Jekyll and Hyde in a Box
Mr. Brooks
Produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios
Directed by Bruce A. Evans
Screenplay by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon
Last month, the Wall Street Journal gleefully doted on billionaire wonderboy Stephen Schwarzman of the aptly named Blackstone Group, a firm dealing in private equities and leveraged buyouts. Schwarzman, George W. Bush’s roommate at Yale and Skull and Bones brother, wished to inform all who cared that, when he pursues a deal, he wants to “inflict pain” and “kill off” his rivals. So there we have it. In American business today, it pays to have murder in your heart. Who can doubt the wisdom of Schwarzman’s lethal intent? He’s a billionaire seven times over. Can’t argue with that.
There is some collateral damage, however: It’s not just rivals who must go to the chopping block. The American public also must feel pain so that Schwarzman and his kind may enjoy the success they so richly deserve. American workers must watch their jobs disappear as they are replaced by illegal immigrants here or by slave labor in China. If this leaves Americans scrambling for enough to support their families, and strips them of health insurance and pensions—well, too bad. And so what if Chinese manufacturers use lead paint on the toys American children play with or sweeten cough medicine with toxins? These are the costs of doing business, and the business of business is giving the business to the weak so the rich can live safely within their gated communities.
In his new film, Mr. Brooks, Bruce A. Evans takes Schwarzman’s business philosophy to its logical conclusion. The eponymous protagonist, Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner), is a self-made man who owns a fabulously profitable box factory in Portland. In one scene, we see him making a deal with Chinese executives. We are left to assume that he is undercutting the American workforce with cheap Asian labor, but nothing is said explicitly. (It wouldn’t do to offend the Asian market.) Economic murder, however, doesn’t fully satisfy Mr. Brooks’ needs. It’s not enough to inflict mortal misery on losers. He must step outside his corporate box (get it?) and kill them, literally. This he does with a CEO’s meticulous care for neatness and efficiency, choosing strangers on whom he can impose his deadly upper-class will. At one point, he has occasion to caution a pesky wannabe who has the nerve to try to get in on his action. This scruffy lower-class loser thinks he can blackmail Brooks into helping him kill one of his enemies. With the measured patience of an executive fully expert in dealing with underling upstarts, he quietly replies, “We could, but then we wouldn’t be in control.”
Evans seems to have wanted to invoke and perhaps satirize the dirty little secret of American movies: class warfare. As a mass medium, film has traditionally flattered the little people by portraying the swells as insufferable snobs, hopelessly inept buffoons, or sadistic bullies. As different as they were, the films of King Vidor, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, and Frank Capra had this in common: The wealthy were not to be trusted. The villain of the Alien franchise, to take another example, is not really the glistening monster with the famously metal chompers. After all, the poor creature can’t really help itself. The real monster is the nameless company who keeps sending Sigourney Weaver into deep space so that—against her will, of course—she can bring back a live specimen of an organism that may prove beneficial to the arms industry. More recently, Syriana suggested that it’s not the Islamists or even Al Qaeda who need killing but the honchos at Mobil and Exxon; after all, they’re the ones who are economically murdering Americans at the gas pump while bloodily disposing of emirs who long to use their oil leverage to help their own people.
With Mr. Brooks, Evans tries to up the ante but then bluffs his hand either incompetently or cynically. Although the screenplay he wrote with Raynold Gideon seems to take sardonic aim at class conflict, it seems to have been blunted by several script conferences too many. One of its major subplots ties itself up in knots, trying to parallel the film’s main line of action but without ever committing itself to reinforcing the film’s suppressed theme. It concerns Brooks’ personal Javert, the frozen-faced Demi Moore, playing Tracy Atwood, a homicide detective. (Is it possible to trust a story that features a woman named Tracy?) She indulges a passion that complements Mr. Brooks’: tracking and, if possible, murdering lesser beings. And, wouldn’t you know it, by virtue of her daddy’s will, she’s even richer than Mr. Brooks. You’re wondering why a woman in possession of a fortune computed to be in excess of $60 million would stalk Portland’s mean streets, armed and ferociously dangerous? Please, get with the program. This woman enjoys taking down class-challenged killers, especially if they come pierced, tattooed, and brain-dead from their underclass slums. By having her pursue Mr. Brooks, the film indulges in irony. Tracy has no idea that her current prey is one of the entitled. She assumes that he is one of the impoverished goons. Fortunately, she still has time to push around some little people and, even better, blow away a couple of dirt-bag losers. But only twice, in muted asides, does Evans draw our attention to her class affinity with Mr. Brooks. And Moore never shares a frame with Costner. We do learn that he admires Tracy’s decision to do what she’s good at, despite having enough to live on perpetual holiday, jetting from St. Croix to Paris to New York. Sort of like himself, you see. They are committed to keeping the little people in their place—six feet under their own.
