By Stephen Vagg
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Alan Rudolph, who helmed Choose Me, Welcome To LA, Remember My Name, Trouble In Mind and Afterglow.
Though he certainly has a small but adoring legion of fans, especially amongst hardcore cineasts, Alan Rudolph remains a truly Unsung Auteur. Like many fine, idiosyncratic directors, Alan Rudolph’s films are unmistakably his, all redolent with his very distinct sense of style, his choice of themes, and even his choice of actors. And even though his body of work has been celebrated at festivals, and many sing his praises, considering the lengthy nature of his highly individualistic career, Alan Rudolph never quite gets the kind of attention that he really deserves. To redress the balance in our minor way, we take a look at every movie made by Alan Rudolph, an auteur and cinematic survivor of the first order.
PREMONITION (1972) AKA HEAD, OR IMPULSE
Rudolph was born in 1943 into the business, his dad Oscar being a director (mostly for TV) and assistant director. Alan got gigs as an assistant director, notably on The Brady Bunch, which nearly sends him insane, so he raises $25,000 to make Premonition, a sort of hippy horror about (we think) a plant that makes you go mad when you smoke it. Dad Oscar produced and fellow nepo baby/second generation talent Tim Ray (son of director Nicholas) starred. The movie looks like it was made by a bunch of potheads in the desert but has some interesting things, and the ending is spooky. DOP John Bailey went on to a huge career (The Big Chill, In the Line of Fire, etc).
TERROR CIRCUS (1973) AKA BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD
Rudolph gets hired to replace a director, not for the last time in his career, on this low budget horror film about a group of women who get abducted in the desert by a psychopath (Andrew Prine) who makes them do circus acts. There’s a monster in the desert, too. The movie has two recurring features of Rudolph’s later work: (a) the cast loved working with him, and (b) the film would have been more fun if it had been trashier. It’s not without its charms, though.
WELCOME TO LA (1976)
Rudolph rescues his career by forming a relationship with legendary director Robert Altman, for whom he worked as an assistant director (The Long Goodbye, California Split, Nashville) and writer (Buffalo Bill And The Indians, Or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson). When making Buffalo Bill, Altman makes United Artists an offer: for an extra million dollars, he’ll give them a second film, directed by Rudolph and produced by Altman. This is Welcome To LA, a sort-of son-of-Nashville about various music industry types in LA, built around the songs of Richard Baskin, and featuring many of the cast from the Altman stock company (Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Sally Kellerman, Sissy Spacek). The result is a dreamy mood piece, highly enjoyable if taken in the right spirit; United Artists didn’t like it, so Altman stepped up and turned his company, Lions Gate, into a distributor where it becomes a low key critical success, and sets the tone for the rest of Rudolph’s career. Everyone should have a friend like Robert Altman. We liked this movie, though.
REMEMBER MY NAME (1978)
Altman also produced this movie, Rudolph’s tribute to women’s melodramas of the 1940s, with Geraldine Chaplin playing a mysterious lady out of prison causing trouble for construction worker Anthony Perkins (!) and wife Berry Berenson (the pair was married in real life – Perkins later died of AIDS and Berenson on September 11). Like Welcome To LA, the film is (a) based around the songs of an artist (in this case Alberta Hunter), and (b) was financed by a major studio (Columbia) who didn’t like the final film so was independently released. It’s one of Rudolph’s best films with an unsettling mood of madness, violence and sex, but it kind of vanished and damaged his career.
ROADIE (1980)
Rudolph’s career was revived when he was hired by producers Zalman King (yes, the sex guy) and Carolyn Pfeiffer to direct someone else’s script, a story based on journalist Big Boy Medlin’s articles about a roadie called Travis Redfish. The film was financed by United Artists, presumably hoping for some National Lampoon’s Animal House style comedy with a killer soundtrack. There are splendid performances from Debbie Harry and Alice Cooper (as themselves) but the film was sunk by the fact Meat Loaf is miscast in the lead, and the central romance – between Travis and a 16-year-old aspiring groupie played by Kaki Hunter of Porky’s fame – doesn’t work. Rudolph was perhaps the wrong director for this material; it needed Alan Arkush or someone of that more energised ilk.
