Wild Palms (1993)

 

Directors: Peter Hewitt, Keith Gordon, Kathryn Bigelow and Phil Joanou

Screenplay: Bruce Wagner

Based on the comic strip by Bruce Wagner

Cast: James Belushi as Harry Wyckoff, Dana Delany as Grace Wyckoff, Ben Savage as Coty Wyckoff, Robert Loggia as Senator Tony Kreutzer, Angie Dickinson as Josie Ito, David Warner as Eli Levitt, Kim Cattrall as Paige Katz, Ernie Hudson as Tommy Laszlo, Nick Mancuso as Tully Woiwode, Bebe Neuwirth as Tabba Schwartzkopf, Aaron Michael Metchik as Peter Katz, Brad Dourif as Chickie Levitt

Re-Review

From the first scene - in which the older brother of Jim Belushi, James Belushi, enters his suburban kitchen at night only to find a rhino there  by the refrigerator- you are immediately primed for a very weird and idiosyncratic television mini-series to ever be produced. Since I have learnt of said series, I was immensely fascinated by its existence and found it fit my sensibilities completely. Riding the zeitgeist wave Twin Peaks (1990-1991) created, broadcast on the same station ABC and co-produced by Oliver Stone, the result is a peculiar beast. One where Stone's cameo as himself, being interviewed about secret JFK conspiracy documents proving his theories, is the thing that barely bats an eyelid about what is going on throughout the narrative. That a phone line was set up to explain plot points per episode is a sign of where Wild Palms goes, a melodrama with a pulpy sci-fi bent and a lot on its mind.

Belushi is Harry Wyckoff, who finds a new career path under senator Tony Kreutzer (Robert Loggia), founder of the religion Synthiotics and founder of the Wild Palms group, who are developing both virtual reality television and mimizine, a synthetic drug with allows one to interact with the holograms. It is not long into the first episode, a feature length beginning, that Wyckoff's life becomes a complex spiral - caught between the war between The Fathers and The Friends, two opposing political sides; discovering that his son Coty (Ben Savage) may not be his own; that Kreutzer is a corrupt wannabe demigod, that and his wife Grace (Dana Delany) is suffering from her connections to the Wild Palms group, not least because her mother Josie Ito (Angie Dickinson) is a vindictive, violent person and Kreutzer's sister; that the story starts rolling, like a noir plot, with an old flame Paige Katz (Kim Cattrall), connected to Kreutzer, who has re-entered his life and stoked a flame that is eating away at both of them.

It is an alternative reality - set in 2007 when Japan did not have the economic bubble burst and influenced US culture - but so much of the five episode mini-series is incredibly fresh and meaningful still. The danger of religious cults; a populist politician played by Robert Loggia whose ability to charm by his charisma; that a murder shown live on TV will be forgotten a week later; and the fact that Wild Palms is about virtual reality technology in peoples' homes that, with a drug that can allow you to touch and interact with holograms, can be used to control people. So much stands out, even if the look and lore is of their times, the best of these sci-fi/dystopian/cyberpunk stories still interesting in their themes. The plot of Wild Palms is in fact not that difficult to set out, merely that there is so much on its mind, that it can be a lot to take in, especially as the show embraces more eccentric details. Its ideas are stil salient even in terms of virtual reality; back then, it was still disconnected from the reality of basic effects and having to wear one of Daft Punk's helmets, but the themes of reality and our growing addictions to artificial simulacra exist even into the modern day.

Whilst there are four directors involved - Peter Hewitt, former actor-director Keith Gordon, Three O'Clock High (1987) director Phil Joanou, and Kathryn Bigelow - this is the brainchild of Bruce Wagner. A novelist and screenwriter, his career in cinema is small but with David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars (2014) among his filmography, an underrated and weird Cronenberg work, his idiosyncrasies are felt between the surrealism to constant references to spirituality including Buddhism. The other factor is Oliver Stone, who produced the mini-series and in the midst of his nineties period clearly saw many of his sensibilities here. He is probably the reason why this is a lot more cinematic than a lot of mini-series, a sense of scale found in its style, where the camera will actually glide across scenes, and musical choices even include the Rolling Stones.

The cast certainly helps, certain performances an acquired taste and yet appropriate for what turned into a melodrama in sci-fi dystopia costume. For James Belushi, it is the least expected role he could have as he is known for comedies and family films until, in a nice piece of synchronicity, being cast in the 2017 series of Twin Peaks. That Belushi apparently had no idea what the plot was about almost feels fitting for the film. As our cipher into this world, an everyman who realise his life is more entrenched in conspiracy than believes, he is the actor playing the most muted role which means he is easy to dismiss, but someone appreciated by me nonetheless. Especially as he is the sane cog in the midst of everyone else, with only the sadness of Dana Delany as his wife, in her tragic plot trajectory, a grounded emotional current.

