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ARTS
Wednesday, January 21, 1981
Page 6
Scott, Brando
succumb to
The Michigan Daily
'Formula'
By CHRISTOPHER POTTER
The face is craggier now than it was a
decade ago, conjuring more than ever a.
visage out of theBrothers Grimm. The
jaw juts forth like a stone-age axe,
from which bellows a voice that rasps
-as though in the dying throes of throat
cancer, yet astounds with its power and
rage. The piercing, slightly mad eyes
peer craftily out from behind the
gnarled hump of a nose-forever
scheming, plotting, thinking furiously.
George C. Scott remains a national
icon of his chosen profession. He has
been hailed as the greatest actor of his
generation for so long now that it's as.
easy to overlook the fact that Scott
hasn't given anything approaching a
'reat performance in years. At one
time it seemed impossinle for him not
t4 do so-the man's range was apparen-
tly limitless. Just as Nijinsky respon-
ded to Diaghilev's directive: "Astonish
s!," so did Scott always manage to
anaze. Whether playing the
manipulative gambler in The Hustler,
the hyperbolic general -of Dr.
Strangelove, or the silently despairing
middle-class physician in Petulia, he
was completely the essence of
whatever character he was called upon
to play.
HE COULD tackle the routine
biography Patton and transform it into
breathtaking history, could singlehan-
dedly elevate an odious farce like Not
With My Wife, You Don't into
pleasurable comic entertainment. His
projections were consummate and en-
thralling, yet ruled by a rigid
professionalism that fiercely rejected
the self-indulgences of the method
school which Scott vocally despised.
His professionalism endures to this
day. Scott is never less than wholly
disciplined in his screen personae; he
remains a master craftsman at work.
Yet of late his acting has fallen ever
more regularly into a set mode of
thrusts and responses. Over the last
decade a creeping sameness has slowly
sapped the energy from this once won-
drous innovator. Scott can still impress,
even fascinate; but he no longer
astonishes us. It's as though acting had
finally become a r job instead of a
delight, was now merely a necessary
financial chore to be fulfilled as slickly
and painlessly as possible. Scott pun-
ches his time clock, does his thing,
brings home the bacon at night. And in
the process something once incon-
ceivable has happened: George C. Scott
has become predictable. And dull.
It's difficult to pinpoint just when or
why Scott's muse abandoned him. It
may well have been vitiated by his or-
deal over The Savage is Loose-a 1974
island-shipwreck epic that Scott not
only directed, starred in, and produced,
but also mortgaged his life's savings on
in a much-ballyhooed effort to retain
total artistic and financial control over
his film.
When Savage turned out to be one of
the most campily inept movies of the
decade, Scott's humiliation was com-
plete and devastating. Shortly after-
wards he announced his imminent
retirement from cinema, opting instead
to dedicate himself to stage acting
and directing. Yet the big bucks
remain in Hollywood, and the ensuing
years have found Scott onscreen with a
monotonous regularity. His recent per-
formances radiate a sullen, almost
resentful tone, as though he wished he
were somewhere, anywhere else except
cauht in front of a camera.
ADMITTEDLY, Scott's recent films
have not been conducive to Olympian
acting. His latest, The Formula, is
anything but a thespian's showcase
despite its constant immersion in
character converstations of Brob-
dingnagian lengths. The Formula is the
woebegone product of Steve Shagan, a
pompous windbag of a writer-producer
who publicly fancies himself a "poet of
despair," and manipulates his perfor-
mers with a hammy superciliousness
that would make Paddy Cheyevsky
blush.
Shagan, dramas don't even pretend to
(starring Burt Reynolds), which made
history as the first actionless police
film; now he has bequeathed us The
Formula, the first actionless inter-
national thriller.
The movie's allegedly true premise
rt
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
The Bush Program in Child Development and Social Policy
Winter 1981 Public Lectures
CURRENT ISSUES IN EDUCATION
Vt
4
Asa Hilliard, Georgia State University January 22
Is School Integration Possible?
Wallace Lambert, McGill University, Canada January 29
Language in Intergroup Relations: The Canadian Experience
Jerome Bruner, Harvard University February 5
Under Five in Britain
Urie Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University March 5
The Ecology of Education
Schorling Auditorium, School of Education
Thursdays at 4 p.m.
Co-sponsored by The University of Michigan School of Education
George C. Scott and Marlon Brando play the principal hero and villain,
respectively, in the completely dull new espionage "thriller" 'The Formula,'
which purports to say something profound about the current energy
crisis-and it very well might, but to find out you have to try to understand
the plot.
murder of an'old friend. The friend, of
course, holds the key to the formula,
and Scott subsequently shuffles his Way
across two continents in a dim, 'n-
coherent search for a hideous truth with
which the audience is already acquan-
ted. Hovering over every inch of his
journey is an invincible, shadowy, mur-
derous organization which sees all,
knows all. Where's the suspense in
trying to outmaneuver God?
