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.
The last “anticipated” film of the summer, Pete’s Dragon, has come, signaling the end of what has been a less than exciting blockbuster season at the movies. The film, like most Disney efforts, preaches about the importance of love, family, and friendship in ways which are mostly hit and miss.
If there’s one thing to celebrate about the film, it’s the presence of screen legend Robert Redford in the role of the wise old man who manages to give the film a calming, soothing quality as well as an overall grace. His involvement in Pete’s Dragon also allows me the opportunity to write about the time he and Michelle Pfeiffer exercised the neverending potency of their movie star abilities in the romantic drama Up Close & Personal.
Based on a screenplay by the acclaimed husband/wife writing team of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, Up Close & Personal tells the story of an aspiring TV reporter named Tally Atwater (Pfeiffer) who goes to work as a low-level assistant at a third-rate station run by Warren Justice (Redford), a former award-winning journalist whose glory days are long gone. Despite her unpolished edges, Warren finds himself intrigued by Tally and takes her under his wing, eventually grooming her into a top reporter. When an unexpected romance develops between them, the two find themselves faced with the impossible task of staying together as Tally’s career begins to take off.
Though it’s difficult to imagine, Up Close & Personal actually started out as a dark portrait of the life of newswoman Jessica Savitch, who gained fame and prominence in the ’70s and ’80s as one of the first women to ever anchor the evening news at a major network. With aspects such as a cocaine addiction, tumultuous relationships, as well as her untimely death due to a tragic car accident, Savitch’s torturous life was ripe for cinematic treatment. As Didion and Dunne got to work on bringing this complex life to the screen, the project was sold to Disney’s Touchstone arm, which promptly led to years and years of re-writes, eventually turning Savitch’s life into a mixture of Pretty Woman and A Star is Born.
At one point toward the end of the film’s many re-writes, Dunne personally went to studio executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and supposedly asked, “What is this film meant to be about?” Katzenberg replied simply, “It’s about two movie stars.” How true that is. There isn’t a single moment in this film which doesn’t highlight both Redford and Pfeiffer’s magnetic chemistry or their striking features. An extended sequence featuring the two playing at the beach and laying in each other’s arms on a gently rocking row boat are is the film’s greatest highlight of this fact. The film also takes great pains to showcase the two in as many different types of scenes as possible. This is especially true of Pfeiffer, who does everything from singing “My Way” to surviving a prison riot throughout the course of the film. In some ways, Up Close & Personal functions as a very expensive demo reel for its two endlessly watchable stars.
The film is a studio product if there ever was one. However, that doesn’t mean that Up Close & Personal isn’t a film without some positive attributes. As much as the film is an overly sentimental love story, there is also an honest comment on the world it illustrates and what it requires of those who enter into it. The world of broadcast journalism is shown as an incredibly fleeting one, where the laws, as well as its participants, are continually changing. The film shows how a person must truly love and believe in what they do and how well they can do it in order to survive in such a ruthless environment where allies are few and far between and everyone is replaceable. Even though the world is shown through a romantic gaze, the harshness of it is clearly visible. In many ways, Tally is a sort of modern-day Alice, who has fallen into the rabbit hole that is her profession. However, while she is clearly ambitious and determined, she’s never ruthless with regard to her ambition. She refuses to let the news world compromise her character, instead doing what it takes to bend it to HER will.
All of that aside, most people checking out Up Close & Personal are doing so because of the love story at the heart of the film, which manages to remain involving throughout. I loved the watching these two characters meet while at completely opposite ends of the professional spectrum. While Tally is on her way up, Warren is clearly on his way down. Adding to this is the way the movie goes against the notion that most who enter the field find themselves married to their work due to the fact that they’ve got no time to invest in a real relationship which usually doesn’t work out in the end. Warren and Tally know the risks, and they know the obstacles. Yet they remain undeterred by it all when it comes to making what they have work. No matter what the cost may be, they each simply refuse to let the other go. A lot of love stories tend to miss for one reason or another, and yet here it’s the challenges set by the film’s backdrop which makes Warren and Tally’s romance such a compelling one.
Aiding the two megawatt stars are a great assortment of character actors, all of whom give the film some definite authenticity in their portrayals of the type of individuals who populate the TV news world. Among them are Joe Mantegna as a ruthless agent, Kate Nelligan as Warren’s former wife, and James Rebhorn as a producer with a grudge. The most memorable of the group is Stockard Channing as a top female anchor whose tough exterior masks a deep insight into the toll this business takes on the soul.
Up Close and Personal received a collection of reviews which ranged from unenthusiastic to flat-out horrible, most of which were attributed to the script. With a pair of such prolific writers like Didion and Dunne, many were expecting more than a frothy love story. Another reason for the film’s dismal critical reception was disappointment towards the studio for re-shaping what was meant to be Savitch’s life story into an old-fashioned romance. The film did enjoy some box-office success; in part that’s due to the film’s introduction of Celine Dion’s future classic “Because You Loved Me” as its theme.
Following the release of Up Close & Personal, Dunne took some time out to document the rollercoaster ride that had been the previous seven years of endless drafts on the road to getting the film made. The result was the book “Monster: Living off the Big Screen,” in which the author chronicles virtually every meeting and re-write he and Didion did, resulting in what has been called one of the most incredible accounts of moviemaking ever written. While Up Close & Personal is satisfying in its own right, it reaches a whole other level of entertaining after learning of the arduous journey in bringing two of the movies’ most charismatic stars to the screen.
