It's a go for Green Lights
08/11/2002
Of all
the films at this year's Rhode Island International Film Festival, Robert
Lieberman's funny Green Lights is nearest to my heart.
Green
Lights is about the kind of brain fever that strikes the residents of a small
city when rumors run wild that a movie company is planning to shoot a big
feature film in their back yards. Suddenly, the only thought on every mind is
being discovered and becoming a superstar. If only . . .
Soon
the Comfort Inn's bellboys are tap dancing, the girl behind the front desk is
bursting into song and a pair of woeful would-be screenwriters are trying to
peddle their script.
Lieberman's
clever film is set in Ithaca, N.Y., where he teaches physics at Cornell
University and also writes novels such as the recently published The Last Boy.
But it could be any small city, such as Providence, where eyes light up every
time someone mentions a film shoot coming to town. Soon the phone is ringing
off the hook with hopefuls wanting to audition.
In
Green Lights, the catalyst is Bob Beeman (John FitzGibbon), the klutzy
brother-in-law of a movie mogul at Everest Pictures. Bob, down to his last
chance before being canned, is sent to Ithaca to scout locations for one of
Everest's upcoming films, Virgin Blood.
Maybe
it's Bob's classic roadster, but on the outskirts of town a gas station
attendant assumes that Bob is a movie producer on his way to shoot an epic film
in Ithaca. By the time Bob arrives, the rumor has exploded and everyone has
gone a little bit nuts. Soon a woman is springing out of his shower as Lady
Macbeth and those two down-on-their-luck writers -- Alex (Daniel Dresner) and
Jimmy (Shawn Randall) -- are imploring Bob to shoot their musical extravaganza,
an awful idea about a boy who drives a taxi.
Bob,
not wanting to disappoint anyone and suffering from delusions of grandeur,
loves the attention. In short order, he has stopped protesting that he is
merely a movie location scout. Instead, he's signing up investors at a Rotary
Club gathering, and flying to New York City for budget meetings.
Lieberman's
film covers the same territory as David Mamet's State and Main, about what
happens when a movie crew invades a small town, but it doesn't have the
mean-spiritedness of that flop. Green Lights is sweet and innocent, sort of a
modern-day Music Man, as it explores the humorous goings-on when people are
grasping for their 15 minutes of fame.
The
cast is solid, with FitzGibbon as a very small man who unexpectedly finds
himself riding the crest of the wave and loving every minute of it. Mimi
Bensinger is amusingly sympathetic as Bob's wife, desperately trying to make
this potential disaster turn out right. Dresner and Randall believably take the
writers from stars in their eyes to the soberness of reality.
For a
small-budget film, Green Lights stands above some of the bigger-budget comedies
recently out of Hollywood.