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.

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.

Tron, 1982 (dir. Steve Lisberger)

SYNOPSIS: Jeff Bridges plays Tron? Nope. Let me stop you right there. Bridges plays Kevin. Kevin used to date Lora and now he’s mad at Encom CEO Ed for stealing his ideas. Meanwhile, Alan is Lora’s new boyfriend and also wrote a computer program called Tron (!) which can help Kevin get his ideas back. But before Kevin can use Alan’s program (Tron!), Ed traps Kevin in the Matrix (look it up) where he eventually frees the internet (Tron). Finally, Ed’s shenanigans are revealed and Kevin succeeds him as CEO of Encom in a move approved by shareholders.

Tagline: “Where love and escape do not compute.”

FILM: 6/10

BRIDGES: 8/10

BOTTOM LINE: (The Matrix + Disclosure) / The 80′s = Tron

The first time I saw Tron was at a birthday party. It was followed by cake and three hours of laser tag. Someone threw up cake in the “Photon Arena”. The last time I saw Tron was with Adam at the New Beverly. It was on a double bill with The Last Starfighter. I made this drawing with two new shading markers which don’t really match each other in hue but that seems to work in the drawing’s favor. I got the nose wrong so you can’t tell if he’s scared or sneering or surprised. I put the close-up of MCP on the side because it used to freak me out and I’m working through that in my art. I added all the diagonal lines so now it looks 3-D.

Winter Kills, 1979 (dir. William Richert)

SYNOPSIS: Bridges stars as Nick, the younger brother of the recently assassinated President. Nick tries to uncover the truth about his brother’s death and begins to suspect that his own father (John Fucking Huston) had something to do with it. And it’s sort of a comedy? In case you weren’t sure, here’s a fairly benign and expository scene featuring Sterling Hayden in a tank with a weirdo beard.

FILM: 6/10

BRIDGES: 7/10

BOTTOM LINE: (Parallax View – Warren Beatty) + (Dr. Strangelove – Peter Sellers) x John Fucking Huston = Winter Kills

I caught this movie late one night in a student lounge when I was taking a break from writing a paper about representations of evil in the works of Goya. Like many films from the late-70′s/early-80′s, it was obviously financed by cocaine dealers and features a rather nihilistic worldview countered only by insane production values and gloriously broad tonal shifts (see also: Night Moves). The upside-down Bridges on top had weird eyes so I started over at the bottom but the eyes are too big. Something wrong with the nose too but my new, grey pen-brush helps. I tried to do something cool with the title. Tried.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream, 1988 (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

SYNOPSIS: Preston Tucker (Bridges) basically invents cars and wholesomeness with the help of the Pleasantville Milf, Father Guido Sarducci and a pre-cube gleaming Christian Slater. Martin Landau reprises his role as the oldest cast member in all of the movies. The film follows Tucker as he tries to make all his American Dreamz come true by buying a factory in Chicago and trying to introduce the city to a new industry… so it is basically a tragedy… except for the part where all the cars in the movie belong to Coppola and George Lucas and a lot of facts about Preston Tucker being a grifting fraud a-hole are suppressed so that the value of all those cars goes up and they can sell them all off to make personal projects like Star Wars video games and the shittiest third of New York Stories.

FILM: 7/10

BRIDGES: 9/10

BOTTOM LINE: Tucker:Cars::The Hudsucker Proxy:Hula Hoops

I saw this when it first opened at a United Artists’ theater near White Settlement Road (relax, this was in the South so it’s okay). I remember the film being advertised as a big epic full of themes (runtime 110 minutes) so I was pretty proud of myself for not getting tired and bored. I still get a lot of the workshop/garage scenes mixed up with parts of The Rocketeer.

Against All Odds, 1984 (dir. Taylor Hackford)

SYNOPSIS: Terry Brogan (Bridges playing another character not named Jack) is hired by his sleazy (James Woods) friend to find a woman (Rachel Ward, nude). Bridges finds Ward (see drawing). Uh-oh. Then Mexico, Mexico, sex, murder, double-cross. Co-starring former Detroit Lion, Alex Karras. The film is actually based on a great old film noir called Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum but when I saw it late at night in the UK, the title was Build My Gallows High which is much, much better.

FILM: 7/10

BRIDGES: 8/10

BOTTOM LINE: Fisher King – 3:2, Against All Odds – 5:1, Seabiscuit – 10:1, The Contender – 30:1

This is one of the first movies I remember watching on HBO. It was on one day after Fraggle Rock (kudos to HBO for making their kid’s show a lead-in to this hard ‘R’ thriller-romance). I remember seeing cross-promotional ads for the movie and Rolex watches in an issue of Vanity Fair that was laying around our house when the movie first came out. So the drawings on the right and left are based on the rolex ads and the center drawing is from the movie poster but their bodies were too tangled below the shoulders so I stopped there and put them in the water, which gave the whole thing an awesome dutch angle. Could probably ditch the side drawings because this middle one is so good.

