CHUD Film of the Month Club: May 2010 - COFFY (1973) and GLORIA (1980)

Nice, will be added to the queue soon.
Thanks for the picks.

Added to my netflix queue. I've been planning to go through some Cassavettes films, because I haven't seen any and feel I should, but nothing's gotten me to sit down and take the plunge. For those that have seen it, how does Gloria work as an introduction to his work?

It's more accessible than most of his films.

Ok... I'll be in to discuss Gloria. I won't be seeing it again but I revisited it recently enough that it's still fresh.

(Decided I want to participate in these discussions so much, I won't let the fact that I can't view the films stop me. If it's a movie I've seen, I'll talk about it)

Just watched Coffy (1973).

I'm in awe haha. My first explotation film was also a blacksplotation film! a Twoffer!

Pam Grier was amazing, just amazing. Besides being gorgeous.
What surprised me is that i thought it was going to be a lot sillier that it was. It's actually a great movie!

The whore fight at King George's place is a thing of beauty. And i really appreciated Sid Haig before from 10.000 Corpses and Devil's Rejects but he was fantastic here.

Great movie Anderson, want to get Gloria done before the weekend.

Like quite a few others I imagine, my first exposure to GLORIA was with HBO. They had the thing in heavy rotation when we first got cable. It's certainly not the first time a woman was given such a mature and gender-redefining role (it's seems to ply the road Ida Lupino helped pave), but at the impressionable age of 10, it was real damn impressive. I'd never seen anything like it. Here was an "old woman" (by the standards of my 10 year old brain) who didn't take shit from anyone and was clearly capable of handling the archly-dismissive criminals. I have to admit that, contrary to my prepubescent tastes, it was hard not to find her attractive. To this day, it's still the benchmark for this kind of role. (And Rowlands is still that alluring.) Her taunting the mob in the subway still gives me goosbumps.

Heh, no matter how many times I've seen it over the last thirty years (yikes!), the kid never gets any less annoying. I suppose that's the point, though.

To me, the most interesting thing about GLORIA is the way it's thought of among Cassevetes fans. Some pretty strong feelings on both sides for this. As a (very) casual fan of his, that debate helps me to sort out questions I develop as I continue to learn more about his work, as well as Rowlands and Falk.

One of the things I like about Coffy is that it isn't afraid to make a black man one of the main villains, making the movie less about black vs white, and more about Coffy taking on the patriarchy.

Grier is great, and I liked that the character is sexually aggressive and uses that to her advantage when taking out her vengeance. My problem with the movie is that I think the last scene betrays that attitude a bit, not so much because Coffy cries when she finds out the man she ways with betrays her by aligning himself with drug dealers, but because she doesn't act out until she finds out he's been sleeping with another woman.

Sid Haig is fantastic in the small role he has, and the scene where he kills King George is still effectively brutal and disturbing.

The movie is on hulu for those that have trouble finding it, and aren't bothered by quick commercials.

You'll find few Cassavettes fans out there (myself included) who don't tell you it's his worst film. I understand why he did it. But in the commentary for Mean Streets, Scorsese talks in detail about a conversation he had with Cassavettes. Because Marty wanted to be a genre filmmaker, make Hollywood films. Cassavettes told him not to bother and that Hollywood films were shit. And then, not 10 years later, he's forced to play in that pool.

His contempt fills every frame and it is the work of a man backed into a corner. I often wonder if he didn't intentionally just decide to make a shitty film - almost to prove his point.

But seriously, I don't think the kid was supposed to be annoying. They just got a really terrible actor to play him. We're supposed to feel sorry for the kid. His whole family was wiped out by gangsters. And there is supposed to be poignancy in his relationship with the title character. That scene at the cemetery in the end should have you in tears.

But the kid is so insufferable, you spend the entire movie hoping Ben Gazarra or someone will show up and put a bullet in his head.

All things considered, Cassavettes acquits himself very well making a Disney movie. It follows the genre parameters of "family entertainment," while still maintaining that edge that makes his movies so special. It does feel like a Cassavettes film very often and Rowlands is, of course, tremendous.

But there is something very wrong when a 10-year-old kid can pretty much singlehandedly torpedo an entire film.

Cassavettes made a worse film... Big Trouble - a sort of spiritual sequel to The In-Laws. But, by the time the movie finally came out (in 1989), he was already dead or dying. And God only knows what transpired for its ultimate release.

I'll post in more detail tomorrow but here's a quick thought about Gloria.

Gloria is a great character piece and a pretty good idea for a story. But i found the film to be made in a very sloppy way, and my god the kid murders the movie.

Rough, yes. Sloppy, no.

There are dozens of continuity errors from shot to shot. Jackets that are on and off, color of clothes, sides people walk. It really distracted me. And all of the kids lines were atrocious.
And several encounters with the mob guys didn't make much sense.

"Bye natheeeng!... Bye leetle eensekt!..."

God, you just want to smack that little bastard.

Tati nailed it.

