CINEMA-USA: ‘Get Shorty’ Takes On the Business of Movies

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Nov 14 1995 (IPS) - The cynical atitude about movie-making in the new film ‘Get Shorty’ is expressed by one of its characters, a gangster who says that all a screenwriter needs to do is write commas and the words “fade to black” at the end.

The world of the movies in ‘Get Shorty’ is one of many such gangsters, using murder and drug deals as tactics to become film producers, and the second-rate directors and actors they hire. That world is so stressful that small-time gangster Chili Palmer (John Travolta) admits, “Maybe I should go back to loan-sharking just to get a rest.”

Audiences seem to love this downbeat, but still glamourous, view of the way movies are made: Since premiering in the United States last month, ‘Get Shorty’ (from New Jersey films, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld) has been the biggest hit on U.S. screens.

Some of that success bears witness to the comeback of Travolta, a screen idol of the 1970s who won back audiences last year with his portrayal of another good-natured thug in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’.

Like ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Get Shorty’ — based on a novel by popular crime writer Elmore Leonard — is a tale of small-time hoodlums and their aspiration for bigger and better things. The two films also share a fondness for cynical, brief bursts of violence intended to be more amusing than frightening.

But Sonnenfeld’s film also aims to be a satire on the way films work their magic. Despite its gentle pace, the movie features the plotting of all sorts of mediocrities — from failed director Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman) to Miami gangster Ray Bones (Dennis Farina) — who use whatever manipulative tactics they have to get ahead in the tough Hollywood scene.

In fact, when Zimm is mistakenly thought to have killed a man, he is treated as a celebrity at a trend Hollywood restaurant. And perhaps the most touching figure is mob boss Bo Catlett (Delroy Lindo) who confesses that after years of amassing millions of dollars in California, he yearns to make movies.

Needless to say, that desire results in a lot of bloodshed. Only Travolta’s Chili Palmer — effortlessly genial and always subtly ahead of everyone else — floats above the violent machinations that follow.

Along the way, the movie revels in the power of cinema itself. Perhaps Palmer’s most appealing trait is his genuine love of movies, so much that he recites all the lines of an old Orson Welles film and even discusses cinema as guns are pulled on him. (MORE)

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