Flickchart Road Trip: Michigan
Welcome to the latest installment of Flickchart Road Trip, in which I’m starting in Los Angeles and “driving” across country, watching one movie from each state and posting about it once a week. The new movie I watch will go up against five movies from that state I’ve already seen, chosen from five distinct spots on my own Flickchart. Although I won’t tell you where the new movie actually lands in my chart (I don’t like to add new movies until I’ve had a month to think about them), I’ll let you know how it fared among the five I’ve chosen. Thanks for riding shotgun!
Detroit is bankrupt.
This is breaking news over the past few weeks, and it bums me out considerably.
I have no real relationship with Detroit, and have been here only once, very briefly. That doesn’t make me mourn for this great American city any less, though. I consistently hope for some kind of external stimulus that’ll make things a bit cheerier for the long-suffering citizens of Detroit, who have seen their city struggle more than most during the financial crisis. The easiest to imagine happening is for one of the sports teams to win a championship, but baseball’s Tigers lost the World Series in 2006 and last year, and football’s Lions and basketball’s Pistons have been mediocre or worse in recent years. Hockey’s Red Wings actually the Stanley Cup a couple years ago, but I don’t follow hockey.
Anyway, yeah. Detroit is bankrupt. It’s the biggest city ever to enter bankruptcy proceedings, and it sucks.
So instead of telling you some jaunty tale of how I spent my time in the great state of Michigan, I will use this space for a moment of silence for the city. Not because it’s dead, mind you, but because it’s hurting enough that it needs some TLC from me right now. You could argue that I should find the good inside the bad and instead celebrate how Detroit perseveres in the face of the current obstacles. Well, keep it to yourself. I already decided to do this other thing.
My Michigan movie looks back to a considerably happier time in the state, when automotive innovation made greater Michigan whir with life. (Actually, the car companies are apparently the only Michigan institution showing real vigor right now.) The movie is Tucker: The Man and His Dream, which doesn’t seem that much like a Francis Ford Coppola movie, except that Coppola made some famously strange directing choices just to fund his pet projects (Jack, anyone?). It’s not clear to me whether Tucker was one of those, but I can tell you that the 1988 film is ranked #2166 among Flickcharters — perhaps a tad higher than I would have expected.
What it’s about
Tucker: The Man and His Dream is the true story of visionary designer Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges), who made a name for himself in World War II by designing and building a high-speed tank that the military deemed “too fast” for combat. At war’s end, the lifelong car builder turns his attention to envisioning, designing and manufacturing the automobile of the future, which will come equipped with a rear engine, disc brakes, headlights that swivel when you turn, and a safety feature that was not standard in the cars of the day: seat belts. Supported by his large family, including wife Vera (Joan Allen) and eldest son Preston Jr. (Christian Slater), Tucker begins a business venture to get the factory space, the design team and the building materials he’ll need to make the so-called “Tucker Torpedo” a reality, partnering with New York financier Abe Karatz (Martin Landau). However, numerous stumbling blocks lie ahead of him, from problems in the design (the prototype won’t go in reverse) to pressure from politicians and the “Big Three” car companies. If Tucker isn’t careful, having a lemon on his hands is going to be the least of his legal and financial troubles.
How it uses the state
One of Tucker’s most notable character traits is that he prefers designing and building his creations in a barn next to his Ypsilanti, Michigan home, rather than a proper factory or other workshop. The movie warmly establishes this pastoral setting, setting up Tucker’s love for this working environment as one of his defining quirks. The action then moves to other locations like Chicago, Washington D.C. and Rochester, but the twinkle in Tucker’s eye indicates that Michigan is never far from his heart.
What it’s up against
Before we get to my thoughts on the film, let’s duel it against five other Michigan movies I’ve already seen, shall we? As you know if you’ve ever added a film to Flickchart using the “By Title” feature, the new movie goes up first against the movie in the exact middle of your rankings. The outcome of that duel determines whether it faces the film at the 75th percentile or the 25th percentile, and so on, until it reaches its exact right place. With five movies, that means at least two and as many as three duels. Here are the films Tucker: The Man and His Dream will battle:
1) The Crow (1994, Alex Proyas). My Flickchart: #166/3562. Global: #911. Before there was Heath Ledger, there was Brandon Lee. The circumstances of their deaths were different — Lee died on set in an accident with a prop gun — but both cases saw a dynamic young actor just entering into the prime of his capabilities when his life was cut short. A limited acting presence in his previous films, Lee harnessed all the angst, all the gallows humor, all the rage and all the love of a Detroit rock musician killed on the night before his wedding, reincarnated a year later to avenge the death of his fiancee that same night. That The Crow became a flimsy franchise of vastly diminishing returns tends to make a person forget just how much the original spoke to the roiling emotions of its late teenage audience, with terrific fight choreography, a rocking industrial soundtrack, a fury with the evils of the world, and a passion for deep romantic love. Director Alex Proyas (who would make Dark City next) lends the whole thing a distinct visual scheme of gothic grime, collaborating with the sublime Lee to create an iconic, tragic character.
2) 8 Mile (2002, Curtis Hanson). My Flickchart: #1160/3562. Global: #2607. Eminem may have been a rap superstar, but it was 8 Mile that made him a household name. Showing a surprising aptitude with material that was a departure for him, the director of L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson, gives us a visceral semi-fictionalized version of Eminem’s real life story growing up on the famous titular Detroit thoroughfare. The intensity in those eyes, however, is all Eminem. It’s a pretty traditional sports movie type underdog story, yet the vibrancy of Eminem’s flow and the dedication of his performance make it something more memorable. A few professionals are on hand to help out (Brittany Murphy, Kim Basinger and a name-checked Mekhi Phifer), but this is Em’s movie, and we want to go with him no matter how rough he is around the edges, no matter what our feelings on his musical genre of choice. The climactic throwdown battle is so enthralling, you will literally lose yourself in that moment.
