A Love Letter to The Bad and The Beautiful

That silly Facebook image-from-a-movie challenge reminded me that after I first saw The Bad and the Beautiful, I loved it so much, I couldn't stop writing about how brilliant it was.  I've cleaned and revisited this since, but I thought I would share here.

It spoils the movie's plot, characters, and twists very thoroughly.

The Ending to Every Story

The beginning is a lovely inversion, several times over.  We see the three victims of Jonathan Shields laughing together, defacing his logo, and being flattered by a Hollywood producer.  Here at the end of the tale, as we begin to watch it unfold.  

They are all a shining success, and Jonathan is the one who is broken.  The inversion of how each of the stories as they tell them will end.  

And at the meta level, sitting at the early concept and recruiting meetings in a producers office, despite also watching the finished movie.

Harry Pebble soft and warm and playing on emotions, completely juxtaposed with every other scene he will play in their version of events.  They agree on Harry, but each of their Jonathas is different, as we'll learn.

Harry giving Jonathan credit for their success, making what he knows is a losing case for their help. And yet they came here.  Jonathan is the only one who didn't know they would refuse to work with him, even now, as he comes to them humbled.  But he's the only one who thought they would walk through the door at all, so who is the fool?

Perhaps only the person who left Jonathan's Oscar for The Faraway Mountain on the desk.

A Good Horror Story

Once upon a time, Fred Amiel had a best friend and partner with panache – who said he was going to set the world on fire.  And when you looked at the fire in his eyes, you believed he was going to do it – and Fred Amiel was the one he wanted to do it with. 

He made it easy to believe, easy to talk and toot your own horn.  He dreamed of being a genie – the person who could grant everyone’s wishes.  His dream seemed selfless at times: buying a ring for Fred’s girlfriend in a fit of cheek that gave Fred a wife.  They found their feet together; they had all the best stories of their lives side by side.

One day, the genie told him -- how do you make a horror movie when you can't afford a movie monster? You never show the "Cat Man" -- only fragments and aftermath.  We fear the dark, the uncertain, more than we fear the known, however terrible. A deft hand, a touch rather than a slap. A sound in the dark, a bird with a broken wing, a child crying with a scratch on her face...

And that was how Fred Amiel’s best friend with panache gave him so much of the faith in himself he had always lacked that he gave the genie his greatest dream – a ready-made script adaptation of The Farway Mountain –  because he knew his partner and best friend could make it real if anyone could.

And when Jonathon Shields, intent on ramming his name down their throats at any cost, got his hands on it – he took the dream for his own.  He couldn’t let Amiel take his own dream, enraged him so that Fred would finally see that he didn’t need a genie to make his own way in the world.  And in that moment, Fred Amiel saw his friend as he truly was at last – an empty, however charming, suit.  Incapable of a dream of his own, so he stole others.

We only see it in fragments and aftermath. We don't see the meeting where Harry Pebble argues for an experienced director and Jonathan agrees.  We don't see him argue for Fred or painfully decide -- we don't see him toss his friend out the window without hesitation. We see only Fred's face, flinching back from the scratch, suddenly child-like in disbelief at being cut out of his dream.  The broken bird, listening to Jonathan take credit for Fred's script. Imagination fills in the shadows that surround Jonathan's betrayal.  A true horror show.

Fred Amiel was strong and assertive and beautiful on the day he told his wonderful genie with panache goodbye, and none of it could make up for the fact that he banished him to his lamp again alone.

The golden lamp in the shape of a man, that Fred Amiel couldn’t help touching in that office, couldn’t help rubbing his fingers over, in bitterness and desperate hope that the genie would appear again.

And He Lived Happily Ever After

Can all of Fred's success replace one dream?  Or is his heart breaking that the genie did not reappear? That the magic was even more illusion than the horror?

For that matter, does Harry Pebble know, as he turns to Georgia, what he is doing? The wound he is re-opening?  How foolish for any man to say to any woman, "I know you'll never work with him again.  After all, you're a woman."

But to say to this woman?  This woman who was never allowed to be a woman, back when that was all she wanted to be.

