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By Cole Smithey
‘The Wendell Baker Story’
Movie Trailer
Luke Wilson’s written, acted
and debut-co-directed homage to
offbeat ’70s era satires, a la
“Rancho Deluxe,” is a study in
movie-by-committee entropy. Made
with five Wilson family members,
the rambling story follows fictional
good-hearted Texas criminal Wendell
Baker (Luke Wilson) whose extended
prison sentence, for selling counterfeit
driver’s licenses to Mexican immigrants,
motivates him to pursue hotel
management. Still heartbroken
at the loss of his true love Doreen
(Eva Mendes), Wendell takes an
administrative post at Shady Grove,
a shabby retirement hotel overseen
by a couple of con men nurses
running a perplexing Medicare
scam. Wendell’s fast friendship
with a crew of quirky residents,
played by Harry Dean Stanton,
Seymour Cassel and Kris Kristofferson,
results in a last ditch attempt
to steal Doreen away from the
grubby hands of her grocery store
manager husband Dave Bix (Will
Ferrell).
It’s evident by the incremental
narrative skids that come with
the passing of each of its three
acts that Luke Wilson started
out with an energized idea that
he simply couldn’t sustain. In
spite of Eva Mendes’ absent romantic
chemistry, we get swept up in
Wilson’s easygoing charisma as
a con man social activist. Wendell
compares the Rio Grande to the
Tigris River as he and his partner-in-crime
Reyes (Jacob Vargas) set up their
mobile shop to sell phony IDs
to illegal migrant workers. Wendell
is a yammer, and he takes pride
in spinning a yarn about all of
the famous Latinos he has supposedly
made friends with over the course
of his long career in forgery.
Calling his Airstream trailer
office “the Ellis Island of the
Southwest,” Wendell goes on at
length to prospective Mexican
clients about his personal relations
with Selma Hayek and Jennifer
Lopez. It’s fun to listen to Wendell
talk in a combination of character
and theme lines that promise a
rowdy rebellious anti-hero cut
from the same burnt hickory as
Jack Nicholson’s character in
“Five Easy Pieces.”
Wilson co-directed the movie
with his older brother Andrew,
also making his directorial debut,
and the diluted effort shows strain
just when the movie should hit
its stride. After getting a somewhat
belated discharge because of his
cheesy demeanor toward the parole
board, Wendell takes to his new
job at Shady Grove like a fish
to water. Standing in the way
of his envisioned glory is head
nurse Neil King (Owen Wilson)
and his lackey sidekick McTeague
(Eddie Griffin in a futile role).
Neil revels in being snarky to
Wendell and to the hotel’s vulnerable
tenants. He’s set up to be a proper
antagonist but the character all
but falls off of the radar after
making a few derogatory comments
and hinting at his corrupt plans.
“The Wendell Baker Story” comes
to gravitate around aging rest
home inhabitants Skip (Harry Dean
Stanton), Boyd (Seymour Cassel)
and Nasher (Kris Kristofferson),
all of whom dream of one last
sensual encounter with the fairer
sex. Except that that possibility
appears less probable for the
reclusive Nasher who looks barely
alive above the neck. Nurse Neil
plans on shipping the three old
codgers away so he can collect
their medical stipends, and it’s
here that Wendell comes to the
rescue by association since Skip
and Boyd take an active interest
in reuniting him with Doreen.
The money scene of the movie comes
when Skip and Boyd try to pick
up a couple of young women working
at a convenience store. Stanton
and Cassel pour on the charm and
the actors’ real-life friendship
of 40-years spices the episode
with a texture of lively improvisation.
These two highly accomplished
actors could command their own
movie alone — “The Ballad of Skip
and Boyd.” Now there’s a sustainable
idea for a movie. CV
‘Bug’
Movie Trailer
William Friedkin ratchets up
suspense and terror to an almost
unbearable level with his adaptation
of Tracy Letts’ award-winning
2004 off-Broadway play “Bug,”
about a couple of outsiders consumed
by paranoia. The psycho-satiric
dramatic material is like a Sam
Shepherd play amped up on a steroid
and amphetamine cocktail that
Friedkin mixes with cunning potency.
Without the benefit of make-up,
Ashley Judd chews scenery and
spits it out as Agnes, an ordinary
lower-class loser holed up in
a desert motel room where she’s
a sitting duck for her abusive
ex-husband Jerry (Harry Connick
Jr.), recently released after
two years in prison. Emotionally
damaged by the disappearance of
her young son some years ago,
lonely Agnes welcomes the live-in
romantic attention of Peter, a
self professed Iraq war veteran
(circa 1990), magnificently played
by Michael Shannon in the role
he created onstage in London and
New York. Between earsplitting
hovering helicopters and threatening
visits from Jerry, Peter discovers
“bugs” he calls aphids that he
believes were planted under his
skin as part of a military medical
experiment. It isn’t long before
the tiny mechanized insects also
invade Agnes’ physiology, and
the couple descends into a bizarre
reality consumed with a panic-stricken
fear scratching at them from their
insides out. Sure, it’s a film
based on a play, but this little
movie kicks like a “Motherbug.”
“Bug” is a disorienting story
because of its rudderless characters,
whose suggestibility to conspiracy
theories pulls them down a path
of excruciating suspicion of a
Government-programmed infestation
of robot bugs. It’s no accident
that the term “bug” is synonymous
with surveillance devices, or
that similar such aphids are referenced
in Philip K. Dick’s “A Scanner
Darkly.” Tracy Letts’ play is
a micro-microcosm of an American
reality that could be played out
in any urban living room or suburban
kitchen where people turn their
paranoid attention inward. Agnes
works as a cocktail waitress at
a roadhouse bar where her lesbian
best friend R.C. (Lynn Collins)
also works. R.C. clearly has the
hots for Agnes, but knows that
Agnes isn’t willing to make such
concessions even if she has sworn
off men. So R.C. introduces Agnes
to Peter, a shy drifter who seems
harmless enough for all of his
geeky Boy Scout charm.
We know from the way Peter talks
that he is a damaged person. He’s
dismissive of sex as a compartmentalized
act that he’s not interested in,
when the subject comes up. Peter’s
low self-esteem painfully leaks
out when he tells Agnes that he’s
“not good for much.” But after
a nasty yet thankfully brief visit
from Jerry, Agnes is happy to
have Peter’s passive aggressive
male presence around. One of the
film’s juiciest scenes comes when
Jerry tries to use his bulk and
macho attitude to intimidate Peter
whose slight build and obsessive
disposition belie his unnerving
ability to put Jerry off balance
with an adamant description of
the bug infestation that consumes
the motel room. Harry Connick
Jr. makes for a respectable bad
guy, and it’s a neat reversal
when, near the end of the story,
we are brought around to hoping
that Jerry will use some of his
meathead brawn to rescue Agnes.
Nevertheless, Michael Shannon
is the revelation here. The established
stage actor who played the unhinged
soldier that rescued survivors
in Oliver Stone’s propaganda puff
piece “World Trade Center” gives
a carefully modulated performance
that speaks directly to the trauma
of returning soldiers. Letts’
script magnifies the ambiguity
of a world where suspicion is
the only currency. CV
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