This would have been a promising premise, had Evans and Gideon not decided to tart up the film with sordid graphics. I can just hear the script conferences, the voices of the producers (one of whom is Mr. Costner) alternately wheedling and threatening as they demand more action, more gore, more sex, and less—much less—of anything that could be deemed offensive to any interest group whatsoever. Of course, there is one acceptable target: the terminally scruffy, those who lack both the means to purchase the kind of clothing that Mr. Brooks wears and, probably, the ten bucks to get into a showing of the film. It’s Filmmaking Economics 101: Ensure the box office, and damn the theme. So, after an intriguing opening, the film caves in to what American producers claim the public craves.
After receiving his man-of-the-year award, Brooks returns home with his lovely wife. On the way, Marshall (William Hurt) mysteriously appears in the back seat. He is Brooks’ sinister hidden self. Marshall leans forward, a knowing smile spreading over his lugubriously pale face. “You deserve a treat,” he murmurs. A treat? He means another murder. Brooks resists. He has been on the wagon from murder for two years, thanks to weekly Alcoholic Anonymous meetings where he proclaims himself an addict, prudently leaving out what he is addicted to. But the “thirst has returned,” the narrator tells us, adding that “it never really left.” So, when Marshall pleadingly insists, Brooks descends to his basement, where he opens a huge closet in which hang, Batman like, about a dozen identical black Gore-Tex suits. He dons one, slips on black army boots, and slinks into the night, as Marshall nudges him on seductively. Spotting a couple in a dance studio, he follows them home. With no trouble at all, he enters their apartment and catches them in flagrante delicto. Their lovemaking is at once enthusiastically athletic and yet carefully posed for the camera. Evans wants to make sure the men in the audience have a good view of the woman, whose body looks to be barely that of a teenager’s. Curiously, we get no such shots of the fellow. Even when Brooks pulls out his big black gun and shoots the couple repeatedly, it’s the young lady who is posed for maximum scrutiny. And afterward, to satisfy his obsession, Brooks himself arranges her limp limbs to ogling advantage. Marshall then counsels him to go home and make love to his beautiful wife. Does this make Evans a necrophiliac voyeur? Not necessarily. Far more likely, he’s just a businessman protecting his investment by giving his customers an added incentive to part with their money.
This lurid scene comes early in the film, and, though nothing so explicit follows, it’s enough to put paid to any pretense that Evans might have made to storytelling integrity. The sequence has no other purpose than to create remunerative sensation. As with all such pandering to prurient curiosity, it does not contribute to the film’s theme. Instead, it throws us out of the story altogether, forcing us to wonder, among much else, how Costner and the naked actors felt about being in such sweaty proximity to one another. And why did Evans choose to use an actress with the body of a 14-year-old? Is popular culture exploring new limits? Is pedophilia headed for the big screen? A couple of months ago, I wrote about the Squirm Index. See this scene (I heartily recommend you do not) with the wrong relative, or with any relative at all, and you will not only squirm but churn with embarrassment—unless, of course, you’ve been entirely inured to such sights by daily doses of HBO’s more mature offerings. For me, the film never recovered from this sordid spectacle.
Evans also indulges a sense of humor that can only be called odious.
