The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (69 page)

How many titanium sets of slacks and sports coat could he sustain? Has there ever been such anonymous tailoring in a man? Such a mix of cloth and stealth? Or such reason to worry over his very severe grace? Carson was never relaxed. He may have exercised all his life, but fretting kept him lean. He shifted that mug endlessly. He drummed with the pencils and checked the knot of his tie as if it were his fly. He was all antennae, sweeping an audience for sullenness or the sweet mercy that liked him. “I don’t know why, but I’m in a silly mood tonight,” he’d claim, a thousand times, trying to believe it. Whereas Johnny Carson was about as silly as Jack Nicklaus putting for money.

There is nothing new in remarking on the enigma or chill of Carson, or in wondering what this affable chatster did when he went home, or when he was off. Kenneth Tynan found him happier on the air than at social gatherings. Truman Capote (close to the second Mrs. Carson) believed Johnny was “consumed by rage.” Research will tell you that Johnny did tennis, traveled, and waited in Malibu to be on the air again. Little enough considering his bounty. Yet it’s hard to picture Carson occupied or doing things away from his set. Out and about in America, what could he have done … except be president? By which, I mean, be the decoy running back for secret service blockers; grin his brittle way across the White House lawn; and do the whiplash monologue, the good news and the bad, a Carnak on the state of the nation. Johnny didn’t just do a brilliant and understanding Reagan impersonation. He had laid down a public pose in which Reagan daydreamed. President Ronnie owed as much to Johnny’s elusive authority as to Reagan’s own past as an actor.

Of course, Johnny was always apolitical. That was how he felt able to make jokes about everyone—often sharp, sometimes damaging. No one questioned the fairness of his mockery, or charged him with allegiances. It was the implicit philosophy of
Tonight
that decent, wry, common-sense Americans knew to trust no one in office. There was never the faintest notion that politics ought to be part of the American soul.

Johnny had tough competition. His era saw the chaos of the sixties, the assassinations, Vietnam, the Americanness of racism, Watergate, and at last, the nullity of Washington. And now we know there are worse things, unrevealed, plots too hideous to be described. Without having to own up to it, Carson was close to the see-no-evil blitheness of Reagan: he was very rich; in the eighties, he earned more for doing less; and around sixty, he insisted on being smart, urbane, and prosperous, as if to say, “Look, it can be done! You can have the love of this country forever if you never take on an issue.”

Johnny had Reagan’s luck in getting away with it. That good fortune was akin to his drab perfect clothes, and the way clubhouse smartness eclipsed character. But near the end, Johnny got caught. The parade of big names for the last month, all coming to Burbank to honor him, was interrupted by fear and loathing in South-Central L.A. This was more than the monologue could stretch around. It wasn’t deemed manageable for Johnny to nod solemnly while such as Jesse Jackson, Spike Lee, or Bill Cosby orated. The show was simply canceled, which isn’t exactly what we ask of the daily talk show that reaches most Americans.

At the very outset of Carson’s term on the
Tonight
show, in October 1962, he did at least refer to a current problem. With riots at the University of Mississippi, Carson said, “I don’t think we should get involved in that. We should just let that go. I feel, like I think most of you do, that we hope all of this works out in the right way.” Is that Reagan, or what? And if things haven’t worked out right yet, if the old problem has grown uglier, how far is that because so central a voice of conventional wisdom stayed mute?

Carson’s mastery depended on his pinnacle of celebrity, not on the fruits of discussion. He did not court challenge or allow much talk without punch line. He would sooner be made a fool of by Joan Embery’s animals or the licensed outrage of Don Rickles than risk being led into matters of structure and nature by his house wisemen—Gore Vidal, William Buckley, or Carl Sagan. (Unknown writers and academics never got on the Carson show—and these days it is unknowns who have the truth.) He never messed with eloquent guests; some caution kept him agreeing until the break, desperate not to be exposed in ignorance or personal opinion. There was no idea for Johnny as potent as a wisecrack.

