MovieChat Forums > The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) Discussion > subcommittee...

subcommittee...

posted 19 years ago by jpgonzo81-1
8 replies | jump to latest

deniro. pacino. hackman. hoffman. o'toole, olivier, o big frickin deal. hacks. the whole gaggle. in this poorly photographed film, harris, an extremely gifted comedienne from the early second city days, plays the role of ellie tynan completely, and splendidly straight. great self-restraint. she pilfers every scene she's in. she pulls the rug right up from underneath meryl streep's feet. a performance which only further goes to prove what depth and range this earthquake of an actress once had. watch her reaction after discovering alda and streep's clandestine affair, its as authentic as the sistine chapel. the frickin sistine chapel! and how she attempts to tear the tynan bedroom apart when he gets home. watch as the two tumble down the family staircase, every step on the way down another nail in the coffin of their disintegrating marriage. the image of her spilling the contents of his briefcase still rings in my head. the very words "you sonofabitch!" are expressed so vehemenously, that you almost actually believe for a moment the two were genuinely in the middle of an allout marital conflict. alda's wounded puppy dog golden-boy senator is no match for harris' jilted caseworker--she gives him the 3rd degree and has him walk on the hot coals he has scattered. poor alda. maybe sleeping with streep wasnt such a good idea. oh ya-- alda telling melvyn douglas to quit speaking in french is hilarious--i mean, gut-busting. i urinated all over my khakis. rip torn and the gumbo was funny too. alan alda wrote a terrific screenplay and his grasp of the bureaucracy is dead-on and quite impressive(though not altogether surprising!)the wrap-up was pretty lame, but now i know where rage against the machine got their cover for the renegades of funk album.
lets see deniro try this!

avoid comparisons. comparisons cause arguements.

thank god for little baby ducks.

[–] WarpedRecord 13 years ago

I could never vote for a man who would cheat on Barbara Harris with Meryl Streep – and I love Meryl Streep (though not as much as Barbara Harris). That scene at the end before Joe accepts the nomination (or does he?) is just astonishing – the tears that well up in her eyes. I would have urinated all over my khakis during that Francais scene also, but I was wearing 501s. Much easier to wash. Of course, these days, the senator would have been shipped off to Paris for giving that speech. Did you really think this was poorly photographed? Anyway 9/10 stars from me.

[–] jpsuperfly81 13 years ago

Its funny you mention the quality of the photography...I reread my comment before reading yours and I was asking myself the same thing...no I don't think it filmed bad, I just got a bad vhs copy and was bitching about the tape quality, not the cinematography. The copy I have must be from the Carter era. The shading and contrast levels are terrible. Poor transfer. How far we've come. Very well acted, though, and very enjoyable for a film about a politician.

[–] WarpedRecord 13 years ago

Hello, JP! Glad you're still around these parts. Yes, the transfer is very bad, considering this was from a major studio and with a major cast. My VHS is also cropped/pan 'n' scan (as I suspect yours is), so we're not even getting the full picture, washed-out though it may be.

Of course, I paid a buck for it at a thrift store, so I can't complain too much. I'm just glad I finally found it. I remember this playing on HBO in the early '80s, but I was too young to really appreciate it then.

This was released in an era when people didn't care so much about technical quality and tapes were released via the cheapest means necessary. I wish they'd release a quality widescreen DVD of this, maybe with a trailer? This film feel remarkably timely for a 32-year-old movie, and it's great to see these stars relatively early in their careers.

[–] jpsuperfly81 13 years ago

http://movies.netflix.com/WiPlayer?trkid=1481020&movieid=70181831

[–] emncaity 12 years ago

I'm watching it on DVD right now, and it looks pretty good.

[–] emncaity 12 years ago

Agreed on nearly all aspects, but you're selling Alda short, even if you disregard (as one should, I think) the real brilliance of his playing this precise character at that precise point in time, when he was seen as a paragon of liberal virtue (and I'm saying that as what most people these days would call a "flaming liberal" myself). For him, to play this character at this time, the better the performance the more he was going to make half the audience feel somewhat betrayed by the notion that somebody considered so pure, or any liberal at all, could be corrupted in this way. But even disregarding Alda's own persona at the time (and here I'll plug his autobiographical books, which are really good), the performance itself is really good. But I'm not going to argue with you one bit about Barbara Harris, who wins over any adult viewer in the very first scene she's in.

The whole thing is also great political commentary today, except that it's far too mild compared to what goes on now. In 1979-1980, Democrats (thanks to Tony Coelho et al.) were just starting to take corporate money because they were afraid they were going to be so completely outgunned by Republican corporate money that they'd never have a chance in national elections ever again, and they're probably right--but it's led to the current situation where we have essentially one party, the American Corporate Party, varsity and junior varsity versions, with some notable individual exceptions on Capitol Hill. When people can characterize the corporate-friendly (despite his rhetoric) Obama as a "socialist," you know we've completely lost our bearings and our minds. Somebody needs to remake this film with a currently plausible fact set. Talk about depressing but necessary.

[–] soulthinker 11 years ago

In the time of Joe Tynan the two parties in the US Congress got along with each other. It was a lack of partisanship and now since Reagan got in and some reactionary Republicans it got ugly and now it is heated and stuck.

[–] emncaity 11 years ago

Couldn't agree more (although even during the time of Reagan and Tip O'Neill, the two sides got along better than this and got a lot more accomplished).

I mean, when one party has gotten to the point where its central reason to exist is to bring down government entirely, when their primary philosophy is that "government IS the problem," it's pretty hard to do any good governing with them, all right.