‘One False Move’ and the art of the visual homage
The other night I watched One False Move again, the film that introduced Billy Bob Thornton to film-goers (for better and worse). This was our introduction to Billy Bob the promising actor and writer (since he co-wrote the neo noir with Tom Epperson), a frighteningly intense screen presence (where has that guy gone?). Just two years later he unveiled Carl, another killer (though of a very different stripe) in the short film, Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade.
What was most surprising about the short was that it starred Molly Ringwald. We all saw her the other night, on the awards show. Since her acting days she seems to have stolen fellow Brat Packer, Andrew McCarthy’s flair-eyed deer-on-the-macadam look. Here, see for yourself:
Whaaaa....?
Anyway, George Hickenlooper directed the short, three years after making the excellent documentary Hearts of Darkness, about the making of Apocalypse Now. But Billy Bob would himself sit in the director’s chair for the feature version, Slingblade, and I’m glad he did. While Hickenlooper’s widescreen beauty was sure perty, Thornton’s realism was a lot more fitting his material.
Rockin the ponytail.
One False Move also introduced the promising filmmaker Carl Franklin to American audiences. Franklin had been making movies, a mixed bag of forgettable B-pictures, for four years before taking on Move. Though on those popcorn flicks he developed a sorta partnership with Todd Field (though his first film, a short, starred a young Don Cheadle). Back then Field was just another actor. He starred opposite Ashley Judd in Ruby in Paradise, her first film. He starred opposite Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, though luckily he didn’t have to make out with him the way Nicole did. That’s just gross.
Though Field started to dabble in making his own stuff in the early nineties, it wasn’t until 2001’s In The Bedroom that he could tell people, “I’m not just another freaking actor. I’m a filmmaker, you monsters. Bring the statues.” The awards came with his next pic, Little Children. And now Field is adapting Cormac McCarthy’s dense, incarnadine epic about the westward expansion of the middle nineteenth century, Blood Meridian. We’ll see. His lack of restraint in directing Jackie Earle Haley’s snickering pedophile, turning him into something like a silent film villain, in Children gives me pause.
After Move, Franklin would make Devil in a Blue Dress, a fantastic film. Since then the man’s more or less disappeared into your television, directing episodes of Rome, The Riches, and now, Pacific. Franklin did a good job with One False Move. Not great, but good. Towards the end he sort of let the rat out of the shithouse and embraced a southern Gothic that seemed to come into the film from nowhere. Suddenly everyone was shot from the floor. All angles were chiaroscuro. Every shot was weighted with menace and foreboding. A black man sittin’ on a stump played the hell out of his harmonica. We get it. “Storm’s a-comin.” Sure. But this is a minor gripe, because the film is generally pretty damned good.
And something I missed the first time I saw this film – I don’t know how I missed this – was the obvious homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. This was a low-budget indie flick, and Franklin went to the trouble of paying for a crane and a crop duster to make this shot. Check it out:
One False Move
And here’s the shot from North By Northwest:
North By Northwest
I’m a fan of the visual homage in movies. I think it’s fun when one filmmaker pays tribute to another by the way they frame their shot, or the elements they choose to focus on. What I find fun about Franklin’s shot is how he compresses three of the four main elements from that famous sequence in Hitchock’s film (the high angle; the bus; the crop duster) into one shot. In Hitchock’s sequence, a wonder of tension management, we never see the bus and the plane in the same shot. The bus arrives, dumps Grant in the middle of nowhere; a series of long still shots follow, meant to emphasize, basically, how screwed he will be when that pilot decides to run him down. Nowhere to hide, man! Not even a ditch. Good thing there wasn’t a tornado on the horizon.
But in One False Move, since nothing bad happens near that intersection where the bus dumps Fantasia, Franklin’s echo is really nothing more than a fun little wink. Though I suppose you could say that her arrival here, back home, marks the beginning of the end for her and most everyone involved.
Quentin Tarantino is no stranger to the visual homage. I haven’t unpacked Inglorious Basterds yet, but what he did in Kill Bill is already well-known, in part because of what he chose to echo.
Kill Bill Vol. 2, 'Massacre at Two Pines' sequence.
The Duke arrives. The Searchers.
He didn’t replicate every detail of the set because it wasn’t a set at all, but a real working chapel in Lancaster, California. Which to me makes it all an even better homage, because when he looked at this existing church in the desert he saw that shot from The Searchers. Like most of Tarantino’s films, Kill Bill was a smorgasbord of cinematic influence. Compare these shots. The Eastwood still is from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, an echo that carries with it another echo, since Tarantino used Ennio Morricone’s compositions for his own film.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (courtesy of the Tarantino Archives).
