pop S, I ARTS Page 6 Tuesday, December 2, 1980 'THE STUNT MAN' Sleight-of-hand movie eP i * Full-Service Dining Roon * Hot Sandwiches * Spaghetti and Cavatini pizza *Salad Bar.-All you can eat * Lunch Smorgasbord * Carry-Out * Computer Games 3045 Carpenter Rd. at Packard, Ann Arbor 971-6500 2407 Washtenaw Ave, at E.M.U.- 434-1448 1249 E. Michigan Ave., Ypsilanti -481-1400 2160 Rawsonville Rd., Belleville - 483-8800 COUPON SPECIAL I Expires 12-7-80 Regular $2.29 ea. MeatballWith Co $1.29 SuamaCheS SANDWICH W" $2 . Submarin SAVE $1.00 ea. Coupon good for all in party. Good only P at Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Pizza Hut Restaurants. m m..mm.m ....m.......- ....... ........ TF i At Join the Daily News Staff, By DENNIS HARVEY In description, Richard Rush's The Stunt Man sounds like another oh-those- wacky-Hollywood-daredevils comedy in the fizzed-out tradition of Hooper-and the canned cheeriness of Dominic Frontier's lousy TV-adventure score tries dutifully to reduce it to that level of mediocrity-but it turns out to be a fantastic toy. jerry-built on a pile of melodramatic absurdities and, at least for a while. exhilerating unlike any other movie. The story is complicated and thoroughly incredible, with a quixotically blurred line between reality and the fantasy of moviemaking. Rush can get away with his missing pieces and adruptly an- nounced-then-yanked metaphors because he works in a kind of cinematic shorthand that, if it doesn't explain the lack of conventional clarity, makes its inclusion unnecessary. He's created an enigmatic comedy-a work in the mind-game territory of Antonioni and Roeg, without the sonority of serious art. It's all play. (At least the good par- ts.) The Stunt Man may have gotten too big for its writer/director-he's been developing the idea and trying to find backing since the early 1970's-and it loses its eclectic charge two-thirds of the way. It has the sloppy overflow of visionary near-genius; there are so many ideas and sleight-of-hand tricks crowding each scene that a fair amount fail, and some of the others are just baf- fling. But the messiness is, for a while, a kind of high-and when the movie begins to go downhill, it's because it starts getting too clean. THE PLOTTINGS are a whirlwind of climaxes and ambigious moments of intimacy, beginning with an epic chase in whichBurt (Steve Railsback) is cor- nered and handcuffed by police in a seedy rural diner. He crashes out and runs through a North by Northwestern series of perils, finally eluding his pur- THE TIN DRUM "An cirtis tic masterpiece" TUES-7:00, 9:25 WED-2:00, 4:25, 7:00, 9:25 A ARBOR INDIVIDUAL THEATRES 5th Ave at tiberty 761-9700 MY BRILLIANT CAREER (G) 'No wonder the audience cheered" -VILLAGE VOICE TUES-7:10, 9:00 WED-1:30, 3:20, 5:20, 7:10, 9:00 M.D. 12/4/80 * With this entire ad - one admission $1.50 any film * Good Mon. thru Thurs. This coupon valid thru * * * m m e m m m" m m m . Steve Railsback, as The Stupt Man, is swept off his feet by ace director Peter O'Toole in Richard Rush's adventure/comedy/romance. The other love story in the film is between Railsback and film star Barbara Hershey. a <0 0e l87q J, O 1 suers on a lonely country bridge-where he's suddenly faced with a screechingly hurried car and a helicopter. The car plummets off the bridge, sinking its hapless driver for good in the lake. The helicopter lands menacingly-and Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), a major-league film director, gets out to yell "Cut!" The major surprise in all of this is that it's the only spectacular action scene in the movie that doesn't turn out to have been (entirely) some kind of fakery. Burt is indeed on the run from the cops, forreasons much later ex- plained, and the (stunt) driver was ac- cidentally killed. Impressed at Burt's survival tactics, Eli offer§ him asylum - in the dead man's identity and job on the WWI adventure that he's filming. Burt is soon involved in a rocky relationship with Nina Franklin (Bar- bara Hershey), the war movie's