Remembering the Wives: Eleanor Coppola and Samantha Davis

In Hollywood, as in the rest of life, wives sometimes get overlooked. But two recent deaths have reminded me of how complicated (though rewarding) it can be to unite in marriage with a major showbiz figure. Eleanor Neil met Francis Ford Coppola in Ireland, where he was shooting his first professional film, a Roger Corman cheapie called, Dementia 13. (She was serving as assistant art director on the project. It came about because Corman had shot The Young Racers in the Emerald Isle, and figured that cast and crew could quickly crank out one more film before they all went home. ) The Coppolas wed in 1963, produced three children, and stayed married for the rest of their lives, despite a good deal of turbulence, as he moved from the glory years of the Godfather films into more complicated territory. In 1976 Eleanor was present in the Philippines, with very young kids in tow, as Coppola shot his Vietnam epic, Apocalypse Now (released in 1979). The chaos of that experience (including Martin Sheen’s nervous breakdown and a typhoon that destroyed an expensive set) was captured in her diaries, which she shaped into a pull-no-punches 1979 book, The Making of Apocalypse Now. It’s been years since I read it, but I recommend it as a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the emotional toll that’s taken when a movie crew moves to a distant land to shoot a difficult film.

 So warmly was Eleanor Coppola’s book received that she helped turn it into a documentary film, which she co-directed with Fax Bahr and my old friend George Hickenlooper. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse appeared in 1991, and quickly picked up awards, including an Emmy for "Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming – Directing.” Thereafter, Eleanor tried her hand at feature filmmaking, directing the 2016 romantic comedy, Paris Can Wait as well as 2020’s Love is Love is Love. She also published a second book, Notes on a Life, which chronicled the doings of her famous family, including the death of her first-born son Gian-Carlo at the age of 22 and her husband’s much-maligned decision to cast daughter Sofia in a key role in The Godfather, Part III. Nor did Eleanor give up documentary filmmaking, chronicling the making of Sofia’s 2006 feature, Marie Antoinette. 

 Eleanor passed away on April 12 of this year, at the age of 87 in Rutherford, California, seat of the family’s well-known winery There’s little question that hers was a remarkably productive life.

 Far less well-known was Samantha Davis, who died on March 24 at the age of 53. She was the longtime wife of Warwick Davis, who starred in George Lucas and Ron  Howard’s Willow.. In this 1988 fantasy film, the still-teenaged Davis (all of three foot six inches tall) played a hero who saves a kingdom from evil usurpers. Part of the drama takes place in the village of the Nelwyns (supposedly a race of tiny people all under four feet tall). For these scenes, little people were recruited from around the globe, and they joyously bonded with one another, leading director Howard to say, “To see them interacting, performing, working hard, laughing, playing, carrying on . . . that was to me I think maybe the greatest experience in the movie.”

 On set Warwick first got to know Samantha, and they married soon thereafter. Though in Willow she was simply a villager, she did rack up several other acting credits, including a role in one of the Harry Potter films. Together they founded a charitable organization, Little People U.K.  His tributes to her memory are deeply moving.

 

 

Drifting through the UCLAx Film Festival

My home campus, UCLA, has recently made headlines with stories about protest encampments, pitched student-on-student battles, and arrests, all pertaining to the tangled conflicts in the Middle East. But last Saturday I attended an event that was peaceful and even joyous. For almost 30 years I’ve been an instructor through UCLA Extension, which welcomes students from all over the world who are keen to improve their skills in a variety of disciplines. Last week Extension hosted UCLAx Film Festival 2024, a gathering of up-and-coming filmmakers who’ve taken pertinent courses in its entertainment studies division or the writers’ program in which I teach. I consider this festival a well-kept secret that should be better known. I attended this year, for the very first time, because one of my screenwriting students alerted me that his short film would be among those featured.

