POSSIBLE SPOILERS!
In recent years, I have quite enjoyed watching films about
radio. In particular, when stories that originated in radio (which generally
means they are relatively old) are remade for film. Most of these stories have seen the light of
day since radio in TV format (or, in a few cases, in graphic novels), which
makes sense given the serialized format of both of these media. I think it’s much harder to make a success of
a radio-to-film transfer because the pulling power of these properties is their
character development or repetition of motifs which is easier to do in
serialized format. The big idea of
“them” tends to be too large by definition for film and just makes the whole
thing seem cheesy. When distilled or
deconstructed episode by episode in a series, these properties are more
digestible. Furthermore, there’s just
something addictive about the character interaction and their familiar modes of
“doing” that makes you want to see them in many adventures—not just one
film. Granted, most of the newer adaptations
to film are banking on serialization (in the form of multiple sequels) but it
tends to happen that their first big-screen incarnation is a box-office
disappointment, making a sequel a moot point.
A case in point is The
Lone Ranger (2013), which I won’t review in detail here. Suffice it to say, as another
Disney/Verbinksi/Depp vehicle, it was heavily promoted as franchise-bait,
following in big brother Pirates of the
Caribbean’s footsteps. (In the interest of full disclosure, I love
the Pirates of the Caribbean films.) With POTC
anchored on the storied motif of pirate narratives, an inspiration as
insubstantial as a theme park ride should have proven TLR to be a winning format, too.
TLR hinged on the storied
motif of the Western, with a generous helping of froth (a theme park ride is
necessarily going to romanticize and de-fang historical piracy; TLR was, in its WXYZ Detroit radio
roots, a children’s show, with its protagonist a role model untouched by the
self-doubt and despair we come to expect from complex heroes these days). TLR, story-wise
and character-wise, had a lot more to work with, which perhaps hindered its
development in a sense. In the end, I
really quite enjoyed the film, though I think it had an identity crisis—which
could be said of The Green Hornet (2011)
as well.
I picked up The Green
Hornet on DVD for (I think) £3, still not convinced—based on pretty poor
reviews and less-than-stellar box office receipts—that I hadn’t wasted my
money. Curiously, TGH and TLR both come
from the same radio station birthplace, WXYZ Detroit, from the same production
team and writer (Fran Striker). (Which
begs the question whether anyone will try to adapt Challenge of the Yukon for film—or have they learned their
lesson?) Whereas TLR was the historical (but moral) Western for boys (mainly boys[1]) of a
certain age, TGH was the modern
equivalent with the cool car and gadgets—not that far removed, really, from Batman (bearing in mind, of course, that
all these popular culture shticks got their start contemporaneously and
probably all influenced each other). My
dad remembers listening to (and enjoying) TGH,
more so than TLR, and
particularly remembers Black Beauty, the car (the Lone Ranger has a horse named
Silver; Britt Reid has a car named Black Beauty—if only Frederick Faust was
around to comment). To be honest, I’ve
only heard a few episodes of TLR and
fewer still of TGH. I prefer their more grown-up OTR cousins
(Gunsmoke, Frontier Gentleman, Dragnet).
Still, I was determined to approach TGH film with an open mind.
I hadn’t ever seen a film with Seth Rogen before (to my knowledge), so
my mind was a blank slate. What I knew
about TGH was pretty basic: the newspaper empire as a cover (somewhat
Batman-esque, somewhat Shadow-esque); the car; and Kato. Britt Reid, of course, in canon, is supposed
to be a descendent of the Lone Ranger.
(This incest of WXYZ’s shouldn’t surprise us given Jean Shepherd’s only
slight exaggeration in A Christmas Story (1983)
when “everybody knows” that the Lone Ranger’s nephew’s horse is named
Victor.) The costumes on the DVD cover
kinda sold it to me—quite ‘30s retro and cool, but also weirdly modern,
too. I think this is somewhat important,
given the ability of a radio-to-film incarnation to match or exceed the
mind’s-eye expectations in terms of the visuals is an index of how well in
might fare for an audience. (This is a
theory in development.)
