The Grifters (film)
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- This article discusses the movie Grifters. See the rock group Grifters for information about the band from Tennessee.
| The Grifters | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical Release Poster |
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| Directed by | Stephen Frears |
| Produced by | Martin Scorsese Robert A. Harris Jim Painter |
| Written by | Novel: Jim Thompson Screenplay: Donald E. Westlake |
| Starring | John Cusack Anjelica Huston Annette Bening Pat Hingle |
| Music by | Elmer Bernstein |
| Cinematography | Oliver Stapleton |
| Editing by | Mick Audsley |
| Distributed by | Miramax |
| Release date(s) | December 5, 1990 |
| Running time | 119 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Gross revenue | $13,446,769 (USA) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Grifters is a 1990 neo-noir film directed by Stephen Frears and produced by Martin Scorsese. It is based upon The Grifters, a pulp novel by Jim Thompson.
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[edit] Plot
The Grifters tells the story of Lilly Dillon, a long-time female con artist who begins to rethink her life when her son Roy, also a grifter, suffers an almost-fatal injury due to a failed scam. Lilly works for a bookmaker, Bobo, handling playback at the tracks, that is, betting money to lower the odds of longshots. While driving to the La Jolla races, she stops at Los Angeles to visit Roy, whom she hasn't seen in eight years. She finds him in a miserable state: he has been hit with a baseball bat trying to con a bartender, and is bleeding internally. When medical assistance finally comes, Lilly confronts the doctor involved, and threatens to have the man killed if her son dies.
At the hospital, Lilly meets and instantly despises Myra, Roy's girlfriend, who also lives on scams and is a few years older than her son. She urges her son to quit the grift and leaves late for La Jolla, missing a race where the winner was paying 70-1. For this mistake, Bobo burns her hand with a cigar.
Upon leaving the hospital, Roy takes Myra to La Jolla for the weekend. On the train, she notices him conning a group of sailors, and later reveals that she is also on the grift and looking for a partner for a long-con operation.
Myra describes her long association with another grifter, Cole, and how they took advantage of wealthy investors in business con-job, including a greedy oil investor, Gloucester Hebbing. The anecdote is recounted in a serio-comic flashback sequence. The flashback scene takes place in plush office building and culminates in a fake FBI raid with a fake shooting of Myra to discourage Hebbing from going to the police.
Roy hesitates at first, but finally refuses her proposition, fearing she may try to dupe him herself. Myra sees his mother behind Roy's decision and moves for revenge. She hints to Bobo that Lilly keeps a large sum of money stashed in her Cadillac, money she had stolen from him over the years. Lilly is warned by a friend and flees. Myra follows with the intention of killing her.
Roy is called by an FBI agent to identify his mother's body, found in a motel room with the face completely destroyed. While identifying it as Lilly's, he silently notes a cigar burn is missing from her right hand. Coming back home, he finds Lilly trying to steal all his money so that she may keep running away from Bobo. She had shot Myra while being attacked at the motel and arranged things so that it looked like she was the one who got killed.
Roy refuses to let her go with his money. In a desperate attempt to get away, she hits him with a suitcase and unintentionally breaks a glass onto his neck, slashing his artery, causing him to bleed to death. This in turn, causes Lilly to break down in tears as her son's lifeless body remains on the floor. Silently packing up the money, Lilly exits the room and descends off into the night but with the knowledge of how she extracted the money, by taking the life of her own son in the process.