 The festival, I’ve discovered, is eight years old. Naturally, during the pandemic, it was online only. And this year’s event was postponed from fall 2023 to spring 2024 because of the long-lasting Writers Guild strike. Still, the event I just attended was a total wow! Introductory days of festivities and panels were followed by the main event, held this year in Downtown L.A.’s fabulous Los Angeles Theatre, a French baroque-style movie palace where in 1931 Charlie Chaplin once premiered City Lights. The Downtown location, which was mercifully far from the campus disturbances of the past week, served to highlight UCLA Extension’s commitment to offering educational opportunities in L.A.’s business hub. And the swanky afterparty (free to all attendees) was a delight.

 So how were the films? These professional-quality gems, all 15 minutes or under, represented a wide variety of styles, themes, and even nationalities. (There were subtitled films shot in Spanish, French, Turkish, and Farsi)  Among the 19 entries were piquant studies of lost souls; a documentary saluting a  ninety-year-old woman who takes a very personal approach to feeding the hungry, a musical tale of a bear invading an L.A. neighborhood, and a love story involving a malfunctioning android. The five prizes awarded at the end of the day showcased the range and quality of the work on display. The audience prize went to The Dot, a whimsical story of a lonely man in an art gallery. Another honoree was Elevate, about a taut late-night encounter between a security guard and a tenant in the high-rise where she works. Andean Condor, gorgeously shot in South America, was a prize-winner too, as was the uproariously goofy The 1971 Kitchen Grand Brie, which used computer-aided animation to  bring us the world’s tastiest road race, in which racing star Armando Fettuccini finally gets his just desserts.

 I’ve saved the best for last. My former student, Christopher Hills Eaton, was the writer/director/producer of an animated film that condenses the story of a full life into 9 ½ poignant minutes. I had absolutely nothing to do with Driftwood, but I have read  enough of Chris’s past work (and learned enough about his family story) to know him as a man of sensitivity and deep emotions. Driftwood begins with a young sailor knocked into the sea in the chaos surrounding Pear Harbor. His salvation comes as he clings to a large chunk of driftwood, and the eccentrically-shaped log follows him through the rest of his life. When the lights came up, my husband asked me if I had a Kleenex I could spare. This was my first discovery that I wasn’t the only one watching the end of the film through tears.  Bravo, Chris!  

For more information about the festival and this year’s films, see https://www.uclaextension.edu/uclaxfilmfest 

 

Marilyn Chambers: 99 & 44/100% Pure

In 1997 a Paul Thomas Anderson film called Boogie Nights captured three Oscar nominations and a number of lesser prizes. This colorful look at the rise of a well-endowed young man renewed movie-goers’ fascination with the Golden Age of Porn (basically 1969-1974). The adult film industry had first gained wide popularity with the release of 1972’s Deep Throat, an x-rated flick that lives on as a reference to a certain Watergate-era snitch. Once it became chic for the general public to seek titillation at venues like the Pussycat Theater, Linda Lovelace (displaying her unusual talents in Deep Throat) and Georgina Spelvin (on display in The Devil in Miss Jones) attracted international attention. But the most complex and compelling of adult movie stars seems to have been Marilyn Chambers, an All-American blonde who burst into the public consciousness as the leading lady in the Mitchell Brothers’ Behind the Green Door (1972).   

 Chambers, barely 20, was pretty, athletic, and enthusiastic about sex in all its forms. She had also, as it turns out, just been prominently featured on the box of Procter & Gamble’s new laundry detergent, Ivory Snow, as a loving young mother cuddling a happy baby. The longtime slogan for Ivory products? “It’s "99 & 44/100% pure.” The contrast between Chambers’ innocent looks and her scandalous reputation boosted her notoriety, and gave my colleague Jared Stearns a nifty title for his brand-new Chambers biography, Pure.