TGH is an
anti-superhero film, which is not immediately apparent, which may be why it
didn’t “do well,” critically or otherwise.
It plays with obvious superhero tropes—the moral, supportive father at
the beginning of the film; the hero’s journey from indifferent to engaged; the
love interest; the hero-sidekick relationship; a truly confident, egomaniacal,
well-costumed supervillain—with varying degrees of success. The fact that it at
least tries to play with these tropes should garner it a degree of praise. Apparently, it was based more on a TV version
of TGH[2]
(at least, in the DVD extras, Rogen and Evan Goldberg never once mention
the radio program)—but to me, the po-faced morality of TLR and TGH just doesn’t
work for today’s audiences. Hence, a
somewhat parodic approach is as convincing as any.
After the initial surprise wears off, it’s refreshing to see
a would-be superhero who has no special skills.
Rogen’s Britt Reit has no martial arts skills, no rippling muscles, and
not what you would exactly call sex appeal.
He’s loud and obnoxious, not particularly intelligent. He is, however, rich (though it’s never
satisfactorily explained how a family-owned newspaper—which somehow employs
Edward James Olmos?!—has generated such a massive fortune) and has an aberrant
moral compass that enables him to do the right things, not always for the right
reasons, and not always very well (his saving grace is that he is, in his
ineptitude, quite funny). He is, in
fact, an enabler for his much more talented “sidekick” Kato. Kato is much more talented in every way[3]—from his
coffee-making skills, to his artistic abilities (including musicianship,
design, and engineering), to his martial arts abilities and weapons design,
right down to his charm and ability to relate to the opposite sex. Might one even say he is better-looking,
too? Perhaps the film is wryly aware
that this should really be called The
Kato Movie but is prevented from doing so because of racial norms in
American movie-making?
Kato in this TGH is
Chinese[4]. In the radio program, Kato debuted in the
1930s as Japanese—then quietly switched nationalities during World War II to
the much more acceptable Filipino[5]. As a Filipino, we got around the thorny issue
of Kato being put into a detention camp.
He isn’t a valet in the film either[6]—though
that doesn’t preclude him from making truly exceptional coffee—which, as absurd
as it may seem, makes for some good character development throughout the
film: some time after Britt and Kato
have begun their masquerade, to impress Lenore (who we’ll get to), Britt
dismissively tells his “executive assistant” to make coffee, to which Kato
reacts accordingly. You can interpret
this (perhaps over-generously) as a reference to the radio series; by
suggesting Kato go make the coffee, it’s almost akin to suggesting Jay Chou
scale down his virtuosity and adopt 1930s-era pidgin English. Rogen and Goldberg seem potentially aware of
the racial politics at play. We as an
audience may ask ourselves why Kato should,
in fact, stay the sidekick, and Rogen as Britt here comes to the rescue;
his self-absorbed arguments fall hilariously flat every time, and we realize
that Kato is in fact responding to Britt’s helplessness and selfishness. I hate the term bromance[7], but
this may well be one. Even if the
centrality of their relationship dominates the film above all else[8], to the
point where it marginalizes Lenore (I promise we’ll get to her), it doesn’t
necessarily mean we should see TGH through
queer-tinted glasses (though I’m sure there’s scope to do so, the
“he-doth-protest-too-much”es notwithstanding).