ENDANGERED SPECIES (1982)
King and Pfeiffer use Rudolph again for another studio picture (MGM), a conspiracy thriller about aliens mutilating cattle in Colorado and the government cover up. Rudolph had an unhappy experience working for MGM, and Robert Urich was miscast in the lead, a role that should have been played by Robert Mitchum – but he wasn’t as badly miscast as Rudolph was behind the camera. The film flopped and most people forget it existed. But it did – yes, a decently budget studio cattle mutilation sci-fi film from Alan Rudolph. Jobeth Williams is lovely as the female lead but is underutilised. Peter Coyote is one of the surprisingly large amount of male actors in Rudolph films with distractingly silly facial hair (eg Keith Carradine in Welcome To LA, Campbell Scott in The Secret Life Of Dentists).
RETURN ENGAGEMENT (1983)
Despite two flops, Carolyn Pfeiffer kept the faith with Rudolph and they collaborate on this gripping documentary about debates between neo-con Watergate burglar and wife beater G. Gordon Liddy (we meet his wife in the film and she literally has black eyes) and acid dropping academic Timothy Leary. Rudolph just filmed the action and it’s one of his best movies. The movie helped set up Island Alive, a studio owned by record mogul Chris Blackwell and run by Pfeiffer and Shep Gordon.
CHOOSE ME (1984)
Alan Rudolph’s one commercially successful movie and the one everyone seems to like. Shep Gordon offered him money to make a video clip with Teddy Pendergrass, Rudolph counter-offered to make a whole feature for a little bit more cash, Gordon agreed, and Rudolph came up with this tale of love, loneliness and sex, reusing themes and story ideas from Welcome To LA and Remember My Name (eg various entangled romantic subplots, a protagonist just out of prison, a focus on the music of a particular artist, Keith Carradine as a stud). It all clicks with career-best performances from Carradine, Lesley Ann Warren, Genevieve Bujold, Patrick Bauchau, and Rae Dawn Chog. Producer Dan Blocker was, like Rudolph, a second-generation talent (son of actor Don Blocker) and he would produce Rudolph’s movies for the next decade.
SONGWRITER (1984)
A Willie Nelson-Kris Krisofferson musical drama based on Nelson’s life. Original director Steve Rash is fired shortly into filming by producer Sydney Pollack, and Alan Rudolph comes in because he needs the money. The result is a ramshackle, enjoyable vehicle with some great acting (especially Lesley Ann Warren) and a fun ending. Like almost every Rudolph movie, it underperforms at the box office. Pollack really had a thing for Willie Nelson, also making The Electric Horseman and Honeysuckle Rose with the famed country singer and occasional actor.
TROUBLE IN MIND (1985)
One of the reasons Rudolph had a career despite countless flops was because movie stars loved working with him. In this neo-noir set in a sort of fantasy land called Rain City, Kris Kristofferson played a typical Rudolph hero (a stud just out of prison) who gets involved with aspiring criminal Keith Carrdine (having the time of his life with some outrageous hair) and his wife (Lori Singer in a career best performance), an old love (Genevieve Bujold) and gang boss (Divine in a straight part and quite good). The film is a bit up its own backside and totally all over the shop, but is consistently interesting. It flopped.
MADE IN HEAVEN (1987)
Rudolph had enough post-Choose Me heat to be offered another studio picture, a romantic fantasy where Timothy Hutton falls in love with Kelly McGillis in Heaven and goes back to earth to be reunited with her. The movie had some lovely things but a serious structural flaw where the two leads don’t engage at all in the second half – there’s nothing wrong with having them apart (Sleepless In Seattle, Random Harvest) but at least one of them’s got to know about the other one, only here it’s like the two leads are off in different movies. Who was responsible for that is unclear, but Rudolph clashed with the writers and producers and the movie flopped. McGillis is lovely, Debra Winger fans won’t want to miss her playing an angel, or Ellen Barkin as a devil. There are also notable rock star cameos from Neil Young, Tom Petty and Ric Ocasek.
