had long since worn off, courtesy of a stock-market correction (sound familiar?). Many in the nation began to take stock of their own lives, if only for a brief period.

The battles between Oliver and Barbara Rose struck such a chord because of this (admittedly short-lived) reassessment. Their relationship began with material goods—a typical romantic- comedy, meet-cute encounter at an auction—so it was only natural that when it all soured—when Barbara decided to have the things that Oliver, as he claims, “worked his ass off for”—it would also involve money and everything it could buy.

Their opulent home forms their battleground, and their take-no-prisoners engagements escalate to take in Barbara’s catered dinner (which Oliver ruins by urinating into it), Oliver’s sports car, and the expensive chandelier from which they dangle at the film’s denouement.

Following Romancing the Stone and its sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, The War of the Roses represented the third (and, so far, last) teaming of Douglas and Turner (who enjoyed a furtive, quickly ended offscreen affair during the making of Stone). These two actors were unafraid to follow their selfish yuppie characters to their logical conclusion. (Douglas gets off one of my favorite lines from the film: "You have sunk below the deepest layer of prehistoric frog shit at the bottom of a New Jersey scum swamp.")

The ascension to power of Barack Obama, like the earlier Presidency of Bill Clinton, persuaded many that a new Age of Aquarius, filled with love and understanding at last, was about to ensue. I’m afraid it’s not going to happen, for reasons having nothing to do with whatever mix of talents and frailties these Presidents and their appointees brought to Washington. It has everything to do with an instinct in the American people far more basic than the kind present in Douglas’ notorious 1990s thriller.

The hunger for material goods has only been checked by the recent recession, just as the “Decade of Greed” did not end when Reagan left for California. That hunger shrivels everything, including marriage.

With so much materially at stake these days, divorce only promises to become nastier. The weapons in the Divorce Wars have only multiplied since the Roses jousted.

In the old days, photographic evidence of liaisons would be enough to compel a wronged spouse to scream bloody murder. Think of the classic early episode of L.A. Law when Arnie Becker warns a client that she does not want to see the pictures of her errant hubby. When she persists and he shows them reluctantly, the inevitable explosion—and resulting legal complication—follows.

But now text messages, reports The New York Times, represent a new “Digital Lipstick on the Collar.” According to the piece, divorce attorneys are seeing an increase in cases where spouses are offering text messages as evidence of adultery.

The War of the Roses missed out on the telecommunications boom that produced the explicit text message, but in so many other ways it anticipated how our age is producing thousands of increasingly toxic divisions of the spoils.