DVD OF THE WEEK: Lookin' to Get Out

Lookin' to Get Out
Directed by Hal Ashby
1982, 105 minutes, USA
Warner

As chronicled in Nick Dawson's book Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel (further clicking: my podcast with Dawson), Lookin' to Get Out was a wildly over-budget production, filmed during a chaotic and desperate time in Ashby's professional life. When ultimately released in an abbreviated, studio-sanctioned edit that was out of the Shampoo auteur's hands (Ashby was only an Oscar-winning editor, no big whoop), the film bombed so badly that it isn't even disparaged today; like most of Ashby's work in the '80s, it was forgotten. As Jon Voight—who starred, produced, co-wrote and worked on the butchered version of this long-lost Vegas farce—recalled to me last April, it was Dawson who first informed him that a director's cut (or as the new DVD positions, an "Extended Version") secretly survived:

I asked Nick, "Where'd you see it?" He said, "I saw the version that Hal left to UCLA. It's a version that he did quietly before he died." The first thing I said was, "Describe the opening." He described it, and I knew it was a cut I hadn't seen, because I knew all the cuts. So I got [co-writer] Al Schwartz, and we went down to see it. We put the first reel up, and it was indeed another cut, and it was terrific. I said, "Let's put up another reel." We put up one more reel, and that, too, was perfect.

"Perfect" obviously overstates the case, but with Voight's help, Lookin' to Get Out no longer seems the high-pitched, broad laffer that its tepid theatrical reviews described, though it's now one of the stranger screwball movies to come out of the studio system. As duplicitous as its rogue's gallery of lowlifes, the film situates the raw, loose stylings of '70s Hollywood (Haskell Wexler even shot the picture) in a glitzy, corny '80s vehicle. One minute it has penthouse-luxury fantasies and a rollicking chase sequence that could share a double bill with The Hangover; in the next, it's a downbeat character study of the unsympathetic and antagonistic, guys who are down on their luck but refuse to acknowledge so—which seems more in line with a Cassavetes picture.

Once the film tanked, Voight never again tried comedy (short of the tongue-in-cheeky Anaconda), but I found him to be an irreverent delight as self-confident loser Alex Kovac, a motor-mouthed New York gambler whose sporadic wins in life are typically tethered to the other shoe dropping, the inevitable result of his impetuous, wise-ass conduct. When he and his sluggish Muppet of a sidekick Jerry Feldman (who knew Burt Young could steal laughs with tiny one-liners and tinier facial expressions?) try to outrun their debts, their angry debtors follow them all the way to Las Vegas. Alex and Jerry have a scheme to make it big (don't they always?), wherein they dupe the MGM Grand to bankroll their game by pretending to be high-roller cronies with the casino's out-of-town owner—who, to add another wrench in their plans, is dating Alex's old flame Patti (an underutilized Ann-Margret).

As should be expected, said other shoe indeed drops for the boys, leading to two decidedly unfunny acts of unexpected violence, a desperate break-the-bank ruse, and a drag-down brawl among the blackjack tables. In its giddiest moments, the film plays like California Split on nitrous oxide, which I'm guessing set the tone for the theatrical cut. The scenes that were likely excised—including Voight's aforementioned opening, where Alex retrieves his Rolls Royce (with one working headlight) and riffs obnoxiously about China to a parking attendant he learns is actually Korean—are those that add nuance to the psychology of these carefree also-rans. I even thought about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, albeit without the politics or drugs, because who needs an artificial high when you have the natural euphoria of compulsive gambling? Every time Jerry asks if a woman they meet is a hooker, I also imagined him pouring beer on his chest to facilitate the tanning process like Dr. Gonzo.

It's probably not saying much to call Lookin' to Get Out Ashby's most vital film of the 1980s. (If anyone thinks Terry Gilliam has a hard time finishing movies, read Dawson's book about what Ashby endured post-Being There.) And humor being subjective, the film should at least be considered a must-see curiosity for Ashby and Angelina Jolie completists. You read that correctly: just before the epilogue, the kindergarten-aged tomb raider makes her screen debut as the love child of Patti and Alex (unbeknownst to him, making their estrangement quite ironic). And yet, the father-daughter-mother circle continues: watch for the late Marcheline Bertrand, Jolie's real-life mama, as a woman driving a jeep with whom Alex flirts at a stoplight.

Posted by ahillis at July 14, 2009 12:50 PM