PROOF

Contents

List of Figures ...... vii Acknowledgements ...... viii Introduction ...... 1 Synopsis ...... 7

Part 1: Making Falling Down

The Principals: Ebbe Roe Smith, Michael Douglas, and Joel Schumacher ...... 19 ‘The “Headline” Type of Screen Story’ ...... 21 From Screenplay to Script: Normalising D-Fens ...... 24 Michael Douglas’s Career of Controversy ...... 26 The Riots/Uprising ...... 28

Part 2: The Controversy

Overview: Striking Several Nerves ...... 33 First Reviews: Thrillers and the Morality of Film Violence ...... 33 Negative Images: ‘Race’ ...... 37 Negative Images: The City of Los Angeles ...... 39 Newsweek ...... 42 Crossfi re ...... 45 Defences and Counter-Arguments...... 46 The Question of Identifi cation ...... 51 PROOF vi controversies

Part 3: The ‘Crisis of White Masculinity ’

An Ambiguous Film ...... 57 The Culture Wars ...... 60 Was there an Economic Basis to the ‘Crisis of White Masculinity’? ...... 61 Fatherhood Movies and the ‘Privilege of Gentleness’ ... 65 The ‘Crisis of Masculinity’ in Gender Theory ...... 67 Whiteness: Marked and Unmarked...... 71 Coming to Grips with Falling Down ...... 74

Part 4: Reading Falling Down

Interpreting Falling Down ...... 81 Jammed In ...... 83 Mr Lee’s Store ...... 85 The Drive-by ...... 91 ‘Not Economically Viable’ ...... 98 ‘What Kind of Vigilante Are You?’ ...... 101 Between Good Guys and Bad Guys ...... 107

Part 5: The Legacy of Falling Down

Debate Movies and Film Theory ...... 117 The High-Water Mark of White Male Paranoia ...... 120 Marketing for Changing Times ...... 121 The End of Men, or White Male Paranoia Redux...... 122

Appendices ...... 125

Appendix A: Key Details ...... 127 Appendix B: Notes ...... 129 Appendix C: References ...... 132

Index ...... 141 PROOF falling down 1

³ Introduction

Some fi lms are born controversial, some fi lms achieve controversial status, and some fi lms have controversy thrust upon them. 1 Falling Down exemplifi es all three. Th e courting of controversy had become central to Michael Douglas’s professional persona well before he lent his iconic presence and box offi ce appeal to a screenplay that had reportedly been rejected by every major studio. As he put it in an interview promoting Falling Down

I respect controversy. My fi lm career life has been made up of controversy. I go back to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the psychiatric community was very upset with us. The China Syndrome – the nuclear energy [industry] was very upset. Fatal Attraction – single women were very upset. Wall Street – anybody involved in the banking or investment community was very upset. Black Rain – police offi cers; and some people accused us of being racists in Black Rain although the Japanese nominated the picture for best foreign fi lm. War of the Roses – divorcées, you know. So it’s been a constant ... And so I think it’s a compliment when there’s a reaction. That means that somebody has felt something. Now, if you can do that, and in the case of Falling Down , leave the theatre and still have a morsel of thought, or contro- versy, that’s healthy. (Schumacher, 1993/2009)

Even by Douglas’s consistently provocative standards (and he does not even mention what had been his most controversial movie so far, 1991’s Basic Instinct , perhaps because it might be hard to categorise neatly as ‘respectable’ PROOF 2 controversies

