The Ides of March (2011)

Dir. George Clooney

Starring: Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti

 

It is many months since we were in the District of Columbia, but it is here in Ohio that we find the film about political chicanery that I had wanted to find there. Oh sure, we had Mr. Smith Goes to Washington andf All the President’s Men, but those were good versus evil stories. There were no shades of grey. In Ohio we find fifty shades of them, courtesy of silver-haired charmer George Clooney. 

It shows how far Clooney has come from his ‘dishy doc’ days on E.R. and some truly regrettable film choices in the ‘90s (Batman and Robin anybody?) that here he directs and stars in a layered film about moral choices and political malfeasance. I’m still putting his reinvention down to O Brother, Where Art Thou? which showed that he was willing to take artistic risks.  

Here Clooney is Governor Mike Morris of Pennsylvania. He is competing for the Democratic party nomination for President in the pivotal swing state of Ohio. To all intents and purposes it is a dead heat between him and his rival, Senator Pullman (Michael Mantell). Each is playing for one of two prizes: the Ohio delegates and those that had earlier voted for the now-eliminated competitor Senator Thompson (Geoffrey Wright) of North Carolina. Thompson is willing to sell his endorsement in exchange for the position of Secretary of State in a new Democratic administration. The question is how far Morris and his team are willing to compromise their principles in order to win. Morris complains about all the principles he has had break in order to get to this point: he agreed to fund-raising dinners, he agreed to trade union support, but he will not entrust the Secretaryship of State to someone who hates the U.N. 

Morris is painted as the good guy. He is the real threat to the Republicans (which is why the right-wing pundits encourage their followers to vote for Pullman in the Ohio primary). He is green, pro-choice, against the death penalty, secular. He is a lot closer to the European political mainstream than that in America I would think (though he is encouraged to call for compulsaory national service for 18-year-olds). Certainly Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), his deputy campaign chief, is a believer. As he willingly admits, “I drank the Kool-Aid”. This is not just about the job for him; he is willing to follow Morris wherever the path leads. 

However, in real life there are no Jefferson Smiths. Everyone has flaws. Everyone makes mistakes. Stephen’s is attending a meeting with Pullman’s campaign chief Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti from Sideways). Duffy is a chess player par excellence. He regards Stephen as the best media mind around. He offers him a job. If Meyers accepts it, the Pullman campaign benefits. However – and this is the so-twisted-it-is-genius moment – if Meyers turns it down the Pullman campaign still benefits. How? Because Duffy knows that Stephen’s boss Paul Zara (Capote’s Philip Seymour Hoffman), a man who values loyalty above all else, will fire him, thereby depriving the Morris campaign of Meyers’ talents. Sneaky, huh? 

Zara’s mistake is to fire Stephen. Because what Paul doesn’t know is that Stephen has information about Morris that can kill his campaign in an instant. Whilst pursuing a casual affair with 20-year-old campaign intern Molly (Evan Rachel Wood) Steve discovers a secret that destroys all the trust and belief he held in the Governor. He discovers that Morris had slept with Molly. And that Molly is now pregnant. For the good of the campaign Stephen hushed it up. He even drove Molly to a clinic for her abortion. But he now has the ability to crush Morris. As he tells the Governor, “You can lie, you can cheat, you can start a war, you can bankrupt the country, but you can’t fuck the interns. They get you for that.” In many ways it is a criticism of the American political system that is unconcerned about gross management of the nation, but is prudish when it comes to issues of personal and sexual morality.

Steve lectures Molly about her mistake. But it was Morris’s mistake too. More so his, because he is older and married. But it is Molly who has to pay the greatest price, not Morris. Again, this is the way it works in America. The great man has to be protected, and the young woman is crushed beneath the wheels of the machine. Meyers, to his partial credit, seems to recognise this. And in return he becomes the “jaded, cynical asshole” that Duffy warned him about. He earlier said that “I’ll say or do anything if I believe in it, but I have to believe in the cause”. The only thing he is left to believe in is his own ambition. He has to turn nasty or end up back in a consulting firm on K Street with a cloud over his career. Stephen now looks upon Morris not as a Messiah but a meal-ticket. Morris is forced into an unhappy marriage of convenience with Meyers. The irony is that this wins him the ticket. People who believed in Morris could never have persuaded him to compromise his principles and meet Thompson’s demands. Meyers now can. In fact it is one of his conditions.  

