‘The song is ended, but the melody lingers on...’: Deceased Artiste Bob Hoskins

Bob Hoskins was one of those special performers who didn't ever look like he was “acting.” He was not a chameleon – he rarely wore elaborate costumes or makeup, he basically looked the same in every role. But there was something about his “every-bloke” appearance and charm that made him the most talented of “artless” actors.

His death last week at 71 was sad but it wasn't that big a surprise, as he had retired from acting in late 2012 because of the onset of Parkinson's disease. What struck me when he retired was that I had really, really loved his work and yet hadn't seen a thing he'd done – and Hoskins was a guy who kept on working, no matter – since the male tearjerker Last Orders back in 2001.

Some of the later items look particularly good, like the British TV series The Street or the film Made in Dagenham, but all too often Hoskins was either in a small role or the film was just too goofy – as with the Jamie Kennedy comedy vehicle Son of the Mask or the last film Hoskins appeared in, Snow White and the Huntsman.

 
So, having confessed that I have no knowledge of the last decade of Hoskins' work (aside from his supporting roles in Beyond the Sea and Paris, Je T'aime), I want to honor him for all the work that came before that. Americans who only watch mainstream multiplex stuff knew him best for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Hook, and really, really bad crap like Mermaids, Heart Condition (where he's a detective haunted by dead cop Denzel Washington – fuck, it's bad), and Super Mario Brothers (which Bob said was indeed the film he liked the least of anything he'd ever done).

Better remembered by those who watch British film and television were Hoskins' early supporting roles in things like Dennis Potter's “Schmoedipus” (the source for Track 29) and Rock Follies of ‘77. I also have a major fondness for John Byrum's Inserts, which was a major flop but was a well-acted small ensemble piece that featured Bob as a gangster.

And there were the films he was so memorable in: Dennis Potter's beautiful miniseries Pennies from Heaven, The Long Good Friday, The Cotton Club, Brazil, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Twenty Four Seven, and of course Mona Lisa.

Hoskins didn't become an actor until he was in his late 20s, when he accompanied a friend to an audition and he was asked to audition as well. Prior to that, he had worked as a porter, a truck driver, and a window cleaner. You can see examples of his early work online, including the 1974 sitcom Thick as Thieves (right), which is up in its entirety.

One of the most entertaining segments featuring a younger (read: early 30s) Hoskins is an educational show about adult literacy called BBC on the Move, which aired in the mid-'70s. The show is the kind of earnestly sincere educational fodder that was lampooned so well in the series Look Around You; it also has the feel of the Children's Television Workshop programs done over, albeit redirected to an adult audience:

A fun example of Hoskins doing comedy is this sketch from The Ken Campbell Roadshow:

He proved himself more than equal to tackling the Bard as Iago in Jonathan Miller's 1981 TV version of Othello, in which he starred opposite Anthony Hopkins:

As the years went on and he became phenomenally successful, he became an easy target for impersonators, as seen here in sketches from The Peter Serafinowicz Show and The Adam and Joe Show.

Here is the real Bob, on The Gaby Roslin Show talking with fellow guest Ian Dury about their work together on one of two films Hoskins directed, The Raggedy Rawney, as well as Dury's thoughts on being disabled and Hoskins inability to understand Ian's Cockney rhyming slang:

The film that made him a star on both sides of the Atlantic was The Long Good Friday (1980), a terrific gangster picture. The conclusion of the film is online and it shows Hoskins at the top of his form. The segment starts off with him telling off two American Mafiosi (one played by iconic tough guy Eddie Constantine), shutting up one of them by referring to him as “you long streak of paralyzed piss.”

The beauty of the sequence (cheesy electronic music excepted) is the final moment in a car where Hoskins delivers a number of emotions in a close-up. It’s a masterclass in how to shift from emotion to emotion, seeming genuine all the way.

His next big knockout of a film was Mona Lisa (1986) for which he won the Best Actor award at both the Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTAs. It’s a beautiful Neil Jordan picture where he is teamed with the earlier iconic Cockney tough-guy, Michael Caine.

