Parallel triangles

Eric Stoltz, Meg Tilly and Craig Sheffer in a publicity shot for "Sleep with Me"

Ah, the love triangle. A range of emotions can spring from this oft-used plot device, and it occurred to me recently that two rather similar and entertaining love triangle story lines appear in two of my favorite movies: “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Sleep with Me.” Released nearly 10 years apart – “St. Elmo’s Fire” in 1985 (the height of the Brat Pack era) and “Sleep with Me” in 1994 – they both feature a longtime group of friends navigating their relationships with each other. They also feature a prominent couple and another friend in the group silently longing to break up that couple's happy-ish home.   

The triangle

St. Elmo’s Fire
Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and Andrew McCarthy play Alec, Leslie and Kevin

Sleep with Me
Meg Tilly, Eric Stoltz and Craig Sheffer play Sarah, Joseph and Frank

The setup

St. Elmo’s Fire
Alec and Leslie are the golden couple – recent Georgetown grads who dated throughout college and were deemed “the couple most likely to couple” by all their friends and acquaintances. They are now living together in a stylish apartment embarking on a life the politically ambitious Alec has envisioned for them. Kevin is Alec’s best friend and, consequently, he is pretty close to Leslie too. He has been there from the beginning of Alec and Leslie’s relationship. What no one knows is that he has been pining away for Leslie the whole time. He is holding out no hope, yet his longing for her can never fade because their group of friends spends so much time together.

Sleep with Me
Sarah and Joseph, who met in college and get married at the start of the film, are the focal couple. Frank is the third wheel – Joseph’s best friend who used to spend a lot of time with the couple but has been backing off since the couple married. Frank has been obsessed with Sarah from the moment he and Joseph spotted her spinning her bright yellow umbrella on their college campus, but Frank kept mum and Joseph won her heart.   

The friends

St. Elmo’s Fire
Everyone in the group is aware that Kevin hasn’t been dating anyone for a long time, but they don’t know it’s because he’s pining away for Leslie. One of them, Demi Moore’s character Jules, is highly suspicious and decides he must be gay. But the rest of the gang is so absorbed in their own obsessions and Kevin does such a great job of declaring his hatred of romantic love whenever possible, that they don’t give his supposedly self-imposed bachelorhood much thought. [At this point I’m going to revert to the actors’ names because it will be easier to follow, plus the Brat Pack rules require using their real names.] Emilio Estevez, who plays Kevin’s roommate, is busy running around after Andie MacDowell – a beauty he went on one date with in college who never took him seriously as a prospect, so of course he can’t get her out of his mind. Rob Lowe, the bad boy of the group, and Mare Winningham, the good girl of the group, have a never-consummated chemistry they try to ignore in order to protect their friendship … and because he’s married. And Demi Moore (the aforementioned Jules) is enamored with the fast life, developing a drug problem and coping with abandonment issues (Her mom is dead and her father is dying.).

Sleep with Me
The group of friends in this movie is much more eclectic than the preps from “St. Elmo’s Fire.” Very California bohemian. The guys in the group have a regular poker game where a series of hilarious exchanges take place, including blow-ups between Frank and Joseph, mostly due to the frustrations of their poker purist buddy hosting the game. As far as names you might recognize, Todd Field, who went on to appear in “Eyes Wide Shut” and direct “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children,” plays Duane – a deeply cynical writer with a thing for women with no body hair. Thomas Gibson of “Dharma and Greg” and “Criminal Minds” fame plays Nigel, a mischievous, brutally honest chap who loves to instigate and is one of the funniest characters in the movie. Parker Posey and Joey Lauren Adams (“Chasing Amy”) also put in brief, offbeat comedic performances as two friends determined to sing through one of the hallowed poker games and disrupt other lives when they can. Quentin Tarantino has a now-legendary cameo breaking down the gay overtones of “Top Gun” at a party, but he wasn’t among the central group of friends, and I only mention it because that’s the biggest claim to fame the movie has.

The turning point

St. Elmo’s Fire
Leslie is getting more and more fed up with what she refers to as Alec’s extracurricular activities, so when he announces their engagement at a party without her consent (she’s been consistently turning down his marriage proposals), she confronts him. Alec refuses to believe she could have discovered his infidelities on her own, so he publicly accuses Kevin of ratting him out, causing a scene and embarrassing himself when it becomes obvious Kevin did nothing of the kind. So in classic egoist fashion, Alec declares that he wants Leslie out of their house and storms away. Instead of staying with one of her numerous girlfriends, she opts to crash at Kevin’s place for the night. How convenient. And in a dialogue that seems both effortless and awkward, Kevin ends up revealing his undying love, and Leslie is so taken with his vulnerability (and determined to lash out at Alec) that she easily falls into a sexual romp with Kevin - wearing a double strand of pearls the whole time, no less.

