dreamers
by Douglas Messerli
Michael
Ventura (screenplay), Robert Dornhelm (director) Echo Park / 1985
Echo
Park is the kind of movie critics like to describe
as "endearing," a small, off-kilter film that overall does not quite
hold together, but has charming moments nonetheless. The film does have a great
deal going for it: wonderful props—a rambling old house ready, so it seems, to
fall down the hill at any moment, a lit-up pizza truck that looks like it's
decked out for Christmas—presumably all the creation of the film's art director
Bernt Capra (father of my typesetter-assistant, Pablo); a wonderful cast
of characters, including Susan Dey, Tom Hulce, Michael Bowen, Shirley Jo Finney,
Timothy Carey and the young Christopher Walker; an often heartfelt story; and a
1980s backdrop of the then young and down-and-out Los Angeles neighborhood of
Echo Park, along with its scraggly palms and golden sunsets. The character
types, however, are just that, outsized stick-figures whose loony lifestyles
make them hard to believe; you know a film is a bit over-the-top when Cheech
Marin plays the film's so-called "straight" man!
Of
course, despite some initial resentments and hesitations, Jonathan and Henry
(whom he rechristens "Hank") eventually bond while delivering pizzas
throughout the neighborhood in his brightly lit-up truck. May gets an audition
and procures a job with a substantial wrinkle—the role is as a party-going
stripper! But, after a while and a few lessons from her employer, Hugo (John
Paragon), she gets used the job and even somewhat enjoys it. August, the most
ridiculous dreamer of them all actually gets a TV ad as a kind Hun-like dragon
slayer sprayed by Viking deodorant. Jonathan even gets a bit of attention from
a local band, but seems so passive that he cannot even sing his song for them
("It's not finished yet.").
Into this madhouse comes August's father, direct from Austria, having
been telephoned by the police upon his son's arrest. Encountering his son in
the midst of this insane gathering he raises his hand to slap August's face.
Suddenly writer and director take the group's dance into the mountains of
Austria with the adult characters loping through the pastures as if they were
attempting to channel Maria Van Trapp in The
Sound of Music. What are they trying to tell us, one must ask? Earlier in
the film, May, in conversation with August, admits that when she has sex she is
just "fucking," while when he has sex, he is, as he puts it, "making
love." The suggestion is that in his true madness, August is the biggest
dreamer of them all. Have these characters, accordingly, been transported into
the lunatic state of mind that August inhabits? Or is it simply evidence that a
bit of patriarchal control has been played out before them, allowing them to
restore their lives?
Echo Park is an endearing, small,
off-kilter film that does not quite hold together.
But
here again, as I argue for this LA sub-genre, an outsider has found his way
among a society of misfits. Or perhaps the misfits have found their way into
the outsider's societal bliss.
Los
Angeles, September 25, 2012
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