Patricia Arquette and Matt Dillon have had remarkable, enduring careers. Especially when you consider they both started as teenagers in a business that’s particularly brutal about youths being mostly disposable. They are teamed in ‘High Desert,’ an intriguingly offbeat AppleTV+ half-hour comedy set in, yes, the desert with characters who are, by any standard, unexpectedly offbeat and real. Married to Dillon’s Denny but ready for divorce Arquette’s Peggy is trying to take control of her life by becoming a licensed Private Investigator. Denny is spending his time behind bars. The two were side by side when they were interviewed for the Boston Herald in a Zoom interview.
Q: Why is it important that Peggy be an addict? I kept thinking when this was being developed, did people sit there and say, ‘We can’t have her be an addict, struggling through this. This is too serious or too depressing.’ Or whatever?
PATRICIA ARQUETTE: Yeah, I’m sure. That is why we got turned down by 100 million places. We have to do it though. Because after two, everything’s going to clean everything up. And then we get back to this just homogenized, boring middle ground. But the truth is: We all know addicts. And this story was based on one of our show’s creator and show runners Nancy Fishman’s sister, Marjorie, who was an addict and who’s now passed on. Who struggled with these things and loved opera and took care of her mom. And was a liar and a manipulator and incredible person. She also said to Nancy once, ‘I’m going to be a PI (a Private Investigator) and she thought, ‘That’s crazy, but you could actually be an amazing PI.’ So, this is born of love. And born from and inspired by a person who had struggled with drugs. I think we’ve all loved addicts, and they can have some beautiful, beautiful qualities. And it’s sad, you know. It’s an illness.
Q: The two of you have this combustible marriage. We begin with a prologue where every life looks spectacularly good and then the police come and that life goes Splat! We jump to years later and we meet Matt in prison where Peggy visits while tripping on acid. How did the two of you create what the history of this couple is?
PA: That was actually the last scene that we shot. But do you want to talk to those?
MATT DILLON: To credit the writers, the foundation was already laid, right? So it made it easy for us to go have fun and make the most of this because the backstories are so strong. Like Denny comes walking into the prison’s visitors room and they look at each other — they’ve got a past, right? And it’s really nice. Because we know what that past is. Because the show, the characters, are real. It was interesting on the set, because we’d be talking about these characters like they were real people! Because in a way they were — because as Patricia said Peggy was inspired by Nancy’s sister. And then Denny was inspired by Nancy’s sister’s husband. So that was very, very real. That richness is what made it fun. What made me want to go to work and why I enjoyed it so much, Denny was a fun character for me to play because of all the polarizing qualities in his personality. He’s spiritual and he really genuinely is seeking the spiritual life. And yet, he’s a he’s a criminal, man. He’s a convicted felon, a kind of a career criminal and a manipulator. He’s going to use the spirituality to help him in his other endeavor, which is illegal activity. (A laugh) This is what is kind of fun about all this complexity. I mean, Peggy’s character, she’s all over the spectrum — classical music, drug addict, co-dependent.
NEW DVDs:
DOOM & GLOOM DOMINATE THIS CABIN ‘Knock at the Cabin’ (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Code, Universal, R) is M. Night Shyamalen’s latest twisted thriller, a Doomsday fable that is completely sincere – and totally bonkers. Fun this is not, but provocative? Decidedly. The cabin in the woods has a vacationing gay couple (out actors Jonathan Groff of ‘Mindhunters’ and Britain’s Ben Aldredge, ‘Spoiler Alert’) with their daughter who are taken hostage by 4 strangers, led by David Bautista. Needless to say they aren’t here to rob & pillage but on a Divine Mission to save planet Earth. With a human sacrifice! Unrelenting. Bonus: Deleted scenes, the Chowblaster Infomercial that features the filmmaker, Behind the Scenes and ‘Tools of the Apocalypse.’
CHRISTOPHER REEVES’ 5 FLIGHTS Before there was Tim Burton’s spectacular revival of Batman, there was Richard Donner’s go-for-broke resuscitation of the all-American comics hero who fought for ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way.’ Yes Christopher Reeve became a star as the alien from Krypton who, when he wasn’t saving the planet and people, worked as reporter Clark Kent at the Daily Planet. Warner Bros. has now issued the entire 4-film series in a 4L Ultra HD upgrade: ‘Superman: 5 Film Collection 1978-1987’ (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code, WB, PG). There are ‘Superman: The Movie,’ “Superman II,’ ‘Superman III’ and ‘Superman IV.’ Here also ‘Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut,’ which makes for a quintet. Super Special Features are included in the multiple Bonus: From commentaries and vintage featurettes to 1940s and ‘50s WB cartoons like ‘Super-Rabbit,’ ‘Snafuperman’ and ‘Stupor Duck.’ There’s a featurette on restoring Donner’s vision to ‘II’ with deleted scenes, a 50th anniversary Superman 50th anniversary TV special from 1988, a 1983 TV special on making ‘III.’ Standouts among the ensemble: Gene Hackman, Richard Pryor, Annette O’Toole, Mariel Hemingway and Terrence Stamp.
BORIS KARLOFF’S EXIT Forever known as Frankenstein’s monster, Boris Karloff ended his career with the heralded 1968 debut of a promising writer-director named Peter Bogdanovich who would go on to make the Oscar-winning classics ‘The Last Picture Show,’ ‘What’s Up, Doc?’ and ‘Paper Moon.’ Conceived with his then wife Polly Platt, the low-budget ‘Targets’ (Blu-ray, Criterion Collection, R), filmed in 3 weeks for $125,000, owes its existence to the legendary King of the Bs, Roger Corman. Karloff owed Corman 2 days’ work and had made a terrible Gothic horror movie. If Bogdanovich, a film buff, could use Karloff with the limited time, insert footage of his bomb movie and then fill in the rest for a new movie, he was in business. ‘Targets’ has Bogdanovich onscreen as a director eager to use a legendary horror icon called Orlok (Karloff, playing a version of himself) for one last role. At a drive-in premiere they will cross paths with a psychotic young man, a disturbed Vietnam vet, who after killing his wife and mother has gone on a shooting spree. The killer is based on the notorious 1966 U of Texas-Austin Clock Tower sniper and mass killer Charles Whitman. Yes, “Targets” presents an all-too-familiar quiet ‘nice guy,’ but the real, prophetic target here is an America awash in guns. The film flopped when released after the RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinations. Today it’s a model of cinema’s classic push/pull regarding screen violence. The Criterion extras, from a 4K digital master, include the filmmaker’s 2003 commentary and an introduction (Bogdanovich died last year), a 1983 audio interview with Platt and a new, all-encompassing overview with Richard Linklater (‘Boyhood,’ ‘School of Rock’) who lives and works in Austin.
FLY & SAY GOOD-BYE ‘Ant-Man + The Wasp: Quantumania’ (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code, Marvel, PG-13) concludes a trilogy begun in 2015. This ending is determined not by the Marvel-ous storytellers but the middling box-office. Superhero fantasies are incredibly expensive and blockbusters are the Darwinian result of who gets to fly sky high again and who doesn’t. ‘Quantumania’ to be fair is very complicated storytelling spanning decades. Standouts in the large cast: Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, the revered veterans, Paul Rudd (of course! he IS Ant-Man) and as the mighty villain Kang, Jonathan Majors. Bonus: Gag reel/deleted scenes, an audio commentary from director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jeff Loveness, plus the actors’ on their characters.
GIVE US BACK THAT STOLEN NAZI ART! ‘Righteous Thieves’ (Blu-ray + Digital, Lionsgate, R) has a terrific hook, hanging its brazen efforts to retrieve stolen Nazi art. Those very long time coming reparations have been stalled since WWII ended. Annabel (Lisa Vidal) leads a top-secret group whose only business is to recover stolen art. Their target is a sneering neo-Nazi Otto (Brian Cousins) whose Monet, Degas, Picasso and van Gogh do not rightfully belong to him. Although Otto would not agree. Naturally there is more to Annabel’s quest than millions of Euros in paintings. Bonus: ‘Coming for It All’ featurette. Optional subtitles in Spanish and English SDH.
SCOTT CAAN LEADS THIS LION Scott Caan, a veteran of 10 years on TV’s ‘Hawaii Five-Oh’ reboot in a supporting role, takes command as the star of this comedic hit man drama ‘One Day as a Lion’ (DVD, Lionsgate, R). Caan’s Jackie Powers (the name sounds like a genuflection to Elmore Leonard) is to kill JK Simmons’ debtor but fails the assignment and flees by taking a waitress hostage. She, surprisingly, is sympathetic because Jackie needs money to spring his son out of jail. (At this point, let us agree it is not a lucky family.) Also around as the bullets fly: Virginia Madsen and Frank Grillo. Bonus: Deleted scenes.
YET ANOTHER HIT MAN STUMBLES A classic setup. An international assassin (Daniel Stisen) finds himself in a ‘reassignment’ center where he’s to be given a new identity, only all too soon he finds himself fighting for his life in that center in ‘The Siege’ (Blu-ray, Well Go USA, R). The assault team is intent on removing all witnesses so our would-be killer has no choice if he is to survive the night unless he teams up with a hitwoman (veteran stuntwoman Lauren Okadigbo) to defend their turf. Or die trying. Bonus: Making of featurette.