and ‘healthy’) Falling Down would upset many people. Both the star and the director Joel Schumacher explicitly intended that the fi lm would ‘strike a nerve’, that is, that it would infl ame sensitivities that normally remain below the surface of mainstream culture. As the reactions of many viewers and critics would testify, it did strike a nerve. But not necessarily the same nerve. Th e production of the fi lm was overtaken by events that redefi ned and complicated its provocation. In particular, towards the end of April 1992, location shooting had to be suspended because much of South Central Los Angeles had been set on fi re. Triggered by the acquittal on 29 April of four white police offi cers accused of beating the black motorist Rodney King the ‘L.A. riots’ or ‘uprising’ was the worst outbreak of urban disorder in the United States since the 1960s. After six days, 51 people were dead, and 700 business had been destroyed, causing damage estimated to cost $1bn. Set in a territorialised Los Angeles utterly lacking civility, Falling Down seemed to mimic the riots by depicting the angry violence of a central protagonist (D-Fens, the unemployed defence worker played by Michael Douglas), who has lost any faith in economic and judicial institutions. Th e targeting of a Korean shopkeeper in an early scene paralleled the attacks on Korean-run businesses that were widely reported as being focal points of the disturbances. Still, as Douglas, Schumacher, and producer Arnold Kopelson were at pains to point out, these were unintended coincidences. Falling Down might have echoed the freewheeling violence of the riots, but in one crucial respect it was out of touch. Th e sense of racial injustice that triggered the riots was given its cinematic apotheosis elsewhere, in the opening titles of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992), which intercut video footage of the beating of Rodney King, with the stars and stripes in fl ames. All of which only highlighted the racial whiteness of the central protagonist of Falling Down , albeit that this particular white guy half realises that he has more in common with people of colour than he had ever imagined. If Falling Down was born controversial, the riots thrust upon it a controversy that its makers had not anticipated. Successive waves of controversy broke over the fi lm after its release on 26 February 1993. Early reviewers compared D-Fens to the New York PROOF falling down 3

‘subway vigilante’ Bernhard Goetz, who had shot four alleged muggers in December 1984, and worried that the fi lm might inspire similar acts of violence. Reports described audiences whooping in enjoyment at the violent retribution dished out in the fi lm to the Korean shopkeeper and Latino gang members. Screenings were picketed by Asian American groups led by the Korean American Coalition, and further protests came from the National Center for Career Change, who feared that the psychotic character portrayed by Douglas would stigmatise jobless defence workers. Los Angeles was reportedly ‘in uproar’ (Reinhold, 1993) over the movie’s portrayal of the city as a territorialised battleground, and the Los Angeles Times published a series of articles in the city’s defence. By the end of March the controversies ignited by the fi lm had gone national. Th e subject of television shows and newspaper articles, D-Fens stared aggressively through his broken glasses from the cover of Newsweek , the epitome of what the magazine called ‘white male paranoia’. Th e accompanying article crystallised what was becoming a common view of the fi lm: in a nutshell, that it legitimated a growing resentment among certain white men towards a multicultural America which no longer granted the privileges formerly accruing through masculinity and white racial identity. Th is book tries to make sense of Falling Down in all its incoherence and ambiguity. More than this, it assesses the historical and cultural signifi cance not only of the fi lm itself but also of the various debates and confl icts which it provoked. In other words, it constitutes as an object of study the controversies surrounding the fi lm. Th e argument here coincides with that of Kendall R. Phillips, who urges that controversy itself deserves more attention as ‘a vital stage that falls in between the feeling of off ence and the legal machinations of censorship’ (2008, p. xv); a stage too often neglected by certain academic approaches to controversial fi lms. Falling Down and much of its coverage in print media and on television belonged to what might be called a ‘controversy culture’, emerging in the 1990s alongside the proliferation of media channels on television and, later, the world wide web. Breaking down boundaries between current PROOF 4 controversies