Arlington Road, 1999 (dir. Mark Pellington)

SYNOPSIS: Bridges plays a dad (not named Jack) who is also a professor of terrorism and sadpants (the latter due to the loss of his hot wife in a dying accident) Tim Robbins plays the same guy who gave Gib and Alison a ride in The Sure Thing but now with children and a bad case of the terrorism. Bridges gets all paranoid when he finds out that Robbins has terrorism. Nobody believes Jeff Bridges! Even after they kill his new hot girlfriend! And just when we sense that all is lost for our hero [SPOILER ALERT] all is lost. Tim Robbins blows up Jeff Bridges with a car bomb.

FILM: 5/10

BRIDGES: 6/10

BOTTOM LINE: Tim Robbins : Arlington Road :: Tommy Lee Jones : Blown Away

I caught this on opening weekend at either Piper’s Alley or 600 N. Michigan and was pretty indifferent about it. I remembered how Hope Davis looked really pale and sickly so I wondered if everything was okay with her in real life. My lack of enthusiasm led me to try out a new pen brush on the drawing… and now I have a document of that lack of enthusiasm. I also have a good argument against using the pen brush again, especially on lettering. Tim Robbins is actually pushing Bridges up against a support beam in a parking garage but the straight-on angle makes Robbins look slightly plump and inflated like one of those shiny-metallic helium balloons so I stopped after the pen brush screwed up the hair line around his jerk face.

The Fisher King, 1991 (dir. Terry Gilliam)

SYNOPSIS: Bridges plays yet another guy named Jack. He was a DJ until one of his fans got the crazy and shot up a restaurant made entirely out of smashing glass and screaming. Perry (Williams) was eating there with his wife but he doesn’t remember this (repressed memory of brain-matter in mouth) so instead he pretends to be a knight in search of the Holy Grail. Perry plays this fantasy out by becoming a hobo and stalking Honey Bunny. Meanwhile, DJ Jack is out of work, sporting dubious hair and has shacked up with video store mogul Mercedes Ruehl and is trying to help Perry on his grail quest. As you probably predicted, everyone eventually goes on a double date. Huh? Yep. And the whole sequence is funny and romantic and heartbreaking.

FILM: 10/10

BRIDGES: 10/10

BOTTOM LINE: The Fisher King:Jeff Bridges::Rainman:Tom Cruise

I saw this movie during my freshman year in San Antonio. I went to the theater at the riverwalk after having all you can eat tacos. This drawing was supposed to be of Bridges advising Williams before the big date but I went over Bridges’ face too much so he’s basically wearing a gimp mask. I don’t know what’s going on with the lack of hands.

The Men Who Stare at Goats, 2008 (dir. Grant Heslov)

SYNOPSIS: In honor of Jeff Bridges being nominated for a film I have yet to see, I offer a drawing of another film I have yet to see. From what I can gather from the trailer George Clooney plays someone in a Coen Brothers movie who got lost on the set of Three Kings with the kid from Almost Famous. The Big Lebowski plays the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. I think Lex Luthor plays Private Pyle.

I hear Bridges is barely in this film which automatically makes it less good. The main reason I still want to see it is because of this IMDB list of plot keywords:

• Staring Contest
• Box Office Hit
• Hippie
• Goat
• New Age
• Psychic Power
• Absurdism
• Animal In Title

FILM: N/A

BRIDGES: N/A

BOTTOM LINE: 1) All Jeff Bridges films are redeemed by his involvement. 2) We have all seen a Jeff Bridges film. 3) Therefore we are all redeemed by Jeff Bridges.

The Big Lebowski, 1998 (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)

Synopsis: Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski (Bridges) is mistaken for Jeffrey “The Big” Lebowski and the resulting soiled rug (literally the thread that holds the whole plot together) leads us into a shaggy dog story about empty threats and impotence set during the weeks leading up to Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

FILM: approaching 10/10 (see below)

BRIDGES: 10/10

BOTTOM LINE: The Big Lebowski – 25 years = (The Long Goodbye – the mumbling) + Sam Elliot VO

My love of this movie has already been established but the first time I saw it, I wasn’t sure what to make of it as a whole. I knew that I had liked it but that I had probably missed alot. I wasn’t entirely sure what the tone of it was supposed to be. But I sure liked the characters and Bridges especially. And so I keep watching it and I can honestly say it gets better every time I see it. Perhaps this drawing can be that for you. Donny is sort of a Skeletor after-thought but there’s some nice shirt work here.