Word: maxed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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HOUSE CALLS Directed by Howard Zieff Screenplay by Max Shulman and Julius J. Epstein, Alan Mandel and Charles Shyer...
...rather dated question need only consider the initial reaction of the Veterans' Administration, which refused to cooperate in the filming after its medical director, Dr. John D. Chase, called the script "a tissue of lies, distortions, and misrepresentations." (This policy was later reversed when President Carter appointed Max Cleland, himself a disabled vet, as head of Veteran Affairs.) We can't forget about these problems, the movie is saying, because they still exist...
...hands of Jean-Luc Godard or Terence Malick, Straight Time might even have been a fascinating variation on Breathless or Badlands. Ulu Grosbard, who did direct, is but a journeyman film maker. He substitutes slow pacing and dour photography for style. Only the action scenes get him moving: when Max and his cronies stage their robberies, Straight Time actually manages to work up a little sweat...
Given the limitations of the screenplay, the cast flesh out the characters as much as humanly possible. Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmet Walsh and Gary Busey all create idiosyncratic lowlifes out of drab dialogue. Theresa Russell (The Last Tycoon), playing Max's all too obligatory love interest, is powerfully sexy. As for Hoffman, he works hard and well to create a man who lives in a state of constant punishment. It's an admirable job, but one sadly wasted in a film that punishes the audience almost as much as it does the people onscreen...
...Scott and Ernest, "a documentary reconstruction of their friendship and estrangement," Matthew Bruccoli suggests it was Hemingway who had his nose pressed up against the glass. "I am getting to know the rich." Hemingway told Max Perkins and Critic Mary Colum at lunch. And it was Colum who replied, "The only difference between the rich and the other people is that the rich have more money." Making Fitzgerald the victim of this putdown, says Bruccoli, was one of several instances when Hemingway adjusted embarrassing truths to preserve his image...