Word: rudolph
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Rudolph's debut feature Welcome to L.A. deserves a couple of critics' stars on guts alone: he has consciously borrowed the impressionistic slice-of-life framework of Nashville and made it work with even less of a plot than Robert Altman's cinematic paradigm. Granted that the basically uncommercial quality of the format has been somewhat offset by the presence of a galaxy of New Hollywood actors; but from a strictly critical standpoint, Rudolph has effectively invited comparisons with his famous mentor that would seem to place his first major work at an almost fatal disadvantage. Yet Welcome...
Bear in mind that what makes the film a genuine offshoot of Nashville is its structure, not its theme: Rudolph's script is indeed relating Carroll's story but it is not focusing on him. No real overriding social commentary can be gleaned from Welcome to L.A. that compares with the heavy-handed moralism of Altman's Nashville vision. Instead, the state of the American psyche is Rudolph's primary preoccupation. He dubbed the genre of Welcome to L.A. "emotional science-fiction--it shows what will happen if we don't watch out." And his own words capture the essence...
...exception appears in the form of the superstar vocalist Eric Wood, played by Richard Baskin (who also wrote the scores for Welcome and Nashville). He serves the function of being the token enigma in the cast, providing a refreshing contrast with the honesty-chic psychobabble of the Los Angelenos. Rudolph deliberately made no effort to flesh out the character, to probe his innermost feelings. The viewer never sees Wood outside of the recording studio, and he maintains his aloofness even within his own habitat, always seated behind a piano bathed in darkness and shadows while singing one of his plaintive...
...wanted that character to be the way music is in out lives," Rudolph said, responding to a question. "When you buy a record and play it, it is up to you what that performer is." Such thinking suggests a point of departure from the premises that underlay Joan Tewksberry's Nashville script, where most of the major characters appeared first as entertainment figures in one way or another but later came under some intense scrutiny anyway...
Similarly subtle features of Welcome distinguish it from its acclaimed forerunner. Rudolph's script is very conscious of the need to deal with its characters on their own terms, without any touch of caricature. A few of Tewksberry's characters bordered on becoming stereotypes; Chaplin's featherweight BBC journalist and Shelley Duvall's L.A. Joan are cases in point. Rudolph skirted this chronic problem by allowing his cast considerable freedom to exercise their improvisational skills. While he did bring a finished script to the filming phase of the production, Rudolph still placed a premium on preserving a certain force...