Yes, he was brilliant. He was a stand-up comic who mastered the less common form of sit-down bemused reaction. So often in his opening monologues he was searching sideways, less for Ed than for his own poker-faced va-voom at the desk. Talking to himself. Johnny Carson could be as dead-on expert, fast, funny, smart, and tireless as a great drummer. A great white drummer who had settled for a safe, moneymaking band. Think of the overflow, the tumult, and the mania in a Buddy Rich and you can see how repressive Johnny’s beat was. (Think of Jack Nicholson’s axeman, “Here’s Johnny!” in
The Shining
to feel some of the restrained energy.) Carson had Ed, Doc, Tommy, Freddie de Cordova, and the stupefied musicians—not a threat in the bunch, no gesture toward independence that was more than a setup for Johnny’s perfectly timed rebukes. And when he punished, one could see the depth of anger. How loyally they withstood his distance; how steadily they pretended to be a bunch of the boys. Just recently, the show reran a chat between Johnny and Doc Severinsen that ran close to revealing how little these buddies knew each other—and Doc was relishing it behind his sweet, pious grin, as if he’d relied on the deft fraud getting his comeuppance one day.

No woman could penetrate this five o’clock mob masquerading as late-nighters (for the show was taped early in front of a nocturnal photograph). Betty White was a regular on the Mighty Carson Art Players. Charo did her bit for Latin women, and did it over and over again, the person as catchphrase. Joan Rivers came, and went, as the miscast “heiress,” so clearly scary to Johnny’s sense of order, and so grindingly intimate. Otherwise, there was a parade of gorgeous bimbos who strolled on for the new sponsor spots, carnal but silent except for the simpering content of being next to Mr. Cool, never noticing his disdain, let alone his self-loathing. That was left to the wives, the ones who had to watch Johnny at home when he was not on.

Now, this may sound as if I don’t really or entirely like Johnny. Not so. I can never resist a magnificent, triumphant performer whose appearance and aplomb are drawn tight to conceal loneliness, dismay, anger, and disgust. And if the
Tonight
show was usually cowardly and irrelevant, Carson could fairly ask, “Why blame me? It’s only entertainment. It’s only television. And if you’re going to have television, you’ve got to expect fixtures like me.” All true: the omissions of the
Tonight
show are no more Johnny’s fault than the lapses of the Reagan years are the burden of their president. After all, it was only ever the
Tonight
show
with
Johnny Carson. He never recognized responsibility.

They say he kept NBC alive and well for years. But network entertainment has lost its hold. The rivals for his slot are discovering that the hallowed hour lost its allure with the monster’s retreat. America is not honestly a late-night country. Prime time is beginning and ending earlier. The TV set is more at our mercy. There are no real talk shows now, only plugging sessions and celebrity roasts. Do you recall a time when Dick Cavett gave five nights in a row to a beguiling, forgotten scoundrel-genius named Jed Harris? That was when TV talked.

Johnny was a model of mainstream hopes and fears. He was what the middle of the country dreamed of being if it made it—a star, but a gray star, matte finish, with all the confusions that entailed. It was the battle between glory and folksiness that made Carson like Nixon, a little more worrying the cheerier he became. All Nixon wanted was to be presidential, and Johnny lasted so long because he didn’t know what to do except be on TV. And as the decades passed, so the mainstream proved itself a narrow inch of iced water. Whereas we deserve floods and torrents.

Helena Bonham Carter
, b. London, 1966
I must confess that, around the time of the ignominiously flashy
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
(94, Kenneth Branagh), I did raise the notion of a fund, or a campaign, to urge Miss BC’s retirement, before she got hurt or stepped on. Not that she really seemed susceptible to damage. I was proved wrong by the transformation of her Kate Croy in
The Wings of the Dove
(97, Iain Softley), so fully grown up, so beguiling in her varieties of blue, and so scaldingly beautiful in the somber nude scenes. She was nominated for an Oscar, and could have won. A real actress was delivered.

The great-granddaughter of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and the granddaughter of Lady Violet Bonham Carter, HBC’s pedigree could hardly be sounder. But there was a time when it seemed at odds with her tininess and her immature attitudes—all of which suited such early roles as
Lady Jane
(86, Trevor Nunn);
A Room with a View
(86, James Ivory);
Maurice
(87, Ivory);
The Mask
(88, Fiorella Infascelli);
Francesco
(89, Liliana Cavani);
Getting It Right
(89, Randal Kleiser); Ophelia to Mel Gibson’s
Hamlet
(90, Franco Zeffirelli);
Where Angels Fear to Tread
(91, Charles Sturridge); Helen Schlegel in
Howards End
(92, Ivory).

