The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (449 page)

He made his name as the extraterrestrial on the hit TV series,
Mork and Mindy
(1978–82), and he continues to perform on TV specials, at clubs, parties, on sound tracks and, surely, in the shower. His movie work is the epitome of unevenness:
Popeye
(80, Robert Altman);
The World According to Garp
(82, George Roy Hill);
The Survivors
(83, Michael Ritchie); Russian in
Moscow on the Hudson
(84, Paul Mazursky); as a high school football failure in
The Best of Times
(86, Roger Spottiswoode);
Club Paradise
(86, Harold Ramis); excruciating in the Saul Bellow adaptation,
Seize the Day
(86, Fielder Cook);
Good Morning, Vietnam
(87, Barry Levinson), for which he was nominated for best actor Oscar;
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
(89, Terry Gilliam); nominated again for best actor in
Dead Poets Society
(89, Peter Weir); as Oliver Sacks in
Awakenings
(90, Penny Marshall);
Cadillac Man
(90, Roger Donaldson);
The Fisher King
(91, Gilliam); a Peter out of Willy Loman in
Hook
(91, Steven Spielberg); as the voice of the Genie in
Aladdin
(92, John Musker and Ron Clements);
Toys
(92, Levinson); dreadfully indulged in a vacuous hit,
Mrs. Doubtfire
(93, Chris Columbus); and
Being Human
(94, Bill Forsyth).

So it goes on, with Williams as the man-child of American film, hideously “likable,” often enough in films for children, but invariably in works for those unwilling to grow up:
Nine Months
(95, Columbus);
Jumanji
(95, Joe Johnston); better in
The Birdcage
(96, Mike Nichols);
Jack
(96, Francis Ford Coppola); a villain in
The Secret Agent
(96, Christopher Hampton), and interesting; Osric in
Hamlet
(96, Kenneth Branagh);
Father’s Day
(97, Ivan Reitman);
Deconstructing Harry
(97, Woody Allen);
Flubber
(97, Les Mayfield); winning the supporting actor Oscar as the shrink in
Good Will Hunting
(97, Gus Van Sant);
What Dreams May Come
(98, Vincent Ward); simply dreadful in
Patch Adams
(98, Tom Shadyac);
Jakob the Liar
(99, Peter Kassovitz);
Bicentennial Man
(99, Columbus); a voice in
A.I
. (01, Spielberg).

Just as “the Robin Williams picture” had become a warning signal, he tried to shift into less ingratiating roles:
Death to Smoochy
(02, Danny DeVito);
Insomnia
(02, Christopher Nolan);
One Hour Photo
(02, Mark Romanek). When that didn’t take, he went back to the comedies:
Noel
(04, Chazz Palmintieri); with his daughter in
House of D
(05, David Duchovny);
The Final Cut
(05, Omar Naim);
The Big White
(05, Mark Mylod);
The Aristocrats
(05, Paul Provenza);
Man of the Year
(06, Barry Levinson); as Teddy Roosevelt in
Night at the Museum
(06, Shawn Levy);
RV
(06, Barry Sonnenfeld);
License to Wed
(07, Ken Kwapis);
August Rush
(07, Kirsten Sheridan);
Shrink
(09, Jonas Pate);
World’s Greatest Dad
(09, Bobcat Goldthwait);
Old Dogs
(09, Walt Becker).

Bruce Willis
(Walter Willison), b. Idar-Oberstein, Germany, 1955
A time may come when Bruce Willis is treasured for his small parts, twenty lively minutes here or there, a flash, a wisecrack, a voice off, or even—simply—an implication: thus, I prefer his doomed gangster in
Billy Bathgate
(91, Robert Benton); the eminently murderable husband in
Mortal Thoughts
(91, Alan Rudolph); the nice parody within
The Player
(92, Robert Altman); the voices off, or within, in
Look Who’s Talking
(89, Amy Heckerling) and
Look Who’s Talking, Too
(90, Heckerling); and even his off-the-picture contribution to his wife Demi Moore’s first Henry Moore-like
Vanity Fair
cover.

