by The Fluffer
Francis Ford Coppola is one of those filmmakers who seems to attract on-set drama, whether it’s insisting the monsoon not arrive on Apocalypse Now, wrangling the mafia on The Godfather, trying to create a behind the scenes Xanadu/Shangri La on One from the Heart, or abusing the studio while simultaneously being the studio on Megalopolis.
But we’re not quite sure that he ever topped the behind-the-scenes dramas of The Cotton Club, his 1984 gangster-musical epic.
This was a movie that he was coerced into making out of financial need following the financial failure of One from the Heart, on which he famously clashed with Producer Robert Evans – then at his cocaine-inhaling, financially-shady peak – and had to deal with an ever-evolving script (that he was rewriting), a troublesome star, uncertain finance, Evans being arrested, and an investor being murdered.
On its release, The Cotton Club didn’t bomb but it lost a lot of money, and the critical response was unenthusiastic. In 2015, Coppola released a revised edition, The Cotton Club: Encore, which didn’t exactly restore the film’s place in the cinematic firmament.
But those of us who love The Cotton Club don’t care, because all this mess is part of the film’s appeal. And we love it – the original version, not the recut (which is interesting, but it fixes none of the movie’s problems and makes some things worse). We get why it didn’t cut through – the film has a central flaw, one easily fixed at script stage, but not once it had been shot. We adore it anyway.
For those who’ve never seen the film, (a) it’s totally worth it even if you hate it and (b) here’s a recap: The Cotton Club is set in and around the famed Harlem nightclub of the same name during Prohibition, where black performers put on shows for predominantly white audiences. Over the course of the movie’s running time, we are treated to a variety of subplots: white Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere) is bodyguard to white Vera (Diane Lane), mistress of white gangster Dutch Schultz (James Remar) who has business dealings with white Cotton Club owners Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins) and Frenchy Demange (Fred Gwynne). Dixie becomes a movie star a la George Raft while his brother Vincent (Nicolas Cage) becomes a gangster a la Mad Dog Coll. All these characters are white; two tap dancing black brothers, Sandman (Gregory Hines) and Clay (Maurice Hines) get a job dancing at the club, where Sandman romances Lila (Lonette McKee), who can pass for white, and they have dealings with black gangster Bumpy Rhodes (Laurence Fishburne). There’s brief appearances from real life characters like Gloria Swanson, Cab Calloway, Lucky Luciano and Fanny Brice.
All these plots are fantastic – full of twists, interesting characters and parallels, sex, violence, romance, costumes, social commentary, music, racial issues, colourism, glamour, and dancing. The cast is wonderful. Richard Gere and Diane Lane copped a lot of criticism, but they are both very attractive and the support cast are magnificent – the Hines brothers, Remar, Fishburne etc. The show is probably stolen by the double act of Hoskins and Gwynne but there’s a splendid cameo from Julian Beck as the hangdog gunman Sol. The dance numbers are very well done and the music is sublime, covering contemporary tunes from the time (eg “Minnie the Moocher”) and John Barry’s evocative score.
Coppola was/is a superb director of violence – those scenes were the highlight of Megalopolis – and The Cotton Club is no exception; stand out sequences include Dutchy Schultz murdering another gangster (John Ryan) at a fancy party and (spoilers) the assassination of Dutch Schultz.
With all this good stuff, what went wrong?
In our opinion it was something very basic, and easy to remedy.
And no one seemed to notice it, not Coppola, not Evans, not the critics.
It’s this – the film lacks a cohesive centre. It’s “bitsy”.
All the aforementioned subplots would be fine if something united them, and that something should have been be the physical location of The Cotton Club. That’s where everything should take place – all the romances, intrigue, sex, dancing and so on.
Films that successfully juggle a lot of plots and character – The Towering Inferno, say – almost always need some sort of unifying element: location and/or time.
In The Cotton Club, it’s so obvious everything should take place in and around the club.
But it doesn’t.
Richard Gere wanted to play a musician in the movie. And since his character was white, he wouldn’t have been allowed to play at The Cotton Club, so Coppola came up with another club for him to perform at where he saves the life of Dutch Schultz (a scene that should have happened at or just outside The Cotton Club). Then Coppola adds another club for the Williams brothers to perform at, then another one for them to reunite at. Then he adds another club for Vera to own. And more and more action happens away from The Cotton Club, and the movie has no centre.
The frustrating thing is that the problem could be so easily fixed – all the above storylines could have been reworked to take place at the Club. You want to give Gere a special skill apart from being handsome, that’s fine – make Dixie a good gambler, or dancer, like George Raft was in real life, just don’t invent another club for him… have Dixie meet Vera and Dutch at The Cotton Club. Give Vera a fashion line or booze run or something rather than another nightclub. Have the Williams brothers do their fighting and reuniting at the Club, not another club.
Coppola’s encore cut added some more dance numbers and scenes with Gregory Hines, which was interesting, but he also removed things from the original that worked, like the opening credit sequence. He didn’t fix the film because the film had a central story flaw that couldn’t be solved by recutting. This is a common issue with many “director’s cuts” – you can put stuff in, take out stuff, add narration, etc etc – but none of it will do any good if there is a central flaw in the movie and there is in The Cotton Club.
Still, there are so many magical moments; James Remar stabbing John Ryan and Fred Gwynne pulling a gun; Julian Beck’s Saul explaining his backstory; how Nicolas Cage and Jennifer Grey really look like 1930s people; the reunion between the Hines brothers; the mad finale where a stage show is intercut with numbers in real life; Diane Lane’s expression at the end when Gere sees her at the train; the gold watch scene between Hoskins and Gwynne; the music, the dancing, the costumes, the décor, the whole texture of the picture.
The Cotton Club could have been classic. As it is, it’s a glorious mess. And it’s one worth watching again and again and again. We love it.