The critical and popular success of the film enhanced both Jordan and Hoskins’ careers, leading in Bob’s case to two more films with George Harrison’s Handmade Films (The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and the first feature film he directed, The Raggedy Rawney). The full film is here:

A decade later, after having made several big hit films, including Roger Rabbit, Hoskins received rave reviews for his work in another low-key character study, Twenty Four Seven (1997). If only he could’ve made many more films like this one:

Last Orders is a very special film, in that it has an unspoken connection to the past of British cinema, as its incredibly talented ensemble of lead actors blends actors known for their work in the Sixties (Michael Caine, David Hemmings, Tom Courtenay) with the two actors who most exemplified the “working-class” Brit in later films (Hoskins and Ray Winstone) as well as one of British cinema’s classiest ladies (Helen Mirren, who began in the Sixties as a sexy “dollybird” in movies).

It’s a wonderfully elegiac film that I’m very glad to have seen with my own dad, given that it is about memories of a father.

I want to close out on the one item that showcases Hoskins’ talents like no other, Dennis Potter’s Pennies From Heaven (1978). I am an obsessive fan of Potter’s work and have found that it only gets better as the years go by. Hoskins was nothing short of perfect as Arthur Parker, the sheet-music salesman who believes that popular songs have all the answers to life’s problems.

The lip-synching technique that Potter had his actors utilize in Pennies, The Singing Detective, and Lipstick on Your Collar is sublime here. We see how the characters’ lives “light up” when they’re caught in the world of the song, and how the bleakness of the real world returns just as soon as the song is over (but they act out the tunes in their natural surroundings, something that was switched around for the Herbert Ross feature film made from the material).

Check out Bob dancing up a storm in this number:

Potter’s signature song (used in several of his teleplays) is heard here, as Hoskins gorgeously acts it out. The delicacy he affects (as he lip-synchs to a female vocalist) is exquisite and serves to underscore the optimism of the lyrics:

And there is no better way for me to end a tribute to Hoskins than by presenting the finale of Pennies, in which a Threepenny Opera ending is introduced, because we so want these sad, ill-fated characters to get together. Arthur literally is “resurrected” to recite with Eileen (Cheryl Campbell) the song lyric that I used as the title of this piece. Then the two dance off to “The Glory of Love.”

Farewell, old son, and thanks for the memories.

'Lost' films found 1: Richard Nixon as Oliver Hardy?

Some lost movies are forgotten masterworks, gems that have been hidden too long from public view. This piece is not about one of those films. The film in question is certainly historically interesting, and it's a major curiosity for comedy fans, but it's a startlingly awful picture, something that is so stunningly bad that you should take in a few minutes of it just to see how really wretched it is.

The film is Another Nice Mess, a 1972 comedy that has been effectively “lost” (read: no VHS or DVD release, no cable showings) for so long that it showed up on the esteemed Temple of Schlock's sublime ongoing list of “lost”movies . It's a political comedy that really a mess (and not a nice one) and is quite similar in terms of its schlockiness to two items I spotlighted years ago on the Funhouse TV show, Booker and Foster’s The Phynx (1970) and the astounding, non-porn comedy Linda Lovelace for President (1975).

The reason I was so surprised (and fascinated) at the film's 100% pure awfulness is that it was written and directed by an incredibly funny man, writer-actor Bob Einstein, aka “Super Dave Osborne” (and “Officer Judy” for those old enough to remember the Smothers Brothers variety show). Einstein has been doing funny material on TV from the late Sixties through to the present, from the Smothers show to Curb Your Enthusiasm. He's a great comedy writer who has humor in his genes – his father was the radio comedian Harry Einstein (aka “Parkyarkarkus”) and his younger brother is Albert Brooks.

Another very funny gent produced the picture — Tommy Smothers (the film is billed as a “SmoBro Production”). The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was one of the funniest and most cutting-edge variety shows of the late Sixties (so cutting-edge that CBS cancelled it), created by a very talented roster of writers and performers. 