When Brooks’ daughter unexpectedly returns from college to tell her parents that she is pregnant, the CEO daddy summons all his executive gravitas to issue this directive: “There’ll be no abortion.” What a lark! This serial killer is pro-life! When daughter and wife stiffen in disapproval of his edict, he tacks like the seasoned executive he is. “A grandchild will be a wonderful gift,” he explains by way of mollifying the wayward miss. Later, he discovers that she may be implicated in an ax murder in Palo Alto. Does she have the serial-killer gene? he wonders. Of course she does. Although we never find out whether she has slaughtered anyone, it’s dollars to doughnuts that, if she did, the victim would have owned a Corolla rather than a Porsche. Here again, the script’s apparent original intention peeks out. The killer gene is a metaphor. It stands for economic privilege. Though carrying a child, the young lady tellingly urges dad to retire and let her run the company. She can’t wait to push the lowly workers around.
The only thing interesting about this film is the interplay between Costner and Hurt. They make an intriguing Jekyll and Hyde pairing. Hurt, an actor I never cared for in the past, has become a compelling presence in his recent outings. In A History of Violence, he played an Irish-American crime boss with an unnerving mixture of charm and menace. Here, he comes across as a cajoling, insinuating Hyde intent on luring Costner’s upright Jekyll back to the pleasures of taking life. “Why do you fight it, Earl?” he pleads with a needling, ironic whine. And when Brooks begins to come around, Marshall fairly sings out, “I love what you’re thinking,” sweeping away any lingering doubts about the wisdom of yielding to his overmastering passion. Costner seems to have responded to Hurt’s sinuous energy with a particularly artful portrayal of a man hemmed but not suffocated by prudence. When this Hyde and Jekyll fully commit to their murderous intentions, they cannot help wallowing in the moment. Heads thrown back, they yield to fits of maniacal laughter. You’d think they had just hatched an especially profitable downsizing scheme in the board room.
Such scenes give an indication of what this film could have been, had Evans and its producers not betrayed their audience as cynically as any rapacious outsourcer betrays American workers.
George McCartney is Chronicles' film editor.
This article first appeared in the August 2007 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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Of course that his daughter's serial-killer gene acts up or-Out and she plunges a big pair of scissors into her dad's neck (surprise!)-as he bends to kiss her goodnight only to bemusedly sit cooly like looking at another video and watch him slowly die: is only afterall a bad dream Kenvin wakes-up from in a pool of sweat. Shucks. Does class loyalty preempt the serial-gene? I have a theory that the next war should only actually be fought by the upperCrust. If they wish to goFor it, let them have at it?! This is why I was a once (and future?) communist!? I kid. But this all throws new light on why legal 'approved' pharmaceuticals and legal over the counter drugs kill and maime more people every year than all illicit street drugs combined. Of course automobiles kill 60Thousand (60,000) people every year and maime hundreds of thousands more, but we only go after the (red herring) 10% of which are caused due to alcohol. Prudent, l'est the combustible vehicles killing, maiming and polluting the air might come into question. Soccer Moms are permitted to go after the loser drunks, not the serial-executives & their filthy contraptions. And it's all protected by Their MEDIA - a big part of which is H O L L Y W O O D. Why not? Got to wuv cars & movies or yur'Un-american. What a country! Want to sell More gas-guzzling Hummers? Why not mount a machine-gun on the roof?! (No way, that would be arming the wrong classes.)
Not sure this depraved side of American culture is something Chronicles should be spending a lot of time on. I see posters for Hollywood serial-killer and torture-porn movies on the London Underground every time I go to work; I come to chroniclesmagazine.org for something more uplifting.
I think this is very appropriate to focus on. In fact I would also add this perverse imbalance 'as if' normal or worse 'good' as it pertains to the real life business practices and personal appetites and philosophies of the Schwarzmans and the Brooks in this contemporary and barbaric milieu of the West particularly in AMERICA is only reflected by what Mr. Newman says he sees going to work, in a kind of 'trickle down' effect.
