Godfather (60 page)

The neophyte lawyer then in earnest takes on a major league insurance company, Great Benefit, which is bent on denying the low-income Black family the insurance benefits for their son Donny Ray (Johnny Whitworth), who is suffering from leukemia. Indeed, the medical coverage that Great Benefit has denied Donny Ray would provide funds for a bone- marrow transplant that could very likely save his life. Great Benefit claims that such an experimental operation is an extraordinary means of treating leukemia, and no insurer is obligated to fund such extraordinary means of medical treatment. Rudy, of course, counters that in an age of advanced medical technology bone-marrow surgery is no longer “experimental,” but an ordinary means of treating leukemia. Therefore, Great Benefit should provide coverage for this standard surgical procedure.

With the Black case Rudy finds himself involved in big-time litigation. His chief opponent is Leo Drummond, a high-priced, amoral attorney backed up by a battery of lawyers. By contrast, Rudy's sole colleague is his seedy sidekick Deck Shifflet, an intrepid would-be lawyer who has failed the bar exam six times. Be that as it may, Deck knows his way around courthouses and teaches Rudy the ropes. Their give-and-take is at the heart of the film. Moreover, their deft interplay exemplifies how Coppola “allows his actors, rather than his showmanship, to carry the scenes.”
⁶
Coppola's skillful screenplay is filled with the kind of behind-the-scenes legal maneuverings that keep the story from becoming a battle of words instead of a battle of wits. As a matter of fact, Rudy discovers that his opponent, a bona fide scoundrel, is not above underhanded tactics like installing a surveillance
device in Rudy's office to monitor his phone calls (shades of
The Conversation
).

Judge Tyrone Kipler (Danny Glover, in an uncredited cameo), is a black veteran of civil rights protests and is thus partial to Rudy and his downtrodden clients. But Kipler is also scrupulously fair, and he must reluctantly rule in favor of Drummond when the legal ace sometimes out-maneuvers Rudy on a point of law. Jones notes that Coppola can get fresh perspectives in any scene, “zeroing in on the possibilities of any given space.” He singles out the scene in which Rudy, with Judge Kipler's permission, holds a conference in the Blacks' backyard so that Donny Ray, who is too weak to go to the courthouse, can videotape his deposition. “The outdoor deposition is a beauty, deftly juxtaposing viewpoints and moods in a few minutes of screen time. The details are superb: the courtly judge greeting all the participants and ushering them into a believably run-down backyard; the team of million-dollar lawyers led by Leo Drummond trudging through the mud and unkempt grass in their expensive shoes; a gnatlike Deck Shifflet setting up his video camera”; and Rudy introducing his cancer-ravaged client to the assembled group.
⁷
The scene is capped by Coppola cutting to Donny Ray's father, a sullen, withdrawn alcoholic, silently retreating with a pint of whiskey to his abandoned car in the weeds to mope. Instead of milking the heartbreaking scene for the last drop of pathos, Coppola finishes it off with a sliver of comic relief: Deck, the little shadow who has stage-managed the whole meeting, goes to the fence and offers his card to a nine-year-old black boy with a broken arm, asking him if he needs legal representation.

Meanwhile, Rudy keeps one eye on Kelly's case. He takes her back to her house to collect her belongings after he has convinced her to file for divorce. Once there, Rudy is forced into a confrontation with Cliff, her abusive mate. When Cliff begins brutally slapping his wife around, Rudy intervenes, and they engage in savage hand-to-hand combat in which a lot of furniture is smashed to pieces. This is the most harrowing depiction of domestic violence in a Coppola film since Carlo attacked Connie in
The Godfather
.

Rudy finally knocks Cliff senseless with Cliff's own ball bat. Thinking that Cliff has been subdued, he stalks out of the house. But Cliff comes to. The terrified Kelly picks up the bat that Rudy had discarded and administers what turns out to be a death blow with a resounding thud. Kelly has killed her husband, but Rudy eloquently convinces the district attorney that she did so in self-defense.

