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Cohen
Underground
Originally printed in Issue 88 - September/October 2002
Colin
Farrell's upcoming thriller Phone Booth is penned
by cult screenwriter Larry Cohen. Lir
Mac Cárthaigh takes
a look at one of the strangest careers in film.
'B' picture. Straight to video. TV movie.
Through the years labels such as these have been used to describe
low-budget commercial feature films, and as such have become
virtual terms of abuse. They suggest unimaginative by-the-numbers
productions, made by hacks, has-beens and never-weres. However,
not everyone working in this field conforms to such a limited
definition. Larry Cohen has taken this despised form of filmmaking
and used it to bring his subversive and exceptional vision
to the screen. By avoiding the Faustian pact of high-budget
major studio funding, Cohen has smuggled his critique of society
to the screen with minimal interference, disguising it with
outlandish plots involving Aztec gods, zombie cops and sentient
goo. Director of twenty films and writer of many more, Cohen
has always maintained his status as a maverick, but his latest
film Phone Booth finds him in the company of a-list
director Joel Schumacher and Twentieth Century Fox.
Larry
Cohen cut his writing teeth on American TV shows ranging from
The Fugitive to The Nurses and the hard-hitting
western series Branded. Such a diverse scripting apprenticeship
seems to have imbued Cohen with a lasting versatility, as
throughout his career he has written and directed in numerous
different genres. Cohen moved to the big screen with his script
for Return of the Seven (1966), since then he has been
the writer, director or producer - sometimes all three - of
blaxploitation movies, horror films, westerns, comedies and
paranoid thrillers. Regardless of the genre, Cohen consistently
uses subtext to question the values of contemporary America.
It is clear from his films that Cohen is dissatisfied with
aspects of the 'American Way', such as the dominance of a
white middle-class, obsession with money and power, rule by
ruthless corporations and corrupt politicians. Beneath the
visceral thrills, excitement and humour of a Larry Cohen film
there is always a critique of some aspect of American society.
The protagonists of Cohen's films tend
to be unsympathetic, while the characters who are 'good' enough
to be called heroes are usually quite two-dimensional. The
ostensible hero of Q: The Winged Serpent is Detective
Shepard, a morally unimpeachable, hard-working cop; however
the real hero is unlikable, downtrodden crook Jimmy Quinn.
Cohen is keen to put morally ambiguous characters to the fore,
questioning the notion of 'hero'; among his retinue of reprobates
are industrial spy 'Mo' Rutherford in The Stuff, the
titular kidnapper of Bone and gang leader Tommy Gibbs
in Black Caesar and Hell Up In Harlem. In Best
Seller, the hitman Cleve is a remorseless killer, yet
he provides the authentic moral voice of the film. Cleve seems
aware of his dubious status, repeatedly warning his biographer
and moral foil Dennis Meechum: "Remember: I'm the hero."
The majority of Cohen's films are set in New York; the buildings
provide a high-quality prefabricated set for low-budget shooting,
while the self-absorbed, oblivious citizens prove ideal victims
for Cohen's monsters and anti-heroes. The gritty, urban mob-drama
Black Caesar (1973) is a stylistic forerunner of Abel
Ferrara's King Of New York; like Ferrara, Cohen uses
the harshness of New York to reflect similar qualities in
its citizenry. The unyielding steel skyline forms a thoroughly
appropriate backdrop for Q , as the risen Aztec god
Quetzlcoatl flies over ziggurat-shaped skyscrapers, swallowing
the odd urbanite as a tasty snack; as police Captain Fletcher
observes "New York is famous for good eating".
Despite
the weighty subjects explored in many of his films, Cohen
still manages to invest his films with some oddly comic moments.
In Q, Quinn auditions for a gig in a bar with some
bizarre scat singing. Hell Up In Harlem boasts many
darkly comic moments, such as a Mafioso being stabbed to death
with a beach umbrella, and a karate-kick duel between the
enormous Fred Williamson and a bikini-clad model. Paul Sorvino
provides masterful dead-pan as the insane right-wing Colonel
Spears in The Stuff; while loading his army into a
fleet of cabs, a driver asks him: "What is this, World
War III?" He replies: "Just get us to 4th and Main
right away, and no more of your liberal remarks!" Cohen
had the chance to give vent to his humorous bent in his only
full-length comedy Full Moon High; a werewolf spoof
starring Adam Arkin.
One of Cohen's recurring themes is the
greed which permeates consumerist society. The recriminations
of his friends and family suggest that gangster Tommy Gibbs
is not evil because he is a murderer and a criminal, but because
he has succumbed to the ideals of the white capitalist world.