While all this is going on, we have to scratch our heads for
awhile trying to determine what to make of Britt’s oddly composed reaction to
his father’s death (i.e., is this bad filmmaking or more of the anti-superhero
mashup?). Once Britt and Kato do their
first “ghetto” run as masked hoodlums (first a prank to defame Britt’s father’s
statue, followed by altruistic helping mugging victims), they need guidance
from a criminal mastermind—this is where Lenore comes in. Rogen and Goldberg,
apparently helped by Cameron Diaz, made a concerted effort to complicate
Lenore’s character, who was a “mere” secretary in the ‘60s show (and given that
I can’t remember any female characters at all from the radio program, I’d say
it was a step up from that). No one
“gets the girl” in TGH, and it’s a
good thing, too. It doesn’t stop either
of the protagonists from trying, with variable results. Nevertheless, Lenore is arguably more
intelligent, and certainly more mature, than Britt or Kato. She is older and wiser (a plot thread is
picked up when Britt quite atrociously comments on her being older than your
average film eye candy aka temping secretary, upon which she refuses to
comment). She also helps them out of
tight spots when necessary, and finally becomes the only one to learn their
real identity.
To give them credit, the film’s composition of the Green
Hornet as hero-masquerading-as-common-criminal by way of media (over)exposure
is reasonably natural. (The
chest-thumping moment at the end of The
Dark Knight, where the hero becomes, in everyone’s eyes except Gordon’s and
the audience’s, a villain, seems an incredible slow-burn in comparison.) Although there is a sh*tload of damage, both
in terms of lives and architecture, gleefully inflicted in TGH, the real villain is perhaps not Chudnovsky and his crime
empire, but the media. Harvey Dent,
Gotham’s White Knight, couldn’t be corrupted, but his counterpart, the District
Attorney, links the media and politics in a way that Britt reacts to with
rather touching innocence. It’s The Daily Sentinel’s coverage of the
Green Hornet that drives Chudnovsky over the edge. The attack-on-tropes in this instance is not
quite as successful. Somehow, creating a
villain whose shtick is that he lacks charisma has made Christoph Waltz’s portrayal
also lack charisma. Yet, there are some
quite funny moments with Chudnovsky (particularly the inability of all
characters to pronounce his name).
The Lenore spanner-in-the-trope-works is, then, arguably
better than any other, and the film starts to turn around and actually make a
success of itself from this point on. As
in TLR, the more insane and
ridiculous the set pieces, the more maniacally enjoyable, until the whole
confection reaches bombastic hilarious conclusion (though far more bloodily in TGH).
In that sense, Michel Gondry was the right person to direct this film,
as there is a stylishness and sleekness (particularly in early scenes like
Chudnovsky confronting the hip young James Franco gangster) that gives it a
completely different tone than the admittedly-also-bombastic Verbinski. (Sometimes there is a bit too much of this,
as in scenes inside The Daily Sentinel building
which look as though they are commercials for interior design firms.)
I really like Black Beauty here[9]—though
the nod to the 1930s style of car was appreciated, and as I said, the
costumes—and the prolonged comedic plot point of the knock-out gas gun—also
make a large contribution to the overall fun-factor. And Rogen is funny. As a role model in the old WXYZ sense, he
doesn’t really work—except, perhaps as a counterpoint to Bale-as-Batman
sidestepping the issue in The Dark Knight
when the Batman-wannabe asks, “What makes you different to me?”[10] Like most traditional superheroes, Britt Reid
has a moneyed background. Unlike them,
however, he isn’t particularly skilled, but he, too, can make a useful
contribution to society by subsidising his mechanic and contributing bravery,
morality, and not much else.
We aren’t looking at any sequels from TGH any time soon, but I have mixed feelings on that. On the one hand, the inept,
flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants quality to this Britt and Kato just about
works; to see them later in their more polished career, as one supposes the TV
series proposed, would be less fun and less convincing. Nevertheless, the Britt-Kato-Lenore
dynamic—far from being a love triangle—is enjoyable enough to want to follow
through.
The Shadow (1994)
is a totally different animal from TLR and
TGH.
Superficially, it’s an older film and thus plays the whole thing
more “straight.” The Shadow as an entity is also symbiotically linked to the success
of Orson Welles’ career—it made him a household name[11] and in
turn, his Shadow/Lamont is a wonderful radio character. I’ve listened to a lot more Shadow than I have TLR and TGH for the
simple reason that I quite enjoy it.