OVERSEEING Shagan's dank con-
spiracy is carnivorous oil baron Adam
Steiffel (who "stifles" the oil sub-
ply-get it?). The fact that Steiffef is
played by Marlon Brando-another
superactor lately on the skids-sets up
the one fascinating dichotomy which
transcends the film's limits: tlie
screen rivalry of Brando, the nar-
cissistic symbol of The Method vs.
Scott, the ascetic practitioner of
thespian control.
It's a duel of dramatic creeds, and
Brando wins hands down. Cockily spor-
ting a shaved dome and a set aof
grotesquely false uppers, he provides
this otherwise solemnly affected film
with a glorious dose of self-effacement.
Diletante though he's become, Brando
at least knows how to have fun ii) a
movie, how to express a healtby,
exhibitionistic contempt for material
that deserves no better.
In contrast, there's not an ounce of
merriment in Scott's performance. The
once-innovative prankster has been
subjugated by the stony plodder-the
good soldier who recites his lines on
cue, takes his paycheck, and goes
home. There's no fire, no sponteneity
left-nothing but a dwindling bag of
tricks from an aging magician who long
ago lost the will to master anything
new.
For those of us who remember his
great moments, the transformation is
agonizing: George Scott has become a
businessman-artist-counting up the
profits, waiting out the days, When he
once again takes to the screen to dimly
regurgitate what's left of his memories,
we can only swallow hay d, remember
what once was.there, and know that the
future of acting belongs to other,
younger men.
Irts Page
ributors. Those who have an interest
g or static arts should attend an in-
ing held this Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in
It around the corner from Student Ac=
iting sample would be helpful, but not
emands that might be made upon you
illing to accommodate and accept any
be dramas-they are puppeteer's
soapboxes upon which the writer forces
his characters to orate his gloomy
banalities on the lost innocence of
America. For Shagan, the less physical
movement in a film, the better; any
overt cinematic hipper-dipper might
distract the audience from the dolorous
wisdom of his tepid prose. Several
years ago Shagan wrote hustle
Blues Band tonight
The Legendary Blues Band, formerly
known as the Muddy Waters Band, will
be playing tonight in the latest of a
series of performances by fine blues ar-
tists at Rick's American Cafe.
The name may sound pretentious at
first, but the band is led by pianist
Pinetop Perkins and mouth harpist
Jerry Portnoy; both about as legendary
as blues musicians come. Individually
and collectively, the band has played
with Greg Allman, Eric Clapton, Larry
Coryell, Bob Dylan, Dizzy Gillespie,
the ann arbor
film cooperative
TONIGHT TONIGHT
PRESENTS
A
CLOCKWORK,
ORANGE
7:00 & 9:30
Aud. A., Angell Hall
Admission: $2
Albert King, Stevie Wonder, the
Rolling Stones, and a host of others.
The band has appeared at Carnegie
Hall, the Kennedy Center, Radio City
Music Hall, the Newport and Mon-
treaux Jazz Festivals, the International
Jazz Jamboree, and the New Orleans
Jazz and Heritage Festival, to name a
few.
The band has mastered a variety of
blues styles, from the blues of har-
monica masters Sonny Boy Williamson
and Slim Harpo, to Southern honky-
tonk blues, to Chicago blues by artists
such as Little Walter. All of the band's
members (including Louis Myers on
guitar, Calvin Jones on bass, and Willie
Smith on drums) are fine blues singers
as well as superior instrumentalists.
But it is Pinetop Perkins that con-
tinually inspires a barrage of adjec-
tives. He is perhaps the finest blues
pianist in the business, and his vocals
are fraught with the passion and in-
spiration characteristic of fine blues.
Skeptical? Seeing is believing, to cop
a cliche, and the opportunity will
present itself tonight at Rick's, with the
show starting at about 9:30.
asserts that the Nazis developed a for-
mula for synthetic fuel during World
War II, and that American oil
conglomerates have been gluttonously
suppressing it for 35 years while all the
world runs dry. Once they've told you
that, there's no need to go on with the
film since nothing happens in it to ex-
pand or develop Shagan's premise one
iota.
Obviously, this leaves the author with
nothing to fill up The Formula's two-
hour time slot. So he and director John
G. Avildson decide to fatigue us with an
intercontinental odyssey featuring
George Scott as an intrepid LA
policeman bent on unravelling the
Jomi theA
The Daily Arts page needs new cont
and some knowledge in the performin
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required.
In case you're concerned about the d
as an arts staffer, rest easy. We are wi
Join The Daily
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