It goes on and on. I don’t know of any filmmaker working today whose films are so thoroughly packed with influence, visual, spoken, aural, typographic, you name it. In his films we’ve seen visual references to spaghetti westerns, chop-socky flicks, popular Japanese pizza restaurants, and so on. Someone (not me) should unpack all of Kill Bill’s references and make themselves a nice little coffee table book. It’d be the perfect Christmas gift.
If you’ve got a favorite visual homage
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I feel like Tarantino doesn’t do homage, exactly; I feel like he’s got such a keen ear and eye for the visual and aural language of film, and especially genre film, that he just implicitly senses that The Bride should get married somewhere in the West, in as barren and wind-swept a church as can be, and that when we see where the church is, it should be a moment when we look through the door and are briefly blinded by the glare, until the camera irises down and we see the desert framed by the church and the Bride in silhouette.
I don’t think Tarantino says “oh, I should frame it up this way because it’ll be just like The Searchers”; I think he says “well, obviously The Searchers did it this way and I’m going to as well, because given this church, these people, and this situation that’s exactly what is right to do.”
That strikes me as a difference between Tarantino and Franklin, or at least between the examples you’ve given. The homage in Kill Bill is Tarantino telling us something about The Bride and about what kind of movie we’re watching. The homage to North by Northwest is Franklin telling us about Franklin. Homage for homage’s sake. I guess I don’t like it as much.
Yeah I hear you, and I agree. Great point. It’s funny that Franklin went to so much trouble to accomplish this thirty second homage when it doesn’t really DO anything for his movie. I think Tarantino’s brain is so full of movies and movie moments that it’s the fabric of his development. When he writes – have you ever read his scripts? – he often puts in references to other movies, little details and things, and I’m sure when he starts to plan the production all of the material in his head really just starts to pour out. But as you say, it all seems to be towards some purpose. Thanks.
I’ve never read any of his scripts but that doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve heard him speak about movies and his knowledge of genre film is encyclopedic, no doubt. What’s that Picasso quote? “Good artists copy, great artists steal”? The difference, I think, is meant to be that a great artist knows not only what to take, but when and why to take it. Tarantino knows what to take.
I really liked Inglorious, and I don’t know much about WWII movies so I’m looking forward to you unpacking it.
In response to another comment. See in context »Love to know how he justified to his producers paying for that fun little wink.
One False Move was always one of those movies that everyone said was good and I couldn’t quite figure out why. I mean, I liked it fine, but it didn’t do a ton for me. But I guess if i have it to thank for the great Boxmasters musical triumph, then it’s worthy of my applause.
I think the coffee table book is a great idea one could no doubt do a whole book just on Tarantino’s references and another one on everyone else…Quinton can use use that one as a shot list for his next film.
There are two great film geeks working today, Tarantino and Scorsese both borrow but only one does it with some class.
I watched One False Move after reading a recommendation on, erm, here. Yeah, I enjoyed it, mainly because I like redneck thrillers ane Billy Bob Thornton, as usual, pulled off a decent performance. I have tried in vain to see Some Folks Call It A Slingblade, which is annoying because the reviews say BBT’s character is slightly different from that in Slingblade and having really enjoyed the latter, especially BBT’s performance, I’d like to compare them myself. BTW, I noticed in one of the Family Guy episodes Stewie Griffin does a very brief mimic of Carl Childers, which amused me.
Speaking of redneck thrillers, I saw Kalifornia again last night, and I still enjoy this film. I think I saw it bagged on here once, but personally I think Brad Pitt’s performance is one of his finest. Tell me you’re not more convinced by him as a psycho redneck than you are of whatever mess of a character he played in Inglorious Basterds! I suppose in 1993 Brad Pitt had to act, ever since Ocean’s Eleven (or arguably, Fight Club) he’s been allowed to pretty much play himself with IMO disastrous consequences. A waste of a good actor, IMO.
As for visual homages, let me think. I’m sure there must be one or two in the Coen brothers’ output. In Cloverfield, clips from the original King Kong and Godzilla were inserted into the footage for fractions of a second, but I’m not sure that counts. I watched The Long Kiss Goodnight earlier this week and noticed two things:
1) The Long Kiss Goodbye was shown playing on a TV with Elliot Gould.
2) Geena Davis climed into a red convertible wearing a headscarf, straight out of Thelma and Louise.
And speaking of T&L, we’re back to Brad Pitt when he could act. Circular stuff, this.
Incidentally, didn’t a low flying plane also menace our hero in The 39 Steps? Albeit in Scotland, not the USA?