The ending is very bleak. We go from Morris celebrating on the podium to Stephen sitting in a darkened auditorium awaiting a TV interview. As the questions come in to his earpiece the camera keeps a tight focus on his blank face. The difference to the casual, joking Stephen seen in a bar earlier in the film is clearly apparent. He does not know what to say. And meanwhile a new intern arrives on the staff, seemingly mirroring Molly. 

 

And they said a black man could never run for president...

 

The film is based upon Beau Willimon’s stage play Farragut North. This election seems to mirror that of 2008 – a divided Republican party, an energised Democratic opposition. Morris even borrows the iconography of Obama in his Shepard Fairey-inspired campaign posters. But the slogans of ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ taste bitter in the end. In many ways it parallels Anonymous’s fictitious account of the 1992 presidential campaign Primary Colors, which featured a charismatic Bill-Clinton-alike politician who likewise was unable to keep it in his pants. But Jack Stanton, the candidate in that story was likeable enough to win people over through charm and force of personaility; we forgave him his weaknesses. Morris is not so effortlessly charismatic. His strength is the arguments and the policies that he and his team have drawn up. His is a cold intellectual attraction. As such, when his weaknesses become apparent, it is impossible to sympathise with him the same way. The overwhelming impression is that we have been duped.

The Ides of March is not a film to watch lightly. The title might have been changed to appeal more to an international audience who have no idea what a Farragut North is (it is a D.C. Metro station in an area which is home to political consultants and lobbyists), but the viewer needs to understand the nature of the American democratic system. Presidential candidates are chosen by the country at learge rather than just elected politicians / trade unionists / paid-up party members. The votes do not automatically go to the candidate, but are aggregated by state, with each state having a certain number of delegates to award the candidate who ‘wins’ that state (so someone who wins Ohio with 51% of the votes, would not share those votes out with his rivals, but would rather get 100% of Ohio’s delegates). Acronyms like DNC (the Democratic National Convention – the party) are bandied around. Without a basis in how American elections are decided and run one would imagine a viewer coukld get quite confused, quite quickly. But for politics nerds (like yours truly) it is a very watchable film of political chicanery full of good non-showy performances. 

What have I learnt about Ohio?

Surprised that a political drama is set outside the Beltway? Don’t be. The people in power in Washington are only there at the behest of that nebulous entity known only as ‘We the People’. Ohio has People. It has a lot of People. Its large population makes it a crucial state for politicians to win as those votes equal delegates. It is also a bellweather or battleground state. Ohio has achieved a significance greater than the sum of its votes. It is a swing state. When it comes to the real Presidential elections everyone knows which way New York, California and Massachussets will vote; they also know which way Texas, Wyoming and Kansas will vote. It is those which are finely balanced like Ohio and Florida that decide elections. This means that rival candidates and campaigns will devote an awful lot of attention to winning Ohio. 

Ohio has ‘open primaries’. That means that anyone can vote in the primary elections to decide a party’s candidate. In closed primaries only registered Democrats can vote in Democratic primaries. In Ohio independents and Republicans can also cast their votes to decide who will be the Democratic nomination.  

March in Ohio is cold. There is frost on the ground and winter coats are required. While Ohio is known as ‘the Buckeye State’ it is only those from Columbus in the centre of the state who refer to themselves as ‘Buckeyes’. Those from Cincinnati refer to themselves as ‘Bearcats’. 

Cincinnati itself is located right on the southern edge of Ohio. Kentucky is right across the river, linked by a bridge. The implication is that the two states have different laws – particularly when it comes to the legalities of a 30-year-old sleeping with a 20-year-old. 

Can we go there?

The Ides of March is the first of my three ‘Ohio’ movies to actually have been filmed in Ohio. The film was set and partially shot in Cincinnati. Locations such as Fountain Square, Hamilton Avenue in Northside and Xavier University were used (Xavier provided the final scene in the sports hall whose corridors re emblazoned with ‘X’s). Another university used for its auditorium was Miami University’s Farmer School of Business (Miami University being located in Oxford, Ohio, northwest of Cincinnati, rather than in Florida). Filming also spilled over the Ohio River into Kentucky. In the film the campaign chiefs are housed in Cincinnati and the interns in Kentucky (where they have a better bar). Hence we see Stephen and Molly cross over the blue John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge into the city. The Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky International Airport seen in the film is also located in Kentucky. 