Some of the episodes are more far-fetched than others, but as a concept,
The Shadow has always really appealed
to the radiogenic in me. I wondered when
I bought this DVD if the film could ever live up to the radio-centricism of the
original. Yes . . . and no.
We seem to love concepts that spill over into a variety of
media and can continue spinning hyperdiegetic universes ad infinitum (or is it
just me?). The Shadow is more vertically integrated in that sense than most
OTR properties, given that it flourishes brilliantly in graphic novel
format—though, inevitably, the Shadow of the graphic novels is quite different
from that of the radio series[12]. Firstly, the Shadow of the graphic novels
looks pretty damn amazing fighting evil with his two handguns, but the whole
point of the Shadow on radio was that he “clouded men’s minds” and didn’t need
guns—or any other weapons (presaging Batman, although Batman of course was not
exactly non-lethal in 1939). Secondly,
the Shadow of the graphic novels is a man with a past.
The film, usefully, takes liberally from all previous
incarnations and, for the most part—to its credit—builds up a surprisingly
devastating Shadow of its own. I say
surprisingly because I wouldn’t have personally cast Alec Baldwin in the film
version—yet, having seem him now, it’s difficult to imagine anyone else (though
in my mind’s eye, the Shadow still looks young Orson Welles-ish). Like TGH
(and come to think of it, TLR),
it starts off shakily. The man of
mystery referenced by the pulp magazines and the later graphic novels is
personified in an Anglo-American who has somehow become a brutal warlord in the
East, who dispenses easily with other’s lives and has a dozen concubines in
late 1920s dress. A Tibetan mystic teaches
him how to use his Jedi mind tricks for good rather than evil. It’s hard not to think of Bale-as-Bruce-Wayne
on his quest high up in the mountains of Bhutan during this sequence, but less
cynically, and perhaps more relevantly, the whole evil-Lamont-in-Asia storyline
(which I was familiar with to an extent from the graphic novels) reminded me of
The Road to Samarkand, an excellent
book by Patrick O’Brian which shares the setting (and presumably written from
real life experience?).
Superheroes don’t usually start out as evil warlords[13]. Some scrolling intertitles deposit us into
New York in probably the best sequence of the entire film. In terms of its visuals, I was quite
impressed this movie (and if you’re going to film an OTR/graphic novel
property, you’d better make sure the visuals look good). Though I’m not 100% sure why it wasn’t filmed
in black-and-white. Some
fantastically-lit shots of Baldwin would look even more incredible in
black-and-white (but I digress). Some evil gangsters are about to dump Dr. Tam
(Sab Shimono) over the side of the Brooklyn Bridge with concrete boots on (no,
really! And they’ve got tommy
guns!). A voice—yes, a voice!—disrupts
them. On radio, a bodiless voice was a
rich and, moreover, achievable device.
It was never quite clear whether the Shadow used telepathy,
ventriloquism, hypnotism, or something else to appear “invisible” to his
victims. He was, in a sense, the voice
of justice and the voice of the downtrodden.
In the graphic novels, he was a bit more visual about it
all—he had a big droopy hat, the guns, a long red scarf, and a long black
coat—and a big nose (uncannily like a Toulouse-Lautrec poster, in fact). I was really impressed that the film managed
to “explain” the nose—a bonafide disguise to throw less suspicion on Lamont Cranston
(and probably more believable than Clark Kent’s glasses)—which he could discard
to, ahem, become hot once again as Lamont.
But back to the Brooklyn Bridge. The scene is filmed in a foggy mist, which
allows the special effects to suggest a sort-of-invisible Shadow. It’s still not clear whether this is a mental
effect or a physical hallucinogen—it’s a bit like Harry Potter’s Invisibility
Cloak, there and not there. To me, it
was a more than adequate visualization of the radio effect. And then there was the laughter that was
supposed to instil fear—“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” It occurred to me how much this crazy
laughter resembled the Phantom of the Opera’s in the stage show, and indeed,
the silhouette of the Phantom in his fedora and the Shadow in his costume are
not at all dissimilar[14]. Although the Phantom in the 2004 film lacked
the hat, the line between vigilantism and murder was blurred in that
depiction—much as it may seem when we’ve just seen Lamont as an evil warlord
murdering people about 10 minutes previously.
