George Clooney's Diversity Vehicle

  

Everyone has a favorite movie but how many people have a favorite movie scene, as in all-time, in the history of cinema or cinema that you’ve seen? Not many of us can narrow it down. People have lists but not one single favorite, the single scene that you would absolutely want to be marooned with? But mine is unique. It’s from Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 film Out of Sight, starring George Clooney, and does not have Clooney in it even though he was star of the movie. And it’s short, there’s no time for over-acting, instead it's a couple of minutes in a Detroit rowhouse between Isaiah Washington—who is from Texas btw, not that that’s important here—and Jennifer Lopez who is from the Bronx. 

Also featured but not seen is Tuffy who is Isaiah Washington’s character’s dog, or was until he got run over, we are informed. Before that Tuffy liked “a good bone,” which is what Isaiah Washington is trying to interest JLo in too. Washington’s character calls his The Monster and he plans to introduce JLo whether she wants it or not.

The difference in performing style between these two actors, who are both underrated as actors btw, is also unique. Washington plays the scene like in a theater—delivering a eulogy for Tuffy not Caesar—and then talking about boxing, which JLo also knows a bit about. She tells him that she’s a flyweight. Washington’s character was a boxer—until his retina “got detached two time”—and he gestures at his own eye so that the back row of the theater can see. The critics would call it a “certain physicality,” like a black Brando, you feel me—something like that. JLo on the other hand plays her role like an actor who has grown up in movies. In this scene she is a woman who’s not interested in a brother’s come-on and who shows a certain fear, yes—while also being fearless. Her empowerment as a female in modern cinema comes from the knowledge that she has a collapsible baton and a Glock in her shoulder bag. 

The reason the scene appeals to me is that it is in one of the rare major theatrical releases, back in the day, just before the millennium, in which two minority actors got time to go at it and talk real shit, without the mediation or interference of the white star.

White stars generally want to be in the scene with a Negro or Mexican in order to show that the white guy or white girl is cool and can hang with the oppressed peoples of the earth and all that. Clooney didn’t do that here, presumably because he’s not that insecure (he hangs these days, we are told in the popular press, with Barack Obama) and besides he already had some good scenes earlier in the film with Don Cheadle and with JLo herself who is Clooney’s love interest when he’s not robbing banks. It says everything that needs to be said about the confrontation in Detroit that it is my favorite scene of all time in the movies, not to repeat myself. As judged #1, by me, for each of the last few years. The scene actually begins with a lead-in by Viola Davis who plays Moselle and who is Isaiah Washington’s presumable squeeze or sister or something and who he has just sent out to get some chicken so that he can be alone with JLo and introduce her to The Monster. That’s all the background you need. Viola Davis is on screen just long enough to open her eyes wide, in foreboding, a beautiful thing to see, and my point is that if the cast is so strong that Ms. Davis is just the set-up, that means it must be a great scene, which it is. You have to see it. Probably the JLo-Isaiah Washington showdown won’t affect you the way it did me, but it might.

If you ask me for my second all-time favorite scene it would be the meeting in the board room in Margin Call, from 2011. Everyone is good and it’s smart moviemaking, explaining an idea not a corpse on the ground. It’s believable in the sense that a bunch of mostly white actors pretending to do wholesale generalized evil—well, these actors are right on the money: Jeremy Irons, Zachary Pinto, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, Aasif Mandvi, they're all about to pull out The Monster, too, but it’s a different one than Isaiah Washington has in Out of Sight. What about the whole movie, you may ask? 

Why not watch it? 

The answer is about not having the patience to sit still for two hours anymore, the length of the average Hollywood release, that can happen as you get older, especially the more movies you’ve seen. Watching a script unfold that—even before it starts—you know how it’s going to end? Not to be a purist, or puritanical, not to be Old School or anything. There was a word that critics used to use a lot, “derivative,” as in one work is derived from another? We’re so far past derivative now, what’s the point? The unsurprising exception is anything with another actor named Washington—Denzel. With Denzel, you have to see the whole film. Literally, he can read the ingredients on a cereal box and it’s watchable, but my favorite is when he’s racking up the body count, especially if he’s doing white guys, not to be mean-spited or anything. The vibe he always gives off is justice. Killing can be beautiful art, especially when it's deserved. 

Historically the two movie scenes that have stayed with me through the decades, since my childhood, are the “I-could-have-been-a-contender” cab ride with Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger in On the Waterfront and the final shoot-out in the saloon in Shane (1953). There’s a dog in the saloon and the animal steals the scene from Alan Ladd and Jack Palance. In terms of sheer cinematic beauty there is the escape across the snow to Switzerland, at the end of La Grande Illusion, which has a brisk and beautiful narrative, not to sound artsy or anything but it really is a cool example of moviemaking. Being an action fan myself and seeing my share of war movies, one must consider the Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now of course. But each of these moments in cinema was picked at a time when the whole movie experience was important to me. Now it’s just scenes on YouTube.

Maybe it’s age, young viewers don’t know that the new movie is derivative of a prior film because they never saw the old one, you know? 

For me, it means no new favorite movies. It’s like a video diet, actually, and the results have been surprising. Revising my number one or number two scene is occasionally required but not as often as you might think. 

Right now a revision of number two is being considered based upon my number of viewings online. The challenger to Margin Call’s board room drama is a scene that also came my way entirely by way of YouTube, from a movie that very likely will never be on my list to see. There is just this one scene, it’s in a meeting room too, like Margin Call, but instead of being a real ensemble work it features a soliloquy, more or less, by none other than Sean Puffy Combs. Instead of the late lamented Tuffy of Out of Sight the animals here are cockatoos. The film is Get Him to the Greek, about the music business, a subject that does not interest me in the least. Again, as in the case of Isaiah Washington, the scene is basically a brother talking shit, there ought to be an Academy Award for a particular scene like this, different from the award for the whole movie. My sincere wish is to thank George Clooney for backing off in Out of Sight and sipping his bottle of water, or whatever, behind the camera, and letting the supporting actors get in some quality time in front. You have to thank the director or whoever who let a good black actor and a Latina star show their stuff and didn’t leave the film on the cutting room floor. And lastly of course you have to thank the writer. It was Elmore Leonard, what can you say?

Leonard also wrote Get Shorty, btw, which has a few good scenes too. In a career spanning decades. Leonard first wrote Westerns—Last Stand at Sabre River and Valdez is Coming, to name a few, with the great Burt Lancaster in the latter. When Leonard's books were filmed in urban settings, Miami or Detroit for example, he has a better ear for multi-ethnic urban dialogue than anybody in the business. Which is what JLo and Isaiah Washington were doing, btw, having a dialogue.