However, a lot of the filming actually took place in Michigan to the north, with several locations being duplicated by Detroit and Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan. Morris’s campaign headquarters was created at 1263 Griswold Street in Detroit. Christ Church Cranbrook was used for the funeral scene.  

Overall Rating: 4/5

Super 8 (2011)

Dir. J.J. Abrams

Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Riley Griffiths 

J.J. Abrams has too many good ideas floating round in his head. The difficulty is in harnessing them before they go all squoodgy. When he makes television series they drag on for ever until the audience no longer has any idea what is happening or has already happened and have given up on them. Evidence for the prosecution: Alias and Lost, both of which I started off loving and then lost interest in. Thankfully with movies he is forced to slap together an entire plot arc in less than two hours. In Super 8 he has some great ideas, a lovely storyline, some top notch special effects and 15 minutes still to spare. Seeing what Abrams is capable of when he controls himself makes me nostalgic for what his TV series could have been if he’d only been kept on a tighter rein. 

Mind you, with Super 8 he has Steven Spielberg as producer to keep him in check. From the moment the Amblin Entertainment logo (of Elliot and E.T. on their bicycle) appears at the beginning I felt we were in sfae territory. And indeed, Super 8 is almost a homage to those ‘80s kids classics that Spielberg either directed (E.T.) or produced (The Goonies). Like those classics it is the children that take centre stage here before being caught up in an out-of-this-world adventure. Literally. Joe (Joel Courtney) is one of a group of young friends helping Charles (Riley Griffiths) make an amateur zombie movie on his super 8 film camera. Filming one night at the local railway station they are witnesses to an explosive train crash. Joe witnesses… something… smash its way out of the wreckage before the US Air Force arrives to quarantine the area.

Over the next few days things get strange. Things go missing: dogs, telephone wires and microwaves and car engines, even the sheriff. This latter disappearance forces Joe’s father Jack (Kyle Chandler) to assume his position, coming into conflict with Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich), the secretive head of the Air Force task force. 

The key plotline surrounds this crash and the extraterrestrial creature released by it. This is no E.T.: it is a huge, many-limbed beast with a taste for human flesh. But, like E.T., it just wants to go home. Its motivations are entirely human – more so than those of Nelec truth be told. It takes Joe who is himself still hurting from the death of his mother to see it not as just a threat, but as an individual, scared, abused and far from home: “I know bad things happen. Bad things happen. But you can still live.” The world may be big and unknowable to schoolkids but they can think with their heart. 

This film has lots of heart. Seeing an alien on the rampage and their hometown turned into a warzone may be the most fantastic part of their incredible adventure, but on the way they learn a lot about life, love, friends and family. In the midst of a crisis they containue to play and film their movie. Joe is still reeling from his mother’s death and unable to connect with his father, but he is carried through it all by his friends. He also experiences first love with Alice (Elle Fanning). It would have been nice to get a bit more characterisation from the other kids. Wannabe Hitchcock Charles with his loud sprawling family come fully-fleshed. But it would have been nice to know more of the backgrounds of borderline pyromaniac Cary (Ryan Lee), Martin (Gabriel Basso), the star of Charles’s ‘The Case’ who spends most of his time puking in shock, and Preston (Zach Mills), ‘the other one’. But they all interact well. There is a moment when they sit in a diner bickering while Alice watches them with amazement. There is a genuine warmth to their friendship, and one feels that Alice has never before experienced anything like it. There is humour to their interactions. They break out of a military evacuation camp to go back to search for Alice. Charles wails “I can’t believe we’re breaking into the school. Who does that? Nobody does that. Idiots do that!” Another favourite line is when they discover their getaway driver stoned. Martin’s comment? “Oh, drugs are so bad!” 



If You've Been Framed didn't pay them £250 for this
they vowed to hunt Beadle down in person...



To go with this humour there are some remarkable special effects. The train wreck is gob-smackingly awesome. For that segment it is almost like a Michael Bay film has been transplanted into the middle of Super 8. This only serves to highlight the differences between Bay’s mindless explosion-driven films and this one, where a sudden catastrophe drives forward a satisfying plot full of wit and emotional intelligence. Yes, okay, a train derailment is unlikely to be that dramatic in real life. But I, for one, was willing to suspend belief in the excitement of the moment. 

I didn’t really know much about Super 8 before watching it. It was only released last year but I haven’t heard anyone raving about it. I might start the trend. It is really enjoyable. It is The Goonies for the 2010s. I encourage you to go see it. 

What have I learnt about Ohio?