It's to the point of the ABSURD now in the United States in that 1/10th of one percent of Americans or 350Thousand (350,000) receive, hold, own every year the same portion of the national economy and wealth (by virtue of the rules of the game that virtually GIVE it to them) as 150Million (150,000,000) Americans or the next 62% of the economy and work force. Of the top 1/10th of one percent 1/10 of that, 1/100 of a percent of the population or 30Thousand (30,000) Americans the very pinnacle of this Ponzi shceme hold more than the other 310,000 at the top AND this proportion of the wealth held by those at the very 'top' has now exceeded what was held by the same relatively few in 1928 just prior to the crash of 1929. AMERICANS real Americans have never worked harder or longer. Yet 80% of what they produce goes to 1% of the population. The bottom 30Million Americans (30,000,000) in the American economy are now what are known as the working poor. Those who do nothing but work for wages with Their taxes automatically withheld, with two or three jobs who still can't pay their bills. The wealthiest of these working poor make $9 per hour. In real terms adjusted for inflation by any measure (and its rigged since linked to the CPI or Consumer Price Index) Americans have been jogging in place and heading backwards since 1969 (for approximately 40 years). Recently when it was suggested by the Government that Americans earnings and wages are up it was found to be a lie and another chimera if you remove the increases of the top 5% of Americans (of course which includes that top 1/10th of 1%) which receives the lion's share. Ameircans are literally now being eaten or consumed alive or in other words 'cannibalism (the System now IS cannibalistic.)' While on the other hand, the MOST competitive nations in the West also have huge social safety nets BECAUSE they understand the SYSTEM itself of the distribution of goods and services must be balanced in order to provide their people with the BASICS of a decent life. This makes the people of a nation happy and ABLE to produce and compete. This also includes how much time the Governments of these civilized nations REQUIRE the work force be given off from work with pay - to rest and get stronger again for the coming year. E.g. Days off required with pay by Law: (just a few) France 31, Germany 28, Austrailia 27, England 21, Japan 14... U.S. 0
Of them all the U.S. is the wealthiest "nation" by Far of course, larger than the entire European Union (all their many member nations combined), the U.S. with 30% of the entire world's economy. But for all intents and purposes it's a SLAVE nation now with the slaves kept in place by a MEDIA (conspiracy of course) advising them otherwise, and telling them how 'lucky' and rich they are. All that is really happening in this country of veritable perverts at the top is an absolute BETRAYAL of work, and a complete sell-out of the "nation".
You can't call this place a 'nation' really because its people have NO Media reflective of their own reality, NO control over their own money supply, and NO government in place to Actually represent their own normal, basic needs since to much of their tax dollars get sent to Washington D.C. their federal politicians sent there have no choice but to work for the wealthy interests who financed them to be able to get there...in order to make those wealthy interests yet wealthier vis a vis the nation's taxpool. That's the SYSTEM publically financed, publically insured but privately owned...and that's what creates the stratospheric fortunes overnight, the taxpool. Everyone wants IN, like pigs at a trough. It's inconceivable to most Americans that legislation is written and agencies created which PAY wealthy coporporations to take their companies and those American jobs overseas or to Mexico etc. ... these companies who want to do it anyway - then get the politicians (they bought and paid for) to write legislation to FINANCE directly out of the American taxpool the move.
Agencies like O.P.I.C. (or whatever new name they want to give it if that one has the light shined on it) use American tax dollars to PAY for American coporations moving abroad, and even the building of their new (privately owned) factories in the foregin nation.
If a law is enacted on the other hand - that ONLY public monies (these same tax dollars) can be used to finance the campaigns of politicians so that they are not bought and paid for by Private interests - the very Supreme Court of this screwy "nation" goes and rules no you can't do that "money is speech." -?- No, money is money... And now it's ALL given to the rich out of the Federal Tax pool - so that in Effect hundreds of millions of Americans are literally Financing THEIR OWN DEMISE.
And then you have people like Mort Zuckerman owner of Newsweek Magazine etc. flapping his lips on talk shows that it can't be stopped and sure the very wealthy get extremely wealthy via government and the shipping of American jobs (mostly manufacturing) overseas so that now manufacturing is down to 10% of the economy when only 20 years ago it was 50% ... but it's ok because now [dumbed down America] is a 'knowledge' based economy, Mort avers with only 5% unemployment (of the slaves) and so everything is really hunky-dory (i.e. for Mort)...Got to read between the lines. Sure it couldn't be 'better' for Mort and his propaganda rag, and all he owns. It's perfect.