Still, there is a more extended Willis, launched in the TV series
Moonlighting
(85–89), which was actually at its best as bits and pieces but in which Willis struck up a pleasing brittle banter with Cybill Shepherd, and in which his cocksureness got enough comeuppance to be entertaining. He had had tiny parts in New York movies—he is said to be in Sidney Lumet’s
Prince of the City
(81) and
The Verdict
(81)—but he made his starring debut in
Blind Date
(87, Blake Edwards). He played Tom Mix in
Sunset
(88, Edwards), before falling into
Die Hard
(88, John McTiernan) and
Die Hard 2
(90, Renny Harlin).

Their success beggared description or reasoning, and left Willis exposed to the just-as-lavish failure of
In Country
(89, Norman Jewison),
The Bonfire of the Vanities
(90, Brian De Palma), and
Hudson Hawk
(91, Michael Lehmann). Chances are that comedy is his most fruitful pursuit, yet he clings to adventure, as in
The Last Boy Scout
(92, Tony Scott). In
Death Becomes Her
(92, Robert Zemeckis), he was again not much more than a support to two actresses going through athletic motions. He was in
North
(94, Rob Reiner); and super in
Pulp Fiction
(94, Quentin Tarantino).

The mystery of Mr. Willis goes on. He makes quantities of commercial junk, where his raised eyebrows soar into the space left by his receding hairline as he offs so many minor players. And then he comes in with something that unmistakably reveals a tender, wise actor. I still have the hunch that he’s going to walk off with an Oscar someday soon, for some piece of breathtaking humility. He came close with
The Sixth Sense
(99, M. Night Shyamalan), and he was brilliant in a supporting role in
Nobody’s Fool
(94, Benton). Against that, there is
Die Hard: With a Vengeance
(95, McTiernan);
Twelve Monkeys
(95, Terry Gilliam);
Last Man Standing
(96, Walter Hill);
The Fifth Element
(97, Luc Besson);
The Jackal
(97, Michael Caton-Jones);
Mercury Rising
(98, Harold Becker); and
Armageddon
(98, Michael Bay).

He was a little better, or quieter, or more humorous, in
The Siege
(98, Edward Zwick);
Breakfast of Champions
(99, Alan Rudolph);
The Story of Us
(99, Rob Reiner);
The Whole Nine Yards
(00, Jonathan Lynn), and—just
—Unbreakable
(00, Shyamalan), which was as opaque as
Sixth Sense
was lucid. He has also been shameless in
The Kid
(00, Jon Turteltaub);
Bandits
(01, Barry Levinson);
Hart’s War
(02, Gregory Hoblit);
Tears of the Sun
(03, Antoine Fuqua);
The Whole Ten Yards
(04, Howard Deutch);
Hostage
(04, Florent Emilio Siri).

The feeling that Bruce, in his own mind, was a figure of bronze (or toffee) was beautifully captured in
Sin City
(05, Frank Miller and Richard Rodriguez);
Alpha Dog
(06, Nick Cassavetes);
16 Blocks
(06, Richard Donner), which he also produced;
Lucky Number Slevin
(06, Paul McGuigan);
Perfect Stranger
(07, James Foley);
Grindhouse
(07, Tarantino);
Live Free or Die Hard
(07, Len Wiseman), which he produced;
What Just Happened
(08, Barry Levinson);
Assassination of a High School President
(08, Brett Simon);
Surrogates
(09, Jonathan Mostow).

Gordon Willis
, b. Queens, New York, 1931
You have to believe this: for 1972 and 1974, Gordon Willis did not win the cinematography Oscars for
The Godfather
and
The Godfather Part II
(both by Francis Coppola). The prizes went to Geoffrey Unsworth for
Cabaret
and to Fred Koenekamp and Joseph Biroc for
The Towering Inferno
. But that is not the whole story: Gordon Willis was not even nominated in those years. In 1971, he shot
Klute
(Alan Pakula); in 1976, he shot
All the President’s Men
(Pakula); in 1977 he shot
Annie Hall
(Woody Allen); and in 1979 he shot
Manhattan
(Allen). You know these films because they were all involved in the Oscars. But for not one of the six was Gordon Willis as much as nominated.

