Bo Hopkins – Movie Musings

Comforting, nostalgia-tinged film, full of wit and comedy, but without a real sense of insight

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Richard Dreyfuss (Curt), Ron Howard (Steve), Paul Le Mat (John), Charles Martin Smith (Terry the Toad), Candy Clark (Debbie), Mackenzie Phillips (Carol), Cindy Williams (Laurie), Wolfman Jack (Himself), Bo Hopkins (Joe), Harrison Ford (Bob Falfa)

Years before he went a long time ago to a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas went not nearly so far back or away: Modesto, California 11 years earlier for a story seeped in nostalgia about the America he remembered growing up in. Much like Star Wars, studio execs thought this hardly sounded like a film people would pay money to see – only the support of a red-hot Francis Ford Coppola got it the green light. It then became one of the most profitable films ever made, repaying its tiny investment many, many times over – not to mention helping kick-start a nostalgic wave that would also (in a way) help Star Wars become a mega-hit.

Told over the final night of the summer vacation, four late teenage friends go through various coming-of-age quests. Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), having second thoughts about leaving for college, spends the night in a Quixotic quest for a girl who mouthed ‘I love you’ to him from a passing car. Best friend Steve (Ron Howard) is more keen to depart, despite the pleas of his girlfriend (and Curt’s sister) Laurie (Cindy Williams). Their geeky friend Terry (Charles Martin Smith) desperately tries to impress Debbie (Candy Clark) with a borrowed car. And cool kid John (Paul Le Mat), is saddled with 12-year old Carol (Mackenzie Phillips) while fending off a challenge for his drag-racing crown from Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford).

There is an undeniable charm to American Graffiti so it’s not remotely a surprise it was a smash hit – or that, with its warm nostalgia for what felt a simpler, happier time, it helped inspire (among many other things) hit sitcom Happy Days. Lucas made the film after the disappointment of his debut, THX 1138, a chilling piece of dystopian sci-fi unlike anything else he ever made again. His segue into something fun, unchallenging and entertainingly crowd-pleasing as this marked a shift that stretched over the rest of his career: a desire to produce stuff the regular cinema-goer wanted to see.

American Graffiti is brilliantly assembled, cut together with a superb sense of pace by Marica Lucas and Verna Fields as it moves between what is effectively four short films. What’s particularly striking about its well-timed pace is that it never jars that, fundamentally, all four stories are thematically the same: horny young men learn lessons and reach surprising decisions in comic situations that place them out of their comfort zones. It’s further helped by its sharp dialogue – Lucas turned over his storyline to Gloria Katz and Wiliard Huyck to punch it up (as Stars Wars prequels viewers know only too well, dialogue was never Lucas’s strength).

It’s all then extremely well-executed by the cast. Best in show, not surprisingly, is Richard Dreyfuss who rode the wave from here to create one of the most impressive 1970s CVs. Dreyfuss – already nearly 25 when playing this teen – has just the right balance of naïve, dreamy decency and cheeky charm as a young man struggling to leave childhood behind to grow-up. He has a brilliant sense of comic timing for his smart-aleck one-liners, while totally convincing as the sort of romantic kid who wants to believe in love-at-first-sight. From awkwardly covering-up a dime-store theft, to impishly sabotaging a police car, or launching into a romantic plea for help in locating the woman who has stolen his heart with a glance, it’s a stand-out performance.

Ron Howard as the want-away Steve who begins to question his decisions, has less spark not helped that the interplay between him and Cindy Williams’ Laurie makes for the film’s dullest and most earnest pairing (both actors went onto play versions of these characters in Happy Days). Especially since they are contrasted with the comedy of mishaps (failed attempts to get alcohol, car jackings, bungled attempts to tackle thieves) of a very funny Charles Martin Smith (cementing a career of geeks) and Oscar-nominated Candy Clark, funny and very sweet as a cool girl who wants something meaningful from the boys fawning over her. The final pairing has some similarly sparky interplay between Paul Le Mat’s frustrated cool-kid, secretly worried his best days are already behind him and Mackenzie Phillips’ precocious pre-teen.

All this take place in a setting marinated in nostalgia and charm. It is a reassuring, unchallenging and romantic view of a particular era in American cultural history. One before the challenges of counterculture, Watergate and Vietnam. It harkened back to an era where kids had neatly cut-hair and wore plaid-shirts tucked into their trousers; where the most dangerous thing a teenager might do is thumb their nose at bossy cops or bum a bottle of booze. All four of the kids are the sort any girl could bring home to their parents without any concern about how they would be received, and even the film’s nominal bad boy is a stand-up guy with firm principles and loyalty.

In fact, what becomes clear is, unlike films from the likes of Fellini (which partly inspired Lucas) this is without any real introspection at all. Other films – take a look at Last Picture Show – would have looked at this setting and wondered if there are darker elements underpinning small town America. Prejudices, jealousies and the like – or the sort of dark foreshadowing of historical traumas like Vietnam and Nixon being just round the corner. There is none of that there – so little in fact that it’s a little jarring when the film’s on-screen “what happened in next” reveals two of its leads would suffer tragic early deaths, one in Vietnam (it’s also jarring – even at the time – that these on-screen captions tell us nothing at all about the futures of the female characters).