Cohen's movies are filled with evil corporations who have
scant regard for the rights of ordinary people. In It's
Alive, the mutation of Frank and Lenore Davis's baby is
a result of their using an experimental pharmaceutical product
for expectant mothers, a situation that is chillingly reminiscent
of the Thalidomide scandal. David Madlock, villain of Best
Seller, is president of Kappa International; Cleve describes
Madlock, who started his corporation with stolen money, as
"the history of America incarnate; the modern robber
baron." The Stuff is Cohen's most overt attack
on the American way of life, from the corporate bosses who
conspire to get the country hooked on their product, to the
unthinking consumer who swallows the advertising slogan along
with the product. The young hero Jason realises that his family
have become 'Stuffies' when he asks them "why are you
talking like you're on a commercial?" Cohen links the
makers of The Stuff to real multinational corporations; parallels
are drawn between the product's secret ingredients and Coca-Cola,
while a Stuff kiosk is blown up right next to a McDonald's.
The ultimate form of ruthless capitalism can be found in the
drugs trade; in the final scene of The Stuff, the product
is outlawed, and placed in the hands of criminal Stuff dealers.
America is a country which has seen its
fair share of political scandal; Cohen's movies present corruption
as a fact of everyday life which should not be accepted. Cohen's
most overt comment on the abuse of power is the paranoid biopic
The Private Files Of J. Edgar Hoover. This product
of the post-Watergate era is unusual as a Cohen project, and
is one of the few movies he directed not to make money. While
the film has latterly garnered acclaim, its initial release
was minimal, apparently for fear of offending the FBI. Cohen's
vision of America involves a society where "anybody can
kill anybody - even the president", as Cleve says in
Best Seller. In Q, Quinn demands an all-embracing
pardon couched in topical terms: "...didn't Ford pardon
Nixon for anything and everything? I'm just looking for a
Nixon-like pardon". Tricky Dicky comes in for some more
stick when a gang of criminals carry out a robbery disguised
in Nixon masks. The political stagnation of the Reagan era
is lampooned in A Return To Salem's Lot , in which
a group of vampires form a politically conservative body.
A newspaper in The Stuff shows a picture of Ronnie
himself above a story about a kid who won't swallow the mind-altering
goo. Cohen's movies abound with US flags and eagles, such
as the one behind Quinn in Q when he talks about murderers
and crooked politicians making money from selling their stories,
or behind Tommy Gibbs as he says of buying his acquittal:
"Anything can be 'fixed' in the good old USA."
The
outlandish gung-ho militarism of Reagan's 'Star Wars' years
is riotously lampooned in The Stuff by McCarthyite
Colonel Malcom Grommett Spears. After shooting a 'Stuffie',
eliciting a mess of white goo, he comments "I kinda like
the sight of blood, but this is disgusting!" Cohen brought
his anti-militarism up to date in Uncle Sam, a Gulf
War veteran turns into a zombie who starts murdering citizens
he considers 'anti-American'. The underlying violence inherent
in America's armed police force is explored in Maniac Cop,
a subject which would make the news three years later in the
form of the Rodney King incident. The idea of police brutality
is not new to Cohen, zombie cop Matt Cordell could be a younger
cousin of the violent and racist McKinney (Art Lund) from
Black Caesar. It is somewhat unfortunate that the majority
of Cohen's 'bad cops' are of Irish origin (i.e. they have
red hair and spurious accents).
The exploration of religion is not something
that Hollywood normally warms to, but Larry Cohen has made
two movies which look at the subject in a highly idiosyncratic
way. God Told Me To features an alien messiah who telepathically
instructs people to commit random killings. The killers justify
their actions with the rationale "God told me to".
Cohen has fun with aspects of Christianity along the way;
virgin birth, for example, is reimagined as artificial insemination
by aliens. The central idea, however, remains serious - the
unacceptability of justifying homicide with ideology. An even
stranger take on religion is found in Q: The Winged Serpent.
The Aztec god Quetzlcoatl is "prayed back to life"
by modern devotees, who offer themselves as sacrifices to
be flayed alive or have their still-beating hearts cut out.
Sergeant Powell (Richard Rowntree) draws a parallel between
the literal sacrifice of the ancient religion and the metaphorical
sacrifice of the Eucharist: "Luckily all we have to do
nowadays is take the water and drink the wine - that's what
I call being civilised". Despite the grisly nature of
the killings, there is a certain amount of ambiguity surrounding
the cult of Quetzlcoatl; while the god itself kills indiscriminately
for food, the feathered priest accepts only willing victims;
when the police interrupt an attempted sacrifice, the aspiring
victim begs to let the priest continue wielding his knife.
Cohen's unique vision has brought him into
conflict with producers on a number of occasions. He was removed
as director from the Mickey Spillane adaptation I, The
Jury; Cohen had intended the film as a complex thriller
in which psychotics are mentally programmed as assassins,
and was unhappy with the direction the film took after he
left: "The people who took over the film were more interested
in action scenes: blowing up limousines, staging an elaborate
chase sequence with shooting and fighting in trucks - stuff
like that. That to me is not important." There was also
tension on the set of critical flop Deadly Illusion,
with Cohen leaving the project after just three weeks, though
retaining his credit as director. Jack Finney's novel The
Body Snatchers has provided inspiration for numerous films,
and its influence can be seen in Cohen movies such as The
Stuff; Cohen drafted an early screen-story for Abel Ferrara's
1993 screen version, but did not write the screenplay himself.
