Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

There are two reasons I wanted to take another look at Bullets Over Broadway, which I hadn't seen since it first opened. It's the 20th anniversary of the film, and in a little over a week I'll be seeing the Broadway musical based on the film, so I wanted to refresh my knowledge of it.

Bullets Over Broadway is perhaps the last successful pure comedy that Woody Allen has made, as such other attempts like The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Small-Time Crooks fell flat. It is an ice cream soda of a film, effervescent and thoroughly refreshing, both a valentine to Damon Runyon and an expression of Allen's comic point of view.

Set in 1928, John Cusack stars as David Shayne, a young playwright in the Clifford Odets mold. He has a new play, but is unwilling to compromise his vision--"I'm an artist!" are his first words. But his producer (Jack Warden) tells him that serious plays don't make money.

We then enter the world of mobsters. Big boss Nick Valenti (a wonderfully reptilian Joe Vitelli) has a mistress, a talentless chorine played by Jennifer Tilly. He will bankroll Cusack's play, but only if Tilly has a role. Cusack eventually says yes. Tilly's bodyguard is Cheech (Chazz Palmintieri), who keeps an eye on rehearsals from the back row. Eventually Palmintieri will turn out to be the theatrical genius, offering suggestions and eventually rewriting the whole play. Cusack realizes he's no artist--at the end of the film he heads back to Pittsburgh.

In addition to this, there are wonderful elements of the backstage comedy, as the cast members of the play offer up their bits. Dianne Wiest, as the diva Helen Sinclair, is the most prominent, and she won as Oscar for the role. She's given to cigarette holders, cloche hats, and broad pronouncements. Today, whenever I mention the film to anyone, the first thing I hear is her repeated line, "Don't speak!"

We also get an amusing storyline involving Jim Broadbent as an actor with an eating problem, and Tracy Ullman as the second lead toting around a chihuahua. But the heart of the film is Allen and co-screenwriter Douglas McGrath's (but it's clearly Allen's) world view--art is everything.

Cusack may be the part Allen would have played if he were younger, but I think Rob Reiner, as his bohemian friend, is spouting Allen's message. Reiner is uncompromising--he has written 20 plays, none produced. "I write plays that are not meant to be produced!" he says proudly. Early in the film he says that artists create their own moral universe, and later will say "guilt is bourgeois crap." The central moral dilemma of the film, (spoiler) when Palmintieri bumps off Tilly to improve the play, is key. Cusack is outraged, and leads to his decision to quit being an artist. But you have to wonder if Allen really takes Palmintieri's view. This was especially relevant consider this film is a few years after his scandal, in which he said, "The heart wants what it wants."

But even without that analysis the film is pure joy. There are too many lines to mention, but I'll end with this, spoken by Harvey Fierstein as Wiest's manager: "He's working on a vehicle for Helen for next season. She plays Jesus' mother. It's a whole Oedipal thing. He loves her... wants to do in the father... well you can see the complications."