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Originally posted 6/6/22 on Substack.
Hello, and welcome back to Against the ’70s, our first post since May 18. My sincerest apologies for the lack of updates - this last month has been a bit manic, as my twin boys have been wrapping up their online school year, catching up on lessons and finishing projects. That is now behind us, and summer has begun! My intention is bang these posts out at a quicker pace, at least for the next couple months.
Today’s post is a Request Line feature, based on the request of newsletter supporter Ryan Godfrey. Thanks, Ryan! Every month, $5 subscribers to the newsletter or Patreon may request a 70s film for me to write about, and subscribers of any level can vote each month to pick one movie out of my five choices to write about.1
Except this month. Because I’m so behind, there will be no poll, and I won’t be taking any Request Line requests. This means that, for my $5 Patreon subscribers, I have paused payment for this month. Unfortunately, for Substack subscribers, that kind of option isn’t available, so instead I’ve extended their subscriptions for a month at no charge. Everything should be back to normal in July.
Finally: there are spoilers here, and by spoilers I mean pretty much the entire movie is spoiled. I don’t think this is a movie where that’s a huge deal - the one big twist can be seen a mile away - but read with care nonetheless. Thanks!
What is it? 11 Harrowhouse, directed by Aram Avakian, adaptation by Charles Grodin, screenplay by Jeffrey Bloom, based on the novel by Gerald A. Browne, and starring Charles Grodin, Candice Bergen, James Mason, Trevor Howard, John Gielgud, and introducing Corky, the Cockroach Who Loved Chocolate Cake2.
First viewing? Yes. In fact, never even heard of it. Thanks, Ryan!
What’s it about? A small-time diamond merchant named Chesser (Charles Grodin) is hired by a billionaire (Trevor Howard) to buy and oversee the cutting of an unusually large diamond. When Chesser is robbed of the diamond under suspicious circumstances, he and his rich girlfriend (Candice Bergen) attempt to pull off a heist at 11 Harrowhouse, the largest wholesaler of diamonds, with the help of a disgruntled employee (James Mason).
What are your thoughts about it? Charles Grodin passed away almost exactly a year ago as I write this. He wasn’t super prolific in the 70s and ’80s, yet, as a child, it seemed as if he was in everything. I suppose it was noticeable because he rarely showed up as a lead, but rather as a secondary character emerging from the margins, usually some kind of executive, whether it was oil- (King Kong), ad- (The Incredible Shrinking Woman) or -secretary (Heaven Can Wait). His spirit as a comedic actor, his very presence, is so tied up with this era that I have to remind myself he wasn’t in stuff like Mr. Mom or Foul Play or The In-Laws. (Seems like he could’ve been though, right?) Despite his multi-decade career as an actor (as well as commentator and author), Charles Grodin is hereby inducted into my personal canon as an Against the 70s icon.
Grodin’s iconicity is about more than just his film appearances; it’s also about his very Grodin-ness. He combined an expressively inexpressive face, one of the greatest since Buster Keaton, with a voice like a disapproving frown, dripping with disappointment, deep loathing and/or eternal peevishness, depending on the character. I haven’t seen The Great Muppet Caper, but I imagine he’s an ideal Muppet straight man, his quiet disapproval lending weight and credence to whatever antics those puppets got up to. The Seventies were about, among other things, retrenchment, in every sense of the word; his characters often embodied that diminished outlook, either embodying it or as a reaction to it.
A great bit of silent comedy from Grodin, which doubles as character development for both Chesser and The System.
Despite his squarish handsomeness, his general aura of annoyance wasn’t usually conducive to protagonists, but rather more suitable to slimy functionaries or hapless nebbishes. And while he did get lead roles, I’m not sure he had one quite like Howard Chesser in 11 Harrowhouse.
Coming off the success of The Heartbreak Kid (1972, Elaine May), Grodin chose, as his next project, a film version of Gerald A. Browne’s novel 11 Harrowhouse Street. Grodin adapted the book himself3 and took the lead role of Chesser, a low-level American diamond dealer in London, there to buy stones from a financial entity known only as The System. One of the common promo pictures for the film, used for the DVD cover, shows Grodin aiming a gun, with Candice Bergen at his side, striking a smooth, confident pose, looking for all the world like James Bond. Was this Charles Grodin, action hero?
Grodin. Charles Grodin.
As anyone who has seen the movie can tell you, this is definitely not what 11 Harrowhouse is up to. (I mean, this is about as heroic as I’ve seen Grodin, but he’s still very much a Grodin character.) For about the first 75 of its 90 minutes, this is a heist movie with an unlikely and reluctant thief at the heart of it, and its terrific. Chesser isn’t entirely heroic; he’s resorts to stealing from The System in order to pay off a debt, one that his girlfriend Maren could take care of but pride prevents him from letting her4. But The System is shown to be murderous, classist, probably anti-semitic, and they treat lifelong, loyal employee and non-drummer Charles Watts (James Mason) like shit. Chesser’s mission is just as much about as helping Watts get payback as much as anything else. We’re on Chesser’s side because Watts and Maren are.
