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September 9, 2008
Southern California noir
Newton Thornburg’s strangely unheralded 1976 crime novel “Cutter and Bone” was made into the 1981 cult film, “Cutter’s Way,” and tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. it will be my pleasure to host a screening of the movie at the Avon Theatre Film Center in Stamford.
“Cutter’s Way” was one of the first Hollywood pictures to be released by an art house subsidiary of a major studio — United Artists Classics — and the success of the specialized distribution paved the way to Fox Searchlight, Miramax and all of the other companies of the 1980s and 1990s that brought foreign and indie films to a greatly expanded number of theaters in this country.
After the break-up of United Artists, the founders of the classics division moved on to another troubled company, Orion, before eventually finding a permanent home under the Sony banner as Sony Pictures Classics.
But, enough business talk.
“Cutter’s Way” is one of my favorite movies from the 1980s because of the way it blends classic elements of 1940s film noir thrillers with the cynical countercultural tone of the late 1970s — when the baby boom radicals of the 1960s and early 1970s knew their day was coming to an end and the “Reagan revolution” was about to begin.
The story follows two lifelong Santa Barbara friends —the scarred Vietnam vet Cutter (John Heard) and the rapidly aging beach boy/gigolo Bone (Jeff Bridges).
Bone has lost his idealistic youthful drive and Cutter is raging over a “system” that left him physically and emotionally maimed.
Late one night, after he has been paid to have sex with a wealthy older woman, Bone’s car breaks down in a rainy alley, and he sees someone dumping something large into a trash can. The something turns out to be a dead girl and soon Cutter and Bone come to believe she was a hitchhiker who was disposed of like a piece of trash by one of the wealthist men in town, J.J. Cord (Stephen Elliott).
The two men set off on a dangerous quest to nail the politically connected power broker, but instead get a painful lesson in the way that rich people clean up their messes.
“Cutter’s Way” has a very strong sense of place — you can practically smell the rot just under the beautiful Southern California surfaces — and the performances by Bridges and Heard are spectacular.
The 1980 movie scene came to be dominated by the comic book antics of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, but “Cutter’s Way” was part of a wave of less-publicized 1980s films such as “At Close Range,” “To Live and Die in L.A.” and “Mike’s Murder” that demonstrated all was not well in boom time, Reagan era America.
(“Cutter’s Way” will be shown Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. at the non-profit Avon Theatre Film Center, 272 Bedford St. Tickets are $10. For more information, call 967-3660.)
Posted by Joe on September 9, 2008 10:02 AM