In Hollywood, movies tend to be seen as 'product', which has
to have broad appeal; it is at best uncritical of, and at
worst propagandist for the 'American Way' so criticised by
Cohen. Mainstream films with messages tend to be 'issue'-based
Oscar-fodder, or disease-of-the-week TV movies. There is no
room for subtext in these forms. Because Larry Cohen works
on a low budget, often using non-union crews and operating
outside of the Hollywood system, his films are freer to take
risks, but have a harder time getting distribution.
For
such a prolific writer and director, it is shocking to find
out how few of Cohen's films are still in circulation. It
seems that only those which operate within commercial genres
are given a chance on DVD or video on this side of the Atlantic.
The new market for home video in the eighties provided Cohen
with a new outlet for his movies; at one stage it seemed every
video library had a copy of The Stuff. Surely the most
lucrative Cohen project on video is William Lustig-directed
Maniac Cop; the film boasted a tailor-made audience
among horror video renters, and spawned two sequels largely
relying on word-of-mouth as promotion. With the increase in
demand for blaxploitation movies among retro fans, the Tommy
Gibbs movies have been enjoying a new lease of life, along
with their spectacular soundtracks by James Brown and Edwin
Starr, yet other Cohen movies are available only in NTSC format
or, worse still, are gathering dust in the vault. Special
Effects, for example, considered by some to be Cohen's
best movie, has been out of print everywhere for some time,
despite star turns by Zoe Tamerlis and Eric Bogosian.
In an industry where it is hard to make a living in a creative
capacity, Larry Cohen has continued to do what he likes doing,
and earning enough to live on along the way. Not only that,
but many of Cohen's associates such as directors Mark L. Lester
and William Lustig as well as actors such as Michael Moriarty
and James Dixon have managed to make a viable living, and
bring some unorthodox tales to the screen while they are doing
so. As Cohen himself said: "I know I'm a lucky guy, I
get to write my stories and make my pictures." Cohen
has spent much of the last ten years writing for television,
though his film work includes two reunions with William Lustig
on The Expert (1994 ) and Uncle Sam (1997).
Now Cohen is set to make the final leap to the mainstream;
his latest project, Phone Booth, has passed through
the hands of a-list directors such as Joel Schumacher, Michael
Bay, Mel Gibson, and back to Schumacher again; while actors
attached have ranged from Will Smith to Jim Carrey. The film
concerns a publicist (Colin Farrell) who is trapped in the
titular phone booth by a sniper (played by Kiefer Sutherland).
While it is a Hollywood movie with a big-name director and
stars, Phone Booth retains some of Cohen's low-budget
ethos; the whole film is based in one set. It has yet to be
seen whether Phone Booth, always considered a 'risky'
project by Hollywood, will mark Cohen's acceptance as a commercially
viable scriptwriter, or prove the final divide between himself
and the system. What is certain is that Larry Cohen will go
on making his films the way he wants to, and using any medium
or methods at his disposal to do so.
Branded,
the TV western created by Larry Cohen, is extensively referenced
in the Cohen brothers' The Big Lebowski. The movie's
star, Jeff Bridges, had performed in The American Success
Company (1979), written by Cohen.
In
God Told Me To, American comedian Andy Kaufman plays
a cop who opens fire on a St. Patrick's day parade.
For
reasons unknown Cohen had written the role of Tommy Gibbs
in Black Caesar with Sammy Davis Jr. in mind.
Wicked
Stepmother was the final film to star Bette Davis; when she
left the project due to health problems, Cohen had to re-write
the film to accomodate her absence.
Legendary
composer Bernard Herrmann provided the score for It's Alive;
it was the last film he scored to be released during his lifetime.
El
Condor features veteran actor Elisha Cook Jr. (The
Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep). Cook appeared in the 1953
adaptation of I, The Jury, re-made by Cohen ard Richard
T. Heffron in 1982.
In
Hell Up In Harlem, Fred Williamson walks by a cinema
offering a double-bill of Across 110th Street and Hammer.
Williamson played the title role in the Hammer.
Original
Gangstas (1996) is something of a Cohen reunion. The cast
includes Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, Hell Up In Harlem),
Jim Brown (El Condor), and Richard Rowntree (Q,
Maniac Cop). Other veterans of blaxploitation featured
are Pam Grier and Ron O'Neal
Larry
Cohen was a production executive on Martin Scorsese's Alice
Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974).
Larry
Cohen appears briefly in John Landis's 1985 comedy Spies
Like Us. The film also features cameos from Joel Cohen,
Terry Gilliam, Sam Raimi, Ray Harryhausen and Frank Oz.
Among
the guest stars in Maniac Cop are former boxer (and
uncle of director William Lustig) Jake LaMotta and director
Sam Raimi.
Author
and professional Irishman Malachy McCourt appears as the Police
Commissioner in Q. Bejayzus!
The
other Larry Cohen is Lawrence D. Cohen, best remembered for
his screenplay of Carrie. He also helped script Scorsese's
Italianamerican, and penned the unusual stage musical
of Carrie.
Read
Niall Kitson's review of Phone
Booth.
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