On Mar 1, 5:54?pm, "Adam H. Kerman"
chinet.com> wrote:> Decided to pop ye olde videotape in to rewatch "Barbarians at the
> Gate". Jonathan Pryce is terrific as Henry Kratitz, dominates every
> scene he's in with his steely gaze and absolute contempt of his
> business opponents.
>
> Larry Gelbart's screenplay is deliciously ironic, extracting comedy
> out of an impossible subject, the leveraged buyout craze of the '80's,
> by focusing on corporate excess. Garner's H. Ross Perot is the
> embodiment of unrelenting greed, who swears he won't be shut out of
> his deal because he'll never be homeless... or planeless. He keeps a
> fleet of 10 corporate jets at his beck and call and, in a favorite
> scene, uses one to ship his despondent German shephard back home.
>
> Early in the movie, Garner lights a cigarette for an executive with
> lungs so weak he can't light his own. Garner throws a party to
> celebrate yet another victory in tobacco lawsuits.
>
> No target goes unskewered, from trophy second wives who won't eat to
> cell phone culture (flip phones the size of small bricks) to mid-town
> Manhattan traffic in which Garner finds himself conversing with
> someone else in the next traffic lane.
>
> Ross and Perot confront each other at a square dance, a "must" event
> fundraiser for the Bush-Quayle ticket. In the next scene, Garner tries
> to orchestrate a dance of his own, when he's invited a variety of Wall
> Street merchant banking houses to raise the needed capital for him
> after he began to sour on Shearson-Lehman's many gaffes due to
> inexperience. Naturally, it all goes wrong when KKR and Shearson end
> up in the same room, that Kravis wants Drexel-Burnham-Lambert to
> raise the money and not Shearson, and that Ross couldn't run his
> company the way he's used to. But Ross gets a bit of his own back when
> Kravis and his mortal enemies on Wall Street, Foresman-Little, end up
> sharing an elevator ride leaving the building.
>
> Read a biography of Garner that commented that he got cast as Perot in
> this because the producers wanted somebody likeable in a movie with no
> good guys. Anybody know anything about that?
Sorry I don't know about casting Garner as Perot, but your line,
"Garner's H. Ross Perot is the embodiment of unrelenting greed who
swears he won't be shut out of his deal because he'll never be
homeless...or planeless" is hilarious.
Ashamed to say I haven't seen this movie, but that won't long be the
case. Sounds like one not to miss.
BTW: IMO anyone in the newsgroup who likes movies and filmmaking--and
obviously that's all of us--might find a new book by David Mamet,
"Bambi Vs. Godzilla," a very good read. I couldn't put it down. It's
our kind of book. Gore Vidal says it's the finest book on the movies
ever written by an American. Lots of the stuff we detect in TRF about
the foibles of making those eps is generically explained as part of
filmmaking with reference to a great, fascinating variety of American
and international films. It's absolutely an "on the set"/insider book.
And it is for me a very funny, honest and insightful inside look at
Hollywood and the movie business in general; pulls no punches but also
gives praise where it's due. The whole Hollywood story, rendered with
superb economy and seriocomic punch, is eminently readable, including
the disturbing recent trends in which Greed is not Good but Bad. Some
of his choices for great movies are surprising and fascinating to me,
and he makes excellent cases. In short: To me Manet's an engrossing
writer. Adam, he shares your admiration of "Shadow Of A Doubt" (he
calls it Hitchcock's finest) and spends a full, pointed and very
fascinating section on that film; one of his praises is that
fundamentally the movies are a MOVING PICTURE business, and
secondarily (if importantly) a dialog business, and that, in a way,
the greatest "Silents" were a sort of epitome of this primacy of
imagery, and that Hitchcock in "Shadow" has so expertly staged the
scenes in which TRF alumnus Cotton and the wonderful Wright appear--
and those two have acted them so well--viz, the scenes in which Cotton
increasingly menaces her and she increasingly loses her attitudinal
innocence--that you could remove the sound track and still understand
exactly the dramatic process going on. I found it a really interesting
book. So if by chance any of you haven't come across it, I'd really
recommend laying out the bread to get i
--even tho it's still in
hardback only--and especially this sharp-eyed group. You'll all feel
right at home with the hardnosed, bright, honest Mamet. (As you know,
he did the screenplay for movies like "The Verdict" and "The Spanish
Prisoner" and is a director and just generally a veteran of Hollywood
as well as a serious playwright and novelist.) Trust me.
