Under the Rainbow (1981, Steve Rash)

There are a number of scenes in Under the Rainbow you probably wouldn’t have imagined had been put on film. Starting with Billy Barty playing a Nazi spy who accidentally hits Hitler in the balls because he’s a little person. When that scene began, I was thinking about how you don’t see a lot of Hitler sight gags anymore. When it ended with Barty hitting Hitler in the balls… I realized there has to be a good reason this movie is so forgotten bad as opposed to infamous bad.

I guess at the time it was the constant sight gags and jokes with drunk, carousing little people who are starring in The Wizard of Oz. But forty years on, I feel like the Japanese racism dates it the most. Rainbow, set in 1938, goes for very Old Hollywood racism. For a while it seems like they’re going to not be overtly racist about the one Black guy (elevator operator Freeman King), and they do avoid it instead doing a literal cartoon sequence with him, but they do a big racist bit with the Black cleaning lady. Even with the Japanese stuff, Rainbow at least humanizes those characters. They treat the Black woman like it’s a racist forties cartoon.

But, and it’s hard not think it’s intentional, when they crash the MGM lot during Gone With the Wind filming, turns out that movie is a lot more racist when you’re watching it be filmed.

Because there is some sincerity to Under the Rainbow, a slapstick comedy about a Japanese spy (Mako) not being able to find his Nazi pal (Barty) because the hotel is full of little people starring in Oz. Barty can’t find Mako because there’s a Japanese tour group in town and all the Japanese guys are dressed the same. You keep waiting for the movie to make an overt “can’t tell them apart” joke, but they seem to think it’s too broad a joke. The constant little person grabbing a boob gag… perfectly okay.

Every once in a while, there’s a not terrible moment or an actual good laugh—but for the most part, aghast is the only appropriate reaction.

Some of the acting is fine, if not better. Eve Arden’s closest to best. She’s a Duchess who’s in L.A. just because; Joseph Maher is her husband, the Duke, who’s convinced an assassin is after him. Chevy Chase is their Secret Service protection. He doesn’t believe there’s an assassin. Robert Donner’s the assassin.

Maher’s not bad. Donner’s bad.

Carrie Fisher is the special casting director for Oz, in charge of the Munchkin cast. She has no chemistry with Chase, but a little with Japanese tourist Bennett Ohta, who gives one of the best performances. Fisher and Chase are professional? I think professional’s a good adjective. And Rainbow traipses Fisher are in her underwear for five or six minutes for no reason other than they want Princess Leia scantily clad. There’s eventually a women’s dressing room scene too, which starts generally offensive and ends very specifically offensive.

Mako’s occasionally okay. At least he doesn’t like Nazis.

Barty’s… I mean, if Rainbow worked, Barty’s performance would be one of cinema’s great performances. However, Rainbow does not work and Barty’s bewildering. It’s impossible to imagine Under the Rainbow any different—certainly not any better, though definitely even more offensive.

Cork Hubbert’s the actual protagonist, but the movie dumps him for the various antics. He’s not bad. He’s not good. But he’s not bad. And he gets the Ben-Hur chariot homage, which is a handful of neat frames amid the chaos.

Adam Arkin’s the hotel manager. He could be worse.

Technically, Rainbow’s mostly fine. It’s not cinematographer Frank Stanley’s fault or David E. Blewitt’s editing. Nothing they—or even director Rash can do—is going to make a difference with the plot. Rash’s got no sense of comic timing, though Joe Renzetti’s disastrous cartoon score accompanying doesn’t help. Great production design from Peter Wooley.

Shame it’s wasted on this exceptionally weird and bad motion picture.

The Buddy Holly Story (1978, Steve Rash)

There are three different things going on throughout The Buddy Holly Story. Well, more than three but there are the three big different things. There’s Robert Gittler’s screenplay, which has one narrative gesture for most of the film. There’s Gary Busey’s lead performance, which is resolute in both its sincerity and its anti-inscrutability. And there’s Rash’s direction, which enables both the script and the performance, but also leverages them to manage the scale.

