K-PAX, 2001 (dir. Iain “Killing Me” Softley)

SYNOPSIS: A Post-Pay It Forward Kevin Spacey stars as Prot, a newly minted mental patient who insists he’s from another planet. Prot makes the other mental patients feel good about being crazy (sample dialogue: “Be Yourself!”). In return, the other mental patients think it is probably very likely that Prot is from another planet. Jeff Bridges plays the psychiatrist who eventually solves Prot with Science and Feelings. Or does he? He does. Prot is just a man named Robert Porter who is grieving his dead, raped family. But then he goes into a coma because the alien part of him returns to his planet? The End.

This poorly uploaded clip from YouTube will give you an idea:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Other IMDb plot keywords include:
•    Dutch Angle
•    Lawn Sprinkler
•    Porcupine Joke
•    Murder
•    Sunglasses
•    Drifter
•    Dreamer
•    Delusional Disorder
•    Rape
•    Title Spoken By Character

FILM: 3/10

BRIDGES: 5/10 (well-lit, brooding-filled therapy/hypnosis sessions)

BOTTOM LINE: K-PAX =  [(Awakenings ÷ The Fisher King) + (Starman ÷ Good Will Hunting)]  - Robin Williams

I saw this at 600 N. Michigan (is that still a thing?) when it opened and remembered thinking: “Crazy people who are half-alien are the new wise old black men of American cinema”. The movie started to lose me near the end of the first act, when Spacey (with a side of Ham) becomes the smartest person in the world by basically rap-battling a bunch of astrophysicists. This drawing is of the movie poster. I’ve been trying to draw more frames from the actual movie but when I rewatched this on TNT (on Demand!) I noticed that the entire film is essentially over-complicated dolly/crane establishing shots and extreme close-ups… like the production blew all their money on equipment for the first week then just filmed each actor with a skeleton crew for whatever was left. Like many of my drawings of Bridges, his head is too fat. I also left off his right ear so his haircut looks asymmetrical. On the upside, I was able to capture Spacey’s smugness even though he is wearing sunglasses, grinning tightly and staring off somewhere past you.

…a snake recently escaped from the Bronx Zoo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rancho Deluxe, 1975 (dir. Frank Perry)

SYNOPSIS: Bridges plays another guy named Jack (see also …. and). He teams up with Assistant Disctrict Attorney Jack McCoy (these are their stories) who plays a half Indian (70′s speak for Native American). Together they steal cattle and do lots of stuff that feels metaphorical about America (see also: The Bicycle Scene from Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid) A big landowner hires Harry Dean Stanton to find them but he just ends up meeting Bridges in an arcade and having a cryptic conversation about the New West while playing pong (PONG!) . Then the landowner hires Slim Pickens to find them. Along the way, they rustle both cattle and the hearts of the locals. Jimmy Buffet shows up and gives you one more reason to not bother seeing this.

FILM: 5/10

BRIDGES: 6/10

BOTTOM LINE: Thunderbolt & Lightfoot > Bad Company > Hearts of the West > Rancho Deluxe

This movie feels like it didn’t age well but I don’t know how it played in 1975 so I can’t be sure (just in case, I rated the film a 5 even though it feels like more of a 3). I asked my mom if she saw this in the theater and she retold me the story about how she called Dustin Hoffman collect in 1969 after seeing The Graduate with a high school friend and getting loaded on gin and tonics. Cool story. She tells this as a way to say that movies ran at a theater for a very long time back then and she doesn’t remember many movies playing locally in 1975 except for Jaws and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I watched it in 1998 after buying the VHS tape at Reckless Records. The drawing is of  the box art on the VHS tape case. My lettering is really good here. Sam Waterston and Bridges sort of look like Bert and Ernie if they wore hats and Bert had a gun.