The "sloppiness" is something that Cassavettes enthusiasts are used to. That is to say, there is an off-the-cuff spirit to his films that works wonders when it's something he cares about. The reason it becomes so apparent here is, I suspect, because he really didn't give a shit about this outside of making it a superb showcase for his wife.

Ultimately, though, it really is all the kid's fault. He renders what would be a serviceble programmer (akin to, say, Hitchcock's Family Plot in that it's an artist going through the motions, yet still watchable) into something that's almost fascinatingly insufferable.

Taking on the patriarchy is part of it, but I think it's also relevant that her boyfriend is totally subservient to the predominantly white crime syndicate, that, and he's sleeping with a white woman (insult to injury if one wishes to read it that way) solidifying his status as a sell out to the white power structure.

How the hell can you dig the kid? All of his lines are worse than Chris Klein's audition for Mamma Mia.

My favorite part is the 2 fat mob guys having a towel fight on the background when she goes to see the head mob guy.

My main problem with the character is that she literally has sex with every single male member of the cast except the one non-sleazeball, who also gets beaten into a coma in the beginning of the picture. I sort of struggle with what the film's take on female sexuality is due to that.

I agree with that statement wholeheartedly.

The problem, though, is that Gloria just isn't very interesting a failure. When I say it's his worst, I don't necessarily mean he has no other "bad" films. Take Husbands, for instance. It is a failure. But he put his heart into it, just the same and the result is genuinely fascinating. The brilliance is still there and you just have to watch.

The only thing about Gloria that I find interesting is the fact that Cassavettes made it. But, if it were any other director, it would just be this crap movie. It's a curiosity for what it represents in his filmography. That's all.

Gloria

Gena Rowlands pretty much owns this movie, without her, the movie just collapses. You have a fairly well worn plot of person who hates kids but slowly comes around in the end. The action set-pieces are fairly perfunctory, although I did like the use of steadicam where Gloria and the kid flee through the kitchen. The kid is saddled with a bad haircut and even more horrendous shirt, he seeminglt wants to die. I though Gloria walking out of the room and casually shooting the mob goon was pure badass.
I thought it was ok, it was my first Cassavetes film, there were elements of a great little film here and there but the pace seems to kill it.

Coffy

Pam Grier spends nearly half this film naked, she's certainly not afraid of showing off that eoic rack of hers. Jack Hill put together a zleazy, violent little film, the kind of film you could only make in the seventies. King George's entrance is just awesome, his orange jumpsuit and cape is pure awesomeness all the way, when Coffy takes off her dress in front of him, he he has this 's man's gotta do what a man's gotta do and if I have to fuck this smoking hot chick then that's what I gotta do' look on his face before he starts taking off his jumpsuit.
"I come home from work to find you ballin' some black bitch"
The epic catfight was great, just Coffy any and all tactics including the silverware and razprblades in her afro. Coffy crashing her car through the living room of her douchbag ex was fantastic. Although Foxy Brown might be more well known, I think this is the better film.

Has anyone seen the Sharon Stone/Sidney Lumet remake of Gloria?
Also, Hong Kong made their own version of Coffy called
The Sexy Killer', it's worth checking out.

Is it? This was a script Cassavetes wrote himself (originally for someone else to direct), and he made it as a vehicle for his wife. From what I've read in the Fine and Carney bios, he didn't have much attachment to the project. But I don't think there was contempt. He tolerated the material enough to waste time writing a Gloria II screenplay that was never produced.

I've been tempted to write the movie off in the way that you have, but then I remember the scene where Rowlands is first confronted by her former partners, and has to decide whether or not to turn over the kid. Cassavetes rather cleverly keeps the child out of frame as the kid tugs at Rowlands' arm and we see Gloria make her decision. This is not hackwork.

BIG TROUBLE was released in 1986, not '89, and Cassavetes signed on late in development after the writer and original director, Andrew Bergman, was dismissed. Cassavetes finished the movie, reshooting some of Bergman's original footage, then basically disowned it after Columbia did a re-edit. It can barely be considered a Cassavetes movie.

You're pointing out one of the best scenes in the film (if not the best) and I agree. But, again, this illustrates how the only real vested interest Cassavetes had was in making sure his wife came off great. I didn't want to suggest that Cassavetes had done hackwork, exactly... I don't really think he was capable of that. But there's nothing in the movie, besides Rowlands, that evidences he had any passion for what he was doing.

What I mean to say is, if he had cared about this one as much as, say A Woman Under The Influence, we may have ended up with a very good film. The elements are all in place for a better-than-average piece of entertainment. It's presumptuous of me to insist that he "didn't care," I know. But I can't think of why else this wouldn't work.

Well... That and the aforementioned kid, of course.

Fuck that little twerp.

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't sure of the year. But I know I didn't even see it until it hit video and I'm pretty sure that was in '88 or even '89.

Anyway, that was my point. I said he made a "worse" film than Gloria. But that's in quotes because I never really think of Big Trouble as a Cassavetes film. I don't think anyone does. I just think of it as "that lame sequel to The In-Laws"

Big Trouble is the Fierce Creatures of the 80s. The difference is that no one saw it and no one cared.