It’s a reminder that Lucas is an entertainer, not a director looking to challenge or explore deeper truths. And, to be fair to him, if he had really allowed American Graffiti more space to acknowledge the darkness to come, or some of the less seemly sides of small-town life, it certainly wouldn’t have become one of the most profitable films of all time. Instead, this is a film that served as a warm hug, a rose-tinted memory of what their childhoods might have been like, when everything was simpler, safer and more straight-forward and the biggest problem you could possibly face was finding the girl you liked and dealing with college. It’s undeniable entertaining, fun and heart-warmingly enjoyable, but it’s also a carefully reassuring view of a far more complex world.

Brad Davis and John Hurt find themselves in melodramatic hell in Midnight Express

Director: Alan Parker

Cast: Brad Davis (Billy Hayes), Randy Quaid (Jimmy Booth), John Hurt (Max), Paul L Smith (Hamidou), Irene Miracle (Susan), Bo Hopkins (Tex), Paolo Bonacelli (Rifkin), Norbert Weisser (Erich), Mike Kellin (Mr Hayes), Peter Jeffrey (Ahmet), Kevork Malikyan (Prosecutor)

Ever wondered why “Turkish prison” was, for a long time, practically a synonym for “hell on earth”? A big reason is this film’s box-office success, a heavily fictionalised version of the experiences of Billy Hayes (Brad Davis), a young American caught smuggling hashish out of Turkey and eventually sentenced to 30 years in a prison notorious for violence, torture and rape. The film covers Hayes’ imprisonment, his alliances with fellow prisoners loud-mouthed American Jimmy (Randy Quaid) and sensitive, strung-out Englishman Max (John Hurt), and his ill-treatment at the hands of sadistic guard Hamidou (Paul L Smith). It’s not exactly a light watch.

Midnight Express was an unexpected controversial sleeper hit. Many felt the film was grossly violent, horrible, and borderline racist towards its Turkish characters. Looking back now, the violence is (with a few exceptions) no more than you might expect – but the attitude the film takes towards its Turkish characters really sticks out.

There is barely a Turk in this who isn’t crooked, sadistic, greedy, ugly or stupid (or a combination of all five). The depiction is so unsettlingly bad, the real Billy Hayes apologised at the time (he was joined years later by the film’s producers and writer, Oliver Stone). Many of the Turks are lascivious anal rapists, while the whole film has a queasy unease about homosexuality. The real Billy Hayes engaged in relationships with other men in prison – the film’s Hayes kisses a fellow prisoner in the shower but then shakes his head and leaves. A 1970s audience could cope with seeing a man flogged or tortured – but in no way could they be expected to watch two men making out.

Other than these unsettling black marks, Midnight Express is a taut, well-made, melodrama. And I say melodrama because both Stone and Parker frequently go over the top. After a friend is betrayed to a horrible fate by a Turkish prisoner, Hayes freaks out, violently beats the Turk, gouges his eyes and then (in almost laughable slow-mo) bites his tongue out and spits it across the room. Later, he is finally allowed to receive a visit from his girlfriend – she presses her breasts up against the glass while a near catatonic Hayes tearfully masturbates (“I wish I could make it better for you baby” she sighs, tearfully). Yes both those sequences are as OTT as they sound.

But when it calms down, Parker crafts a pretty affecting story. It cuts Hayes a lot of slack – I found it hard to feel sorry for a dumb, drug-smuggler who assumes his American passport will let him off with a slap on the wrist. I can’t be alone in thinking that someone who breaks the law deserves to pay some sort of price. To be fair, I think the film partly shares this view: it fast-forwards through most of Hayes’ original term, and only really hits into full misery once his sentence is arbitrarily extended by 27 years. I think Parker and Stone believe this switches the moral right to Hayes, who had served his term only to be hit with a sudden draconian change weeks before release.

A lot of the film’s impact comes from Brad Davis’ impassioned performance as Hayes. There is something very sensitive and gentle about Davis, a real vulnerability that the film seizes upon to great effect. He looks like a bewildered lost soul, and Davis’ performance is scintillating first in its confusion, then his distress and anger.

There are decent performances from the rest of the cast, with John Hurt standing out as the gentle Max. Garlanded with awards, Hurt is perfect as the straggled, beaten down, but still cynical and surly Max – and of course Hurt’s natural affinity for suffering works perfectly for a character who goes through the wringer. Quaid also does decent work as a thoughtless loudmouth, as does Kellin as Hayes’ impotent father. It’s also nice to see a small cameo from Peter Jeffrey as a well-spoken half-English paedophile in the prison’s psychiatric ward.

It’s a shame that Midnight Express too frequently goes too far, as it’s got an almost medieval understanding of suffering. The prison is a grim world of its own, where the prisoners largely self-police and acts of petty revenge are common. Later in the film, Hayes is sent to the film’s psychiatric ward, a hellish basement where prisoners walk in drugged-up dumbness pointlessly round and round a stone pillar.

Moments like this are far more impactful because they avoid the extremities of the rest of the film. Most of what we see isn’t true – Hayes’ story and his escape was vastly different, and the film exaggerates both his naïveté and his suffering – but it still works extremely well. Parker fought to end the film simply, rather than the all-action escape sequence filmed and this works wonderfully (it’s basically a Third Man homage, by way of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye) – although it still finds another moment for a threat of anal rape in the final ten minutes.

Midnight Express is a decent film, but not a pleasant one – and it leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth, for all the competence with which it is made. Parker and Stone frequently go too far, and the reek of homophobic racism still comes off the film. However it is certainly a good piece of technical film-making and has some marvellous performances in the mix.