The Princess in the Sty

Once upon a time, Georgia Lorrison was living like Cinderella, in cinders and filth in the shadow of her father’s grave as her one comfort.  And he couldn’t stand to see it – Jonathon Shields who was determined to be her Good Fairy from the moment she recognized his father in the caricature.  The other child trapped in a father’s dream and legacy.

But she scorned to go to a Ball with no Prince Charming in sight, so he became the prince she wanted to believe was the only thing that could save her – at least long enough to get her fitted and comfortable walking in her golden dress and silver shoes.  And as he gave her the strength to stand, loading her in that great coach everyone kept telling her she was going to turn into a pumpkin, he let her play at love with him if that was what it took to get her to the Ball.

And when she finally looked around at her Party – the Star of the Ball – she sought that special face the fairy tale promised.  She banished herself at midnight, after all he’d done to show her she was a princess in her own right, to seek for her prince.

And she found a snake.

Jonathon Shields, who used her love to get the movie that was all he had ever cared about – made a Star to use, not a Woman to love.  All he wanted to be was her Good Fairy – all he wanted was a star for his picture.

And the worst part -- the part she beat herself black and blue with later -- of finding him with another woman, was that he had warned her all along that this would happen.  In her very first screen test, he told her that she should ignore the man, force him to come to her. That she was off-putting when she tossed herself and her line at the leading man.  She should have listened -- Georgia was never more alluring to Jonathan than when she ignored him and the casting director to stare at the caricature on his wall, lost in her own world.  He told her from the start she was best from a distance, he scorned her for offering to sleep with him.  A cruel fate for a woman but the making of a star of the silver screen.  And it works for us too, in the audience. We like her most when she looks at Jonathan with cool distaste, when she stops trying to be domestic or flailing in grief in the car and stars in Fred's movies or defaces his legacy with a smile.

Like his smile of pride when she strode into his office the next day – every inch the princess he had made of her – and tore up her contract. But it still couldn’t make up for the fact that she left him.

Left her master’s voice, as he wanted her to do.  And he didn’t know if it was a victory or in which battle, when he heard the little click and the soft breath as she listened on the phone to his voice – in bitterness and pain and enduring love, hoping that like the last time she listened in, she would hear the words that showed them both how to be in love for awhile.

And She Lived Happily Ever After

Jonathan taught her too well.  Even if she wanted to work with him again, she knows that she is only alluring to him when she pretends not even to hear the announcement that he is calling.  The moment he had her, it would all be over.  Even if she would forgive, she would surrender her power over him in a moment and be once again so much trash in his eyes. 

He taught her better than that.

Just like he taught James Lee Bartlow better than to respond, to say any of the thousands of devastating lines running through his writer's mind out loud.  How could Jonathan Shields think that James Lee Bartlow would allow him to film the story her wrote about the wife Jonathan stole and killed?  Even Harry Pebble should know better than to ask for the rights to Mrs. Bartlow's story.

So many brilliant lines, James Lee has thought of to use in this meeting.  So many vicious, cutting insults.  So many heartbroken accusations.  So many cold declarations.  He won't use any of them.

Because of a weekend by a quiet lake, when Jonathan Shields cut every line by the mother in a  crucial scene, and when Bartlow complained, Jonathan countered, "She doesn't speak. She can't speak."  The audience would fill in her grief, her pride, her sorrow, her fear, her love...all the unknowable, unspeakable things you feel sending your child off to war.  "They'll  imagine it better than you or I could ever write it," Shields told him.

A lesson James Lee learned and used, when he walked away from Jonathan Shields,  and a lesson he uses now.

What words could he ever find to destroy Jonathan Shields more thoroughly than he has always destroyed himself?

Drop Dead.

Once upon a time, James Lee Bartlow had everything he wanted, except one.  The King in a fairy tale who sends his wishes out into the void, he called over and over again, “I started to write…”  But his beautiful wife and beautiful life kept crowding in with gifts from an admiring public, everything a successful writer needs; his life was liberally peppered with sex and stifling the genius he longed so to share with the world.  

Then an angel appeared.