The Shadow does know what evil
lurks in the hearts of men. He was it!
This scene also establishes the Shadow’s “gang,” all of whom
have been saved by the Shadow and now “work” for him. This is quite a satisfactory explanation of
how one man, with some advantages it’s true—mental powers, guns, a substantial
fortune, experience abroad—can adequately police a city the size of New York
without a Batcave, Alfred, Robin, Oracle, etc.
Lamont may have a cab driver (the cab is sponsored by Sunshine Radio)
named Moe (Peter Boyle) for support, transportation, and comic relief, but he
has no Alfred. He seems to live alone in
a cavernous palatial mansion without any hired help[15]—quite
frankly, I kept thinking of Jean Cocteau’s La
Belle et la Bête. Lamont does have an
uncle, an inane police chief (Jonathan Winters) who bemoans the fact that his
nephew is a rich playboy with no career prospects. (Bruce Wayne at least has Wayne Enterprises
and his philanthropy; Lamont is the ultimate Valentino-esque layabout playboy.) Dr. Tam, who returns and actually is somewhat
crucial to the plot, seems to represent a (welcome) revisionist version of
history in the 1930s. In fact, all the
scientists in the film are foreign-born—a comment on the cosmopolitan nature of
the 1930s, on New York, or what?
So far, so good. Then
in comes the villain and the plot, which are largely dispensable. Shiwan Khan, Genghis Khan’s last descendent
(at first I thought he was the
reincarnation of Genghis Khan; anything seemed possible in the movie up to that
point!), wants to rule the world. He
comes to New York for fashion advice from the Shadow (the comic moments between
Baldwin and John Lone are actually little gems in the bombast) but mainly for
an atom bomb, helpfully formulated by a criminally underused Ian McKellan under
mind control and an oh-so-typical-I’m-British-therefore-I’m-the-villain Tim
Curry. There is some really apt stuff
about buildings that magically appear from nowhere (I say no more so you’re not
spoilered) and some more shoot-em-ups, though nothing quite reaches the level
established in the Brooklyn Bridge sequence.
What about the Shadow’s “constant companion,” Margo Lane,
the only person in the radio show to know his true identity? I really like Margo in the radio series;
she’s more than a match for Lamont verbally, in terms of ‘30s screwball wit,
and she is as much his sidekick as the requisite female voice (although Walter
Gibson was pressured into writing her into the series). In the graphic novels that I’ve read, she
somewhat resembles Marion from Raiders of
the Lost Ark—able to take care of herself, in love with Lamont but also
somewhat bitterly resigned to his bad behavior (and I don’t mean coming home
late . . . he’s a bit of a jerk to her).
As with the Shadow, the film’s Margo is a mixture of all that has come
before. She gets to wear ravishing
costumes, but for the first three-quarters of the film, that’s all she’s good
for. She really ramps up the sexual
tension by slumming it at Chez Cranston and telling him all about her sensual
dream of lying naked on a beach while wearing a filmy negligee. Baldwin’s frantic looks at her coyness are
priceless, as is his unsettling but hilarious rejoinder: “I dreamed I tore all the skin off my face
and was somebody else underneath.”
MARGO: You have
problems.
LAMONT: I'm aware of that.
Margo’s importance to the plot up to this point has been the
fact she is Ian McKellan’s character’s daughter. However, in what is actually a tremendously
appropriate move, Margo is deemed to have psychically receptive powers to the
point she can read Lamont’s mind. At
last, a REASON for them to be together—both in a working partnership and as a
romantic relationship. This is tested
when Tim Curry’s character locks Lamont in an experimental chamber that floods
with water, and Margo is able to rescue Lamont.