THE MODERNS (1988)
Rudolph goes indie again, with the story of an American painter (Keith Carradine) who works as a forger in 1920s Paris. Linda Fiorentino is amazing as his ex, John Lone is a compelling villain, and Genevieve Bujold and Geraldine Chaplin pop up. This probably should have been made in the late 1970s as originally intended and needed more sex (not to mention a trim) but is worth seeing for Fiorentino alone.
LOVE AT LARGE (1990)
A sort of Trouble In Mind 2, a screwball noir set in fantasy land, with Tom Berenger and Elizabeth Perkins as rival private detectives and Anne Archer as a femme female. The film takes too long to introduce Perkins, but once it does, it’s fun. Audiences didn’t like it.
MORTAL THOUGHTS (1991)
Rudolph replaces a sacked director for the third time – on this occasion, Claude Kerven, punted shortly into the shooting of this thriller about two women (Glenne Headly, Demi Moore), one of whom has an abusive husband (Bruce Willis) who winds up dead. This is a movie that clearly should be a stock 90s thriller but Rudolph gives it the indie treatment and it detracts rather than elevates the material; he also completely fails to nail the central relationship between the two women. Nonetheless Moore and Willis loved working with Rudolph, backing his vision when the studio wanted changes (Moore co-produced), and the presence of the stars ensured this actually made some money. There’s a lot of New Jersey accent acting with hairdos to match.
EQUINOX (1992)
Rudolph goes back to fantasy noir, with Matthew Modine as identical twins, one a nerd and the other a criminal. Lovely mood and the acting is terrific, particularly from Lara Flynn Boyle; like many young actresses, she did her best work for Rudolph – one of the reasons that even though this movie sunk like a stone, as many of his pictures did, he kept getting work.
MRS PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE (1994)
Rudolph is reunited with Robert Altman, who produced this account of the gang at The Algonquin Round Table, focusing on Dorothy Parker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her love for Robert Bentley (Campbell Scott) and Charles MacArthur (Matthew Broderick). A film full of great stuff, but yet again, Rudolph can’t nail the central relationship – Parker and Benchley. We wonder if he simply was more comfortable with ensembles. Side note: Rudolph persuaded Gwyneth Paltrow to go nude in this, something the director had a strong track record of doing (eg Sissy Spacek, Sally Kellerman, Geraldine Chaplin, Julie Delpy). This movie was a kind-of success; we think people were hoping it would be Rudolph’s The Player (1992) but it was not to be: once again, Rudolph was unable to escape Altman’s shadow. Worth seeing though especially if you love the period.
AFTERGLOW (1997)
Rudolph’s ability to attract actors keeps him at the table. This has Nick Nolte and Julie Christie as a couple who wind up swapping partners with another couple, Lara Flynn Boyle and Jonny Lee Miller. The acting is strong; Boyle is again terrific under Rudolph, though the movie was stolen by Christie, who got an Oscar nomination. Hardly anyone saw it.
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (1999)
People tried to film Kurt Vonnegut’s novel for years, including Robert Altman in the ’70s, who got Rudolph to write a script. Rudolph got the chance to direct it himself over twenty years later due to the enthusiasm of Bruce Willis, who, feeling in the mood for a little acting, co-produced and starred, bringing in Rudolph as director. The Disney Organisation, bizarrely, financed this due to a deal it had with Willis. (The star had pulled out of a Disney film called Broadway Brawler, causing it to collapse, and got out of trouble by agreeing to star in three movies for Disney at a cheaper rate: Armageddon, The Sixth Sense and The Kid; we don’t know how he got Breakfast of Champions by them). The film has an amazing cast (Albert Finney, Omar Epps, Barbara Hershey, Lukas Haas, Shawnee Smith, Will Patton), but critics were hostile, and audiences non-existent. We didn’t like this movie, but it has its fans.
