The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen (12 page)

“Ghost Dog is an imagined character that follows the
Hagakure
, the code of the samurai,” says writer/director Jim Jarmusch. “He's sort of a Don Quixote character really. He follows a spiritual warrior code that is from another century and another culture that doesn't really interface with the world he lives in, and yet it becomes his guide. He
is
a samurai because he follows the code of the samurai.”

The Akron, Ohio-born Jarmusch is almost as well known for his bushy shock of white hair as his films. He is a critic's darling, and has a shelf full of awards to prove it, but he's never really made a commercial film. His work in the 1980s came to define a certain school of minimalist, art-house, high-concept, low-production-value, indie cinema. His 2000 big-screen release
Ghost Dog
is as close to a mainstream action movie as Jarmusch has ever come.

Forest Whitaker is Ghost Dog, a self-styled samurai who works as a hit man for the mob. He fell into that line of work after his life was saved by a mafia don named Louie (John Tormey), and by samurai law Ghost Dog must now dedicate his life to his Mafioso master. Ghost Dog is a man of mystery, even to his employers. He receives his instructions by carrier pigeon, and, in an annual tribute, is paid only once a year for his services, on the first day of the fall.

This becomes a complication after a hit gone wrong. Ghost Dog assassinates a rogue member of the crime family, but is seen by the victim's daughter (Tricia Vessey). He spares her life because she is reading one of his favorite books,
Rashomon.
Louie is unhappy with this turn of events and orders Ghost Dog eliminated; trouble is, no one knows where he lives because their only contact with him is through the pigeons. Ghost Dog deals with the death warrant in the manner of a true samurai warrior — he attacks.

This is an extremely offbeat movie. Virtually every piece of the puzzle makes no sense. Is it possible for a hit man to be completely anonymous, and only communicate through carrier pigeons? I would think not, but that's not the point. Jarmusch uses this device to accentuate the alienation of the character. Ghost Dog is a man completely shut off from the rest of the world, a person with virtually no contact with others — his best friend is a Haitian ice cream vendor Raymond (Isaach De Bankole) who doesn't speak English, and Ghost Dog doesn't speak French — who is ultimately left sad and alone.

The study of alienation works so well here because of the work of Forest Whitaker in the title role. He gives a domineering performance that drives the entire movie, and his character can be summed up in one passage from
L'ours
, read by his Haitian friend Raymond: “The bear is a solitary animal adaptable to all sorts of climates, environments, and foods. In groups they share food when quantities are abundant, despite their limited social interaction. The bear is a formidable adversary with no predatory instincts at all. But when surprised or wounded, a bear may attack and become very dangerous.” The viewer always knows that underneath Whitaker's sleepy eyes is a coiled snake ready to strike, and it lends a tension to his character that few actors could pull off with such subtle élan.

“In the very beginning of
Ghost Dog
I was trying to think of a character that I could write and work with Forest on,” says Jarmusch. “So that came before the story, before he was a samurai.

“I like the fact that he is physically imposing and yet has that face,” says the director of his leading man. “His face, those eyes, there is a kind of poignancy that is very soft. There is a kind of gentleness. It is kind of contradictory. I've seen a lot of characters that he has created on screen. Very often they are shaded more toward that vulnerable side. I wanted to get a balance where he was very strong, stoic, a man of few words, and let that softness that is in his features and spirit kind of be present and not be pushed in any way. We were trying to make a character that would use both sides of Forest.”

For the film to work the bizarre character of Ghost Dog would have to be completely credible. Jarmusch thinks that Whitaker hit all the right buttons: “A samurai uses his sword as an extension of his body,” said the director, “and his body is an extension of his spirit. Forest took that further because Ghost Dog knows guns — it's modern — as well as he knows sword technique. The guns are an extension of his body, and therefore his spirit, as is the way he puts a CD into the CD player or the way he crouches or walks or moves. Forest really brought a beautiful physical translation of the soul of the character to the screen.”

