Wall Street: People Never Change

Hair color may change, but an obsession with a certain shade of green never does...

If Oliver Stone is disappointed that his inconsequential Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps isn't nudging its way into the Best Picture race, he might consider sneaking it into the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Fact is, for American viewers the characters may as well be speaking a rural Turkish dialect as they argue and fret about the recent financial crisis. It's yet another aimless Recession Movie that ultimately serves no purpose other than to remind us that we still have no idea what a credit default swap is. We don't understand Wall Street, and thus we can't understand Wall Street.

But then, that's assuming Stone set out to explain this disaster in the first place, which we can rule out based simply on the fact that he doesn't actually portray even one financial shenanigan (leaving Charles Ferguson's upcoming Inside Job as the all-important final chance to explain the recession in Main Street terms). Instead, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a timeless examination of greed, similar to its prequel in an attempt to personify evil as a white guy in a dark suit.

To the extent that Stone successfully portrays bankers and brokers as scheming swindlers, we should be thankful. It puts us at much greater ease when we can pin the blame on them, the lenders, and not us, the borrowers, and Stone's stylish flair throughout the film, as unnecessary as it is to the story, still achieves an essential purpose in distracting us from the film's bleak central theme: people never change.

Although advertising firms and media headlines and magazine columnists naïvely and hopelessly attempt to convince us that we've entered a "new normal" in which people will spend sparingly and save wisely, the inconvenient truth is that 90% of Americans are earning and spending as much as they ever have (and in the case of the top earners, earning more than they ever have). Interest rates remain at historic lows and credit is still freely available to nearly anyone who desires it. As the recession begins to fade on a wider scale and the opportunities for easy money begin to emerge, we will be resurrected like millions of Gordon Gekkos, anxious to reclaim our financial kingdoms, no matter the literal or figurative cost. Isn't that human nature, or, at the very least, the American way?

Whatever Happened To: Michael Douglas?

["Whatever Happened To:...?" is an occasional feature about an actor or actress who, despite having had a highly successful film career at some point, has for some unknown reason faded from the spotlight in recent years. ]

If I didn't know better I'd propose a ridiculous theory here. While acknowledging the well-cataloged evidence of gender-based age discrimination in Hollywood (you might remember a rich discussion after I asked "Whatever Happened to: Meg Ryan?"), the case of Michael Douglas could fool you into thinking that the market isn't really flooded with opportunities for older men these days, either.

I even found a recent argument in favor of this idea, but a simple look back at Best Actor nominees this decade reveals a veritable AARP membership roster: Frank Langella (age 71), Richard Jenkins (age 62), Clint Eastwood (age 79), Peter O'Toole (age 76), Tommy Lee Jones (age 62), David Strathairn (age 60), Ben Kingsley (age ), Jack Nicholson (age 72), and Michael Caine (age 76). To be generous you could add Anthony Hopkins (age 71), who is perhaps deserving of a "Whatever Happened to...?" feature of his own (like Sean Connery), even though he was still great as recently as five years ago in Proof and The World's Fastest Indian.

So yes, I do know better than to make the age discrimination argument for Douglas, and even contrarians could continue arguing that there are even older (mostly British?) women landing major roles in recent years (Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Imelda Staunton, Judi Dench). But...yeah, that's a pretty short list.

In any event, where does all of this leave 64 year-old Michael Douglas, a well-respected Best Actor winner who could command as much as $20 million per picture as recently as 10 years ago?

Fatal Attraction (1987), Falling Down (1993), Disclosure (1994)

I think the secret to much of his success, in addition to acting talent, confidence, a gravely voice and good looks, was a keen sense of self-awareness. He appeared to know exactly which roles suited his look and his style, like Tom Cruise or George Clooney behind him. This made him an easy target for the criticism of "always playing the same misogynistic/womanizing character", but the other side of that coin is "always playing the same misogynistic/womanizing character really, really well". Which is not to say that Douglas never took off his suit and stepped out of the office and away from the women. Movies like Falling Down (highlighted as an Underrated MOTM last summer), The Game, and even Wonder Boys showed Douglas in more emotionally tormented roles, while other performances (Romancing the Stone, The Jewel of the Nile, The Ghost and the Darkness) showed that he wasn't afraid to break a sweat out in the wild.

