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detective Oscar Grace (“Everything is just a little askew; pretty soon people start thinking the old rules are no longer in effect"), and, in two scenes where he briefly walks off with the picture, a young and terrific Mickey Rourke as an arsonist who tries to warn the oblivious Racine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.

Flashback, May 1980: Force Is With “Empire Strikes Back”

Sequels have difficult acts to live up to, and few as much as The Empire Strikes Back, the follow-up to Star Wars, the 1977 film that drew famously long lines even as it broke one box-office record after another.

George Lucas had so much riding on this: not just fan expectations, nor even an entire franchise that would enable him, at last, to make the films he wanted free of studio interference, but also his financial well-being. To finance the $33 million production, he used his profits from Star Wars, then received a bank loan. It didn’t seem like a good sign when Empire went over budget, because of inevitable production snafus, by $10 million.

Lucas needn’t have worried. Maybe The Empire Strikes Back was the only one of the six movies in the Star Wars cycle not to top $300 million domestically. But otherwise, everything went according to plan, and then some.

As the Memorial Day weekend came to an end in 1980, The Empire Strikes Back stood at the top of the box-office heap, on its way to becoming the top-grossing film of the year. Lucas made back his investment in three months.

But the movie had also, surprisingly for a sequel, earned at least a modicum of critical acclaim for adding emotional complications to what had been at heart, in the original, a mere throwback to the Flash Gordon sci-fi serials of the early sound era. Luke Skywalker’s ongoing confrontation with the evil Darth Vader now featured a surprise that added an unexpected Freudian undercurrent to Lucas' projected saga of the Jedi Knights.

Some more icing on the cake: In a film cycle that powered up modern film merchandising as we know it, Empire added another quirky, beloved character: diminutive Jedi master Yoda, who looked like Making of the President author Theodore H. White and sounded like one of Time Magazine’s odd inverted sentences from the Henry Luce era.

This time, Lucas stepped away from the director’s chair, while an initially reluctant Irvin Kershner assumed his old role. But really, could you honestly say that you could have told the difference between the two?

If you want to observe the divergence between the two movies, look to the screenwriting credits. In Star Wars, that belonged to Lucas himself. But a film consists of more than simply a simple scenario—what also makes it credible are characters acting believably and dialogue that rings true.

By common agreement of several key cast members, Lucas provided neither. One of the funniest moments in Carrie Fisher’s recent one-woman show Wishful Drinking came when she described her startled reaction to Lucas’ claim that “there’s no underwear in space.” Veteran British thespian Alec Guinness, used to embodying multiple characters of staggering variety and complexity onstage in Shakespearean roles and onscreen in Alexander Mackendrick comedies and David Lean epics, kept wondering aloud what was going on with his character this time, the sagacious Obi-Wan Kenobe. Most memorably, Harrison Ford, according to John Seabrook’s terrific retrospective on Star Wars in The New Yorker, told Lucas, in no uncertain times: “George, you can type this crap, but you sure as shit can't say it.”

Faithful reader, I sat enthusiastically, like much of the rest of the world, through Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi. But I bailed out after the 1999 film that ostensibly begins the whole saga, The Phantom Menace.

It wasn’t only because I objected to the all-around idiocy of Jar-Jar Binks, or even to the foul notion of killing off Liam Neeson as young Annakin Skywalker’s mentor, but also to the preposterous name Lucas bestowed on the latter, Qui-Gon Jinn.

(The latter—which rhymes with “Algonquin”--reminds me of Mark Twain chuckling at the name James Fenimore Cooper gave the mighty brave in The Leatherstocking Saga, “Chingachgook”—“pronounced Chicago, I think,” he wrote. Perhaps in that spirit, in his spoof Spaceballs, Mel Brooks, as the mysterious, gnomic knight master, announces: “I’m Yogurt—just plain Yogurt!”)

But Empire, as I’ve indicated, rang some interesting changes on Lucas’ stock characters. This time, after outlining his story, he turned the screenwriting chores over to hands less caught up in technical razzle-dazzle, as he was, and more on characterization.

The first screenwriter who took a crack at the sequel was Leigh Brackett, a veteran who had not only worked on several Howard Hawks films (e.g., The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo) but had carved out a niche in science fiction. In reading her (admittedly unfinished) script, though, Lucas felt disappointed.

Yet at this point, going back to her for a rewrite, even were he so inclined, was out of the question, because Brackett was dying of cancer. Not much of her script was retained onscreen, but Lucas made sure she shared screenwriting credit, in tribute to her professionalism under extraordinarily trying circumstances.

Lucas then turned to the young Lawrence Kasdan, who would go on to write Raiders of the Lost Art for Lucas, then tackle, on his own, Body Heat, The Big Chill, and The Accidental Tourist. In an interview a decade ago, Kasdan recalled the process of turning out this script as being “fun,” though how much it was is open to question, given that pre-production had already begun and Lucas and Kershner needed to review the evolving script every couple of weeks in “very intense, highly adrenalized” story sessions.