Gone are two of the trademarks of Jarmusch's previous films: the long takes and silent passages.
Ghost Dog
has the energy of a squirrel, and the fast, edgy cuts are combined with a harsh hip-hop soundtrack by the rza of the Wu-Tang Clan. Jarmusch has long recognized the power of music in his films, and chooses soundtrack material carefully. Whether it's Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Tom Waits, or Lounge Lizard John Lurie, Jarmusch has a knack for matching his images with effective music.
Ghost Dog
's nervy edge is perfectly suited to rza's abrasive hip-hop, with the music lending a jittery inner-city feel to the film.

“Music always starts really early for me,” says Jarmusch discussing the soundtracks of his films. “In the case of my previous feature film
Dead Man
, even while I was writing my dream was to get Neil Young to do the music, and it happened. In this case it was the same thing. While I was still collecting fragments of ideas I had this dream that I would get the rza to do the music. I was a fan of the Wu-Tang and of a certain percentage of hip-hop that I think is really amazing. Also the Wu-Tang philosophy was really interesting to me before I met the rza or any of the Wu-Tang, so I had this dream that maybe I could get the rza to do the music. I listened to a lot of his music while writing, and I was able to find people I know that knew people that he knew, and was able to get to meet and talk to him about it. My dream came true again.”

Ghost Dog
is a unique animal, a strikingly new examination of urban crime drama (although I wish Jarmusch had freshened up the characters of the mob guys a tad), that explores not only the physical act of killing, but the metaphysical as well.

In 1944 the screen's first female werewolf, Princess Celeste LaTour (Nina Foch) terrified moviegoers in
Cry of the Werewolf
as she murdered everyone who knew her terrible lycanthropian secret. Fifty-six years later the beastly tradition of women doomed to shape-shift into horrible creatures continued with
Ginger Snaps
, the story of a teenage girl and “the curse.” It's funny, feminist horror.

If you follow the news, chances are you may have read about
Ginger Snaps
before it even went into production, but not because it had a cast of superstars or was being directed by an A-list Hollywood talent. No,
Ginger Snaps
hit the headlines in the wake of the Columbine and Taber, Alberta, school shootings. The
Toronto Star
ran a sensational (although untrue) story describing the as-yet-unmade film as a slasher movie featuring the toxic combo of teens and violence. In a knee-jerk reaction to the hot-button topic an onslaught of press followed, criticizing the filmmakers and one of the movie's main backers, Telefilm Canada.

Luckily the government-funded Telefilm didn't buckle under, and continued to support the project, although the negative press made it difficult to find a casting agent willing to take on the film; several casting agents refused to even look at the script, much less send it to their clients. It took six months to cast the leads, with auditions being held in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Vancouver. Eventually every role was cast and production began just a few days before Halloween 1999 in the Toronto suburbs of Brampton, Scarborough, and Etobicoke.

The fictional suburb of Bailey Downs is home to 15-year-old Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) and her soon-to-be-sweet-16 sister Ginger (Katharine Isabelle). They are pariahs in the small bedroom community, clinging to each other as best friends, bound by a childhood pact. They are so desperately unhappy and bored they vow to commit suicide together. In preparation they assemble a school art project — a series of gruesome photos of Ginger in various death scenes. On the night of Ginger's first period the duo are cutting through the woods on the edge of town when Ginger is ferociously attacked by a mysterious creature.

Ginger survives, her wounds miraculously healing in no time flat. She may be mildly physically scarred from the attack, but the psychological scars seem much deeper. She becomes prickly and in denial. Brigitte is the first to realize what is happening. The sudden appearance of little silvery hairs on the scars and a tail budding from the base of her spine point in only one direction — Ginger is becoming a werewolf.

“I've got this ache,” says Ginger, referring to her unnatural cravings, “and I thought it was for sex, but it's to tear everything into fucking pieces.” Ginger is no longer an outsider, but a predator using her sexual charms to seduce victims who will unwittingly satisfy her new-found blood lust. Brigitte searches for a cure for her sister's malady, turning to Sam (Kris Lemche), a local drug dealer and amateur botanist. They search for a holistic remedy to cure the infection that has overtaken Ginger.

As Ginger loses her battle with the dark side she begins to behave and think more like a beast. Brigitte, blinded by the love of her sister, becomes an accomplice to Ginger's vicious crimes, and the whole thing comes to a crescendo on Halloween night.