leading lady, but the major love-hate terror in his life is working with Eli, the crazed auteur. "I can't take my eyes off him!" he says fearfully. "It's just a crush," a fellow stunter assures him. Eli, bastard though he is, is regarded as a god. Burt and Nina must tremulously sneak around under his omnipresent gaze, trying to elude that grandiose snarl of disapproval, but when Burt bitches back at Eli, Nina is outraged-"What is going on in that dim little brain of yours?" Eli is not a warm human being. He's something of more difficult and rarefied; his crew regards him with terrified and/or un- derstanding awe. - _ WITH ELI PLAYED by Peter O'Toole, the audience becomes .a fer- vent disciple. O'Toole strikes sparks with each lacerating flick of an epithet. Flying about on a camera crane like a mad bacchanal sprite, barking out the script's almost-witty lines in a hoarse croak that's as unerringly pungent as Maggie Smith's musical drawl, he's a marvelous jaded monster-too exhausted to bother with nonsense and too intelligent to believe in even his own cynicism. Eli's loyalties are ambigious, but they exist., You can feel the mixture of distaste and pleasure he feels in trying to inject some art and life into his trash genre ventures. "Who cares?," someone asks in exasperation, to which he replies "I care!" The questioner ounters, "$ullshit!," and Eli shrugs, "True." before moving on to his next Macheavellian insanity. O'Toole has always been a richly enjoyable actor, and he's probably never had a screen role so perfectly tailored to his ability to simultaneously carry on and sar- castically deride the tradition of paten- ted Great Acting as this one. Aging-hard, like Richard Burton-has merely sharpened his sting, made his once marketably androgenous matinee- idol face even more striking. Eli is like the latter-day John Barrymore, self-mocking. and bitter, but still more alive than anyone else. A genius in a world of hucksters, he's had his grandly theatrical revenge in becoming the biggest and best. huckster of them all. He amuses him- self mainly by keeping Burt (who has clearly never even imagined anyone like this before) in a state of total con- fusion, toying with how far he can be pushed before there's an 'explosion. These two are so comically foreign to each other that they seem to have sprung not just from "different worlds" but from different mgvies. BURT IS INTERESTING-and, of- ten, surprisingly repellant-because he The Michigan Dai :4 naking is, for the first time I can recall, a realistic version of that Hitchcockian supposed "ordinary man in extraor- dinary circumstances." The ar- chtypical Hitchcock model was Cary Grant-anything but ordinary, han- dsome, witty, charming, resourceful. Burt is resourceful .(though he sweats it) and attractive in a less distinctive way (blond and teeny-handsome, he looks like Ken, of Barbie and. . .), but he's basically your average asshole. A Vietnam vet, he's righteous about it, cocky, immature and uncomprehen- ding, prone to statements like "Where I was, we only raped gooks." We sometimes fear for him and -can usually sympathize with his bewilder- ment (since-we share it), but we never really like him. Eli's affection for him is vague and appropriately bemused. He says he's intrigued by the dumb animal strength that Burt shares with the movie-within-the-movie's' protagonist, but Eli seems to be as waxily sincere about this as he is about blatant lies. The truth of the mat- ter-the way the undercurrents play-is that Eli has a crush on that bronzed stud, though he's intelligent- enough to be flippant about it and not embarrass himself for an oaf. (When Burt is told that Eli and Nina had a failed affair a few years before, the news rings unimaginably false.) Though Railsback is OK (Burt's grating qualities are supposed to be there, I think, though there's an in- clination to blame such things on the actor) and Hershey is for the most part a good deal more relaxed than she was 4 in her early-'70's ingenue days, Burt and Nina make