Meanwhile, you might reach the conclusion that in
Klute
, the two parts of
The Godfather, All the President’s Men
, and
The Parallax View
(yes, Willis shot that), one cinematographer had established a kind of noir color look, rich in brown, amber, and shadow, that was a vital force in the noir movies made in Hollywood in the 1970s. This is not just a matter of recording the images efficiently, it is in the understanding of a new dramatic need and the technical ability to deliver it. Willis in the early 1970s is as important to film history as Henri Decaë and Raoul Coutard are a decade before.

Was Willis “difficult”? Did he deserve the title “Prince of Darkness” bestowed on him by a fond Conrad Hall? Francis Coppola said that the two of them argued a lot, and he said the discussions were positive. It may be that a majority of cinematographers disliked Willis’s new style, disliked him, or disapproved of his attitude to union arrangements—he was fixedly East Coast and out of love with Los Angeles. In which case, Willis has only one consolation: that so many of the best pictures of the 1970s chose him to do their work.

This “anomaly” was noted and on two occasions—for
Zelig
(82, Allen) and
The Godfather Part III
(90, Coppola), Willis was nominated. He did not win. And maybe if he was really “difficult” it was as well that he didn’t win—a good cinematographer might go crazy at an Oscar for
Godfather III
and nothing for the first two. And so, it was 2009 before the Academy awarded Willis an honorary Oscar—and something like justice was done at last. Of course, they did not give the Oscar out on Oscars night but months before, at a private event. To which I will add this: that in what we now see as the last age of moving photography that used film stock emulsion, light, color, and dramatic insight, Gordon Willis is a giant figure and one of the band of artists who made
The Godfather
possible.

He shot a number of other films, many of which contribute toward the adult color photography that he helped create:
End of the Road
(70, Aram Avakian);
Loving
(70, Irvin Kershner);
The Landlord
(70, Hal Ashby);
Little Murders
(71, Alan Arkin);
Bad Company
(72, Robert Benton);
Up the Sandbox
(72, Kershner);
The Paper Chase
(73, James Bridges);
The Drowning Pool
(75, Stuart Rosenberg);
Interiors
(78, Allen);
Comes a Horseman
(78, Pakula);
Stardust Memories
(80, Allen);
Pennies from Heaven
(81, Herbert Ross);
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
(82, Allen);
Broadway Danny Rose
(84, Allen);
The Purple Rose of Cairo
(85, Allen);
Perfect
(85, Bridges);
The Money Pit
(86, Richard Benjamin);
The Pick-Up Artist
(87, James Toback);
Bright Lights, Big City
(88, Bridges);
Presumed Innocent
(90, Pakula);
Malice
(93, Harold Becker);
The Devil’s Own
(97, Pakula).

He directed one film,
Windows
(80), and it was not very good.

I once heard photographer Michael Chapman say that he was almost ashamed to have nominations in years when Willis was overlooked—but Chapman was ignored for
Taxi Driver!

Debra Winger
, b. Cleveland, Ohio, 1955
I met Debra Winger in the early eighties, to write a profile for
California
magazine. She had so much going for her then: she was articulate, unruly, raucous, funny, but very smart; she had something of the young Stanwyck; and she was young enough for her evident insecurities to seem natural—she was not yet thirty. Though it was not her first film, in
Urban Cowboy
(80, James Bridges) she had stolen a big picture with her bravura tough prettiness, her through-and-through snappiness, and one sequence on a mechanical bull. In
An Officer and a Gentleman
(82, Taylor Hackford), she had delivered an authentic working-class woman, she had seemed hot, urgent, and gritty, and the film was another hit. Just ahead lay
Terms of Endearment
(83, James L. Brooks) in which her portrait of a young woman dying of cancer was free from sentimentality or easy pathos. That Debra Winger had projects of her own in mind—she wanted to play the singer Libby Holman and Mabel Normand—and she seemed capable of a large career.

Yet there were stories that she was difficult, argumentative, wild … one never knows what those reports mean. It can be a matter of disobedience or simply seeking more understanding; or of being too gritty, not quite beautiful, and too edgily Jewish.

Ten years later, Winger’s looked like a falling career, made up of willful misjudgments, her eyes ever more desperate at the realization of not being accepted or loved by the public. By then, the real puzzle was that she had no grasp of why or how she was threatening.