Ryan, why is there a cockroach on the poster? RYAN WHY IS THERE A COCKROACH ON THE POSTER
As you might have gathered from the poster, cockroaches form a plot point in 11 Harrowhouse. As you may recall from my Damanation Alley writeup, I have a specific relationship to that kind of insect, in that I’m absolutely phobic about them. As part of his plan to break into The System, Chesser takes some cockroaches from a jar 5 and paints them with different colors of nail polish, so he can send them down different tubes to find the right one that leads to the diamond vault. (If that sounds familiar, that’s because it was ripped off beat for beat in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky.) So how bad was this for me, Mr. Phobic? To answer that, I’m introducing a new feature to Against the 70s, one I hope I won’t have to roll out often: The Roach Report. The Roach Report gives the reader a sense of how the film is to watch for the roach-phobic, on a scale of from 1 footstomp (an easy sit, all things considered) to 5 footstomps (absolute torture)6. 11 Harrhowhouse gets 1 1/2 footstomps: the bugs are, if I’m not mistaken, of the German variety, small, wispy, fragile-looking things, and aside from two close-ups as they’re painted, we only really see one from a moderate distance.
I distinctly recall reading Grodin saying that, when he learned that Mason was going to play the scene without looking at him, he decided to look at Mason the entire time. But now I can’t find the source.
Speaking of Soderbergh, director Aram Avakian (probably best known for the great documentary Jazz on a Summer’s Day) shoots with a proto-Soderberghian style, full of cool tones and stationary camera set-ups. I often think of 70s cinema as the opposite of ‘80s quick cut, so-called “music video” editing, but even on those terms, Avakian gives scenes an unusual amount of room and oxygen to play out. The heist sequence is long and effectively wordless, a series of uninflected shots spelling out the process of sucking up billions of dollars worth of diamonds from an impregnable vault. Avakian works hard to make every moment interesting, and does so without breaking a sweat. (A favorite bit: Chesser and Watts’ clandestine meeting in the park, filmed in longfocus to suggest surveillance, giving a rather vanilla scene a hint of danger.) Avakian got his start as an editor, and only directed six features, with 11 Harrowhouse as his final one. I think it was Roger Ebert who suggested that editors, and not cinematographers, make for great directors; whoever said it, the notion holds here. Avakian passed away in 1987; based on this film, I dearly wish he’d been able to make more. (Reportedly, Avakian was initially hired to edit The Godfather, but apparently tried to get Coppola fired in order to replace him. I have no idea if this is covered in the 2022 miniseries The Offer but I hope it is.)
Tammy Bakker’s got a lot on her plate.
It’s a quiet movie, and that’s with constant narration from Grodin. To my surprise, the narration was not part of the original cut. (It’s not clear whether Grodin or Bloom or someone else wrote the narration ahead of the recording, or if Grodin improvised it in the booth, or what.) Critics didn’t care much for the film, and the narration was usually cited as a factor. What I have to say will rock your world: I like the narration. Generally. It provides some context that I don’t think would be graspable with Grodin and Avakian’s style in stony lockstep. The scene that introduces Chesser has virtually nothing going on audibly save Grodin’s narration, and I can imagine this kind of dry silence driving a test audience mad. So I’m sympathetic to wanting to hear Chesser’s thoughts, even if a lot of it is of the audience-goosing “If I had know then what I know now” variety. And if we didn’t have the narration, we wouldn’t get the moment when Chesser notes that, upon entering Massey’s estate, “to have a place like this, you have to start with it or get it. In either case, you gotta know or be a really big crook.”
11 Harrowhouse is a terrific movie, a credit to the heist genre, and necessary viewing for Grodin completists. It’s shy of great, though, if only because the first five minutes and the final fifteen feel like a different movie. In the first five, an airplane lands and a man, having some kind of medical emergency, is taken off the plane, accompanied by a doctor. They board an ambulance, and it’s revealed they are smugglers who have just brought diamonds into the country. Literally the moment we learn this, a bomb, hidden with the diamonds, blows up the ambulance. Presumably this opener is here to juice up the narrative (otherwise the story begins with Chesser in a waiting room) and demonstrate how dangerous The System is. But couldn’t we have intuited that? Especially since the violence inherent in The System never comes up again?
Then there’s the last fifteen. Chesser and Maren have stolen every last one of The System’s diamonds, and take them back to Massey - who, unsurprisingly, immediately double-crosses them. Chesser and Maren manage to drive off in the van with the diamonds, but find they are trapped on Massey’s massive estate. What follows is a long chase sequence that abandons the heretofore dry, slightly chilly tone for something a bit wackier, tossing aside the weight that had been building up over the previous 75 minutes. The deaths in the ambulance were a shock, Watts’ death is tragic, but here, some of Massey’s men die in two different car explosions and it’s a joke. It’s like the movie itself is making a “wrap it up” gesture. It might’ve been… fine… like that, but Grodin’s narration continues through this, dropping unfunny comments, adding nothing and drawing attention away from the action. I’d bet big money that, had the narration been removed here, no one would’ve noticed, and no one would’ve complained about it elsewhere.
