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Weiser 2008
12016-07-12T09:51:07-07:00Phil Ethingtone37d40405599cccc3b6330e6c4be064cc03ef7a56771Noteplain2016-07-12T09:51:07-07:00Phil Ethingtone37d40405599cccc3b6330e6c4be064cc03ef7a5Stanley Weiser, Repeat After Me: Greed Is Not Good," Los Angeles Times, 5 October 2008.
The peak years of the New Hollywood Bloodbath (1967-1974) had long passed by the time Brian di Palma ushered-in the New Carnography of the Reagan repression, directing the Oliver Stone script for a remake of Public Enemy (1931). The 1983 Scarface is a real landmark in the the carnographic mass media. As with so many Hollywood films, it was deeply embedded in the realities of its fictions. Oliver Stone was then still a regular cocaine user, and went above cover to establishments with known drug cartel ties. He wanted to meet the actual gangsters who conducted the brutal Caribbean drug smuggling business. Stone and Di Palma knew they had a perfect match-up with the 1931 Paul Muni Scarface starring Paul Muni and directed by Howard Hawks. A "retro" remake set in Prohibition Chicago was not interesting to Stone. But a fully contemporary story set in Reagan-Era Miami presented a real opportunity. Al Pacino, who spoke only rudimentary Spanish, saw it as a very serious challenge. His performance alone puts the movie in a category of classics, despite the inherent cheesiness of all blood-soaked Brian Di Palma films. (Alfred Hitchcock, responding to Di Palma's claim that Dressed To Kill was his hommage to Hitchcock's murder thrillers, responded, "you mean frommage" (cheese).
The film took shape in a highly political environment during its 1982-3 production cycle. The Reagan Revolution was in full effect, a pliant Congress giving Southern California's finest spokesman for the New Right. The corporate titans of the 1890s, the 1920s, and the 1950s, made yet another comeback with deregulation of markets, and the repeal of New Deal regulatory controls on Wall Street. Oliver Stone directed another movie in Reagan's second term, Wall Street, starring Michael Douglas as the predatory Gordon Gekko, who portrayed just this top-end manipulation of free-enterprise capitalism. As screenwriter Stanley Weiser recalled:
"In developing the character of Gordon Gekko, I formed an amalgam of disgraced arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, corporate raider Carl Icahn, and his lesser-known art-collecting compatriot Asher Edelman. Add a dash of Michael Ovitz and a heaping portion of, yes, my good friend and esteemed colleague Stone (who came up with the character's name) -- and there you have the rough draft of 'Gekko the Great.'"Note.
The Reagan Eighties were the dream day for the old Goldwater and Nixon masses. But the Cold War was also in full swing. Indeed it was in the Endgame. This Reagan administration, staffed by the Hawks of the previous two decades, sought not just containment of the Communist world, but roll-back. Cuba, and the long saga of Exiles in Miami, had loomed large in the US National Security State's golden years (1950s-1980s), as the Nemesis at the gates. Richard Nixon's long affiliation with the Havana gangsters and Bay of Pigs insurrectionists, had sealed that Cold War commitment through the end of the Watergate crisis. Now Stone had a perfect opportunity for a reality-based immigrant-rises-in-the mob, one that was highly linked to the Cold War endgame struggles.
During the entire presidential campaign cycle of 1980, 15 April-31 October 1980, Fidel Castro allowed a makeshift "Muriel Boat lift" to evacuate, mixed cynically with common criminals to empty his jails. The mixture of the majority numbers fleeing an authoritarian state, with Cuba's Least Wanted, created a serious crisis in Florida in particular. But Florida also represented, the High Life, Miami Beach setting the lifestyle standard for the Deregulated 1980s, a veritable re-play of the roaring 20s. The symbolic headline vice of the 1980s was cocaine, drug of the newly-rich especially. Stone and DiPalma set-out to re-make the 1932 Scarface in the same way as Howard Hawks had from real drug lords and the post-War immigrant story to match the Italian's of the 1920s-30s.