TRIXIE (2000)
Rudolph returns to screwball noir whether you like it or not, with Emily Watson accent acting as a security guard who investigates a murder, and tries not to notice the fact that co-star Brittany Murphy really should have played her part. Strong cast, with Murphy, Nolte and Nathan Lane stealing the show.
INVESTIGATING SEX (2001)
Another Rudolph movie that might have been better off made in the freer 1970s, which has Dermot Mulroney as a 1920s academic investigating sex with the help of stenographers Robin Tunney (outstanding) and Neve Campbell. It’s based on a true story, about surrealists in Paris in the 1920s; it might’ve been more fun to have made the characters French surrealists rather than Americans. Like a lot of Rudolph movies, it feels like a Woody Allen film without as many laughs. The sex talk has dated somewhat, especially in these Gen Z days, and there are too many characters; Rudolph clashed with his German investors who wanted more sex in it and the film struggled to be released. Nonetheless, there’s plenty to admire here and it’s great to see Tuesday Weld on screen.
THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS (2002)
A dentist (co-producer Campbell Scott) worries that his dentist wife (Hope Davis) is cheating on him and…that’s about it. Not enough story for a feature, though one feels it might play on stage (playwright Craig Lucas wrote the script). Robin Tunney is in this one too, and her part should’ve been bigger.
RAY MEETS HELEN (2017)
Rudolph takes a fifteen-year break from directing, presumably not of his own choosing, before retuning with this shaggy dog melodrama that touches on romance and crime, starring Keith Carradine and Sandra Locke as people who reinvent themselves via the discovery of some cash. It’s very patchy, and Carradine shows off his old raffish charm, but while it’s lovely to see Locke in a lead role, the impact of the cancer that was to take her life shortly after filming is all too evident
IN CONCLUSION…
What can we make of the career of the now seemingly retired, 83-year-old Alan Rudolph? Well, it’s kind of inspiring in a way. For almost thirty years, he got to direct more than twenty feature movies, despite most of them losing money and getting variable reviews.
He did this several ways. (a) The mentorship of powerful figures – Robert Altman to start off with, then later Chris Blackwell, Shep Gordon, and Bruce Willis. (b) The adoration of actors – this meant they were willing to work for cheap, and sometimes those actors were movie stars who could get films financed eg Nick Nolte, Bruce Willis, Tom Berenger. (c) Keeping budgets down – Rudolph made some expensive films, but he could always cut his cloth accordingly and make a two-people-in-a-room movie. (d) The ability to self-start – Rudolph was always writing his own scripts, and initiating his own projects.
If you can do the above four things, you will have a career, box office or not. And if you are interested in Alan Rudolph, we’d recommend the following five to start: Choose Me, Welcome To LA, Remember My Name, Trouble In Mind and Afterglow.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs James Lee Barrett, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, Joan Tewkesbury, Jamaa Fanaka, Jack Starrett, Joseph Sargent, Jeffrey Schwarz, George Sidney, Philip Dunne, Zak Hilditch, Luke Sparke, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Morgan Matthews, Tom Laughlin, Diane Keaton, Ed Hunt, Nancy Savoca, Robert Vincent O’Neil, Marvin J. Chomsky, Sam Firstenberg, Jack Sholder, Richard Gray, Giuseppe Andrews, Gus Trikonis, Greydon Clark, Frances Doel, Gordon Douglas, Billy Fine, Craig R. Baxley, Harvey Bernhard, Bert I. Gordon, James Fargo, Jeremy Kagan, Robby Benson, Robert Hiltzik, John Carl Buechler, Rick Carter, Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
