{"id":18147,"date":"2022-04-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=18147"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:12:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:12:56","slug":"the-player-the-90s-heyday-of-screenwriter-michael-tolkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-player-the-90s-heyday-of-screenwriter-michael-tolkin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Player: The \u201890s Heyday of Screenwriter Michael Tolkin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It started as a bit on one of the late-night shows: the host walked down a random block in Hollywood and asked strangers how things were going with their screenplay. Every single person had an answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This gave fellow screenwriter Michael Tolkin an idea, not for a script, but a novel: a serial killer is going around Hollywood killing writers of unproduced screenplays, but the cops can\u2019t break the pattern because everyone in the city was writing a script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, this idea morphed into The Player<\/em>, a macabre satire about a power-hungry studio executive whose life spirals out of control after he murders a frustrated screenwriter. While the novel didn\u2019t initially prove a best seller, it quickly caught the attention of the industry it skewered (torched, really). It was optioned and made into a film only four years later\u2014ironic, considering the original title was Turnaround<\/em>\u2014with Tolkin himself taking on scripting duties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Released thirty years ago this April, The Player<\/em> proved a huge critical and modest commercial success, serving as the triumphant return to Hollywood for director Robert Altman\u2019s after a decade spent in artistic exile following several notorious (but fascinating<\/a>) flops. Rather than playing things safe in order to make something with wide appeal, the maverick director doubled down on his signature touchstones: a massive ensemble cast (in this case, dozens Hollywood A-listers, most of whom play themselves), dizzyingly overlapping dialog, \u201ccollaborative improvisation\u201d and some truly bravura filmmaking (the crown jewel: the seven minute and 47 second single-take tracking shot that opens the movie).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for as much as The Player<\/em> is rightly regarded as a quintessential Altman picture, it is equally a Tolkin picture, and not simply because he adapted his own source material. One of the poster children for hot ticket screenwriters synonymous with the studio system depicted in The Player,<\/em> Tolkin\u2019s work as both a writer and director during that period resulted in several films that married high concept premises with deep psychological, spiritual and political complexity and literary sensibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The son of television comedy writer and studio executive, respectively, Michael Tolkin was very much to the manner born (his brother Stephen is also a writer and director, the two of them playing brother scribes in The Player<\/em>). He cut his teeth writing journalism as well as for television (early credits include episodes of Taxi<\/em>, as well as the Animal House<\/em> spinoff Delta House<\/em>) before making the jump to film with his script for 1989\u2019s Gleaming the Cube, <\/em>directed by Graeme Clifford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On its face a high-octane action vehicle for budding heartthrob Christian Slater, as well as one of several pieces of media attempting to cash in on the newly resurgent popularity of skateboarding (Cube<\/em> features the sport\u2019s GOAT, Tony Hawk, prominently throughout), the film is, in actuality, a surprisingly serious and politically astute murder mystery about a troubled teen\u2019s attempts to avenge the murder of his adopted Vietnamese brother at the hands of hardline anticommunist weapons dealers; its clear-eyed examination of the unhealed scars of Vietnam, together with its sunburnt California backdrop, calling to mind late \u201870s neo-noirs as much as the flashy teen skate movies of its day. Author and screenwriter Jack Pendarvis nailed it when he referred<\/a> to the film as \u201cCutter\u2019s Way<\/em><\/a> for teens!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around this same time, Tolkin began writing The Player<\/em>, using the money he made from Gleaming the Cube<\/em> to take the time needed to complete it. Once published, the book\u2019s rights were purchased by producers as a potential starring role for Chevy Chase (whose father, Ned, was the novel\u2019s original publisher) or directorial project for Mike Rydell. Those plans fell through and it was given over to Altman after his planned adaptation of short story writer Raymond Carver\u2019s oeuvre, Short Cuts<\/em>, hit a wall (the eventual success of The Player<\/em> giving Altman the stroke he needed to get that film made a year later).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one point along the way, it was suggested to Tolkin that he direct The Player<\/em> himself, but as he recounted to actress Illeana Douglas on her podcast<\/a> in 2017, \u201cI didn\u2019t want to fail at something I\u2019d already succeeded.\u201d At the time, he was also knee-deep in post-production for his own directorial debut, one of the most beguiling and philosophically frightening films of its decade (or since): The Rapture<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by the rise of Christianity fundamentalism of the day, the 1991 film <\/em>centers on spiritually unmoored and sexually adventurous telephone operator Sharon (Mimi Rogers) as  she becomes a born-again Christian after experiencing visions (alongside a growing number of people across the world) of the forthcoming Day of Judgement (aka The Rapture). After a shocking tragedy befalls her family, Sharon and her young daughter spiral into desperation and madness, resulting in her committing the most horrific of all crimes. It\u2019s at this point that the film leans fully into its supernatural premise, closing out with one of the most unforgettable and devastating\u2014yet, somehow, vindicating\u2014endings in all of American cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A heady, haunting amalgamation of erotic thriller, spiritual drama, psychological character study, and cosmic horror (in which the Christian apocalypse is properly examined through the lens of eldritch terror), audiences unsurprisingly steered clear of The Rapture, <\/em>although critics leaned positive on it. It has since gone on to achieve minor cult classic status, although the members of said