Mark Metcalf, co-owner of Libby Montana restaurant in Mequon, is an actor known for his work in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."
In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects.
He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com.
This week, Metcalfe weighs in on "Ace in the Hole," "Once" and "The Hoax."
ACE IN THE HOLE (1951)
Many people do not like to watch movies that are in black & white. I don't understand why, unless it's simply because they are used to color and think black and white is going backwards or something like that. That's like not reading history because it took place in the past. Duh ... If you cut yourself off from black and white films, you miss out on 50 percent of the movies ever made. More importantly, you miss many of the great filmmakers that ever lived. Filmmakers that any filmmaker of today will easily admit they learned from; filmmakers like Billy Wilder.
Wilder is really one of the great moviemakers, a maker of popular entertainment. It seems as though people think of "pop culture" as a thing that exists right now, with no history or tradition. Shakespeare was pop culture, so were Aeschylus and Sophocles. Just because they are perceived as high brow now doesn't mean that the people who went to see them back then were any brighter, smarter or more cultured than we are now.
Madonna and Sarah Bernhardt probably have more in common than we like to think. We put ourselves down by thinking that pop culture is thin, light stuff that only lasts a few moments and then is forgotten. Movies like "The Apartment," "Some Like It Hot," "Sunset Boulevard," "Stalag 17," "Witness For the Prosecution," "Irma La Douce," "Double Indemnity" and this one, that I had never heard of before, "Ace In the Hole," are popular entertainment at its best.
Because they were made before most of you were born, they are somehow historical and that makes them not worth the effort. However, it's like my son and spinach, if you haven't tried it, how do you know you don't like it?
The Kirk Douglas performance in the center of "Ace in the Hole" is a little overbearing, as all Kirk Douglas performances are, but don't let that spoil it. The script and the story, which Wilder wrote, as he did everything he directed, are worth the grins that Douglas forces out of you. I just kept imagining Tom Cruise in the part and it made it easier. Tom Cruise is the Kirk Douglas of today: overeager, over-amped and over-developed in the jaw.
It's the story of a washed up journalist who stumbles on a story in New Mexico, a story of a man trapped in a cave. The journalist dries out long enough to promote the story, turns it into a media circus, becomes a star again, then gets a conscience just in time to fall down dead right in our laps.
The sex between Jan Sterling and Douglas is at a distance but the desert heat is there, along with the desire and the desperation. She wants him, but he is to busy manipulating to be anything more than violent. It's a great story and Wilder lets the little two-pump gas station and diner in the desert grow to become the midway for one man's demise and then has it all disappear with the wind in an instant. It is deliberate and it is surprising.
Maybe Douglas is hard to watch because he never apologizes for the character's excesses. He owns them, takes his shirt off and bares them to us all. It's brave acting, really. It's over the top and it goes to far, but he is taking the risks that we are too fearful to take. It's why it endures.
ONCE (2006)
With most movies, you know where you're going after just a few minutes. The fun part is how you get there and what the scenery is like along the way.
This is especially true with romances, romantic comedies in particular. "Once" is Irish, and it's not a period piece about the troubles, and it doesn't have Daniel Day Lewis in it, or that other young kid with the startling eyes who was in that movie on a plane, where he tries to get the woman from "Wedding Crashers" to do something ... you know the one ... Anyway, it's Irish, so that gives it a lot of charm. It's also a musical. At least it's built around music, about people whose lives are music, and a specific kind of music.
I don't know enough about it to put a label on it, but it sounds like it comes out of Irish folk music with the stress and strain of contemporary urban life, with the attendant desperation and sorrow driving it from within.
A street singer sings of the woman who left him and his longing for her. A young Czech immigrant who sells roses on the street likes his music and befriends him, helps him develop and promote his music. They fall in love, but remain chaste. She is married with a child, but her husband is in the Czech Republic and the street singer, remember, has the woman he longs for. You know where it's going. You know they will fall in love. You want them to. Moreover, it's a refreshing change that they are good and sensitive people, kind and polite and not self-centered or narcissistic. It's especially surprising, because so many American films are about the narcissism of modern life in Hollywood.
This film, though, is a fairy tale but it is told almost like a documentary. Hand-held camera. Very intimate. Very naturalistic acting. No movie stars. Just real people behaving in a real way in a fairy tale romance. But, not a Disney fairy tale. This could really happen. And you are moved. You really care about the people, believe in them and want good things to happen for them.
Sometimes the music is like listening to bagpipes, but sometimes, rarely for me, but sometimes, bagpipes are just what you want to hear. And if you let yourself listen to this man sing and the woman sing with him, you begin to feel where it comes form and that is worth the journey.
THE HOAX (2006)
Richard Gere is acting his little heart out. He's doing all the character work he's always wanted to do. It's just too bad he's Richard Gere and he can't forget it. Nor can we. Alfred Molina, on the other hand, does a wonderful job. He's funny, and sad, and pathetic and you never for a moment think that he's Richard Gere; or Alfred Molina, for that matter.
"Hoax" is based on the true story of Clifford Irving and the book he wrote about Howard Hughes. Actually, he promoted the Autobiography of Howard Hughes. Only he made it all up. With amazing research and great invention, he sold the idea that he knew the world's greatest recluse and that he, Irving, had the rights to edit and write the only authorized biography of the great man. The film is shaped a little like a farce with comic entrances and exits. Many exits, because Irving and the Molina character, Suskind, are always on the verge of being caught.
I was in New York when this was all happening and I don't think they do a very good job of capturing New York in the '70s. But I was spending a lot of time in bars during that decade, so there is a lot I don't remember. Like I said, Molina is worth watching but the film may not be.
Mark Metcalf is an actor and owner of Libby Montana restaurant in Mequon. Still active in Milwaukee theater, he's best known for his roles as Neidermeyer in "Animal House" and as The Maestro on "Seinfeld."
Originally from New Jersey, Metcalf now lives in Bayside.