aff airs and entertainment, investigative journalism and expert commentary, controversy culture has since become ubiquitous on television and online. For some, this has generated anxieties that the values of responsible enquiry and interrogation have been subjugated to the demands of mere entertainment. Others have celebrated the dynamism of ‘postmodern’ cultural forms, seeing them as more open and democratic. Th is book rejects both these positions. As it makes clear, readings of Falling Down were from the fi rst also interventions in far-reaching debates over gendered and racial identity, as well as sites of political confl ict and negotiation. As a preliminary, a detailed synopsis provides both a straightforward account of Falling Down , and indicates those aspects of production design, shooting and editing, mise-en-scène , and production, which are particularly infl uential in determining its cinematic eff ects and its wider cultural signifi cance. Part 1 then charts the making of the fi lm, from the roots of Ebbe Roe Smith’s original screenplay to the production process, during which it was reshaped by Schumacher and Douglas amongst others. Part 2 traces the history of the Falling Down controversy as it unfolded in the American media after the fi lm’s release. Part 3 moves outwards from the Falling Down controversy in popular media to the wider contexts of the ‘culture wars’ of the early 1990s USA, the resonant term used to describe the political reaction to the qualifi ed success of identity politics in the 1970s and 1980s. Specifi cally, it examines the various meanings of the so-called crisis of white masculinity historically and in terms of their impact on critical theory. Th e approach taken here lies at the intersection of debates over fi lm violence with the new understanding of cinematic representations of identity that emerged in the 1990s as academics responded to Hollywood’s engagement with identity politics. In the context of debates over fi lm violence, the central question about Falling Down can be put relatively simply: Does the fi lm legitimate (white male) violence, or pathologise it? However, as will be seen, the answer to this question is complicated by the ways in which Falling Down encourages audiences to make multiple and split identifi cations, with and/or against D-Fens, his ex- PROOF falling down 5

wife Beth, and Prendergast, the cop who tracks his path across Los Angeles and eventually kills him. It is this purposeful ambiguity that makes the controversy over Falling Down more than just historically signifi cant. Paradoxically, it also makes it necessary to supplement analysis of the fi lm itself with an understanding of the wider context of the struggles over identity that informed the fi lm- makers’ vision and the frameworks of interpretation used by audiences. Had the fi lm been identifi able with a particular position in the culture wars, it might have become notorious, but it would not have sparked the debates that it did. What made Falling Down deeply controversial is what continues to make it fascinating: the blurring between its sense of a nation in crisis, a loss of civility that aff ects everybody, and a specifi c identity – that of the white male – that is in crisis. Th is ambiguity is crystallised in the ways that the fi lm presents D-Fens as both a universal fi gure – a ‘consumer’ and an ‘American’ – and as a white unemployed man, a member of an identity group that for the fi rst time in American history had acquired the status of victim, and required group advocacy. Th roughout this discussion of wider historical and theoretical contexts, the fi lm itself remains a touchstone. In particular, Part 4 focuses sharply on important scenes from Falling Down , in the context of historical and critical debates over identity and representation. Th e analysis of these key scenes pays particular attention to the viewing positions that they seem to privilege, the viewing pleasures off ered, the depiction of racial and gendered identity, and reports of research into audiences’ reactions. Taken together, Parts 3 and 4 argue in detail that Falling Down represents a pivotal moment in the trajectory of white masculinity in the United States, and, by implication, in the West more generally; one caught between outworn forms of a bogus universalism, and emerging forms that are still coalescing 20 years later. Falling Down is in this sense the cultural condensation of the crisis of white masculinity elaborated at length in Susan Faludi’s Stiff ed: Th e Betrayal of the Modern Man (1999). Th is is to evoke the pivotal nature of Falling Down ’s depiction of white masculinity, but PROOF 6 controversies

more than this, and more interestingly, it also frames the fi lm’s depiction of identity and anger with respect to the political opposition between multiculturalism and approaches that seek to negate or ignore diff erence. What is ultimately at stake is not simply a debate over progressive or reactionary forms of masculinity, or even over gender and social justice, but a wider question concerning the possibility of separating the liberating elements of Western democratic traditions from their patriarchal and racial hierarchies. Part 5 brings these considerations together in assessing the historical importance of Falling Down and its legacy for both cinematic and television depictions of ‘race’ 2 and gender. Th ere we assess how what Douglas called Falling Down ’s ‘morsel of thought, of controversy’ continues to relate to the debates over identity that bubble through cultural and political life on both sides of the Atlantic and in the rest of the world. PROOF

