Harpo out of Hell: MIAMI BLUES (1990)

Fans of Miami Blues (recently released on a spiffy Blu-ray), are maniacs, or rather fans of maniacs, especially when safely across the screen. We are connoisseurs of true film maniacs, in that they are beyond motivation, desire, and depravity, for these all phony. We seek the semi-benevolent destructive playfulness that can only be found in certain rare 'awakened' megalomaniacs, those who are like us in our most id-unleashing dreams, or as we are sometimes in video games where instead of racking points and advancing levels we just drive over pedestrians and shoot innocent bystanders. Directed by that shaggy dog beachcomber director George Armitage, Miami Blues offers one such maniac. It is a violent Marx Bros writ large in the deadpan Elmore Leonard Miami... allegedly about hangdog cop Hank Moseley (Fred Willard) who decides to hunt down the mysterious guy in the airport who broke a moonie's finger, though god knows why, it's really about masks, and badass madness... just for the hell of it. And we love it because it's a film that goes all the way, covering Alec Baldwin's back as he seems to spur-of-the-moment bring the film down around his ears.

In Blues we glean the subliminal Marx connection only if we're savvy that Junior's initial alias, Herman Gottlieb, is the name of Sig Ruman's Baroni-signing exasperated straight man in MGM's Night at the Opera (1935), a film I saw so many times as a kid that its textures and rhythms cloak me still in a kind of cinephile temple garment. It's just too obscure a reference for even learned critics but it's intentional. It has to be, because that connection holds the secret to the madness of Baldwin's maniacal character. His genius lies in that same crazy Marx-Lugosi "life is but a dream" row-row yer way straight out the Truman Show bubble direction. Forever caught in an old world (pre-WW2) bourgeois slow burn harrumph as Groucho dances verbal circles around him and Harpo sets his shoes on fire (or steals his gun. badge and bridgework), it's only natural that he'd eventually get his wallet lifted and identity stolen by a light-fingered Harpo out of hell, for how can we measure the high crusting curves of madness without a straight line? It doesn't work otherwise.

And sometimes it doesn't work anyway. As we all know, if the unleashed Id is too self-serving or sadistic, the unleashed 'it's all a dream anyway so unleash your primal desires and/or try to fly' aspect leads merely to lurid horror movies (Killer's Moon, Devil's Rejects) and if it's too post-modern leads to a headache-based longing for narrative immersion (Daisies, Weekend); but if it's juuuust right? You got the Marx Brothers, Bela Lugosi, Timothy Carey Jr., and... then.... it gets foggy. Who else is left? Then the answer come back: Alec Baldwin as Junior, aka Freddie Frenger, AKA Herman Gottlieb. He's left and let-a me tell you, boss, now you got something. Left handed moths ate the painting. And now that Blues is on Blu-ray it's not just a chance to remember how goddamned charismatic and hirsute old Alec was then but that true anarchic Harpo Marx madness shall not perish from the screen, even into the 1990s. It will merely get a short haircut, presume a deadpan smile of solemn toughness, and acquire a gun. And sans its streaky pastel blurriness, there shall be breathtaking pink skies and dockside 'arrests.'

HERE'S TO DEAR OLD BALDWIN:

Most guys as good looking as Alec are, let's face it, dull as chalk - and many still are just as dull even after age does a Jake LaMotta on their kisser. Occupied with making sure their hair is werewolf perfect and their best angle cameraward for so long they forget to accrue depth. No emotion on their face lest wrinkles appear, they come across often as drugged narcissist automatons drained of all wit and regular guy who-gives-a-fuckitude like they're empty aquariums and filled instead with the kind of self-righteous petulance they're convinced is the height of butch charisma. With his Irish-American twinkle alight in his eyes, though, and whatever the age, Baldwin comes off as real, even when he's acting the part of a charming actor who knows he's fake. We know guys like him, and he's a cipher without being a bore. He's charming without being cocky, crazy without being aggravating. Better actors can't say that, nor worse ones.

The real Herman Gottlieb (Sig Ruman) center, and top right

A lot of us kids who grew up with the Marx Brothers and the Lugosi collection (and then completed our teenage years as snotty poseur with Repo Man) were left in the cold at the end of the 80s. It's hard to believe now, because so soon on their way was a game changing ballsiness in mainstream cinema: Silence of the Lambs, Goodfellas, Miami Blues, and True Romance paved the way for the Tarantino revolution and film long used to blurry dupes they made off cable or wherever in the early 90s, fans who've long grown used to the blurry pastel streaks of the decor and sky, the fuzzy short hair cuts of both Junior and Susie reduced to a blurry halo. With the new Shout Blu-ray its all sharp and clear, with a nice lovely sparkle to the sea and sky and deep 3-D blacks to every sun-dappled shadow. The 80s pastels are no longer as wearisome and the transfer is so sharp you can smell the salt and suntan oil. Extras include interviews with Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who both admit really enjoying themselves with the project and characters and each other, and it shows.