Rash has a very determined narrative distance with The Buddy Holly Story. It’s Buddy Holly’s story. It’s Busey’s story. If he’s not in a scene, he’s about to be. Even when it’s not his scene, it ends up being his scene, because it’s all about him. Well, his performance. But Busey doesn’t do exposition. The performance doesn’t suggest a propensity for it, the script doesn’t pursue it. The other members in the band are there for exposition. Lovable standing bassist Charles Martin Smith and big but not dumb drummer Don Stroud. Even Amy Johnston, as Busey’s hometown girlfriend, expounds so Busey doesn’t. So the script’s got its own distance to its protagonist.

Because what the film becomes–and stays for quite a while–is these three guys journey into and through stardom. But not the pluses of stardom and not even the minuses (they’re implied and off-screen). They’re moving through the practicalities of it all. They’re at an information disadvantage, going from Lubbock to New York City by way of Nashville. Their actions can influence the trajectory but those actions tend to be reactions. Bluntly, the film positions the band as underdogs, even though they’re objectively not.

American music in the fifties had an enumeration of creatively significant artists working independently, simultaneously, and in both active and passive conjunction. Lots of big things happened in music, including Buddy Holly and some of the other musical acts portrayed in the film. Rash and Gittler consciously keep the characters’ anticipation and trepidation separate from the audience’s. The film is very sad. But it’s not sentimental. It’s sad. It’s guardedly, but enthusiastically nostalgic.

But it’s also very softly lighted–by Stevan Larner–on these often empty sets. Joel Schiller’s production design is great but outside musical set pieces, a lot of the film is just the three guys in sparse interiors. Usually without natural light sources. If there were fluorescent lights all over the place in the fifties, The Buddy Holly Story would be mostly in fluorescent lighted rooms with Busey discovering how far his creative ambitions can go and how to get them there and Stroud and Smith trying to keep up.

There are also bigger scenes, but they’re near vignettes. Like when Busey and the boys go play the Apollo and the white manager (Dick O’Neill) is terrified of putting up the three white boys from Texas for his black customers. The micro-subplot where Busey and the boys tour with Sam Cooke (Paul Mooney). They’re these clumps of larger scale scenes with the band scenes–which do eventually involve other supporting cast members, but as background–handling the narrative progress.

Then in the mid-to-late second act the film spotlights Busey as he branches off from the musical journey plot line to romance Maria Richwine. And the spotlight stays on Busey even away from those scenes. The film doesn’t really change its narrative distance, just its focus… by fading out around Busey. But never isolating him.

It’s a neat trick. Rash and Gittler do a lot with a lot. They’re even able to get away with the obviously historical location footage from establishing shots later on. It’s almost a gradual trust issue. The film doesn’t exactly lull its audience, but it invites a comfortable relationship.

Because the film is a true story and it’s a tragedy and even if you’re going into it completely unaware as a viewer, the filmmakers are aware and they take on certain responsibilities. And everyone making Buddy Holly Story–Rash, Gittler, Busey, Stroud, Smith, and whoever else–are embracing those responsibilities. The film’s astoundingly self-confident from the first scene. It’s never showy but it never meanders either. It doesn’t wander. Rash is guiding that flow, with a variety of styles, and each one has to hit just the right tone.

Not always easy when there are budgetary restrictions. Some of those interiors are sparser than they ought to be.

When the Story gets to the end, the film does just the right thing. It’s not an entirely unexpected thing, it’s not a surprise, but it’s neither the most or least obvious. But then Rash and Gittler haven’t been worried about the audience’s expectations, they’ve been tracking Busey’s. So it’s sort of the inevitable right thing. And you want it to go on forever.

The acting’s all good or better. Busey’s phenomenal. Then there’s the lip-synching. There isn’t any. So that enthusiastic nostalgia without any betraying of the verisimilitude and whatnot. Because Rash and Gittler are taking it seriously.

So it’s like it should be a surprise The Buddy Holly Story is such a success, but it also couldn’t be anything but.