Index

81/2, 129n. 12

A Clockwork Orange (1971), 87, 140n. 1 Cagney, James 21, 22 African American identity, depiction of, 2, Canby, Vincent 34 9, 12, 30, 47–8, 50, 73–4, 89–90, Candy, John 67 98–101, 104–5, 113–14 Canty, Troy 96–7 Alien fi l m s , 1 0 9 Car Wash (1976), 48 Allen, Barry 96–7 Carr, Jay 34 Amistad (1997), 89 Chan, Michael Paul 9, 53, 129 angry white males as political Chapman, Rowena 65, 71 constituency, 57–9, 61, 74 Cheever, John 140n. 1 Ansen, David 34–5, 37 Chomsky, Noam 45–6 Arroyave, Karina 11, 92, 129 Civil Rights movement, 57, 98, 100, 118 Asian American identity, depiction of, 3, class, 23, 30, 33, 35–6, 38–9, 47, 63 9, 10, 30, 37–9, 46, 50, 51, 53, Clinton, Bill 44, 61–2 58–9, 85–91, 119 Close, Glenn 28 Cohan, Stephen 65 backlash against feminism, 28, 57–60, Collins, Ava Preacher 65 66, 108, 120; see also Faludi, Collins, Jim 65 Susan Colors (1988), 39 Baker, Bob 40–41, 47 Cooper, James Fenimore 69, 99 Barlowe, Jamie 70 Corliss, Richard 37 Barry, Raymond J. 11, 129 crisis of white masculinity Basic Instinct (1992), 1, 20, 27–8, 48–9, as ideological formation, 5, 42–46, 52, 58 59–77, 109 Baym, Nina 68–71 question of its basis in economics, Bean, Sean 117 61–63 Bening, Annette 52, 130n. 10 Crossfi re(current affairs television black identity, see African American series), 45–7, 96 Black Rain (1989), 1 culture wars, 4, 5, 53, 57, 60–1, 81, 123 Blade Runner (1982), 109 Curtis-Hall, Vondie 12, 98, 129 Bobbit, Lorena 85 Boyz N the Hood (1991), 39, 48, 108 Davis, Miles, music in the style of, 12, 16 Breaking Bad, 123 Death Wish series of fi lms (1974–94), 24, Bronson, Charles 24, 34–5, 37, 51, 121 33–7, 41, 51, 95, 96, 129n.5 Buchanan, Patrick 45, 59, 60–2, 123 Denny, Reginald 28 Bush, George W. 45, 61, 62 Dirty Harry (1971), 11, 93, 95–6 Disclosure (1995), 27, 49, 62, 118, 120 Cabey, Darell 96–7 Do the Right Thing (1989), 48 PROOF 142 controversies