In the movie's deeply moving climax, Rudy presents documentation that
proves that the life of Donny Ray Black—who has died in the course of the trial—could have been saved by the operation that the criminally negligent insurance company patently should have funded. Rudy shows in open court the videotape of Donny Ray's deposition, made shortly before his death, in which he testifies, “Leukemia was detected in plenty of time for a bone-marow transplant to save my life.” Rudy shrewdly freezes the image of the haggard, pale young man on the screen in the courtroom, and Donny Ray seems to be staring plaintively, with dark circles under his eyes, directly at Wilfred Keely, the CEO of Great Benefit. Then, for good measure, Donny Ray's wretched father strides over to Keely and silently thrusts a cherished photograph of his dead boy in Keely's face, while the CEO averts his eyes in shame.

The jury ultimately sees through the slick and manipulative legal tactics of the high-powered lawyer, Leo Drummond, while at the same time the jurors are favorably impressed by Rudy's sincere, straightforward defense of his client. The jury, accordingly, awards the Black family $50 million in punitive damages. Consequently, the movie's title refers to a lawyer who causes a deluge of cash to rain down on his client. In short, Rudy Baylor is a latter-day David, who has vanquished Goliath in the person of big-time attorney Leo Drummond, whose client, Great Benefit, is bankrupted by the verdict. Keely shortly thereafter is apprehended at the airport as he desperately attempts to flee the country.

When Rudy mulls over his triumph, he wonders if he really wants to wear the mantle of a legal eagle, which this case has conferred upon him. He considers instant retirement from the law profession: “Every client that I ever have will expect this kind of victory, nothing less,” he says in a voiceover. He is not sure he can live up to such grandiose expectations. “I still love the law,” he adds, “but maybe I should be teaching it, rather than practicing it.” As the movie ends, Rudy and Kelly are driving away from Memphis, preparing to build a new life somewhere else.

Early in the film a client of Bruiser's notices that he has a fish tank in his office with a shark swimming around in it. He observes, “A live shark in a lawyer's office. It must be a joke.” Since Bruiser is a killer shark, it is no joke. Coppola ingeniously plants this incident at the beginning of the movie so that he can pick up on it at the end. As Rudy and Kelly ride off into the sunset, Rudy says on the sound track, “I don't want to wake up some morning and find that I have become Leo Drummond. And then you're nothing but another lawyer joke—just another shark in the dirty water.” The movie concludes on this thought-provoking reflection.

The Rainmaker
opened on November 21, 1997, to critical hosannas and big box office. It earned $46 million in domestic rentals, rivaling the
grosses of
Godfather II
. It was generally rated a well-crafted picture and by far the most satisfying adaptation of a John Grisham novel. Critics also agree that Herr's cogent running narration gave the movie its spine, providing a pithy, morally nuanced commentary on the legal profession. Jonathan Rosenbaum applauded Matt Damon's assured performance, plus the many star turns and glittering cameos by Jon Voight, Mickey Rourke, and Teresa Wright, as well as the solid work done by Mary Kay Place and Red West as Donny Ray's parents and by Johnny Whitworth as Donny Ray. He also handed a well-deserved bouquet to Elmer Bernstein for his richly textured score.
⁸
Bernstein's underscore is one of the most evocative scores ever contributed to a film set in the Deep South and is redolent with the colors and rhythms of old-fashioned gutbucket jazz, featuring an electronic organ and a guitar.

Besides its barb-filled dialogue and luminous cast, one notes in
The Rainmaker
the sheer vibrancy of Coppola's eye for detail and the scope of his storytelling. The film in essence affirms life in all its ambiguity and complexity, briefly banishing death even while contemplating it.

Michael Wilmington, who awarded the film his top rating of four stars, is not alone in comparing
The Rainmaker
, with its brilliant courtroom crossfire, to Otto Preminger's classic courtroom drama
Anatomy of a Murder
(1959).
The Rainmaker
, Wilmington contends, is “a richer, deeper, more enjoyable work” than most films about court cases. “Working near the top of his form, Coppola and his extraordinary cast and company turn an expert, crowd-pleasing best seller into a film of greater warmth, humanity, and humor.”
⁹
As such, the picture richly deserves to be called, in this writer's view, one of the best courtroom dramas ever made.

There remains one other Coppola film to consider, one which is unfortunately not in a class with
The Rainmaker
. It is a minor effort that serves as a footnote to the director's illustrious career. Walt Disney Pictures, for whom Coppola had filmed “Life without Zoe” for
New York Stories
, brought him a script by Gary Nadeau and James De Monaco entitled
Jack
, in which the title character has the mind of a ten-year-old in a forty-year-old body. Coppola was immediately attracted to the material because it called up some childhood memories of his own.

