by Frank Calvillo
Box Office Alternative Column
Box Office Alternative is a weekly look into additional/optional choices to the big-budget spectacle opening up at your local movie theater every Friday. Oftentimes, titles will consist of little-known or underappreciated work from the same actor/writer/director/producer of said new release, while at other times, the selection for the week just happens to touch upon the same subject in a unique way. Above all, this is a place to revisit and/or discover forgotten cinematic gems of all kinds.
This week’s box office champ looks to be Jon Favreau’s glorious live-action remake of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which has already been receiving some of the best reviews of the director’s career. The film features an all-star cast voicing the assortment of animal characters, including Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, and, in his final role, Garry Shandling.
The death of Shandling last month was a definite loss to anyone familiar with the comedic actor’s work as one of the most subtle, yet effectively funny men ever to find his way onto film and TV. Even though I’ll probably be the only one who will champion it, when I think of the career of Shandling, I can’t help but gravitate towards his work in Town & Country, a film whose reputation as one of the biggest film disasters in history overshadows it’s worth as a fun all-star comedy.
The plot of Town & Country is fairly straightforward. The blissful lives of successful architects Porter and Ellie Stoddard (Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton) are disrupted when their best friends Mona (Goldie Hawn) and Griffin (Garry Shandling) announce they are getting a divorce due to the latter’s infidelity. The announcement brings Porter’s own past indiscretions to the surface, leading to Ellie throwing him out and forcing him to re-evaluate things.
To describe in a paragraph or two everything that went wrong, and why, with the production of Town & Country would take far too long to get into. So instead, I thought I’d just list the various reported problems faced by the cast and crew when filming began in the summer of 1998.
1. Filming started without a finished script. 2. Gerard Depardieu injured his back in a driving accident and had to be replaced by Shandling. 3. Director Peter Chelsom’s clashes with Beatty over his legendary penchant for re-takes, which led to the former temporarily leaving the production and the latter taking over directing duties. 4. A pair of film canisters representing two days worth of filming were stolen and held for ransom. 5. Jenna Elfman’s hair falling out as a result of having it dyed platinum blonde a number of times when shooting meant her scenes were constantly postponed. 6. Filming being rushed due to Keaton, Shandling, and Elfman being needed on other projects. 7. A number of disastrous test screenings. 8. Buck Henry needing to be called in for re-writes, which netted him $3 million and a supporting role in the film as a divorce lawyer. 9. Reshoots, including a virtually new third act, which couldn’t take place until early 2000 when all cast members finally proved available. 10. A final budget of over $90 million covering cast salaries and pricey filming locations such as Manhattan and Sun Valley. 11. 13 postponed release dates.
12. A plethora of bad press between the initial summer 1998 start date of filming and the eventual spring 2001 release.
To say that all of the film’s production problems didn’t affect the outcome of Town & Country would be the most brazen of statements. Scenes in the last half hour of the film work, even if it throws the pacing and tone for a loop. Meanwhile the film’s ending, which sees both Porter and Ellie as well as Mona and Griffin try to make amends with one another, does provide resolution, in spite of its weakness. Meanwhile some of the film’s comedy just plain falls flat. Case in point, the scene in which Ellie is telling Porter about a movie she just saw about a philandering husband and his wife who pushed him out the window. Watching Ellie describe this while carrying a butcher’s knife and seeing Porter quickly close the window upon her exit, has all the intentions of laughter without any of the ingredients which make things funny.
While I’m without question in the minority here, I firmly believe that Town & Country works thanks some finely-tuned comedic moments. There’s the deliciously farcical sequence in Mona and Griffin’s home featuring them, Porter and Ellie, Porter’s involvement with a ski bunny (Andie Macdowell), and her foul-mouthed, hot-tempered parents (Charlton Heston and Marian Seldes); Shandling’s scenes in a Sun Valley cabin, which have him beautifully playing the hapless loser; and Henry’s onscreen moments as a smart aleck attorney. More than that, though, Town & Country represents a throwback to the kind of grown-up comedies of the early ’90s, especially with its comment on fidelity, friendship, and long-lasting marriages. Plus, most any die-hard cinephile would jump at the chance to watch legends of Beatty, Keaton, and Hawn’s stature appear onscreen together.
In spite of all the turmoil, the cast does manage to pull through and give some pretty decent performances. This is hardly surprising given the more than capable players assembled here. Everyone garners laughs, but it’s Hawn as the angry divorcee, Macdowell as an unhinged heiress, and especially Shandling, who proves himself to be Town & Country’s greatest comedic source.
There was no premiere for Town & Country. Nor was there the standard rituals of press junkets and TV appearances promoting the film. Instead, a last-minute press conference with select cast members and a minimal advertising push was all the film received by way of marketing. When the reviews came out, many were expectedly negative, while others felt that the film wasn’t necessarily bad, but rather just not that special. Audiences barely got the chance to make up their own minds, however, as the film was pulled from theaters after only two weeks of dismal box office returns.
Today, the legacy for Town & Country stands strong as one of the biggest box office disasters of all time after Eddie Murphy’s The Adventures of Pluto Nash. The film reportedly sent Beatty into retirement, nearly killed Chelsom’s directing career, and was eventually the subject of an edition of “My World of Flops” by The AV Club’s Nathan Rabin. For most movie lovers, the film remains in the same league as other such movie disasters like Cutthroat Island and Heaven’s Gate. Maybe the only proper sort of audience for Town & Country would be those who have never heard anything at all about its troubled past and can instead enjoy its dazzling cast as well as the collection of solid laughs it does indeed provide.