Sleep with Me
Tension builds throughout the movie because Frank begins a passive-aggressive campaign to push Joseph away by doing everything he can to annoy his old friend when they hang out – especially at their regular poker game. Meanwhile, as Joseph and Sarah deal with the banalities of marriage, Joseph starts to act out a bit, making Sarah insecure. Things come to a head when Sarah and Joseph have a get-together and invite Frank and his current flame – a model all the men at the gathering go gaga for, especially Joseph. Frank sees Sarah’s growing disgust with the situation and somehow thinks it is the perfect opportunity to declare his love for her and kiss her in front of everyone. His actions do not go over well. He is subsequently ostracized from the group until their friend Nigel the troublemaker invites all of them to a party. Frank’s arrival sends Joseph and Sarah into a shouting match. Joseph gets so angry that he takes off with a woman he just met at the party (Parker Posey). Sarah assumes he is going to sleep with the woman he picked up, so she winds up in bed with Frank. Like Leslie in “St. Elmo’s Fire,” Sarah goes to bed with Frank more to get back at Joseph for his presumed infidelity than to consummate a connection with Frank.  

The resolve

I won’t reveal exactly how things turn out for the couples and the friends, but I will say that I was OK with both resolutions although my heart went out to the guys on the losing end of things. Love certainly can be a losing game, but who’s to say three people can’t maintain a happy and enduring love affair? Surely there are some movies that bear that out, but that’s a blog post for another time.    

The master

“I try to live my life in such a way that I don’t have profound regrets.”

— Philip Seymour Hoffman in New York Times Magazine, 2008

[Originally posted February 2014 on my Tops page. I'm posting it again today in honor of PSH's birthday.]

In the short space of about 23 years, Philip Seymour Hoffman made his mark as one of the most talented actors of his or any other generation. When I heard of his passing Feb. 2, since I didn’t know him, I could only respond as a fan would respond – selfishly bemoaning the loss of another brilliant talent to drugs. I think Lena Dunham said it well in her tweet about our loss of the joy he brought due to such a joyless act.

But I quickly moved from the sadness to thinking specifically about the joy – his many performances that touched me. Some of them were small parts, as in the 1994 comedy starring Paul Newman, “Nobody’s Fool,” and the 1998 romantic comedy, “Next Stop Wonderland,” with Hope Davis. And then there were his major roles in films like 2008’s “Doubt” and his best actor Oscar-winning turn in the 2005 biopic “Capote.”

Hoffman had a great collaboration going with director Paul Thomas Anderson over the years, starting with “Hard Eight” in 1996 and followed by “Boogie Nights” in 1997, “Magnolia” in 1999, “Punch-Drunk Love” in 2002, and ending with “The Master” in 2012. I can only assume they worked well together because of the frequency and fullness of their collaborations. My favorites in that bunch are his sadly sweet porno groupie Scotty J in “Boogie Nights” and his deeply sympathetic nurse Phil Parma in “Magnolia.”

What I look for most in a movie is to be drawn completely into the world on the screen, which requires believable characters. Hoffman was always believable. Sure, he teetered dangerously close to giving himself away as Truman Capote in “Capote,” but I grant him some leeway there because Capote was such an outsize character, a tremendous personality, to begin with, and Hoffman pulled it off anyway.

Fortunately, Hoffman was not one of those actors who is so famous it is impossible to see him as anyone other than himself. I knew little about his private life, so none of that baggage entered into his performances for me. He had the skill and the freedom to become the character, and he did so whether the role was big or small. And what an eclectic bunch of roles they were. 

I regret I was never able to see his acclaimed performance in “Death of A Salesman” on Broadway. According to Steve Martin, “If you missed him as Willy Loman, you missed a Willy Loman for all time.” But I am thrilled to have experienced his work on the big screen. That’s the great thing about the cinematic arts – your work lives on long after your body calls it quits. Here’s my list of favorites starring PSH. If there are any you haven’t seen, do so immediately!