Robert Loggia, who described his role as Tony Kreutzer in the context of ancient Greek plays when interviewed about the miniseries, chews scenery appropriate for a character that has had people killed and also starts randomly bursting into song in the final episodes. Not a man unknown for weird films, an acid flashback to his Al Johnson impersonation in The Ninth Configuration (1980) and that he would work with David Lynch in Lost Highway (1997), he fits a role of the ultimate tyrant, obsessed with a McGuffin known as the Go Chip which will give him digital immortality. Angie Dickinson, from the likes of Dressed to Kill (1980), manages to outdo even Loggia as his sister Josie, channelling both Bettie Davis and Joan Crawford from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) with her pronounced makeup and heightened performance; appropriate for a character with an obsession with kidnapping her former husband and Friends leader Eli Levitt (David Warner), and gouging peoples' eyes out. Among these figures also includes Coty Wyckoff (Ben Savage), Harry's son who is both a new TV star for a cheesy show "Church Windows", naturally the first stage for controlling the masses, and a child sociopath; Ernie Hudson from the Ghostbusters films as a Friends member who becomes addicted to mimizine and can hear church bells as a result, and even Brad Dourif in a small role. Another smaller role is by one of the mini-series' directors themselves in Kathryn Bigelow, which has additional pertinence as this feels like a dry run for Strange Days (1995), her dystopian sci-fi epic which also deals with the dangers of technology through artificial memories.

The tapestry, which can be boiled down to the evil  "Fathers" and good "Friends" who are at war, is pleased to cram in as many references as it can, from the mythology of the hungry ghost to cinema references. Villains have their own fears and compulsions, and side characters on the Friends are even clearly meant to be gay lovers, with far more progressiveness to that point by it never being explicitly evoked yet part of a tragedy in the midst of this underground war. The plot twists and events fly thick and fast - secret tunnels in swimming pools, child kidnapping and psychotic child stars, drugs which induce hallucinations of church bells and microchips that create digital immortality - but there is always a sense of scale and gravitas which makes everything feel appropriate. It gets to the point where you have a glib reference here in calling a cafe in the background "Eros plus Massacre", a tip to the hat to a three and a half hour Japanese experimental film by Yoshishige Yoshida, which shows we are completely different territory to most television at the time. This is even before you get to Wagner's own quirks like his obsession, spoken by the characters, of rhinos being fallen unicorns. For television, it is like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) at points.

If Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2006) is like MTV scatterbrained version of this type of high-minded sci-fi, Wild Palms in tone is far more stylish and an moody, like the classy event it was originally clearly meant to be and from the director of Natural Born Killers (1994). Palms' class is felt just in Ryuichi Sakamoto scoring the mini-series, the former Yellow Magic Orchestra member and legendary film composer creating an underrated score in his career, or how for all its dated CGI animation, the premise is thought-out and still poignant, the dangers of one's dreams and alternative realities being controlled and manipulated. Like a high budget soap opera, the over-the-top drama and twists feel on point, and appropriate for a world that has yuppies beating people up in the street that everyone walks past.

It never comes off as tacky, and even the aesthetic, where Japanese clothing has influenced these characters' costumes and everything is high on early nineties style, everything is matter-of-fact, a grounded world that does evoke Wagner's constant obsession with Los Angeles and Hollywood if his bibliography is to attest to. That it is set in Los Angeles of another world makes the world's mishmash of content befitting, and the absurdity is also clearly on purpose - rhinos in the kitchen, dreams of taking a katana as one's briefcase, even the casting of Bob Gunton as the obviously suspicious psychologist - with a sense of humour occasionally and proudly appearing. I mean, one episode includes in its first scenes a hologram sixties girl group and the final episode is named after a song from a Marx Brothers' film. Author William Gibson has a cameo as himself, admitting he has been called the inventor of "cyberpunk", only to walk off and never be seen again.

The general madness on display was the original reason I feel in love with this title and is weaves gladly with the ambition and quality, characters spitting out elaborate and memorable dialogue in each scene with the content being as memorable and idiosyncratic. In spite of its limitations, still for a higher budgeted television production having to tell some of its content off-screen, Wild Palms is deliciously weird. Where swimming pools have secret doors at the bottoms, lairs to the Friends' hideouts, and that, as in all dystopian sci-fi of the time, there is a slum district which law enforcement stays out of, a Casablanca of rebels and bootleg holograms. The dichotomy between advanced tech, like virtual reality, against issues like the complete lack of internet, living in a subconscious realm outside of our past or future off the television screen, is matched by both moments of real emotional weight but also the weirdness of a religious cult whose motto "Everything must go" is literally taking an advertising motto as biblical text, the accidental comparisons to a real and controversial religious group not likely to be missed either whatever your opinion on them. Wild Palms is something deliriously weird that, even if it came after Twin Peaks' popularity, somehow was bankrolled and exists despite the sense it was never going to succeed even as a miniseries. An instant cult work, not contrived but too weird to live. Merely a slither of Wild Palms creates many questions which, even when answered, open up so many new questions of where they came from. Now that I have come to admire it even in context of its TV presentation, which once before was a flaw, Wild Palms gets by as a bizarre TV melodrama, a product of its time which thankfully exists, only to have turned into something I absolutely adore.

 

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low