 Jared, a fellow member of Biographers International Organization, has been fascinated by the life of Chambers (born Marilyn Briggs, and comfortably raised in tony Westport, Connecticut) for decades. In the course of his research, he’s connected with virtually everyone still living who’s played a part in Chambers’ eventful life, including her siblings, her daughter, and her closest friend. Jared is particularly good at pointing up Chambers’ many self-contradictions. Though she was bold and sassy in public appearances as well as on the talk-show circuit, she was easily dominated by most of the men in her life, including her longtime husband and manager, Chuck Traynor. (He was a shrewd but volatile man, who had previously been married to, and guided the emergence of, Linda Lovelace. Jared hardly minces words in describing him: “an illiterate, abusive, opportunistic misogynist.”)  Chambers also had a surprising domestic streak, but underwent at least one abortion due to Traynor’s insistence. It was not until she moved on to a (somewhat) more stable man that she finally had the child she’d hoped for, and became a loving parent.

 In tracing Chambers’ career, Jared reveals how difficult it was for her to convert her fame into the serious acting opportunities she craved. Spurned over and over by mainstream Hollywood, she starred in a nightclub act and launched a one-woman drama called “Sex Surrogate” that was banned from Las Vegas (!) because it contained full frontal nudity. But though Jared focuses in on Marilyn’s life, he doesn’t ignore what was happening in the world around her. The mid-1980s was the era when the scourge of AIDS was rocking the adult film industry, one more way in which Marilyn’s livelihood was facing jeopardy.

 In a fascinating digression, Jared explains how his subject’s combination of bold sexuality and personal elegance made her a magnet for gay men, to the point where “it’s a wonder why Marilyn Chambers isn’t as prominently revered in the gay community as Madonna, Mae West, or Mamie Van Doren. She has many hallmarks associated with diva worship.”

 By the way, Marilyn Chambers didn’t care for Boogie Nights’ depiction of the world she knew so well.  To her it was simply “inaccurate.” 

 

 

A Heartfelt Ode to Lovers and Other Strangers

Yes, I’m a bit of a sucker for wedding movies, especially those that suggest that it’s possible to achieve wedded bliss. Lovers and Other Strangers came out in 1970, when I was heading toward marriage myself. I’m not sure this little film acknowledges the possibility of happily ever after, but it’s both romantic (at times) and extremely funny (often).

 Two of the writers of this film are Renée Taylor and Joseph Bologna, a married couple who presumably knew the territory. They first launched this comedy on Broadway, where it was a hit of the 1968 season, with Taylor in a key role. She doesn’t appear in the film, which was co-written by David Zelag Goodman, but the three shared an Oscar nomination for their screenplay. (By the way, Bologna passed on in 2017, but Taylor is still around at the ripe old age of 91.)

 The centerpiece of the film is the wedding of two attractive young New Yorkers, Susan (Bonnie Bedelia) and Mike (Michael Brandon). Though their parents don’t know it, they’ve been sharing an apartment for a year. Now, on the eve of their wedding, Mike isn’t sure he wants to change the status quo. But Susan, who seems to have good insight into the working of her boyfriend’s mind, cheerfully proceeds with the gown fitting and other plans for the elaborate out-of-town nuptials to which they’ve committed. In the course of their pre-wedding errands, we come to know their families. Mike’s lower-middle-class Italian parents (Beatrice Arthur and the Oscar-nominated Richard Castellano) seem in many ways to be a mismatch: she’s devoutly Roman Catholic and he has had a few extramarital flings, but doesn’t see the point in going to confession. Yet though they bicker constantly and don’t pretend to be entirely happy with one another, they’re unified in their horror that older son Richie is on the brink of divorce. (Hhis pretty young wife is Diane Keaton, in her first film role. She’s a romantic who laments that since a year or two of marriage, Richie’s hair no longer smells like raisins.)

 Meanwhile Susan’s affluent Irish-Catholic parents (Gig Young and Cloris Leachman) present themselves as an attractive married couple. This is a façade, however, because the very smooth Hal is juggling his marital commitments and a fling with the woebegone Kathy (Anne Jackson). Kathy, alas, always seems to be weeping in the bathroom as Hal weasels out of promises to divorce his wife. And there’s one more screwball coupling, between a hot-to-trot cousin (Bob Dishy) and a ditzy bridesmaid (Marian Hailey) who’s really into Camus and Khalil Gibran. (When she mentions taking part in the recent student protests on the campus of Columbia University, he’s impressed that she’s an Ivy Leaguer. No, she earnestly explains, she was one of the “outside agitators” there.) 

