7/23/2001
"The dandy has a unique advantage over the common herd. No matter what the situation, he will always be more exquisitely dressed than his enemies.
"Therefore, he has already triumphed."
-Sebastian O Grant Morrison
In which we discuss actors as if they were fictional composites
Ok, so I have a lame job. I spent the last couple of hours reading movie reviews on New York Times On-line and pretending to work. And yet, no matter how guilty I feel about the fact that my job is ultimately a self-perpetuating scam, the fact remains that there is simply no work to be done. But I'm not here to talk about my job. I was reading movie reviews- specifically reviews of movies I have no intention of seeing; the adolescent male marketed movies. So I read the review of "the Fast and the Furious" and "The Mummy Returns" (which I did actually see) and "Kiss of the Dragon" and "Pootie Tang" and that's where I paused--
When I was in Memphis three weeks ago, I missed my chance to see this movie. One of the girls I was hanging with really wanted to see it (she was out-voted - we saw "Shrek" instead.) But reading the review made me realize that she could have just said two words and I would have gone like a shot. She had just met me and there's no way she could have possibly known that all she'd've had to have said to get me bouncing off the goddamn walls in enthusiasm to see a PG-13 boy movie is the simple phrase, "Robert Vaughn."
There was an addendum I was going to add to my "Maryanne" article as part of being too honest for my own good, and amending every generalization I ever uttered. There was a point in there where I was talking about the honorable death of men in action movies as being both fitting and right, as the plot carries you to a certain point where your actions have repercussions. Anyway, the exception to this rule, for me, is the death of Robert Vaughn.
I can't stand watching that man die. I will whine for days after seeing him killed, nobly or ignobly, casual or pointed deaths, it doesn't matter. It makes me petulant and casually cruel. It drives me up a wall.
I can't even really explain it. The man is not sympathetic. He's not my "type." He's not Steve McQueen, who sometimes looks so lost in the world you want to wrap him up in a blanket and take him home. He's not James Coburn (who is my "type")- tall and skeletal with far too many teeth. He's not even Paul Newman with those honest blue eyes. Or Clint Eastwood (who's tall and skeletal and-- oh wait...).
And yet, seeing him cast before the dogs, I am on edge for days after.
Even in "Bullitt" where he was a total jerk-politician-- if they had ended "Bullitt" with his death (not sure how that would fit into the storyline, but I'm improvising here) well, ok (cos I know Cecily's never seen it) the entire movie has Robert Vaughn's political career impeding or subverting Steve McQueen's police investigation (it's one of those movies; like "Dirty Harry" or (of all things) "Point Break" where police get stymied by liberal politics or internal politics, or themselves...) and Robert Vaughn dressed to the nines, gets to discuss roses with old ladies and yell at Steve McQueen for trying to do his job. You hate the man. You side with McQueen. Steve's the kid kept after class unjustly; he's the boy who's punished for telling the truth. Authority is arrogant and well-tailored, and your plebeian instincts want to humiliate him, bring him low. But at the end of the movie, Robert Vaughn is still in a position of authority, and Steve McQueen still has to deal with political ambitions that further complicate his complicated job. The point is, given all of this, given that Robert Vaughn plays the man you love to hate; if in the closing scene, the limo pulling away from the curb exploded and took the politician to hell, if Steve McQueen had lit a cigarette off of the smoldering wreckage and walked away singing quietly to himself, a man who's hated master is dead, I still would have been pissed. Even with Robert Vaughn portraying absolute evil as I define it; the player, the liar, the man of coalitions and coercion, the man for whom power is an end unto itself, I will still knot my hands into fists and wish to the ends of the earth that he would survive.
But why?
He's not the kind of guy I'd take home. He's too much for me; too urbane, too blasé, too intense. He is, and has seen too much. He's too well polished. He's too much to live for, to live up to. The women who take him home are fooling themselves, because he sees beyond them, he's somewhere else; the next night, the next angle, the next photo-op. (Whereas the women who take James Coburn home are fooling no one, since both they and the man himself know it's only a one night stand.... Check out the "Our Man Flint" movies.)
Watch Robert Vaughn in the "Magnificent Seven." He does nothing during the first half of the movie but look cool and unruffled. The first killing is done by James Coburn, while Robert Vaughn, though in position, only gets to seem regretful about being at the right place, ready but uninvolved. The first attack by the bad guys he's been paid to defend the town against finds him holding up a wall. He doesn't actively participate in the movie until the very end. He is heroic at the last, perhaps, but he is not a hero. Charles Bronson is more of a hero. But I don't care about him (this isn't the Dirty Dozen, after all...). So what's the deal? The gentrified clothes? The nonchalant manner? The alcoholism? The nightmares? The lies he tells himself? Those sexy leather gloves he never removes? (Here's a fun fact, kiddies; for the filming of "The Magnificent Seven", the actors got to choose their own wardrobes as part of fleshing out their characterization, just like Benico Del Toro mumbling his way to stardom in "Usual Suspects.")
Do I watch him because he is always a man of surfaces so polished as to distract from his real purpose, his real motives? If you watch "The Magnificent Seven," you might catch this too; everyone else seems to have a purpose, an agenda, a reason to be and be there, even if it's simply to finish the job, to do what needs doing. But Robert Vaughn has no reason to be there. Every other one of the gunmen is easy to read, at least on an iconic level, in it for money, for honor, to prove themselves, to stand by their friends. But what does Robert Vaughn, his soft, southern drawl, his well-kept appearance and the gloves he never removes, have to do with that? The film makes it clear that he is morally questionable even in such a morally questionable bunch. In a crowd of loners, he still stands alone.
How about "Towering Inferno?" Now, I surprised myself by loving this movie. And I know exactly why I loved it; three reasons; Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen and Robert Vaughn. Oh and Fred Astair, Paul Newman and a bunch of others; the cast list is insane. But still, what is there to this movie? Tall building, fire, people trapped in a dinner-party on the top floor. It's all spelled out to you from the first- the only question remaining is who dies and how.
But I spent most of the time I watched this movie gaping in wonder as Robert Vaughn stole scene after scene simply by remaining, well, unruffled. And a man who can do that while trapped in a burning building deserves better, deserves a better death, at the very least.
It's unbelievable. The entire movie, he walks through the panic and the party as if it's nothing to do with him, as if he's a casual observer, as if he's a god descended to earth. He drinks expensive wine and radiates calm. He is a man of power, a man to be impressed, a man that petty trivialities like natural catastrophes break themselves against. You think when you first see him that he's a dandy, too civilized to be real, yet when calamity hits, it's nothing to him; and you wonder what wars did he survive, what horrors did he endure that enables him to be in such a situation and not be disabled by it?
Then he's gone. The fears of other, lesser men pull him down and cast him aside.
Taking all of his secrets with him.
-Leslie