[edit] Production
John Cusack had read Jim Thompson's novel in 1985 and was so impressed by it that he wanted to turn the book into a film himself.[1] The project originated with Martin Scorsese who subsequently brought in Stephen Frears to direct while he produced.[2] Frears had just finished making Dangerous Liaisons and was looking for another project when Scorsese approached him.[3] The British filmmaker was drawn to Thompson's "tough and very stylistic" writing and described it, "as if pulp fiction meets Greek tragedy".[3] Scorsese looked for a screenwriter and filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff recommended Donald Westlake. Frears contacted Westlake who turned him down immediately but changed his mind soon afterwards.[2]
When Cusack found out that Scorsese and Frears were planning an adaptation, he actively pursued a role in the project. Cusack has said that he saw the character of Roy Dillon as "a wonderfully twisted role to dive into".[1] To research his role, he studied with real grifters and learned card and dice tricks as well as sleight-of-hand tricks like the 20-dollar-switch that his character does in the film. He even successfully pulled off this trick at a bar on a bartender he knew well.[4]
For the role of Lilly, Frears originally considered Cher but she became too expensive after the success of Moonstruck.[5] Frears first contacted Anjelica Huston about playing Lilly in 1989 while she was filming Crimes and Misdemeanors, but after reading the script, she was unsure.[6] Before she could make a decision, Frears called her and said that they were going in a different direction in the casting. Melanie Griffith was approached to play Lilly because he was interested in making a film "about how shocking it would be to have a mother who looked like your sister,"[3] but the actress was pregnant at the time and could not do it. A few months later, Frears contacted Huston again to see if she was still interested.[6] He was reluctant to cast her because she looked like, "a lady" and decided to cheapen her look with a bleached blond wig and wearing "vulgar clothes".[3] Huston read the script again and felt more passionate about the part and was cast in the role. To research her part, she studied lady dealers at card parlors in L.A. county.[6]
The shoot was emotionally challenging for Huston. After completing the final scene between Lilly and Roy, she was so drained from the experience that she ran from the set and the studio. It took her hours to recover.[6] After shooting the scene where Bobo Justus tortures Lilly for information, Huston was so affected by the rough quality of the scene that she spent that night throwing up.[6]
[edit] Reception
The Grifters had its world premiere on September 14, 1990 at the Toronto Film Festival at the Elgin Theater.[3][7] The film had a brief Academy Award-qualifying run in New York City and Los Angeles before opening wide in January.[8]
[edit] Awards
The Grifters was nominated in 1990 for four Academy Awards:
- Best Director (Stephen Frears)
- Best Actress in a Leading Role (Anjelica Huston)
- Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Annette Bening)
- Best Adapted Screenplay (Donald E. Westlake)
It lost in all categories. Some magazines remarked that Elmer Bernstein might have deserved a nomination for his original score.
The actresses were also nominated for a few notable international prizes, including the BAFTA (Bening) and the Golden Globe (Huston): they were both awarded by the American National Society of Film Critics. Westlake's screenplay was nominated by the Writers Guild of America, losing - as he did at the Oscars - to Michael Blake's Dances with Wolves.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Van Gelder, Lawrence. "At the Movies", New York Times, August 31, 1990.
- ^ a b Bygrave, Mike. "A Shot at Point Blank", The Guardian, July 16, 1990.
- ^ a b c d e Kelly, Deirdre. "An English Director on Challenge of Making his First Yankee Flick", Globe and Mail, September 15, 1990.
- ^ Goodman, Joan. "Getting the Drift of the Grift", The Guardian, January 31, 1991.
- ^ Johnston, Sheila. "The Innocent Abroad", The Independent, January 31, 1991.
- ^ a b c d e Sharkey, Betsy. "Anjelica Huston Seeks the Soul of a Con Artist", New York Times, December 2, 1990.
- ^ Harris, Christopher. "Frears to Attend Premiere", Globe and Mail, August 29, 1990.
- ^ Green, Tom. "Haute Huston", USA Today, December 11, 1990.
[edit] Quotes
- Bobo Justus: One question. Do you want to stick to that story, or do you want to keep your teeth?
Lilly Dillon: I want to keep my teeth. - Myra Langtry: I have only one thing now. Are you interested?
Jeweler: Well, I'd have to see it, of course.
Myra Langtry: You are seeing it. You're looking right at it.
Jeweler: I see.
[edit] Taglines
- Seduction. Betrayal. Murder. Who's Conning Who?