1. “Synecdoche, New York” (2008)
2. “Magnolia” (1999)
3. “Doubt” (2008)
4. “Capote” (2005)
5. “Boogie Nights” (1997)
6. “Next Stop Wonderland” (1998)
7. “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” (2007)
8. “The Master” (2012)
9. “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999)
10. “Nobody’s Fool” (1994)

I recognize Hoffman had many other marvelous performances, but my list is based on the ones I have seen (naturally) that made the biggest impression on me. I’ll wrap by repeating my initial Facebook post about his passing:

One of my favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman performances was in the deep, strange little Charlie Kaufman indie pic, "Synecdoche, New York," which features one of my favorite songs of all time, “Little Person" by Jon Brion. The song is especially poignant in light of Hoffman's passing. He was such a brilliant actor, but obviously we need more than brilliance to keep the demons at bay. RIP PSH.

Little Person by Jon Brion I'm just a little person. One person in a sea. Of many little people. Who are not aware of me. I do my little job. And live my little life. Eat my little meals. Miss my little kid and wife. And somewhere maybe someday.

The impossible plan

A SCENIC VIEW

Ving Rhames (from left), Jean Reno, Emmanuelle Beart and Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible."

To say Ethan Hunt of “Mission: Impossible” is a resourceful man is like saying water is wet. A spy is nothing if not quick, cunning and pro-active, and the A-types like Ethan are so appealing when at their best – doing their dangerous dirty work for queen and country, or in Ethan’s case, for president and country. In anticipation of the July 31 release of "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation," I'm reflecting on one of my favorite scenes from the "Mission: Impossible" franchise.

What I like best about Hunt is how methodical he is. So many people are mesmerized by the action sequences, which are spectacular, but I care more about the cerebral aspects of “the game.” That is why the first “Mission: Impossible” (1996), directed by Brian DePalma, is my favorite. It is the most thoughtful film of the franchise, filled with the most mind games and compelling characters like Max, played with relish by Vanessa Redgrave, and rogue operative Krieger, played by Jean Reno. Some fans and critics complained that it was overly complicated, but it’s a criticism that seems silly nearly 20 years later when you compare its plot with other action thrillers. I would also argue that it has rather plausible scenarios for a spy film apart from that ridiculous, but riveting final action sequence with the helicopter in the train tunnel.

The most thrilling aspect of these kinds of films is the execution of “the great plan” – and this film’s scenes of discussing and executing a master plan rival any ever shot in terms of bravado and suspense. It begins with Ethan pitching his plan to the people he needs to execute it.

“Relax Luther - it’s much worse than you think.”

— Ethan Hunt in "Mission: Impossible"

Ethan has been disavowed from his spy agency, the IMF, because they believe he is a mole who has betrayed the agency, which is revealed in a great scene early in the film between Ethan and the head of the IMF played by Henry Czerny (“Kittredge, you’ve never seen me very upset.”). Claire, one of Ethan’s original team members played by Emmanuelle Béart, has joined him in recruiting a new team – just two more people – to pull a job that will enable Ethan to negotiate with the true mole and ideally bring him or her to justice.

Because they were operating outside of the IMF, Ethan and Claire had to pick people who are also disavowed – ex-operatives from the agency. They went with slick computer hacker Luther Stickell, played by Ving Rhames, and Krieger, the gruff, all-around handy guy who can get things and fly helicopters into tight places.

The quintessential scene in the movie is the vault scene – when Ethan is dangling in mid-air in a strategically secured vault at CIA headquarters trying to obtain the top secret file he needs to get out of the trouble he is in and potentially save the lives of all IMF undercover agents (by putting them at risk). But my favorite scene is the one that precedes the CIA headquarters shenanigans – the scene when Ethan describes their objective in his efforts to convince Luther and Krieger to do the job. It is a simple objective that requires a clever and meticulous plan to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds – that’s the formula. And you have to have a character like Ethan Hunt played by the pre-eminent superstar of his generation Tom Cruise to exude the confidence, charisma and, of course, skill to make the audience root for them to get the job done.

It is tightly shot in a train compartment with Ethan and Claire sitting across from Luther and Krieger as Ethan drops one devastating piece of news after another – we have to break into CIA headquarters, the vault we have to enter has temperature and pressure sensors and requires a code key we won’t have … It’s thrilling to hear him list everything they are up against as matter-of-factly as if he was describing how to change a tire and to see the expressions and utterances of shock and disbelief on Luther and Krieger’s faces as if they were watching a train wreck.

Yet with all the confidence of an A-type who knows he has planned everything to perfection, as well as wonderfully wry humor employed for good measure, Ethan convinces the guys to come along for the ride and assures them of their eventual success. When he says, “We’re going to do it,” at the end of the scene, he leaves no room for doubt. And when the “Mission: Impossible” theme kicks in right after his line and the scene shifts to Langley, Va., the excitement is all about seeing how they’re going to do it – not if.