The area featured is an industrial area – or it was in 1979 when the film was set anyway. It has a steel mill and a chemical plant. It also has an air force base. The sheriff’s department are amiable individuals but unprepared for a crisis. The military pay them no heed. To them Lilian is just a small town they can boss around at will. The homes are modest, and yet they have the sort of gadgets that would not become common in the UK for at least another five years: home video cameras, Walkmans, microwaves. 

Can we go there?

It says a lot that one of the things about this film that made me happiest is that at one point the town of Lilian is clearly marked on a map. From this we can see that it is located west of Dayton, Ohio, roughly halfway to Eaton, near West Alexandria. This makes sense if the Air Force train was transporting the alien and its craft from Area 51 in Nevada to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton; as any armchair ufologist can tell you some of the retrieved wreckage from the Roswell Incident was shipped up to Wright-Patterson, which was later the home of Project Blue Book. Wright-Patterson AFB can actually be visited – or at least the National Museum of the US Air Force can be.  

Sadly Lilian, Ohio, does not really exist. The town used was just – just – outside of Ohio: Weirton which sits just across the Ohio River in a five-mile wide strip of West Virginia sandwiched between Ohio and Pennsylvania. Weirton was also the shooting location for Reckless and some scenes in The Deer Hunter. The water tower was constructed just off Weirton’s Main Street. Weirton Electrical Supply on Main Street was turned into the Olsen Camera Store. The diner scene I mentioned was filmed in Cathy’s Pies and Sandwiches (also on Main Street). Joe and Charles lived in Weirton Heights around Ferwood Avenue and Crystal Lane); Alice and her father lived over on Avenue F. The tank battle – including the image of a tank wheeling through a children’s playground – was also created in Weirton Heights by the intersections of S. 17^th and S. 20^th Streets. Marland Heights Community Church became Lilian Middle School. Wheeling Ohio County Airport was used for Lilian Airfield in the film. The Weirton Museum has published details specifying where much of the action took place.

Overall Rating: 5/5

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

 

Dir. Wes Craven

Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund

“One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…” 

Tina (Amanda Wyss) awakens from a nightmare in which she is stalked by a murderous psycho with a taloned glove (Robert Englund). To her amazement her nightgown bears slashes. When she tells this story the next day her best friend Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) recalls that she too had a similar dream. Tina’s on-off boyfriend Rod (Nick Corri) later reveals that he has been having nightmares as well. That night Tina once again sees the same figure in her dreams. Yet this time she is brutally murdered in real life. Rod witnesses her body being thrown around the bedroom by an unseen assailant. 

Rod is arrested for Tina’s murder, but Nancy continues to see the evil figure when sleeping. She starts to believe that the disfigured person in her dreams is responsible for Tina’s death. Her mother identifies this man as child-killer Freddy Krueger, but explains that he is dead. Dead or not, Nancy knows that he is coming for her next. 

“Three, four, better lock your door…” 

Growing up in the ‘80s A Nightmare on Elm Street was one of the films that everyone claimed to have watched. I claimed to have watched it myself and took part in conversations about it. In reality I doubt anyone really had. The film was released with an 18 rating, and we would have been about seven when it came out. But it was a film that everyone talked about, and the VHS revolution probably meant that it had wider exposer than if it had just been a cinema release. And so it was almost a rite of passage for me to go back and finally watch it for real, albeit some 25 years later. 

“Five, six, grab your crucifix …” 

What immediately struck me was how cheap it looked. Some of the effects – like Freddy’s lengthening arms in Tina’s second dream – look terrible. The acting is also pretty dire. Until her gory death I had assumed that Tina was going to be the main character of the film. She was the first person to appear on screen and Amanda Wyss’s acting was far superior to Heather Langenkamp’s. In fact Heather’s parents (John Saxon and Ronne Blakley) were also rotten. The good point to this was that the suburban houses looked genuine and lived in. The point of the movie is that Elm Street is just another ordinary suburban street, and yet very bad things happen on it. The setting worked. 

Added to this was a good central idea: what is the boundary between dreams and reality? The idea of the terrible things that happen in a nightmare actually having an effect in the waking world is a scary one. After all, when you are asleep you are helpless. When you are caught in a nightmare you have no control over the course it will take. The film is about the fear of being impotent against an unknown threat. And this is a threat that seems very sexual. While other characters die it is only Tina and Heather we see being stalked. Tina and Rod bear out the horror movie trueism (later referenced in director Wes Craven’s own Scream) that if characters have sex, they die. The image when Freddy’s claw appears between Heather’s legs in the bath is quite explicitly sexual. In an early draft of the script Freddy was to have been a child molester rather than a child murderer. Freddy is a monster that preys on the young and innocent and helpless. 