Douglas, Michael 1–7, 19–20, 24–30, 34, Flatliners (1990), 20 37–9, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 58–9, Forrest, Frederic 12, 19, 102, 129 62, 83, 93, 108, 109, 117, 118, Frankenberg, Ruth 73 120, 121, 122, 129 Frias, Eddie 10, 129 Douglas, Kirk 47 downsizing (corporate rationalisation), Gabbard, Krin 141–2n. 18 57, 63 Gabriel, John 52, 82, 90, 103 Duvall, Robert 7, 19, 84, 129 Garfi eld, John 21 Dyer, Richard 71–2, 76, 103–105, Gates, David 42–6, 59 109–110, 130n. 14 gay activism, 58, 118 gender representation, 23, 27–8, 33, Eastwood, Clint 93, 111 65–7, 75–7, 83–6; see also crisis of white masculinity Fabiani, Mark 41 gender theory, 67–71 Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), 129n. 1 Gingrich, Newt 59 Faludi, Susan 5, 28, 29, 64, 85, 101, GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance 122–3 Against Defamation), 58 Falling Down (1992) God Bless America (2012), 117 as ambiguous or incoherent, 3–4, Goetz, Bernhard 3, 34–6, 45, 83, 96–8, 57– 60, 84 – 5, 110, 114, 117–121 111 as coherent, see Gormley; Kennedy; Goldthwaite, Bobcat 117 Willis Goodall, Caroline 120 at the box office, 40, 130 Gooding-Williams, Robert 29 budget, 20, 130 Gordon, Andrew M. 72–4, 89, 100 [self] censorship, 96–7 Gormley, Paul 108–09, 113, controversy over, 3–4, 23–8, 33–53 130n. 15 critical reception, 2–3, 33–53 Grand Canyon (1991), 39 key details, 129–30 Groundhog Day (1993), 66 in relation to actual events and news stories, 2, 21–3, 28–30, 82–3, Haraway, Donna 65 87–8, 96–8 Hark, Ina Rae 66 scene analysis, 83–114 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 69 screenplay, 22–26 Herbert, Steve 111 splitting audience identifi cations, 4–5, Hershey, Barbara 8, 129 25, 51–3, 74–77, 88, 90, 101, Hill Street Blues, 19 110 Hinkley, Brent 11, 129 synopsis, 7–16 Hinson, Hal 25, 34, 35, 37 Fanon, Frantz 95 Hirsch, Paul 96–7, 130 Fatal Attraction (1987), 1, 27–8, 48, 49, Hoffman, Dustin 122 108, 118 Holliday, George 28–9 Faulkner, William 70 hooks, bell 114 Fellini, 130n. 12 Hughes, John 67 femininity, see gender representation feminism, 28, 43–4, 57, 61, 66, 67, 118 identity politics, the movements’ impacts fi lm violence, 33–7, 51 on US cinema, 4–5, 33, 42, 46, 51, Finch, Peter 34 57–9, 64, 70, 76, 89, 114, 118–19 PROOF falling down 143

Ignatiev, Noel 73 Montoya, Richard 9, 129 Moore, Demi 118, 120 James, Henry 69 Morrison, Toni 70 Jeffords, Susan 66–7 multicultural society, depictions of and debates over, 6, 42, 57, 60, 71, Kennedy, Liam 100, 108–110, 113 114 Kerouac, Jack 69, 99 Kesey, Ken 26 NAACP (National Association for the Kimmel, Michael 43–6 Advancement of Colored People), King, Peter H. 40 38, 48 King, Rodney 2, 28–30, 88, 96–8, 111 National Center for Career Change, Kinsley, Michael 45–6 38, 39 Kirkham, Pat 66 Network (1976), 34, 35, 38 Kopelson, Arthur 2, 20, 24, 30, 129 Newsweek, 3, 42–6, 59, 65 Korean American Advocates for Justice, Nixon, Richard 45, 60 38 Nussbaum, Emily 123 Koreans, depictions of, see Asian Nyswaner, Ron 118 American identity One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Lancaster, Burt 36 1, 26, 48 Latino and Latina identity, depiction of, 3, Outlaw (2007), 117 9, 11–12, 13, 15, 30, 37–9, 50–1, 53, 58, 59, 83, 91–6, 104, 119 Parenthood (1989), 66–7, 76 LaSalle, Mick 34 Park, Jeana H. 38, 86, 87, 90, 130n. 8 Latasha Harlins/Soon Ja Du case, 87–8, 111 Park, Steve 9, 129 Lee, Spike 2, 48, 118 Parker, John 25–7, 49 Lethal Weapon series (1987-98), 90 Parrington, Vernon 69 Levinson, Barry 120 Peberdy, Donna 119 Limbaugh, Rush 43 Perot, Ross 58–9, 62 Los Angeles riots/uprising, 2, 28–30, Pfeiffer, Dedee 11, 129 39–40, 47, 58, 83, 87, 89 Pfeil, Fred 66–7, 71, 81 Love, Nick 117 Philadelphia (1993), 118 Lumet, Sidney 34 Phillips, Kendall R. 3 Poe, Edgar Allan 69 MC Hammer, 112–13 political correctness, 38, 47, 49 Malcolm X (1992), 2, 118, 135 Popwell, Albert 93 Martin, Steve 67 psychoanalytical fi lm theory, 65–6 masculinity, see gender representation Mathews, Jack 39 ‘race’/ethnicity, 6, 23, 27, 29, 33, 37, 60, McBrier, Debra Branch 62 62, 66, 70, 72, 73, 81, 91–101, McCalman, Macon 9, 129 113, 119, 122, 129n. 2; see also Melville, Herman 69 Asian American identity; African Menace II Society (1993), 108, 114 American identity; Latino and Miller, Randall M. 72 Latina identity; white identity Modleski, Tania 66–8, 70–1 and downward occupational mobility in Moffet, D.W. 9, 129 the 1990s 61–64 PROOF 144 controversies