 With all this going on, it’s remarkable that the wedding comes off as planned, leaving us hoping that at least one couple will find joy in holy matrimony, at least for now. The film won favor both from audiences and Oscar voters, earning three nominations. (Its only victory was for its song, “For All We Know,” which became a hit for The Carpenters and a staple at weddings from that day to this.)

 An eerie postscript: Gig Young, the one-time Oscar-winner who plays the straying father of the bride, was married five times. His last marriage, in 1978 when he was 64, was to a 31-year-old German magazine editor. Three weeks later, he apparently killed his wife and then himself. So much for happily ever after.

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

Linking Up on the Links: “Tin Cup”

When it comes to golf, I don’t know a birdie from a bogey. So a movie that’s all about golf should not speak to me. Still, I was a big fan of Ron Shelton’s baseball-related directorial debut, Bull Durham (1988). Four years later, Shelton made playground basketball sexy in White Men Can’t Jump. So I was curious to see what he could do on the golf links, especially since Tin Cup (1996) reunited him with the star of Bull Durham, Kevin Costner.

 I’m not always a Kevin Costner enthusiast, especially in films that require him to be solemn and heroic. (See, for instance, Dances with Wolves.) In Tin Cup he’s quite the opposite: something of a grifter who just happens to have remarkable golf skills, but is too much in love with crazy bets and show-offy gambles to make a real career out of a sport he loves. Shelton describes his Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy as a archetypal American hustler-conman-loser who has a gift for self-destruction. To my surprise, he reminded me a great deal of Jimmy McGill, Bob Odenkirk’s talented but sleazy lawyer in the TV series, Better Call Saul. (The two men even have a similar look: clean-cut but diabolical.) The film ends up with Roy in a position to win—to everyone’s astonishment—the U.S. Open, but the outcome is not what you might expect.

 Following some success on his college golf team, Roy has made a life for himself running a driving-range in an out-of-the-way desert spot called Salome, Texas, where the greens are hardly green, and armadillos are an occasional hazard on the course. (The movie opens with a series of colorful roadside signs including this one: “Last chance to hit golf balls fore 520 miles.”) Not much concerned about money, Roy hangs out with a scruffy group of golf buddies, drinking beers, making creative wagers, and giving the occasional golf lesson to a newbie. Such a one is Dr. Molly Griswold (Rene Russo), a feisty and attractive clinical psychologist who shows up with hundreds of dollars’ worth of questionable golf gear. She’s dating Roy’s college nemesis, David Simms (Don Johnson), now a star professional golfer who holds charity tournaments and never misses a chance to needle Roy about his less than stellar accomplishments on the links. Naturally, Roy and Molly can’t fight their growing attraction, especially when she discovers (natch!) that big-hearted, charitable David is really a jerk behind the scenes.

 Though I delighted in Roy’s devil-may-care personality, Dr. Molly didn’t work for me. Yes, she has colorful moments, but the character seems less a reflection of true human behavior than a construct by a screenwriter looking to find an original take on his leading lady. Her backstory is a  jumble of romance with an Amarillo cowboy, years selling real estate, and suddenly a newly-minted psychotherapy degree. Frankly, it just doesn’t wash, though the romantic capitulation, when it comes, is jolly good fun, even while it leaves Roy’s caddy/guru/best friend out in the rain for a very long time.

 That best friend is played by Cheech Marin, best known for his drug-friendly comedy routines with partner Tommy Chong. His role as Romeo Posar gives him the opportunity to be wise, to be funny, even to sing and to dance in sexy style with Roy’s ex-girlfriend, a bodacious stripper. I would be remiss in not mentioning Cheech’s off-screen passion for collecting Chicano art. He boasts the largest such collection in the world, and in 2022 joined with the city of Riverside, California to open The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry.