Falling Down
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| Falling Down | |
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 Falling Down |
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| Directed by | Joel Schumacher |
| Produced by | Timothy Harris Arnold Kopelson Herschel Weingrod |
| Written by | Ebbe Roe Smith |
| Starring | Michael Douglas Robert Duvall Barbara Hershey Rachel Ticotin Frederic Forrest Tuesday Weld |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
| Cinematography | Andrzej Bartkowiak |
| Editing by | Paul Hirsch |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | February 26, 1993 (USA) |
| Running time | 113 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million |
| IMDb profile | |
Falling Down is a 1993 film by Joel Schumacher about the character William "Bill" Foster (played by Michael Douglas) also known as "D-FENS" (named for his license plate), an unemployed engineer with a considerable life insurance policy, making an attempt to "go home" for his daughter's birthday after leaving his car in traffic on the hottest day of the year. As he passes through the city of Los Angeles, California on foot he finds himself alienated, disgusted and angered by what he experiences as he is accosted, overcharged and rejected. He becomes a vigilante as he gradually begins to accumulate weaponry and starts to force people out of his way.
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[edit] Plot
Taglines:
A Tale of Urban Reality.
The adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.
The film traces the stories of two men; William "Bill" Foster (or D-FENS, as he is known as for much of the film, by his car vanity plate, played by Michael Douglas) and LAPD Detective Martin Prendergast (Robert Duvall) on an especially hot day in Los Angeles. Foster, recently divorced, laid off, and now trapped in a traffic jam, abandons his car and begins walking across the city toward the district of Venice and the home of his ex-wife (Barbara Hershey). As he progresses, his behavior toward other city residents becomes increasingly violent and erratic, with him obtaining more powerful weaponry at each stage.
He starts by assaulting a Korean store owner (Michael Paul Chan), criticizing him for charging exorbitant prices, and takes the owner's baseball bat. He does however, pay for a Coke. Shortly after, Foster is confronted by two Hispanic gang members, demanding he pay for passing through their "territory". Foster drives them away with the bat and acquires a butterfly knife dropped by one of the gang members, finding its design fascinating. The same gang members are vengeful and later look for Foster to kill him in a drive-by shooting. The gang shoots several innocent bystanders but fail to hit Foster with automatic weapons fire, and by misfortune crash their car, allowing Foster to acquire their cache of firearms. Foster then enters a fast food restaurant called Whammyburger and tries to order a breakfast menu. However, the restaurant's cashier and manager refuse to serve him breakfast a few minutes after the deadline, which causes him to become angered and pull a TEC-9 out of the bag of weapons he took from the gang, accidentally firing a couple of shots into the ceiling. He then resolves to order from the lunch menu, but is once again angered over the difference between the luscious, generous hamburgers pictured in the in-store advertising and the comparatively miniscule actual product. Once again, he pays for it.
During his walk, Foster buys a snowglobe as a birthday present for his daughter. He then stops in an army surplus store to replace his shoe with a hole in it. In the store, the owner (Frederic Forrest) helpfully presents Foster his choice of "hiking boots", but is soon revealed to be homophobic as he begins to insult two homosexuals browsing the store. Shortly after he forces the two men out of the store, Detective Sandra Torres (Rachel Ticotin) comes inside and inquires about his possible sighting of a person matching Foster's description. The owner denies seeing Foster and hides him in a dressing room where he tried on his boots. After Detective Torres leaves, the store owner locks the door and takes Foster to his "private stash" in the back of the store, presenting himself as "his friend". The store owner is then revealed to be a Neo-Nazi as the room is full of Nazi-related items. He also shows Foster an empty can of "actually used" Zyklon B, impressed by the thought of how many Jews the can murdered, and tries to give him an M72 Light Anti-Tank Weapon as a present, believing himself and Foster to be on the same side.
After Foster lashes out and calls the Nazi a "sick asshole", the Nazi pulls a gun on him and forces him against a counter. While going through Foster's bag of weapons, the Nazi finds the snowglobe and promptly destroys it, calling it "faggot shit". When the Nazi tries to handcuff Foster, he stabs him with the butterfly knife and proceeds to kill the man execution style. Afterwards, Foster trades his short-sleeved shirt and tie for army fatigues and takes the M72 Light Anti-tank Weapon from the store, which he uses to terrorize a road repair crew, accusing them of conducting unnecessary repairs (and snarling traffic) solely to justify their budget.
Prendergast, on his last day before retirement, also has a troubled, frustrating life. He must deal with a domineering mentally-ill wife (Tuesday Weld) (of which is seemingly foreshadowed in the beginning of the film as Prendergast sits in traffic, where he sees a billboard of a glamor model with a figure screaming "Help me!" spraypainted between her cleavage) and disrespect from his co-workers, with the exception of his former partner, Detective Sandra Torres. The title of the film refers to Foster's mental collapse and Prendergast's wife's insistence that she and her husband retire to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where the old London Bridge was moved (from the nursery rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down). The snowglobe purchased by Foster also plays the tune London Bridge is Falling Down.
With Torres, Prendergast traces Foster's movements and rushes to intercept him before he can reach his ex-wife's house. Foster's ex-wife has a restraining order against him and has already called police several times, panicked because Foster has repeatedly and menacingly called her, announcing his plan to attend their young daughter's birthday party.
Foster proceeds to cut through a golf course, to the dismay of an older, rich golfer complaining that Foster was walking on "his golf course". Despite Foster being directly in his way, the old man takes his stroke anyway, nearly hitting Foster with his golf ball. Foster responds by berating the man, telling him how the land taken up by the golf course should be open to children, families, and the general public. He then he shoots the old man's golf cart with a shotgun, causing it to roll downhill into a pond. At this point, the old golfer has a heart attack (either incidentally or due to the shooting of the cart) and in his dying gasps indicates that his medication was in the cart. Foster grins at the man and remarks on how he is going to die wearing a stupid-looking hat (and how he deserved it as well for the golf ball). Foster then has to climb over a wall topped with barbed wire, on which he cuts his hand. After terrorizing the residents on the other side, he comes to realize that they do not own the property, and leaves them alone.
Foster and Prendergast only meet in the final minutes of the film. There the police officer dismisses Foster's complaints about being deceived and mistreated by society as no excuse for terrorizing people. Just then, Foster, having lost his last firearm, deliberately draws a water pistol on Prendergast in a suicide-by-cop action, causing Prendergast to reflexively shoot and kill Foster, thus allowing Foster's life insurance to pay for his daughter -- whereas taking his own life would not. Shortly after, Prendergast (whose behavior has also become harsher over the course of the film, changing him from a mild submissive man to one who asserts himself with his wife and punches an insulting co-worker) publicly curses his supervisor ("Fuck you, Captain Yardley. Fuck you very much") and decides he will not retire just yet.
[edit] Social impact of the film
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The two main characters of the film represent middle-aged white males who, in an era of perceived deference to the sensibilities of women and minorities, and in Foster's case the shrinking importance of defense spending following the end of the Cold War, are losing their social prominence (another possible interpretation of the film's title). The issue was sufficiently resonant to be the cover story of the March 29, 1993 issue of Newsweek with the headline White Male Paranoia: Are They the Newest Victims--or Just Bad Sports? and a photograph of Douglas dressed as Foster.
In the film, though, Foster denies being a racist, even after lashing out at a Korean store owner in part because he feels the owner has not made a sufficient effort to learn English (Foster attacked the Korean mainly because the latter was taking advantage of consumers by overcharging).
One key scene is when Foster witnesses a middle-aged black man demonstrating outside a bank. The black man is complaining about not being "economically viable". Interestingly enough, the black man is wearing the same white shirt and black tie that Foster is. Foster's constant observation of the demonstrator presumes that both are in a similar situation (unemployed), especially when the black man tells Foster "don't forget about me" moments after being forced into a police cruiser, to which Foster nods. During his final standoff with Prendergast, Foster uses the phrase "economically viable" while describing the loss of his engineering job. Foster also bemusedly remarks to Prendergast "I'm the bad guy...? How did that happen?", shortly before Foster compels Prendergast to shoot him. The world had changed and Foster could not or would not adapt. Many social commentators have seized on this perceived loss of influence, presented in this film and the similarly themed 1999 movie Fight Club.
The film was criticized for adhering to racist stereotypes but every ethnic group portrayed negatively has a counterpart. The gangbangers are Latino as is Duvall's partner. The Korean storekeeper doesn't speak English well and a Japanese cop who is asked to translate states that he doesn't speak Korean (an expression of the stereotypical American ignorance to other cultures and the belief that there is a homogeneous "Asian" culture). These are two examples but there are more.
Roger Ebert, who gave the film a positive review at the time of its release, stated of William "D-Fens" Foster:
"What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders."
[edit] Primary cast
- Michael Douglas - William "Bill" Foster/D-Fens
- Robert Duvall - Detective Martin Prendergast
- Barbara Hershey - Elizabeth "Beth" Travino
- Tuesday Weld - Amanda Prendergast
- Rachel Ticotin - Detective Sandra Torres
- Frederic Forrest - Nick, Surplus Store Owner
- Raymond J. Barry - Captain Yardley
[edit] Awards and nominations
- 1993 Camerimage, Nominated for the Golden Frog
- 1993 Cannes Film Festival, Nominated for the Palme d'Or
- 1994 Edgar Award, Won for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (Ebbe Roe Smith)
[edit] Trivia
- As the movie was being filmed, the massive 1992 Los Angeles riots (also known as the Rodney King riots) broke out, bringing to light many of the issues of racial, social and economic tensions portrayed in the film.
- Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden wrote a song about this movie, on the album The X-Factor. The song is called "Man on the Edge"; its refrain is the phrase "Falling Down", repeated.
- In the Front Line Assembly Millennium album (released in 1994, soon after the première of Falling Down) most of the samples were from this film.
- The band Rammstein can be seen wearing the same pants, shirt, and tie as Foster in the liner notes from their album Reise, Reise
- The band The Methadones' third full length album was a themed album based on this movie.
- The last film to be played in a grindhouse on New York's famous 42nd Street "Deuce" (Source: Sleazoid Express)
- The Irish Comedian Ed Byrne based his 2006 'Standing Up and Falling Down' tour on this film
- In a cut scene in Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, a character dressed similarly to "Bill" blows up a construction vehicle with a bazooka, allowing the player to progress to the next area.
- In the Lillian Verner Skit on MadTV, one of the contestants is an albino who enjoys thinking suicidal thoughts and wearing slipers. When he actually gets a question right in the game, the host asks "What do you want to do?" The contestant then replies "I wanna go and threaten a policeman with a waterpistol, and then he'll shoot and kill me, which is what I want!" This is a probable reference to the death of the Michael Douglas's character in Falling Down.
[edit] External links