She doesn’t go into the rest of the adventure guns blazing—perhaps
later—but becomes one of the Shadow’s “gang.”
Lamont has to learn to trust Margo, which is hard given she can see into
his past. The mini-flashbacks to warlord
days are actually rather powerful, and given that, as I said, I didn’t have
much confidence in Baldwin, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the
poignancy of his performance.
In the radio series, there was never a hint of more than a
platonic relationship, though it was pretty clear they were dating. Surprisingly, the platonic ideal is more or
less maintained by the end of the film—there’s just the teasing, innuendo-heavy
scenes and some kissing. So, a promising
start for the Margo/Lamont-Shadow partnership.
I did wonder by the end of the film whether it was possible for The Shadow could be updated in another
film incarnation à la TGH attempted.
[1]
I haven’t run across much in the way of audience demographic figures for TLR or anything else of the
period—besides a 1938 doctoral dissertation, though one suspects Lazarfield
would have that kind of stuff. Is this
all a gender smoke-screen, in the way we don’t necessarily imagine little girls
watching the first year of Doctor Who whereas
contemporary testimony runs counter to our expectations?
[2]
Though apparently it wasn’t nearly as popular as the 1960s Batman, only running for 2 seasons.
[3]
In the radio program, he was a master chemist.
[4]
The casting in TGH is interesting in
contrast with that of TLR. Kato and Tonto, the non-white sidekicks,
were always played on radio by white men.
In the film TLR, Depp is
apparently Native American “enough” to play Tonto without causing outcry
(again, in the interests of full disclosure, I really like Johnny Depp). Bruce
Lee, apparently, played Kato in the ‘60s TV show (again, though, shouldn’t it
have really been The Kato Show??). Furthermore, by Kato’s being Chinese, we
potentially get around the issue of the name being pronounced incorrectly.
[5]
See Alexander Russo’s excellent article, “A Dark(ened) Figure on the
Airwaves: Race, Nation, and The Green Hornet.” Radio
Reader: Essays on the Cultural History
of Radio. Ed. Michele Hilmes, Jason
Loviglio. London: Routledge, 2002: 257-276.
[6]
One wonders what Rochester (Eddie Anderson), Jack Benny’s Black butler, would
have as his updated career if there was ever a remake of that radio show.
[7]
Although many of my favorite films are dominated by a central platonic
male-male relationship—Master and
Commander (2003), The Eagle (2011)—I
still wouldn’t call them bromances.
[8]
Contrast this with the shoe-horned-in romance of TLR, which, despite the best efforts of Armie Hammer and Ruth
Wilson, remains unconvincing. John
Cawelti did, after all, call Tonto and the Lone Ranger “a pure marriage of
males.”
[9]
And I am not really into cars. At all.
[10]
In the interests of full disclosure, once again, I really really love The Dark Knight.
[11]
And paid him enough to fund the Mercury Theater through the late 1930s before
he left for Hollywood even though it seems he saw it as hack writing and a
means to an end.
[12]
To be fair, like many OTR serials, The
Shadow actually began in
print: as a pulp magazine character
written by Walter Gibson. This Shadow was
about as mysterious as a renegade Time Lord:
perhaps not even human. His
character standardized by the later ‘30s as an impersonator of rich playboy
Lamont Cranston but continued to change and evolve.
[13]
You can make an argument, I suppose, that this is in a sense what Tony Stark is
at the beginning of Iron Man, though
he does not at that point believe he is doing evil. I’m pretty sure Lamont is revelling in his
evil deeds.
[14]
However, which influenced which? The Phantom novel was published in English
in 1911, which predates The Shadow pulp
stories. However, the pulp stories
predate all film versions (except the Lon Chaney one) and the stage show. The stage show predates The Shadow film by nearly 10 years.
[15]
Then again, Dracula seemed able to whip up dinner for Jonathan Harker in the
absence of hired help.