a rather uninteresting and unconvincing pair. Once the plot begins to center around this couple, the approach gets more conventional and the movie loses its steam. They make a much less entertaining romantic com- bination than Eli and Burt. It's difficult to pin down exactly what's so liberating about The Stunt Man. Richard Rush has admirable visual assurance for a first-time direc- tor, and the big stunt set-pieces are crazily elaborate. They don't take off on their own, though; they're a rather tex- tbookish fantasyland, conception of filmmaking, a bit cute .about it, rather like those day-in-the-life studio "documentaries" from the vintage years of Hollywood. What fires The Stunt Man isn't its surface action, but rather the giddy interplay of logic and illogic lurking around its quirky edges. Projects as longin-the-making as this one are usually parched and thought- out to the point of rigor mortis by the time they reach the screen, but Rush has, miraculously, stayed intoxicated' with his possibilities, bursting with almost too many ideas. He may turn out to be the rarest and, in some ways, the most exciting kind of movie whiz kid-a pop-art magician with a happy visible mind. the ann arbor film cooperative DVER MUICA CETY December Calendar ~11ss iaft Fr i., Sat.,Sun. Dec. 5,6,7 One of Ann Arbor's most cherished traditions is the University Choral Union's performance of "The Mes- siah." Once again, under the direction of Donald Bryant, the 300-voice Choral Union and soloists present Handel's great oratorio to begin a joyous Christmas season. Soloists are Elizabeth Parcells, soprano; Victoria Grof, contralto; Leonard Johnson, tenor; Edward Pierson, bass; Bejun Mehta, boy soprano. Fri. and Sat. at 8:30; Sun. at 2:30. Hill. Auditorium THE SEVENTH'SEAL Tonight Tonight " Bergman invents a new kind of film; proves to the world that questions about the existence of God and man's place in the universe can be filmed, can be dramatic, can be commercial. "Who are you?" "I am Death." "Have you come for me?" "I have been walking by your side for a long time:" "That I know." "Are you prepared?" "My body is frightened, but I am not." "Well, There is no shame in that." 7:00 & 9:05 at Lorch Hall. Wednesday: DOUBLE INDEMNITY CINEM A G U LD Projecting the Human Spirit r 3 r TONIGHT TONIGHT For their Christmas 1980 recital pro- gram in Ann Arbor, these eight re- markably well-trained and versatile singers will present traditional carols, old favorites like Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" and new arrange- ments of some popular Jerome Kern and Cole Porter nusic, as well as works by Scarlatti, Debussy, Rimsky- Korsakov, Benjamin Britten, their unique singing of music by Bach, and their own version of Mozart's "Ein Kleine Nachtmusik." Friday, 8:00. Power Center Fiday, Dec.12 presents SMILE 7:00 Aud. A Uproarious Satire of American popular culture. THE CANDIDATE 9:00 Aud. A ROBERT REDFORD for Senator? A satirical look at American politics. Read and Use Daily Classifieds! Call 764-0557 MICHIGAN THEATRE 11 r I Rudolf Serkin Pianist Monday, Dec. 15 One of the most persistently admired, beloved and influential musicians in the world, Rudolf Serkin has received critical praise for his solo recitals and his performances with the world's greatest orchestras. His recital this season will be the eighteenth time Musical Society concertgoers will have the special opportunity to hear 'this titan among pianists." Monday, 8:30. Hill Auditorium MICHIGAN THEATRE presents the VAUDEVILLE '80 CHRISTMAS SHOW FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1980-7:30 pm $ 2Single Feature $Double Feature Can we serve you /'. , J .4 A delightful and memorable Christmas ritual for Ann Arbor families and for all who love beautiful music, shimmer- ing costumes and graceful dancing. The Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre pre- sents the wonderment of Christmas een thronuh the eves of a little girl. The Films "The Man Who Came to (1942) "The Nutcracker" (1965, Tehaiktv*K4 1I