Mad Dog Time (1996)

 

Director: Larry Bishop

Screenplay: Larry Bishop

Cast: Jeff Goldblum as Mickey Holliday, Richard Dreyfuss as Vic, Gabriel Byrne as Ben London, Ellen Barkin as Rita Everly, Diane Lane as Grace Everly, Gregory Hines as Jules Flamingo, Kyle MacLachlan as Jake Parker, Burt Reynolds as Jackie Jackson, Larry Bishop as Falco, Henry Silva as Sleepy Joe, Michael J. Pollard as Red, Christopher Jones as Falco, Billy Idol as Lee Turner, Angie Everhart as Gabriella, Billy Drago as Wells, Paul Anka as Danny, Rob Reiner as Albert, Joey Bishop as Gottlieb, Richard Pryor as Jimmy the Gravedigger

An Abstract Candidate

 

Mad Dog Time was one of those films flashed up into my attention at one point, in a context long vanished from my memory but occupying the space now given it, one which did initial come with a negative baggage whether it deserved it or not with how it was talked about. My first encounter with Larry Bishop, son of Joey Bishop, one of the members of the "Rat Pack" with Frank Sinatra, was negative when my younger self was not a fan of Hell Ride (2008), a Quentin Tarantino co-produced biker film, which I will have to return to with so much time having past that the old opinion has been forgotten let alone my memories of that film. That film was not helped as I was getting into cinema at the time of the "neo-grindhouse" wave of genre films, in the shadow of Tarantino's own 2007 project Grindhouse with Robert Rodriquez, which I was not a fan of back then. Ironically, Mad Dog Time found itself caught up in the shadow of Tarantino as it was lumped into the films post-Pulp Fiction, when it blew up in 1994, which led to a lot of self-reflective and dialogue heavy crime films come in from its wake. Mad Dog Time was cursed by a zero star review from Roger Ebert¹, one I am going to commit a blasphemy in saying is actually a pretty terrible review. It really does not get into anything about what the film is barring its obsession with dialogue eccentricities, such as the leads having similar sounding names, which is definitely absurd, but spends most of its time trying to think of absurd ways to describe something being pointless without actually needing a film to critique involved. This is something, as time goes on, and as I came to cinema in the time of the greater weight of amateur voices and the internet in opinion, where I find myself realising the film critics who became huge, usually the American ones like Ebert or Pauline Kael, were still figures with their own personal opinions even if they are still worth reading the reflections of.

That may seem insanely blasphemous to start this review with, but Mad Dog Time is definitely one of those subjective films you think is being too smart for its own good to the point of pretention, or you vibe with, and the Ebert review really does not get into what exactly Larry Bishop's film is, especially as it really sticks out next to other self reflective crime films I have seen from the nineties. For me, built with the help of Larry Bishop being friends with some of the cast and others willing to work on this lower budget film, Mad Dog Time from the get-go has an absurdist artificiality to the proceedings which was immediately interesting. This premise has been seen before and that is clearly the point as the film goes through with deconstructing this premise, in which a mob boss Vic (Richard Dreyfuss) is going to be let out the mental health hospital, and everyone is going to be dragged in and then likely dragged into a body bag, such as Mickey Holliday (Jeff Goldblum) for being with Vic's estranged girlfriend Grace (Diane Lane). From the get-go, there is a voice-over set against the cosmos itself explaining this is an alternative dimension, starting with an illustration of a nightclub only to turn into the real set, mostly locked into artificial world based on locations and sets. The best comparison points here, for the set up, is that for a film which Larry Bishop openly admits was inspired by the likes of Samuel Beckett²  this brings to mind too Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987), author Norman Mailer's infamous adaptation of his own novel which is a bizarre, sick humoured subversion of crime film tropes, and Jean-Luc Godard's Detective (1985), which does also fit into Ebert's criticism of Mad Dog Time, of being a film about "two or three characters [starting] out in a scene and [reciting] some dry, hard-boiled dialogue, and then one or two of them will get shot"². Godard's film, which was made as much to be able to make his controversial take on the Virgin Birth in Hail Mary (1985), has more of his introspective musings on art, and significantly less people being shot, but is as much an artificial dissection of the crime films he grew up with as much as Tough Guys... is a fresh take from a veteran author who would have started his literary career at their boom in pulp literature, and Larry Bishop’s film which comes from hindsight to them too.

This Godard comparison is apt, likely as for the late Swiss director’s film, the crime genre were always artificial for me. They are films I have seen from my youth, and they exist outside the reality of crime as artificial stories of morality, unless you see the films like his or even these pulpier versions which undercut and dissect these stories. Vic is going to finally leave the asylum but already chaos is brewing. By the first minutes, actor Michael J. Pollard of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) has been shot dead, and this beings the absurdity clearly here, that this is a world of mindless violence and power games where the sole outside world is a mortician, frequently mentioned, who clearly gets enough clients to work on in the crime world he can afford on-bench advertising. Roger Ebert's criticism of Mad Dog Time was that this was about characters just standing around and pontificating, which would sound pretentious if this was just meant to be cool. Despite some of these characters giving their opinion on the philosophy of life, this dialogue usually leads to funny one liners or the character coming off as ridiculous on purpose. So much is clearly written by Larry Bishop as a joke, everything clearly unhinged and pointlessly violent, beginning with whatever Gabriel Byrne managed to channel as “Brass Balls” Ben London. His is a deeply odd performance just in the accented cadence he chooses, but as the film goes, this becomes one of the best performances, as a rare comedy performance from the actor, and a sign of how artificial the film is.