Jack is afflicted with a fictitious disease that makes him age at four times the normal rate, a factor that cuts him off from normal children. The screenplay caused Coppola to remember his bout with polio as a boy: “When I was nine I was confined to a room for over a year with polio, and because polio is a child's illness, they kept every other kid away from me. I remember being pinned to this bed, and longing for friends and company,” says
Coppola. “When I read
Jack
, I was moved because that was precisely his problem; there were no children in his life.” Hollywood insiders wondered why Coppola involved himself in another Disney picture after the debacle of “Life without Zoe.” But, aside from his affinity with the story, Coppola welcomed the opportunity to plough his director's fee back into American Zoetrope. In addition,
Jack
reminded him of an earlier film: “
Peggy Sue Got Married
was a kind of sweet fable,” he explained, “and in a way
Jack
is like that.” (In
Peggy Sue
the situation that obtains in
Jack
is reversed: she is a forty-year-old woman who finds herself in her teenage body. “Even though
Jack
didn't originate with me, I tried to tackle the story with as much feeling and love as I could.”
¹⁰

Coppola did not do much tinkering with the screenplay of
Jack
, but he did modify it in some interesting ways. The film begins with a pre-credit sequence in which a woman is rushed in to labor, crying, “It's too soon. It's not even two months!” She then gives birth to a premature baby. “Now that's a pretty serious kind of opening for such a whimsical movie,” says Coppola. “So I added a thing where the mother is at a
beaux-arts
ball; when they rush her into the hospital,” she and her husband are wearing bizarre costumes straight out of
The Wizard of Oz
. This gives a wacky kind of “Preston Sturges” feeling to the scene.

For his production team Coppola was able once more to bring back production designer Dean Tavoularis and editor Barry Malkin, with John Toll (
The Rainmaker
) as director of photography. Tavoularis and Coppola chose location sites in Northern California, in easy commuting distance from Coppola's Napa estate, just as he had done for
Peggy Sue Got Married
. As a matter of fact, the rambling old house inhabited by Jack and his family closely resembles Peggy Sue's family manse in the earlier movie.

Robin Williams was set to take the title role, and Coppola heartily approved. Williams can be childlike, Coppola stated, “but he's such an extraordinarily intelligent man that I knew he could pull off the illusion” of being a child trapped in an adult's body.
¹¹
Diane Lane, whose association with Coppola dated way back to
The Outsiders
, took the part of Jack's mother, Karen Powell.

During the three-week rehearsal period at Coppola's Napa estate, he encouraged the children in the cast, who would play Jack's schoolmates, to improvise as they engaged in games like hopscotch and in childish pranks with Williams. By the end of rehearsals, Williams was not a superstar to
them any more, but just one of the gang. “We just ran around up at his place,” said Williams. “[I]t was great, because you assimilate behavior without even knowing it.”
¹²
Principal photography started in September 1995 and proceeded in a routine fashion.

The concept of a boy with a man's body had been done before, most notably in the Tom Hanks vehicle
Big
(1988), in which a twelve-year-old gets his wish to grow “big” granted temporarily by a carnival wishing-machine. In
Jack
the boy's rapid growth is not caused by magic but by an irreversible disease. That gives the present film some poignancy. It is evident that, since Jack ages physically four years for each calendar year that he lives, he may not reach twenty.

In the film's prologue Jack is born fully developed after a two-month pregnancy. After the prologue the story leaps ahead a decade, whereby Jack is ten and looks like a robust adult of forty. His parents, Brian and Karen Powell, in the intervening years have kept him at home. A kindly school teacher, Lawrence Woodruff (Bill Cosby), has come to the house regularly to tutor Jack. Since Jack has no ordinary contact with other children, Brian, with Woodruff's support, persuades Karen to liberate Jack from his cloistered existence and let him go to elementary school with other children his age. “Just because a person is different,” says Woodruff, “he shouldn't be an outcast.” Be that as it may, Jack's classmates initially see him as a freak and ridicule him during class and in the schoolyard. After all, Jack towers over them, and when he sits in a school desk on his first day in the fifth grade, he is too big for the desk, which tips over and collapses under his weight. The other kids gradually accept him, however, when they realize that his size can benefit them. He is a topnotch basketball player at recess, and he looks old enough to buy them
Penthouse
at the local drugstore.