Ginger Snaps
adroitly plays against the usual horror movie conventions when it comes to portraying teenagers. The nubile scream queens of
I Know What You Did Last Summer
and
Urban Myth
are nowhere to be found. Ginger and Brigitte are late-bloomers, goth girls who are entering adulthood and experiencing all the traumatic transformations that go along with it. The film's best piece of dark teenage humor is the use of menstruation as a metaphor for turning into a werewolf. How many hack comics have joked about the beastly effects of pms?
Ginger Snaps
takes those jokes one step further in a wickedly funny allegory.

A movie like this hinges on the performances of its leads. Director John Fawcett wisely chose to play it straight, avoiding the camp that mars so many teen horror flicks. Emily Perkins shows real depth as Brigitte, moving her character through an arc from the timid little wallflower you might see in an Edward Gorey cartoon to an independent powder keg à la
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. “I was drawn to the fact that she doesn't belong anywhere,” says Perkins, “I think teenagers can relate to that. She's a strange, strange girl.”

Katharine Isabelle is a bottle rocket as the hormonally unbalanced Ginger. The character almost threatens to careen off the rails, but Isabelle keeps her on track in a performance that shows great skill. “Ginger is an exaggeration of my bad side,” says Isabelle. “She's not too much of a stretch for me. Except all the being a werewolf and killing people stuff. That's a bit of a stretch.”

Both actresses glide through the material, bringing realism to an unreal situation. Ginger and Brigitte are nihilistic, fighting the pressures to conform and fit in with a society they have no use for. Add boys to the mix and you've got a potentially explosive situation. These are the kind of teens who give high school guidance counselors ulcers.

It's clear that screenwriter Karen Walton remembers her high school years very well. Her snappy script never talks down to the teens, instead addressing their problems as legitimate issues without a hint of condescension. The sensitive handling of the lead characters gives this film a feeling of authenticity that works very well whether you choose to look upon this more as a horror flick or a clever commentary on the pain of becoming an adult.

Ginger Snaps
may take itself seriously, but it washes the premise down with a spoonful of sugar. The metaphors are quietly woven into the fabric of the piece, which bristles with genuine frights and a great deal of humor built around the characters and situations, unlike the postmodern “look at me, I'm so ironic” humor of the
Scream
series. Mimi Rogers as the girls' mother, Pamela, is the main source of laughs. She's a guileless Mrs. Cleaver type (if Beaver's mom had taken too much acid in the '60s). To celebrate her daughter's first period and her ascent into womanhood, Pamela inappropriately bakes a large strawberry cake for the whole family to enjoy. She's thrilled; the girls, of course, are mortified.

Ginger Snaps
is a welcome addition to the werewolf genre.

The making of the Sex Pistols' film
The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle
was almost as chaotic as one of their concerts. The original director quit, one of the stars died, and the whole thing seemed ready to fall apart. Only the tenacity of a young guerrilla filmmaker saved the movie from the scrap heap. Julien Temple stepped in and made a movie about a band that had already broken up, putting together something he called “a vandalized documentary,” and in the process made a little-seen but classic rock-and-roll movie.

The Sex Pistols were the most reviled people in England; a series of outrageous publicity stunts had turned the foul-mouthed foursome into the tabloids' favorite whipping boys. Public reaction to them was so strong they had to tour under the name spots (Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly) to sidestep various bans and potential protests. It was while they were on their cloak-and-dagger tour that the idea of making a movie first came up — manager Malcolm McLaren wanted to find a cheap, safe way to promote the band in other territories, and with the band banned in so many European cities, a film was the only way for most people to see them.

McLaren had approached a number of well-known English comics to write a script, including Peter Cook, the legendary improv master and former partner to Dudley Moore. Cook considered the project, but never put pen to paper. McLaren ruled out another likely candidate after a night of drinking at a pub. A meeting was set up with Monty Python co-founder Graham Chapman. Many drinks later Chapman performed his favorite party trick: dipping his penis into a pint of beer for the pub dog to lick. While one would think that the display might appeal to McLaren, a man who encouraged the Pistols to vomit in public and was often interviewed wearing a full s&m rubber suit, he was actually so disgusted by the show he crossed Chapman off the list of potential writers.