The angel set about dismantling everything that kept James Lee Bartlow from his work.  He bribed him out of the grandeur and gossip of Old Virginia, decorated him out of the house, and, finally, in desperation, cuckholded him out of his wife’s glorious clutches.  In a cabin by the lake, James Lee Bartlow made peace with the angel, saw him at last for what he was, and he learned from the angel how to sing a new kind of song.  A purer, more enduring, utterly heartbreaking song.

But when he came down from the mountaintop, his whole life was crumbling.  The only thing he had lacked was now the only thing he had left.  The angel did not abandon him.  The angel held him, steadied him, showed him how to find consolation in his gift.  And James Lee Bartlow watched as the angel gloried in the gift that they shared...and then watched as his angel turned human and their work turned to dust before his eyes. 

And he forgave it.

Until Jonathon Shields grew giddy with the thought of his one true friend in the world seeing him as human, not some impersonal fiery angel or even genius but a mere man.  And he forgot what the angel had done to James Lee Bartlow.  His guardian angel had killed his wife.  And from that moment on, all James Lee Bartlow could see was how the angel had taken everything from him, not that he had given him the one thing he had called for again and again.

And the fact that James Lee Bartlow wrote as he had never rewritten before was small consolation for the fact that perhaps the first person allowed to see Jonathon Shields as flawed, as fully-human, walked out on him without a word.

When he stops by the phone, last of all of them, he simply waits for a moment.  The voice in his head, the angel who saved him, on the other end of the line.  He taps Georgia’s shoulder, wondering if even the flawed, human angel could still propel him to fly higher.

The Ending Everyone Saw Coming

Harry Pebble never should have held this meeting.  Should not have put any of the five of them through it.  That is clear, as the dust settles around the three stories of destruction.  They all stopped before the tale of their rebirth, so evident in their quiet strength and rich apparel and box office appeal.

I don’t know what would have happened, if Harry Pebble hadn’t added the final line.  I’m sure it was Harry Pebble who added, “just this once” to the question of working with Jonathan again.  

It was the "just this once" what made Georgia Lorrison stand up.  What made the boys follow her.  Just this once.  Like the first time, when he broke their hearts and left them behind – or like James Lee Bartlow walked out on him in turn.  I don’t know what they would have done if Harry Pebble hadn’t tried to appease them, offer them what he imagined would be a concession rather than a fresh torment.

Just this once, to dance again with the dreamer with panache, the handsome prince, the guardian muse.  Just this once, to be burned again by the soulless genie, the fey trickster, the fiery angel.  Just this once.  To help him get on his feet again and move on to breaking other hearts.

He touched their lives, just once upon a time, and it burned them forever.  It burned them hard and strong and beautiful.  When Jonathon took his blaze away with him, they were something marvelous and forever longing for when the flames kept them safe and warm and wonderful.  Tragic and beautiful, for the rest of their days.  You can’t go back.  Not just once more.

But in a way, the central lesson of this movie is: would you rather be Sid or Harry Pebble?  Would you really?  Would you rather have your heart unbroken, your hero unfallen, your life reliable and glowing, if it meant that it was never your beauty that you learned to share with the world?  If you never became a true artist?  If you never found your own strength and voice?  Would you rather be undamaged but only along for the ride?

Or would you rather be the most sought-after director in Hollywood like Fred Amiel, able to speak for yourself and achieve your own vision?  With the magic of movies yours to command, with the humility and restraint Jonathon could not summon for himself.  

Or would you rather be the most shining star of the silver screen, Georgia Lorrison, the worthy heir of a glorious star of a father?  With the truth and beauty you never believed was truly part of you shining out for all the world to see.  To be the fulfillment of your father’s promise, not the echo of a greater man, as Jonathan will always see himself.  

Or would you rather be the genius writer appreciated in his own time, finally able to pierce to the true soul of your most beloved subject?  With the faithfulness and steadiness of love that Shields of Hollywood would never understand, could never quite believe you once offered him.

Would you rather be Sid or Harry Pebble?  Who were never betrayed, who still have him in their lives, who gave everything for him, whom he loves and never hurt – but whom he never made great?