Somewhere around the year 2000, however, Douglas must have become restless in these roles. Wonder Boys was a bit of risk for him artistically, and despite the positive reviews the film received, he was pretty hurt by his peers' cool reception to it. IMDb quotes him as saying, "Wonder Boys was a huge disappointment personally. I loved the movie and we didn't even get critically acknowledged as far as awards go. I thought it was a fucking disgrace. I'll be honest - it really hurt my confidence. It was a punch in the gut."

How this affected his future choices in roles I can't say, but as I see it, 2000 was the year his career took a downward turn. Coincidentally - and I really do think it's a coincidence - it was also the year that he married Catherine Zeta-Jones, his junior by 25 years to the day (they share the same birthday, which is completely useless information that you now have stuck in your head).

The Game (1997), Traffic and Wonder Boys (2000)

But what actually happened after the year 2000? Well, he began exploring roles in comedy films (as well as a guest appearance on TV's "Will & Grace"), and almost immediately had two of the worst years of his career: 2001 (One Night at McCool's and Don't Say A Word - the latter maybe being an unintentional comedy) and 2003 (The In-Laws and It Runs in the Family, the latter of which also starred his father, Kirk, the screen legend-turned-MySpace blogger). As with Meg Ryan, these duds were followed, perhaps coincidentally, by a complete hiatus from any acting roles - nothing at all until 2006, when the terrible trend unfortunately picked right back up where it left off with The Sentinel and You, Me, and Dupree, both of which were almost universally panned. (Ironically, the same year he wisely declined to reprise his role opposite Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct 2.)

Those two movies in 2006 marked my last sightings of Douglas on the big screen, because by the time The King of California arrived in very limited release in 2007, it wasn't clear whether Douglas was still taking acting seriously. Either that or nobody recognized him in a wild-eyed, bearded role as an estranged father living in a mental institution. The movie earned moderately positive reviews but did little to revive his acting career, which may not have been his motive in the first place, since in recent years he has been an advocate for nuclear disarmament as well as an announcer for the NBC Nightly News.

Which brings us to 2009, where Douglas has just played - this is unbelievable- a supporting role to Matthew McConaughey in the ridiculous Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Roger Ebert deadpanned in his review, "Michael Douglas is widely said to have modeled his hair, eyeglass frames and general appearance on the noted womanizer Bob Evans, but actually he reminded me more of Kirk Douglas playing Bob Evans. It's an effective performance either way you look at it." Meanwhile, my neighborhood critic Colin Covert observed that "Michael Douglas, as the playboy uncle who raised the orphaned Connor, returns from the dead, introducing the spirits that will teach his nephew a cautionary lesson. Douglas, radiating an arid narcissism, does look as if he was recently exhumed. Whether this is a deliberate makeup choice or unfortunate lighting is hard to guess." The movie comfortably holds a 28% on RT and 34 rating on Metacritic.

What is Douglas doing in these movies? We can't be entirely sure, but if not for Oliver Stone it nearly would have been time to completely write off Douglas' career from this point on. Stone, who directed Douglas in his Best Actor-winning performance in 1988's Wall Street, has recently announced plans for a sequel titled Wall Street 2 (originally Money Never Sleeps), due out in 2011. Douglas will reprise his role as Gordon Gekko, with Shia LaBeouf (man, I'm getting so good at spelling that) and Javier Bardem in supporting roles.

Hopefully it will be a return to form for Douglas, even if his character is a complete weasel. As Gekko, he boasted, "I look at a hundred deals a day. I pick one." Douglas himself could have said the same thing 10-15 years ago, but sadly, these days it doesn't appear those deals are landing on his desk very often.

Underrated MOTM: Falling Down (1993)

August's Underrated Movie of the Month (MOTM) seems appropriate for the last hot days of summer, and also, coincidentally, as a follow up to my thoughts on Frozen River. More exaggerated, more violent, and more symbolic than that film, Falling Down is a movie that just makes you feel bad all over. Obviously, this is not why I recommend giving it another look. Rather, I bring attention to it as a movie with a story that, 15 years after its release, is still relevant, almost poignant, and probably just as shocking to watch.

I didn't see Falling Down in the theater, and I probably haven't seen it for at least five years, but somehow it remains with me more than some of the movies that I've seen in the last month. It's no surprise - just by looking at the poster you can tell it features unique imagery. But beyond the memorable scenes and beyond Michael Douglas' jawdroppingly overlooked performance, Falling Down deserves credit for being one of those movies, like the upcoming Underrated MOTM The Siege, that was eerily ahead of its time.