Running out of options in England, McLaren and the band turned their eyes to a cult, soft-porn filmmaker in the United States. Russ Meyer's subversive take on the entertainment industry in
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
appealed to Johnny Rotten, who called Meyer “an absolute nutcase.” Meyer agreed to make the film on the condition that he could bring some of his own people, including his stripper girlfriend Kitten Natividad and screenwriter Roger Ebert.

The hard-boiled Meyer didn't know what to make of McLaren or the band. When McLaren showed up at one meeting wearing bondage pants Meyer insisted on sitting on the aisle. “If we have to evacuate he'll get those goddamned straps tangled up in the seats,” he said.

Ebert and Meyer set to work on a script that was due to start shooting on Halloween in 1977. Writing and rewriting over the course of three months, they cobbled together a piercing indictment of the music business called
Who Killed Bambi?
. In keeping with the punk rock ethos the film explored themes of debauchery, corruption, anarchy, and the death of innocence.

In the surreal title sequence an aging rock star known as MJ (probably Mick Jagger) is threatened by the popularity of the Sex Pistols and pulls a Robin Hood stunt. “Jagger — we don't call him Jagger — goes out in hunting garb and crossbow and shoots a deer on the queen's reserve,” Meyer told
Search and Destroy
in 1978. “He straps it on the Rolls and drives careening through the countryside. He picks a suitable thatched-roof cottage to give it to the poor and throws it down on the porch. A little girl comes out and says, ‘Mommy! They've just killed Bambi!'”

An eclectic group of actors was assembled. Along with the Pistols — Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones, and Paul Cook — Mick Jagger's ex-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull was cast as Sid's incestuous mom and a motley crew of Pistols' fans were brought in for color.

Shooting on the Meyer's film ended abruptly after only a day and a half, and no one seems to be able to agree why production was shut down. Ebert claims work came to a halt when it became apparent that the crew was not going to be paid for their work. According to McLaren the project was killed by its main financier, 20th Century Fox, who pulled out under the pretext that, “We are in the business of making family entertainment.” Apparently several shareholders, including Grace Kelly, were outraged by the film's subject matter. Either way, the movie seemed as dead as the deer in the opening scene.

With just a few feet of film from the Meyer project, McLaren tried to salvage the film and turned to British director Pete Walker, best known for a string of exploitation movies with titles like
Die, Beautiful Marianne
and
Asylum of the Insane
. Cameras never even rolled on his version, as the band weren't interested in learning the reams of lines set out in the script. Later that year the band fell apart when Rotten escaped to Jamaica, Cook and Jones went to Rio to hang out with Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, and Sid took refuge in Paris.

In Paris a young film student who had been filming the Pistols since their early days was hired to shoot some footage of Sid. Julien Temple came complete with a cinematic sense and an attitude. His plan was to show the seamier side of the music business, so he arranged a set piece with Sid, by this time ravaged by heroin, singing “My Way” in front of a respectable upper-class audience. On a set originally built for French superstar Serge Gainsbourg, Sid wears a dinner jacket and motorcycle boots and mumbles his way through rewritten lyrics that were part Frank Sinatra, part Joey Ramone. In the end Sid pulls out a revolver and shoots members of the audience. It's pure punk rock, and Sid plays it perfectly. “We saw Sid as the first monster child of the hippie generation,” said Temple.

In the absence of the band Temple pieced together a mockumentary broken into 10 sequences — lessons on how to sell a band. Using clips and animation he cynically outlines McLaren's modus operandi of artist management, everything from “How to Manufacture Your Group” to “How to Become the World's Greatest Tourist Attraction.”

The film came out in 1980, two years after the Pistols played their last gig. The band, particularly Johnny Rotten, hated it, as did most reviewers at the time. To me, though, it represents a unique time capsule of one of the most exciting movements in popular music. Punk rock was a short-lived, but wildly influential period that has informed hundreds of bands, and
The Great Rock ‘N' Roll Swindle
is the unruly blueprint.