The film had its detractors at the time --there was yet no Tarantino or Fiorentino. In fact one of my only memories of reading 'The Daily Orange' - Syracuse University's student-run newspaper, was a scathing review of Miami Blues, which declared it emblematic of a rise in nonsensical nihilism. The writer was clearly an pretentious twit and there were many in Syracuse, who seemed to have hardened their mind with dogmatic readings of western dialectical philosophy solely to appease their stern conservative father. There were a lot of such idiots in Syracuse and they all got BMWs as graduation presents, and today they're probably going to see the remake of Far From the Maddening Crowd at some UWS theater with their minky wives.

In other words, a bourgeois white elephant filmgoer will not approve of Miami Blues, which seems like an open invitation to the underclasses to rise up and boot them from their homes like Bane in Dark Knight Rises. Those of us with love for Baldwin's crazy ex-con Junior don't care if they do or not and anyway we still have a grip on the termite megalomania of early childhood but have no urge to burn out the white elephant hoi poloi except via silver screen termite effigy. All that rage we used to excise via the now outgrown release mechanism of temper tantrums building up and up through early adolescence, until a miracle like Bela Lugosi in The Raven or Harpo Marx in Night at the Opera comes along, and out it comes in gushing waves of joy, an air pocket of tyrannical childhood, the good with the bad all buried now rising like an oil gusher, lifting us up off the surface of our becalmed flat consciousness is a most pleasing way. One wild man performance is worth three movies worth of 'importance' or 'meaning.'


We see Junior's kind of kinetic free-form insanity so seldom, especially in today's nanny state clime, that when it comes it's like a precious little match in the Hans Christian Anderson blizzard of safe sanctified sanity: we saw it in Ledger's Joker, Jolie's Lisa, Joe Pesci's Tommy, Burton's Georgie Boy, Barrymore's Oscar Jaffe, Keitel's Bad Lieutenant, and Hopkins' Lecter: it is the glint of madness that takes that fluttery match and lights up the sky for just long enough we see the vastness of heaven. And then the match is out, the sky is dark, the house lights come back up, the veil of paralyzing self-consciousness descends once more like a clingy Psycho shower curtain, and not even Fred Willard can be held accountable for what we do to try and get the fire back. We wind up in rehab, or as deranged loners, buried deep in our bomb shelters, watching our Night of the Opera - My Man Godfrey -  tape over and over.

PRINCETON BLUES:

And if you know you're in a dream, and beyond all fear, why wouldn't you go a little nuts - the way Baldwin's crazy cop goes around he's a dead ringer for an old friend from the Princeton Blues Traveler days, Percheur - a crazy Bill Brasky type of larger than life maniac who was a living legend amongst the local mix of debauched upper dregs 80s hippie-music-Princeton Record Exchange / Hoagie Haven / stealing badges to crash the Princeton reunions / pre-fame Blues Traveler / I told (you already) Althea gave me her last double purple barrel - contingent.

That Percheur he a some boy all right.

I thought they were just making Percheur up until I finally met him at a big outdoor keg party somewhere in the wilds of the Jersey Devil country, he spied some other dude he kind of didn't like from the other end of the throng, and then with a crazy drunk falling motion flung his half full Bud tall boy high into the air. If you've ever thrown a half-full tall boy straight up in the air like a mortar you know it's not easy to get either distance or accuracy and this was an pinwheel over handed wind up swing, upon releasing it he fall backwards and hid behind a car, as the bottle soared up and landed with pinpoint accuracy on the guy's head - he must have been 50 yards away at least.

Percheur (not his real name) didn't do this to impress anyone. He didn't even know anyone was watching (and I was the only one). I pretended not to notice and refrained from looking at him as the guy, huge, started running right toward the car behind which Percheur hid and so he took off into the scrub brush. Percheur spent the rest of the party on the run, coming back to the keg (and Max and I) periodically like a renewable kick the can. To this day it's the single most amazing throw I've ever seen -- he never even aimed or even looked at the guy directly before throwing it. Even when fighting or being chased he never seemed like it was anything but a friendly scrap with a old buddy even though the old buddy clearly felt different.

But that story is nothing, Max shrugged it off as lesser Percheur. Last Max heard of him was 20 years ago when--inspired by Miami Blues--he stole a fireman's badge and was pulling over cars on the road to fuck with them and/or steal their drugs. And they called him from then on Princeton Blues. (Ours was "As the Spliff Burns...")

Soon after of course the neighborhood was smotten by crack - which they could afford. They'd sit around doing rocks and watching pre-code WB gangster movies on TCM, which I respected. I still have the tape they made me of Two Seconds, Picture Snatcher and Beast of the City. And like pre-code WB, Miami Blues man flies free while we.... oops it fell. As we all did. But that's the arc of a gangster. The film ends and its time for teeth to be returned from whence they came, as they always must be.... Walter Brennan in Red River asking for them back 'come grub' with after losing them in a poker game to Chief Yowlachie, now named Two Jaw Quo! Think about it, Gummo. Your teeth will never grind so free again.

"come chow, you get