Actor Ebbe Roe Smith had two screenwriting credits in his career: Falling Down was his first original screenplay, and Car 54, Where Are You? was his second (don't ask, it's Hollywood). Every studio in Hollywood reportedly turned down Smith's screenplay for Falling Down until Douglas read it and endorsed it as "one of the best he'd ever read". Brought on board to direct was Joel Schumacher, who had made his career in the 80's with St. Elmo's Fire and The Lost Boys. After a few promising early 90's offerings (Falling Down included), Schumacher would unfortunately begin producing the box-office repellent that he continues to bring us to this day. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who's seen more than one of his movies in the theater in the last 10 years. I'm serious - anybody?

By the same token, you might have as much difficulty finding more than handful of people who have either seen or remember Falling Down. For the most part, initial reviews were positive, including a gem by Roger Ebert. In the years that have passed, however, online critics (no doubt still riding the anti-Crash bandwagon full steam ahead) have lashed out at Falling Down, calling it, "a crude, cathartic rant that both condemns and exploits modern paranoia," and, "an uneven and frequently pretentious story that is never as important or dramatic as it thinks it is." I'm not going to take this opportunity to defend Crash in particular, but I am going to declare that movies like it (and like Falling Down's L.A. predecessor Grand Canyon) have the potential to be extremely powerful and influential in a number of ways, beyond the fact that they initiate a conversation that few Americans want to have.

In case you haven't seen Falling Down, well there's not much to summarize. It's just one crazy day in the life of Bill Foster (Douglas), a former Department of Defense employee who, unable to deal with his failed marriage (which ended in a restraining order) and abrupt job loss, simply snaps one hot summer morning while sitting in a hellish traffic jam on the way to his daughter's birthday party, to which he was obviously uninvited. In one of the best scenes in the movie, Foster does what so many of us have considered: he gets out of his car and just starts walking. Through a series of bizarre encounters with gang members, a neo-Nazi, a Korean shop owner, some Whammyburger employees, and several other L.A. denizens, Foster commits numerous felonies and takes multiple lives. Throughout his rampage, he's tracked by the grizzled, retiring detective Martin Prendergast (Robert Duvall), who eventually finds Foster at the home of his ex-wife, Beth (Barbara Hershey).

There are two aspects to Falling Down that leave a lasting impression to this day. The first is the performance by Michael Douglas, who inhabits the monstrous Bill Foster with shocking ease even if he occasionally pours on the snarling nastiness a little too thick. If you found it necessary I suppose you could point out that Foster's character is thinly developed, but then I think you're missing the point. We don't know much more about him than we knew about Heath Ledger's Joker in this summer's The Dark Knight, but that didn't seem to create a problem, did it? Both are entirely original characters, and though their hysterics are more important than their histories, a major difference between the two is worth pointing out: people like Bill Foster actually exist.

I love Ebert's take on Foster:

"What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders."

Aside from featuring one of the most overlooked characters of the 90's, Falling Down was also, as I already mentioned, an amazingly accurate portrayal of 1992 Los Angeles. Again, Ebert:

"Because the character is white, and many of his targets are not, the movie could be read as racist. I prefer to think of it as a reflection of the real feelings of a lot of people who, lacking the insight to see how political and economic philosophies have affected them, fall back on easy scapegoating. If you don't have a job and the Korean shop owner does, it is easy to see him as the villain. It takes a little more imagination to realize that you lost your job because of the greedy and unsound financial games of the go-go junk bond years...Falling Down does a good job of representing a real feeling in our society today."

Easy for Ebert to say in 1993 after having observed the L.A. riots which, wouldn't you know it, occurred while Falling Down was filming in the city.

If everything Ebert says is true, and I believe it is, Falling Down should be praised as one of the better movies of the 90's, as an unflinching tale of moral decay, and as an important influence on the racially-charged movies that followed it, including Crash and American History X. Wash all of that aside if you like, but you still have a performance by Michael Douglas that is somehow never mentioned alongside his memorable work in Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, Basic Instinct, The Game, and Wonder Boys. Where is the love for this movie? Absent within it, absent toward it.

Too bad, really, because another look at Falling Down could produce some important discussions at this time in America. Unfortunately, I fear Bill Foster is not as much of a caricature as we'd like to think.