It can be too "clever" with the naming of certain characters and its symbolism, which seem too obvious when you realise what is hinted in them, but with the eccentric wordplay, such as imagining all of Vic's personalities visiting his nightclub, you see Bishop was never interested in making these characters "cool". They are instead amalgamations of eccentric figures inspired by crime cinema and the Rat Pack, the group his father was part of and the music throughout nodded to. You could figure out a way to stage this in a theatre performance, which is a virtue, but the production design by Dina Lipton does add a lot to its playful eccentricities. Attempting to be the Iago to this Shakespearian tale, but coming off as a lame sleaze weasel, Kyle MacLachlan's base is literally a warehouse barring the abrupt cameo by his own personal aircraft, which is a hilarious non-sequitur alongside being introduced to his cronies, even Billy Drago, eating sushi. Throughout, the fact many scenes stay within warehouse spaces or Vic’s nightclub does not attempt to hide, as much as Godard’s Detective did in a hotel, these plot clichés being forced through this world and puncturing them inherently in the locations used.

The least expected people popping up adds on a first viewing, but to this film's credit, everyone gets something to work with which would grow on other viewings. Yes, that is musician Billy Idol of all people in a small role to challenge Jeff Goldblum to a duel, first revolver to kill the opponent to win, and he stands out, looking like he wandered off another crime pastiche, Alan Rudolph's Trouble in Mind (1985), just for telling Goldblum to fuck himself. This also presents the most cinematic part of the film, that all pistol duels are done sat down, usually behind desks, which is the type of thing I could see Seijun Suzuki having done, with the Hachiro Guryu team who worked on his films^a, when he dissected yakuza cinema out of boredom of the templates demanded of him by Nikkatsu studios. That is part of the reason why this grew on me as I was watching it, a film trying to be cleaver but undercutting its pretensions by both the quality of the performances and that it is deliberately exaggerated on purpose. All the films, many more well regarded, I have mentioned may be viewed as an excuse to defend Mad Dog Time with comparison, it is, but because this shares so many of their traits and their quirks, a few even maligned themselves, sharing a collected DNA between them all in doing different things to undercut this genre.

This also includes the fact Mad Dog Time is incredibly funny, with the fact that ninety percent of the cast dies by the end becoming part of its sick sense of humour, more so because the cast is full of diverse names who all get idiosyncratic touches, like cult legend Henry Silva as a narcoleptic heavy to the least expected Burt Reynolds cameo possible. That your two female leads are figures above this lunacy - Diane Lane standing as calm and collected, Ellen Barkin captivating as someone whose irritable energy is nonetheless contrasted by her character's love for Mick - does emphasis this too. The two figures who keep this world sane among the men are, ironically, Richard Dreyfuss despite being the character meant to be the ticking time bomb, playing the role in a calm of a man after having stripped everything away, and Jeff Goldblum, who radiates film noir charm that makes this, even if you hate the film, one of his best performances. Goldblum is trademarked for his nervous energy, but until he is caught off-guard and forced to try to outsmart his enemies by talking his way out of the situation, his character of Mick is cool and absolutely in control. Even if he has cheated on two sisters, in Grace, who they both know are not meant for each other, and her sister Rita, who is meant to be together with Mick in their love-hate chemistry, the character is still likable and it is because Goldblum plays the role so well.

Even that he can be rattled as a character works, because of Goldblum’s performance. Like a character from many older film noirs, he does play it like the underdog leads in that he is always precariously doomed, but always has the one liner to stick it into someone. Even one of the more abrupt turns, a fake copy of a hit man eventually played by Larry Bishop himself, feels like a pastiche from old pulp radio stories, emphasising how with all the back stabbings and shootings here, nothing is for certain and Mick has to figure out how to survive it. Considering someone pretends to have a heart condition, using Tic Tacs as a fake medication, for as long as they can for the right moment to kill someone shows the absurd lengths for nothing this deals with, the film playing to the idea of the pointless machinations of these gangsters striving for power only leading to chaos. Mad Dog Time was kneecapped itself when it was realised, one where the film won me over in the prolonged joke of Vic threatening Ben London to leave town, only to shoot him in the kneecap when he refuses and telling him to hop off from town. The pointless amount of death is the joke, and it is telling the sanest act is to decide to not draw the trigger on oneself and save another even if one last person is shot to accomplish this. Even that this ends with a sentimental finale, whilst part of the many aspects that may make this an acquired taste, made this a film that vibed for me perfectly. Film opinion is subjective, but with Mad Dog Time, it is weird now seeing this elusive film, dismissed back in the day, only to find myself looking at its negative reactions with surprise. Not necessarily because the film would appeal to everyone, truly an “acquired taste” in how much of it plays against conventions, but because whilst I absolutely see the imperfect moments and all that would put those off in its choices, I have seen a lot of films undermine the tropes of crime cinema like this even before Quentin Tarantino, the supposed reason for this film existing, and see this share all the virtues I have found in those films as here, winning me over as a result as an underrated production.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

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

 

======

1) Roger Ebert's Mad Dog Time review, originally published on November 29th 1996.

2) Larry Bishop's interview as part of the Projection Booth podcast's review on Mad Dog Time, released August 20th 2021.

a) The collective pen name for Seijun Suzuki himself, Takeo Kimura, Atsushi Yamatoya, Yōzō Tanaka, Chūsei Sone, Yutaka Okada, Seiichirō Yamaguchi and Yasuaki Hangai.