cult\u2014including yours truly\u2014are as rabid in their proselytization as the end-times evangelists within the film itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the disappointing reception to The Rapture<\/em> took some shine off of Tolkin\u2019s rising star, the release of The Player<\/em> the next year helped restore it. Nineteen ninety-two was a big year, as it also saw the release of Bill Duke\u2019s neo-noir crime saga Deep Cover<\/em>, which Tolkin co-wrote with Harry Bean. Hailed as an instant classic of the rapidly ascending hip-hop culture\u2014thanks in large part to its Dr. Dre-produced soundtrack, which introduced listeners to Snoop Dog\u2014today the film is recognized as a key work of Black American cinema, while its indictment on the United States\u2019 government\u2019s War on Drugs (at the time considered radical) stands it as one of the most clear-eyed and prescient films of its era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with The Player<\/em>, the lion\u2019s share of credit for Deep Cover<\/em> goes to its director, Duke (as it should), but Tolkin\u2019s fingerprints can be seen all over the film, particularly via its heavy religious overtones, such as a sacrilegious strip tease that occurs midway through (but also in the overriding themes of sin, guilt and redemption); noir bonafides (Tolkin has crime fiction authors Patricia Highsmith and James M. Cain as two of his biggest influences); and especially the Player<\/em>-like rise to power given over to Jeff Goldblum\u2019s ruthless yuppie lawyer-turned-narco kingpin antagonist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second and, as of now, last feature film that Tolkin wrote and directed came along two years later in the form of The New Age<\/em>. The L.A. set dramady combines The Player\u2019s<\/em> remorseless dissection of upper class moral rot and The Rapture\u2019s<\/em> sincere examination of metaphysical yearning into a slow burn story about a well-off married couple (Peter Weller and Joan Davis) and their financial, moral, and romantic disintegration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, audiences wholly rejected the scabrous film, which really is a shame, for while The New Age<\/em> is an undoubtedly an uneven work\u2014the satire of yuppie ennui and hypocrisy plays as thuddingly obvious at times (the high end clothing store the couple burns their money setting up is called \u2018Hypocracy\u2019, for crying out loud). But the sincere presentation of new age spirituality is genuinely unsettling; like The Rapture<\/em> before it, it showed Tolkin to have a natural grasp of cinematic language, both films making fine use of depth of field, subtly intricate camera movement, and shadowy cinematography that come together create an off-kilter, but wholly hypnotic and entrancing atmosphere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, his two films serve as prime examples of a particular strain of non-genre 90\u2019s cinema in which the most pervasive tone is one of implacable dread. Call it the Menace of Modernity, with both The Rapture<\/em> and The New Age<\/em> stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the more widely celebrated (or at least more frequently referenced) work of, among others, David Cronenberg (Crash<\/em>), Atom Egoyan (Exotica<\/em>), Paul Schrader (The Comfort of Strangers<\/em>), James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross<\/em>), Neil Labute (In the Company of Men<\/em>) and Todd Solondz (Happiness<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fiercely negative reception to The New Age <\/em>may have put the kibosh on Tolkin\u2019s career as a director, but he continued working as a screenwriter for the remainder of the decade, nabbing his highest profile credit on the long gestating disaster epic Deep Impact<\/em> (alas, this was after Steven Spielberg had removed himself from the project). Like The Rapture<\/em>, Deep Impact<\/em> is a story about the end of the world via heaven borne destruction, albeit one that takes the secular view of things, replacing the hand of God with a giant meteor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolkin has spoken about how unhappy he was in Deep Impact<\/em> as a finished film, although its success at the box office alleviated some of his initial disappointment. Yet, in spite of the movie\u2019s success\u2014and make no mistake, while it\u2019s regarded as the other<\/em> comet movie of 1998 when compared to Armageddon<\/em>, it still made bank\u2014it also signaled the end (as of now) for Tolkin\u2019s time as a screenwriter for the movies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tolkin has a few other feature screenwriting credits to his name, including 2001\u2019s mostly forgotten one-bad-day thriller Changing Lanes<\/em> and 2007\u2019s dreadful adaptation of the Fellini-inspired<\/a> Broadway musical Nine<\/em>, both of which he co-wrote (he also did uncredited work on horror remakes The Haunting<\/em> [1999] and Dawn of the Dead<\/em> [2004]). But since the turn of the century he\u2019s gradually moved from film to television, while also continuing to publish novels (2006 saw the release of a sequel to his most famous work with The Return of the Player<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2014, he\u2019s written and directed several episodes of the Showtime drama Ray Donovan<\/em> and created the true crime limited series Escape at Dannemora<\/em> for the same network. Along with the anniversary of The Player<\/em>, this month will also see the debut of his newest series, The Offer<\/em>, a dramatization of the making of The Godfather<\/em> that, fittingly, is also set amidst the backlots of the Hollywood studio system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Tolkin clearly hasn\u2019t wanted for work since his \u201890\u2019s heyday, the trajectory of his career is representative of the decline of Hollywood\u2019s relationship with writers and writing. The past two decades have seen so many of the most popular and sought-after scribes move into television in response to the industry\u2019s rejection of mid-budget productions in favor of expensive, IP-driven tentpoles, a shift so dystopian that it makes the homicidal Hollywood Tolkin created for the The Player<\/em> now look like a utopia. \"\"\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever happened to the man behind three of the best movies of 1992?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":506,"featured_media":18149,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/506"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22003,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18147\/revisions\/22003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}