Another Nice Mess — notice the use of the actual Oliver Hardy phrase (often rendered as “Another fine mess”) — is a disaster from start to finish, but as with most items from the Nixon years, it is a fascinating and vibrant disaster. As I note frequently on the Funhouse TV show, the Sixties (which as an historical era of course extended into the early Seventies) as a time period is a gift that keeps on giving and giving….

The most notable thing about this bizarre artifact is that Einstein decided to “layer” the action. So, on the base level, it’s a broad slapstick farce in which “Richie” (Rich Little, dressed up to look like Nixon, but playing Oliver Hardy) and “Spiro” (Herb Voland, dressed up to look like Spiro Agnew, but playing Stan Laurel) get into various predicaments around the White House, unaware that Adolf Hitler (Bruce Kirby) is stalking them.

Other filmmakers have decided to “resurrect” L&H, most notably Blake Edwards in the horrific A Fine Mess (1986), which was Edwards deadly “variation” on “The Music Box,” and John Cherry in The All New Adventures of Laurel and Hardy in ‘For Love or Mummy’ (1999), a heinous production from Larry Harmon (who owned the rights to the L&H screen characters).

What Einstein did in Another Nice Mess was to intercut footage of the real Laurel and Hardy from their later, sadder vehicles (Air Raid Wardens and Nothing But Trouble) into his political comedy. And then he inserted scenes with Rich Little playing “the real Nixon” watching the film in a screening room. Little’s impression of Oliver Hardy is pretty meager, but his Nixon just wears you down (and is a pale echo of the great take on Tricky Dick offered by the wonderfully cartoonlike David Frye).

So what we’ve got in this film is another feature from the turn of the Seventies in which the characters “interact” with footage from Hollywood’s Golden Age. The most famous example of this phenomenon is definitely Myra Breckenridge (1970) — which includes L&H footage — while the best example of it is without a doubt Harry Hurwitz’s The Projectionist (1971), in which L&H are also referenced, because star Chuck McCann does a really wonderful impression of Ollie.

In watching this amazing misfire, I was reminded of another cosmically awful Blake Edwards’ film, Son of the Pink Panther (1993). There Edwards keeps cutting from a slapstick scene set in a hospital to a television showing a much funnier hospital scene from the Marx Bros’ Day at the Races. As you watch the scene, ALL you want to see is the Marx sequence.

Here, Einstein has the real L&H reacting to “Richie” and “Spiro,” and the results are even sadder and more misguided than Edwards’ blunder, since Einstein is reminding us of the older incarnation of “the Boys,” while attempting to use them to brighten up a comedy that can’t be improved.

Perhaps the surest sign that all involved were at a very low ebb humor-wise is the fact that a mock television commercial included later in the film (as “Richie” and “Spiro” get high on pot) is terrible and not even a good “sign of the times” (the best example of mock commercials from that same era can be found in Robert Downey Sr.’s terrific Putney Swope).

To add insult to injury, Einstein uses contemporary footage of a real anti-war protest outside the White House to no good effect — if the film was indeed intended to mock the fuck out of Nixon, the footage could’ve easily been used to deride Nixon’s policies. Instead, the picture is a PG-rated farce that has no bite and not a dram of truly satirical intent.

As a point of trivia, it should be noted that Steve Martin (who began his TV comedy writing career working for the Smothers) makes his movie debut in a very small role as “a hippy” (around the 36:00 mark).

The best thing one can hope for watching this picture is that all involved were heavily stoned at the time they made it. That way, at least someone had some fun. History buffs, take note of this movie; comedy fans, get ready to fast forward….

Thanks to Steve Stoliar, author of Raised Eyebrows, for noting that this sucker had come “above ground” on the Net. Steve had the wonderful experience of seeing the film in a theater with a friend who kept complaining that it was the worst film he'd ever seen. The lights came up... and they saw the film's star, Rich Little, sitting right in front of them.