Radner, Hilary 65 The Public Enemy (1931), 21–2 Rainer, Peter 40–41, 47, 61, 89, 95 The Searchers (1956), 51 Ramseur, James 96–7 The Sopranos, 123 Rauzi, Robin 40, 94 The Swimmer (1968), 36 Reaganism, 41–2, 49, 57, 61 The Swimmer (short story), 129n. 6 Regarding Henry (1991), 66 The War of the Roses (1989), 1, 27, 118 Reiner, Ira 88 The Wire, 123 Rodriguez, Agustin 10, 129 The Wiz (1978), 48 Roediger, David 62, 73 Thumim, Janet 66 Romancing the Stone (1984), 27 Ticotin, Rachel 9, 120, 129 Rosin, Hanna 122–3 Traube, Elizabeth 67, 119 Rutherford, Jonathan 65, 71 Trilling, Lionel 69, 138 Turan, Kenneth 35–36, 37, 40 Salamon, Julie 37 Turner & Hooch (1989), 19 Schumacher, Joel 1, 2, 4, 19, 20–21 23, Twain, Mark 99 25–6, 34, 37–8, 46–8, 52, 59, 130 Twelfth Night, 129n. 1 n.10 Scott, Kimberley 9, 129 Uncle Buck (1989), 66–7 Segal, Lynne 66 Unforgiven (1992), 111 Silverman, Kaja 65 Singer, Joey Hope 8, 129 Vera, Hernán 72–4, 89, 100 Singleton, John 48 vigilantes and vigilante fi lms, 3, 13, 33, Slotnick, Barry 45–6 35–7, 45, 97, 102–03, 108, 111, Smith, Carol R. 72 117 Smith, Ebbe Roe 4, 19, 22–6, 29, 85, 129, 130, 140n. 3 Wall Street (1987), 1, 36 Sollors, Werner 99 Ware, Vron 73 stereotypes and stereotyping, 38–9, 58, Weinstein, Philip 70 86, 91, 95, 119 Weld, Tuesday 10, 129 Stern, Howard 43 West, Cornel 129n. 2 Stewart, Jon 46 Western fi lms, 71, 86, 111, 114 Stone, Sharon 27–8 white identity, depiction of, 2–3, 23–6, Straw Dogs (1971), 122 42–5, 49–50, 59–65, 71–4, 76–7, Sununu, John 45 83–4, 91–7, 101–9 Willis, Sharon 74–5, 77, 81, 84–5, 103, T.J. Hooker, 19 108 –110, 119 Taxi Driver (1976), 34–5 Wilson, George 62 Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), 66 Winant, Howard 73 The American President (1995), 52 Winner, Michael 35 The Birth of a Nation (1915), 140n. 1 Woll, Allen L. 72 The China Syndrome (1979), 1, 27, 48 The Fisher King (1991), 66 Zanuck, Darryl 21–2 The Jewel of the Nile (1985), 27 Zombie fi l m s , 1 0 9 PROOF PROOF