She was unexpectedly good on television as Marina Oswald in
Fatal Deception
(93, Robert Dornhelm); not too credible as Woody’s wife in
Mighty Aphrodite
(95, Woody Allen); Olivia in
Twelfth Night
(96, Nunn);
Portraits Chinois
(96, Martine Dugowson);
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
(97, Robert Bierman). She was much improved in
Margaret’s Museum
(97, Mort Ransen), and very good as Morgan Le Fay in
Merlin
(98, Steve Barron). She then played a brave but misguided role, as a sexually hungry cripple, with her real-life companion, Kenneth Branagh, in the awful
Theory of Flight
(98, Paul Greengrass). A year later she was very funny as a caricature of the hard slut in
Fight Club
(99, David Fincher);
Women Talking Dirty
(99, Coky Giedroyc);
Carnivale
(99, Deane Taylor); as the liberal in
Planet of the Apes
(01, Tim Burton);
Novocaine
(01, David Atkins).

She was in
Till Human Voices Wake Us
(01, Michael Petroni); as Mum in the short
Football
(01, Gaby Dellal);
The Heart of Me
(02, Thaddeus O’Sullivan); good in
Live from Baghdad
(02, Mick Jackson); as Anne Boleyn in
Henry VIII
(03, Pete Travis);
Big Fish
(03, Burton).

She married Tim Burton, and that dictated a good deal of her work:
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
(04, Brad Silberling);
Conversations with Other Women
(05, Hans Canosa); representing autism in
Magnificent 7
(05, Kenneth Glenaan);
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
(05, Nick Park)—a voice; another voice in
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
(05);
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
(05, Burton);
Sixty-Six
(06, Paul Weiland);
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
(07, David Yates); singing and very sexy in
Sweeney Todd
(07, Burton), but not quite right for it;
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
(09, Yates);
Terminator Salvation
(09, McG); as
Enid
(Blyton) (09, James Hawes); the Red Queen in
Alice in Wonderland
(10, Burton).

John Cassavetes
(1929–89), b. New York
1961:
Shadows
. 1962:
Too Late Blues; A Child Is Waiting
. 1968:
Faces
. 1970:
Husbands
. 1971:
Minnie and Moskowitz
. 1974:
A Woman Under the Influence
. 1976:
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
. 1978:
Opening Night
. 1980:
Gloria
. 1983:
Love Streams
. 1985:
Big Trouble
.

Shadows
was once hailed as the breakthrough of what was called American underground cinema. But the film jumped up above ground like a wired groundhog. Cassavetes was depicted as a frustrated genius obliged to act in passing Hollywood nonsense as a way of saving money for his own “sincere” films.
Shadows was
sincere, as student movies are. Cassavetes was really the first modern American independent. His half-swaggering, halfaggressive integrity was highly influential. Like booze, it seemed to exalt the man himself. He could rouse audiences against commercial pictures like Warren Beatty working himself up into socialist wrath playing John Reed. Except that, as an actor, Cassavetes had harsh metal in his soul.

Something of this cult had once embraced the far more agreeable, and more slippery, Orson Welles. Like Cassavetes, Welles could be an actor who delighted in the coarsest melodrama, and never resisted it. Whereupon, it was supposed, such hams walked through a transforming doorway, or aura, and became selfless artists. “American independent” can be a large contradiction in terms. Sooner or later, making movies is getting down in the dirt of money and crowds—and Cassavetes’s shark’s grin seemed to suggest he understood that.

He was earnest and obsessive; he had a grinding laugh when he acted, yet I’d guess he was humorless. He was an actor first and last, and someone belligerently alone and secret in his dogged pursuits. That which seemed independent was the helpless course of temperament. He was seldom a graceful filmmaker; whereas, Welles was maybe cursed with the knack of making everything seem oiled and easy—except writing. There’s the rub with many American independents. The Cassavetes films are far more thoroughly written than was once believed; and they are badly written. What makes John Sayles more interesting than Cassavetes is his attitude as a writer. Sayles is no Welles. He may find the visual rather secondary, but his pictures benefit from material, ideas, and talk. They are constructed, and so Sayles gets better performances from actors than Cassavetes. He directs them; he knows what they should do. Cassavetes indulges them, he invites them in and waits to see what they will do. He treats them like adorable pets; and we sometimes feel as if they were his vacation snapshots.