So now THAT'S America, and yes it's PERVERTED mostly at the top. But, Americans are still basically decent and so they don't yet even conceive the depths to which their "leadership" has descended, BECAUSE also the MEDIA keeps them completely away from the reality and in fact is There in place by design, to Brainwash them with what they are 'supposed' to Believe...Exactly like what was done to get the nation into the war in Iraq; and yet even the Democratic Congress now under Pelosi will not apparently bring the two co-Presidents Cheney & Bush, who implement the will of these interests - up for impeachment proceedings. Why? The SAME interests OWN the Democrats. They too ONLY want IN - to the tax pool in behalf of their Masters. THAT'S it.
If Mr. Newman doesn't find the truth under these circumstances Uplifting... well ?
_________________
"So now THAT’S America, and yes it’s PERVERTED mostly at the top."
Perverted at the top, but utterly stupid at all levels. The very fact that our intellectually sterile WonderBread media survives at all (i.e., ordinary people *actually consume* Fox News and the New York Times, horrifying as this may be to Chronicles subscribers) is a spectacular testament to the success of the upper dogs in brainwashing the underdogs.
One important tool in brainwashing us, as your discussion of the Supreme Court suggests, is to convince the public that the Constitution of 1787 is essential to the survival of this "nation." It is not, for more reasons than we have time for here, but it suffices to say that:
1. A "nation" defined by a piece of paper is not a nation at all.
2. Few if any other Western countries have not made significant revisions to their constitutions
3. As you imply, we are trapped: the "strict constructionists" would have us not adapt to changing economic and international winds except as we can formulate a nearly impossible consensus for an "amendment," whereas the "living document" proponents would drag our legal system into utter nihilism.
Someday, someone will write a book about how the elites of what was one of the most forward-looking societies managed to seize upon the critical inflexibility of its constitutional foundations to systematically destroy their own people through de-industrialization and massive immigration. If we are not to be indicted in that mess, conservatives have GOT to divorce themselves from the adulation of the almighty United States Constitution.
"If Mr. Newman doesn’t find the truth under these circumstances Uplifting… well ?"
I don't find Hollywood serial killer movies uplifting, no.
what about post # 5 do you find the truth uplifting? I'll just add all of the indisputable stats come from either the govt. and/or the n.y.times and/or the Bill Moyers program NOW - and as far as zuckerman is concerned i wasn't sure if that billionaire owns newsweek or u.s. news and world report. but he's a typical mouthpiece for why things simply 'must' keep going in this pathetic direction (pathetic - except where he and his ilk are concerned) - and the mantra to quote him 'you can't stop it, you can't stop it.' swine.
post #4 contains the correct statistics I was referring to... #5 wasn't written by me.
"Someday, someone will write a book about how the elites of what was one of the most forward-looking societies managed to seize upon the critical inflexibility of its constitutional foundations to systematically destroy their own people through de-industrialization and massive immigration. If we are not to be indicted in that mess, conservatives have GOT to divorce themselves from the adulation of the almighty United States Constitution." -Nicholas Moses
Brilliant post, post #5. The statistics are in #4 ... the succinct analysis in your #5.
Emigrate, go to work in an actual Nation - and write that Book. You'll probably have to get it published for the first time abroad anyway. The overdogs are swine here and have all the publishing houses etc. et. al . The 'reason' it's so rampant and pervasive is that they are Not destroying 'their own people' in terms of their own sensibility they are destroying 'us'. Only the Christian Religion embraces all in any universal kind of sensibility. Which at least at America's start is what allowed the U.S. under that ridiculous 'Constitution' to seem like a nation. As a matter of fact it might yet SEEM like a nation if freedom of religion was defined as meaning - "Freedom of any of the established CHRISTIAN Religions."
The overdogs aren't shooting themselves in the foot - in their own sense of things - most of them conveniently have citizenships in multiple countries... other than the one they exploit so well since it's not really a nation... u.s.
Mostly I agree with you.
I didn't know Steve Scharwtzman was a roomie of George W Bush at Yale. Another connection i didn't know about. I actually found a wesbite while browsing that mapped out many connections to the CEO Blackstone
http://www.newsvisual.com/newsvisual/2007/08/steve-schwarzma.html
"Curiously, we get no such shots of the fellow." Are you kidding? The frontal nude male is still effectively verboten in Hollywank. The reasons behind this are too complex to discuss here, but suffice it to say script conferences were designed with Mr. Hyde in mind.