Dir: James Toback
Star: Ray Sharkey, Ornella Muti, Klaus Kinski, Armand Assante
It’s not often you can point at a specific moment, after which it becomes impossible to take a film seriously. Usually, this kind of thing creeps up gradually, until you realize you are watching proceedings with a permanent, sardonically raised eyebrow. But, here, there’s a particular line of dialogue which was just so horrifically bad, that the snort of derision it provoked echoed throughout the rest of the film. It comes after banker Byron Levin (Sharkey) has finished an appointment with international mogul Frederick Stockheinz (Kinski), declining an offer of one million dollars to fly down to Latin America and convince Levin’s former college friend, now national leader, Lorenzo Prado (Assante), not to nationalize Stockheinz’s mines. On the way out to his car, however, he bumps into the businessman’s wife, Catherine (Muti), and falls instantly for her. However, he opts for what is surely the most laughable pick-up line in cinema history:
“If you ever touch him again, or any other man, I’ll kill you.”
What’s particularly ludicrous, is that it works, and the two begin a torrid affair. Maybe the eighties were a different era or – and I’m leaning more toward this explanation – maybe Toback thinks this kind of line actually succeeds, outside of movieland. Three decades after this movie came out, he has a bad reputation for trying out cringeworthy chat-up techniques on women in the street. So perhaps it’s not too much of a surprise that, when in his screenplay, the lead character behaves in the same way. I suspect many viewers will be less convinced, and the disbelief largely set the tone for the remainder of this, which stumbles from one sad wish-fulfillment to the next, visiting the usual benchmarks of Toback’s movies (“sex, money, race, gambling, fate, art, music, seduction, the conflict between high and low culture, lofty philosophizing, and street-corner tough-guy posturing”, to quote Nathan Rabin). The startling thing is, the chat-up line is only one among a number of contenders for the worst scene here. We’ll get to others in due course.
In some ways, it is ahead of its time, portraying a world where business and government have become merged. As Stockheinz says during his first meeting with Levin (in between yelling as he makes Very Important Phone-calls, because he is a Very Important Businessman), “Trans Allied Silver is not a corporation, it’s a civilization… In ten years, multinationals will own 65% of the world”. But the film does little to explore the concept, and I’m inclined to file this prescience in the “Blind squirrel” category of scriptwriting. On the other hand, particular in the early going, so much of the film seem to depict people making phone-calls, it could be an AT&T corporate video. Despite the kind of seduction technique which appears to have strayed in from /r/theredpill, Catherine falls for Byron, even though he has little to offer except further bizarre statements, and sexual dysfunction. These combine to provide another memorably bad scene. Byron can’t sustain an erection, and requests Catherine sing The Star-Spangled Banner to bring his Old Glory to attention. That whirring sound you hear, is Betsy Ross spinning in her grave.
You can also add in the poignant monologue where Catherine talks about discovering her father’s dead body after he committed suicide: “He was hanging, naked, from the rafters. His penis was sticking out. His feet were blue”. It’s reminiscent of nothing so much as Phoebe Cates’ story in Gremlins, about how her father dressed as Santa, got stuck in the chimney and died. Except, that was intended as black comedy. This is apparently dead serious, since Toback’s films wouldn’t know a joke if it came up and introduced itself to them. Having been fired from his bank job, and now banging the millionaire’s misses, our hero opts to take Stockheinz up on his offer, and the three of them fly off to “Costa Salva”. Byron hangs out with Lorenzo for a bit, while he performs the usual duties of a Latin American president e.g. attending a rally, but still finding time to squeeze in a quick shag with a local peasant girl he passes on the road, and to whom he takes a fancy.
There’s finally some action after Stockheinz eventually susses out what’s going on. He orders his driver/bodyguard Blair to get rid of Byron, only to be double-crossed, as Blair has taken Lorenzo’s money to kill his employer. Byron disrupts the attempt – for no reason that Toback bothers to make sense for his character – only for Stockheinz to kill Blair and leave the witless banker (or bitless wanker, I’m not sure which is more appropriate) to take the rap. Except Lorenzo lets Byron go, because…. College buddies? Back in America, Levin’s bibliophile wife leaves him – it’s not clear what happened to his senile father in law (played by renowned Golden Age director, King Vidor). But there’s a happy ending, as Catherine – or, at least, Catherine’s voice – shows up and asks where he is going. No clue is offered concerning what happened to Stockheinz either. Maybe he got left behind in Costa Salva.
It’s a mess, from beginning to end, and it’s not even a likeable mess. Kinski gets to shout a lot into phones, and that’s about it. Even Toback now says Sharkey was “the wrong actor” – Toback wanted to use Harvey Keitel, although the script was originally written for Warren Beatty, a frequent partner of Toback, who also has a bit of a reputation, to put it mildly, as a womanizer. Maybe he’d have been better able to pull off the over-ripe dialogue Toback penned; I note Toback’s subsequent film, The Pick-Up Artist, was also intended as a Beatty vehicle. One can only wonder what might have transpired had original producer and renowned critic Pauline Kael stayed with the production. She hated Toback’s script, requested a rewrite, and according to Toback, “After six weeks with her, I said to [Beatty], “That’s it, either I’m going or she’s going.”” Kael went. With hindsight, the results couldn’t have been any worse if they’d fired Toback.