 

Rubber Ducky had a serious product defect



 “Seven, eight, gonna stay up late…” 

And while some of the special effects are a bit naff, others are very good: Tina being thrown up against the ceiling by an invisible attacker, the bulging wall over Heather’s bed, the fountain of blood when Glen (Johnny Depp) is attacked. To me though, the simplest effect is the best: the characterisation of Freddy Krueger. This is before the later movies in the series when Robert Englund was allowed to play Freddy as an arch anti-hero. This is Freddy without the backchat but with an image that was to become iconic. Hat. Burn-scarred face. Striped jumper. And, of course, the glove with attached knives.  

“Nine, ten, never sleep again!”

Englund’s career was made by this film. Now it seems that all horrors need to have him in as a twinkly-eyed homage to classic slasher flicks. Wes Craven’s was too. Craven’s is one of the roster of illustrious names that can sell a horror movie: Craven, Raimi, Carpenter. And Nightmare… also introduced us to a young actor who went on to have the most successful career of them all. As the credits announce at the start, ‘Introducing Johnny Depp’. We have already seen Depp in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A Nightmare on Elm Street was his first film role. So it seems that we should be grateful for this film for creating something new in cinema. 

What have I learnt about Ohio?

A Nightmare on Elm Street is set in the fictional town of Springwood, Ohio. Apparently. I don’t recall Ohio, Springwood, or even Elm Street being mentioned during the film. This fact might have become canon later on in the series. So I’m not sure how much we can read into this film and say that we have learned a lot about Ohio. I’m sure that in Ohio cemetaries do not come shaded by palm trees! 

Can we go there?

So quelle surprise the film was not shot in Ohio; it was filmed in California (as those palm trees suggested). That cemetery was the Evergreen Cemetery on North Evergreen Avenue, Los Angeles. The boiler-room in which the dreamers keep finding themselves was the real boiler-room of the (supposedly haunted) Lincoln Heights Jail, whereas the police station was really the Cahuenga branch of the Los Angeles Public Library on Santa Monica Boulevard. The kids’ school was John Marshall High School in Silverlake (other films shot at this school include Rebel Without a Cause, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Grosse Pointe Blank and the final scene in Grease). Nancy and Glen meet on an arched bridge (with more palm trees in the background) – this was filmed in Venice Beach. 

A lot of the action takes place in people’s homes however. Nancy and Glen both lived in West Hollywood – Nancy at 1428 N. Genesee Avenue, and Glenn across the road at no. 1419. This was the fictitious ‘Elm Street’. But it looks as though Tina didn’t live on Elm Street at all. Her house (complete with back yard and alleyway) was 620 Milwood Avenue in Venice.

Overall Rating: 3/5

Week 36: Ohio

"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
 We're finally on our own;
 This summer I hear the drumming -
 Four dead in Ohio..."
 - 'Ohio',
 Neil Young

From the underpopulated North Dakota we have scooted back east to Ohio, in the industrial heartland of America. We've got some rock 'n' roll on the radio because, after all, Cleveland, Ohio, is home to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. It was a local DJ that first coined the word you see. Ohio even has its own 'State Rock Song': Hang on Sloopy by The McCoys believe it or not. And don't stop believing - Glee is also set in Ohio.

 

As well as being the birthplace of rock 'n' roll, Ohio also claims to be the birthplace of seven presidents, all Republican, two of whom were assassinated. It is also the birthplace of great aviators. Yes, the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, but they grew up in Dayton, Ohio. The first American in space, John Glenn, and the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong who so sadly died last week, depriving the world of one of its few true legends, also hailed from the Buckeye State. Ohio really is the heart of America. It borders one of the United States's original colonies (Pennsylvania), rural and mountainous West Virginia, genteel Soithern Kentucky, Midwestern Indiana and industrialised Michigan. Little wonder that it has recently been known as a bellweather state in American elections. Any election night worth its salt will have hordes of outside broadcasts coming live from Ohio.

 

 

As I finished off North Dakota with some horror movies I thought I would commence Ohio with some as well. My three films for Ohio are:

• A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
• Super 8 (2011)
• The Ides of March (2011)