Secret past
Mark Steyn
Thomas Pynchon A Journey Into The Mind Of Unrated, ICA Half Past Dead 15, selected cinenias
Imentioned last week, apropos my near resignation from The Spectator, that I lacked alternative employment prospects. But it wasn't always so. About 11 years ago, I got a call from a producer who was making a film about Thomas Pynchon, the publicity-shy novelist who makes J.D. Salinger look like Liz Hurley. Or alleged novelist, I should say, since nobody's seen him since the late Sixties, when he may or may not have come into some fellow's store disguised as a woman. Anyway, this producer had been looking for a guy to play the lead — a journalist who goes in search of Pynchon — and evidently he'd considered whoever the big male stars were back in the early Nineties — Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Burt Reynolds, Don Ameche — but none of them was quite right and then one morning he happened to wake up, switch on the TV and see me on the old Channel 4 breakfast show. 'Eureka!' he said. Or rather, as he said to me, 'You reek of authenticity. And that's what I need.' He added that Nic Roeg was interested in directing, and there was also a chance Theresa Russell would commit, and it occurred to me, given her energetic track record, that this was probably my
best ever shot at landing a nude scene with Theresa.
So I said yeah, sure, put me down, and a week or so later a script arrived with the working title A Journey In Search Of Thomas Pynchon, whose first scene had me driving a rental car out of the airport in Los Angeles, with Dionne Warwick on the radio singing 'Do You Know The Way To San Jose?' as I peered through the window looking for the way to San Jose or someone who knew it. With my name attached to the project, it was rushed through the development process straight to the dustgathering attic stage, where it languished for a decade. But now Thomas Pynchon — A Journey Into The Mind Of has come to London. Instead of Nic Roeg, there are two wacky Italian directors. Instead of Dionne Warwick, there's a trippy electronic score by the Residents. Instead of me — well, I was dreading the shame of being bounced in favour of James Delingpole or Toby Young, but they seem to have axed the Steyn role entirely. The movie's at the ICA. With me, it would have been playing the Empire, Leicester Square. And that's all I'm going to say.
On the other hand. I should have no trouble landing a gig as an action hero. If Steven Seagal can still be one, any wheezing tubster can make the grade. In Half Past Dead, Seagal looks way past viable. The story involves a Supreme Court judge who's being held hostage in the death chamber at Alcatraz, and, believe me, that plot is the least ridiculous thing about this picture. As usual these days, Seagal is paired with a hip young black rapper Oa Rule) and does his 'action' sequences accompanied by hardcore hip-hop, even though, as soon as he waddles into frame in a billowing farmboy smock, you can't help feeling Val Doonican would be more appropriate. As for the attempt to wedge the longtime taciturn loner into a buddy caper format, Seagal and Ja Rule have the warm personal chemistry of the Prince and Princess of Wales on their last Australian tour.
But a buddy caper without buddies leads naturally to the film's next great innovation: a car chase with a car but nobody chasing it. Instead, the vehicle just careers around some freight yards for no particular reason, and we only see Seagal in extreme partial close-ups of relatively unpudgy segments of his face. It's hard to have a buddy movie when one guy's a wiry little feller wiggling all over the screen and the other guy's just a disembodied right cheek. But it does give you plenty of time to look over the supporting players: the faint flare of the judge's nostril rang a bell, and indeed it turned out to be lovely Linda Thorson from The Avengers all those years ago.
MGM kicked Mario Lanza off The Student Prince for being a third of Seagal's size, and that was an operetta. Don Michael Paul goes to a lot more trouble, apparently shooting most of the film dur
ing a total eclipse illuminated only by occasional reflections of cobalt blue tubing. On the basis of my few visits to prisons, I'd say the lighting tends if anything to the glaring. But in this Alcatraz. the warden likes to keep the lights nice and low, mindful that Seagal's hairpiece might be coming into longshot. I get the feeling he doesn't do his own stunts, given that he can barely do his own dialogue, croaking out four or five monosyllables every ten minutes like a fellow in an iron lung trying to keep his utilities bill down. 'They're. Very. Heavily. Armed.' wheezes Seagal, assessing the enemy. Fortunately, Seagal is not only heavily armed, he's also heavily legged, heavily bottomed and heavily torsoed.
If he can't do his own stunts, he can at least do his own slow-motion sequences. But most of the time you're only aware of the star man from the reaction shots. A bad guy suddenly looks startled and flies backward and you vaguely glimpse an ankle or elbow coming into shot. Then the film cuts to a close-up of Seagal's least bulky cheek in three-quarter shadow, and we thus deduce that the elbow also belonged to him. This isn't just Half Past Dead, this is the sort of movie you do when the actor croaks and you have to get an entire picture out of 12 minutes of miscellaneous footage. For all you get to see of Steven Seagal, they might as well have cast Thomas Pynchon.
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