The Matrix Reloaded (2003, The Wachowski Sisters)
The ending confirms there’s no big theme to 11 Harrowhouse, no great meaning. Massey and The System might be a crooks, but Chesser isn’t interested in leveling the playing field by crashing the value of diamonds. There’s no class consciousness here, despite it peeking through at the beginning. It’s just a guy who wants to propose to his girlfriend with the biggest diamond possible.
How many stars out of five? Three and a half.
Where can I stream it? As of this writing, there is an unofficial YouTube stream available, but who knows if it’s still there by the time you read it. You do. You know. You’ll know because you can click the link.7 You can also, as of this writing8, rent or buy it from Amazon Video, Apple, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu, or DirecTV. I don’t know for sure, but I’m still certain the quality from these streamers is better than the unofficial YouTube upload.
What can we take from it? 11 Harrowhouse doesn’t immediately lend itself to new rpg material. Sure, there’s the heist, but heists are a) a pretty big topic, which I may cover in the future and b) there’s a whole rpg - Blades in the Dark - that’s built around heists, so the ground is well-trod. So instead, I’d like this post’s rpg material to be a Cypher System tribute to the late, fucking great Charles Grodin.
Are you serious? Are you joking? Are you bluffing, or are you telling the truth? No one can say, because your personality can best be described as
DEADPAN
Your manner, especially your facial expressions, don’t tend to give away your true emotions, whether that’s joy or irritation or even terror. It’s rare that you raise your voice or make large, sweeping gestures, and even when you do, your manner is often read as joking or ironic.
Close ot the Vest: +4 to your Intellect Pool
Skill: You are trained in all tasks involving bluffing, whether that’s a high-stakes negotiation or nickel poker. Speaking of poker…
Poker-Faced: Once per session, while interacting with an NPC, you can leave them with the opposite impression of your true feelings or intentions. If you hate that NPC, after interacting with them, you can make them think you like them, or vice-versa.
Straight-Faced: Even when you are expressing yourself as boldly and clearly as possible, your deadpan nature can still cause you to be misunderstood or dismissed. Once per session, the GM can make a GM Intrusion to have your interaction with an NPC go awry in some way related to this Descriptor. Per the regular GM Intrusion rules, you recieve 2 XP and you must give 1 XP away to another player. However, you cannot refuse this Intrusion.
Initial Link to the Starting Adventure:
Yeah, Request Line isn’t happening anymore, since I’ve discontinued both the Substack and Patreon versions of Against the ’70s. If I can find a way to reincorporate it back into this blog version, I will.↩︎
This is a joke. I don’t actually know the cockroach’s name.↩︎
According to the credits, Grodin adapted the novel, but Jeffrey Bloom, probably best known for writing and directing the sand-monster movie Blood Beach, wrote the screenplay. I’m not 100% sure how someone adapts a book but doesn’t write the screenplay. Did Grodin write a treatment? Did Grodin write the screenplay but was blocked from full credit due to WGA rules? And who wrote the voiceover that was added after test screenings?↩︎
Maren is an odd, very writerly character. She seems, to me, less like a real person than a liquid that fills in the gaps where the plot needs to be. She’s a fast, reckless driver so the climax works. She’s independently wealthy so she can offer Chesser an out that he can reject out of pride. But Chesser can’t marry her for her money, which would solve all of his problems, because she’ll be disinherited of her deceased husband’s wealth if she remarries. She’s totally game to steal billions of diamonds because Chesser needs a partner. And so on. Bergen’s a fun and light presence, a great contrast to Grodin, so it’s fine, but her character never feels organic.↩︎
No indication is given how these bugs were procured, and no indication is desired.↩︎
Here’s some calibration for the Roach Report. Bug (1975, Jeannot Szwarc) is wall-to-wall images of cockroaches, and gets a 5. Alice, Sweet Alice (1976, Alfred Sole) has, by contrast, only two scenes of cockroaches, but jesus christ those scenes. If you know, you know. It also rates a 5. Damnation Alley (1977, Jack Smight), which I’ve talked about previously, is about a 3 1/2. The Nest (1988? Director? Who cares, I’m not googling that shit because fuck that poster) could’ve been as low as 4, but there’s one scene so completely nauseating, even if you aren’t phobic, that I have to go with a 5. No way I’m ever sitting through that again. The does-thisbother-your-title-I’m-not-infringing-your-title They Nest (2000, Ellory Elkayem) sticks to CG bugs in the second half, which are rarely convincing and especially weren’t with turn of the century technology; it’s a 2 1/2. The Nest (2020, Sean Durkin) gets a 0.↩︎
As you can probably tell from the lack of a link, it’s gone. There might be another one on YouTube, though, I haven’t checked.↩︎
6/6/22↩︎