3) Roger & Me (1989, Michael Moore). My Flickchart: #1343/3562. Global: #1447. Michael Moore’s first, and in many ways his defining, film should really rank higher for me. Unfortunately, I saw it for the first time only a few years ago, at which point films like Bowling for Columbine and Sicko were a tough act to follow. However, it’s still his quintessential film as the passions in it run closest to home. The famous liberal documentarian/gadfly examines the sad state of his home town of Flint, Michigan in the wake of General Motors closing its Flint plants and shipping the jobs to Mexico, where workers could be paid much less. The Roger of the title is former GM CEO Roger Smith, in whose face Moore works tirelessly (and humorously) to stick a microphone and a video camera. Moore’s famous style — praised as confrontational by his fans and muckraking by his opponents — was born in Roger & Me, and for better or worse, it was his primary mode of operation for the next 20+ years.
4) Dreamgirls (2006, Bill Condon). My Flickchart: #2053/3562. Global: #4104. A few months after I’d seen and been a bit underwhelmed by Dreamgirls, someone distilled for me its biggest problem: It doesn’t know which character the story is actually about. Faithful period design, some very interesting character moments, and a bunch of memorable songs are ultimately diminished by the movie’s uncertain narrative drive. At different times it seems to be about Beyonce Knowles‘ character, or Eddie Murphy‘s character, or Jennifer Hudson‘s character, in the role that won the former American Idol contestant an Oscar. By dropping the thread of each narrative, however, it was destined to feel a little unsatisfying, despite a number of truly exceptional components. The movie does have a lot to recommend as a history of Motown and a loose history of one of its most successful acts, The Supremes, but I was just expecting a bit more from it. Murphy might have also won an Oscar if voters weren’t being barraged for the trailers for Norbit at the time they were voting.
5) Detroit Rock City (1999, Adam Rifkin). My Flickchart: #3552/3562. Global: #2825. It probably seems strange to include the above image for a movie about a group of high school friends trying to attend a Detroit concert by their favorite band, Kiss. I mean, who could refuse the chance to post an image of those costumes? The image above, though, is the Detroit Rock City I saw — a silly, bumbling, over-the-top comedy in which episodes (and facial expressions) like you see above are far too common. Simply put, this is a moronic film, and the actors (led by the scenery chewing of Lin Shaye as a religious zealot crusading against the band) make sure we know it’s moronic, by mugging, preening and in all other ways calling attention to themselves. The members of Kiss also appear as themselves, not very memorably. Seventies teenagers on a wild adventure to score concert tickets has a lot going for it as an idea. Too bad the hacks who made this movie didn’t know how to find the joy in it.
First duel: Tucker: The Man and His Dream vs. Roger & Me. I’d rather run a car company the way Preston Tucker runs it than the way Roger Smith runs it, but I’d rather see the movie about Smith. Roger & Me wins.
Second duel: Tucker: The Man and His Dream vs. Dreamgirls. His dreams, her dreams, I can’t keep all these dreams straight. Nor can I easily choose a winner, but his dreams edge out hers. Tucker: The Man and His Dream wins.
Tucker: The Man and His Dream finishes fourth out of the six movies.
My thoughts
Remember earlier how I said that I didn’t know if this was a Coppola pet project, or one of his for-hire projects? A quick bit of research answered that definitively: He was actually developing a script for this movie as early as 1973, before The Godfather Part II had even been released.
Why, then, doesn’t Tucker: The Man and His Dream feel a bit more passionate? By being as light-hearted and whimsical as it is, told in the jaunty spirit of the kind of News on the March segments that comprise the beginning of Citizen Kane, Tucker ends up feeling a bit slight, a bit corny, a bit square. That’s certainly intentional on some level and certainly in keeping with the personality of Preston Tucker, but makes for a somewhat lightweight consideration of the subject matter. Then again, consider the subject matter. Trying to make a cooler car is a luxuriously lightweight pursuit, especially when your last job was building a machine designed to kill Nazis. With happier times brings breezier topics, and this movie has a great amount of fun, even if it doesn’t always feel like it has a great amount of substance.
One detail Coppola certainly gets right is the visual scheme of the film, which has a faithful period look that never quits. That goes right down to the gorgeous Tucker sedans, which glint and glimmer in a manner that feels delightfully futuristic, even though the real cars existed nearly eight decades ago. It’s a lot of fun to see how Tucker and his team used spit, dirt and gumption to put together a prototype that would meet an early showcase deadline and be sharp enough to pass the eye test. At its best, Tucker is a testament to the can-do American spirit, and the scenes that focus on this aspect of Tucker’s enterprise are easily the most fun and the most enduring. Another fun scene involves a cameo from Dean Stockwell as Howard Hughes.
The political intrigue involving the conspiracy by the car companies to crush Tucker is not quite as interesting, nor is a climactic courtroom scene in which it will be determined whether Tucker could spend the rest of his life in jail for defrauding the SEC. Given the real existence of real cars, it seems a bit strange that Tucker is facing a charge that he never intended to use the money invested in him to build actual cars. Some bits like this don’t seem properly set up beforehand, and if there’s one consistent complaint about the movie, it’s that Coppola doesn’t sufficiently set up a number of things. This leaves the characters feeling a little more empty and one-dimensional than the level that would be necessary to care about them intensely.
Up next
It’s time to head to the Hoosier state, Indiana. Indiana has a lot of Illinois envy, I imagine, and that’s carrying over to my choice for this state: Michael Mann‘s 2009 film Public Enemies, which spends a lot more time in Illinois than Indiana. Indiana does get at least one key scene, and sometimes, that’s good enough.