The countercultural filmmaking career of editor turned film directing
loose cannon Hal Ashby’s brief intersection with up-and-coming countercultural
movie star Jack Nicholson in the 1973 Columbia Pictures produced adaptation of
Darryl Ponicsan’s military prison critique The Last Detail remains one
of the greatest examples of what was commonly referred to as a New Hollywood of
the 1970s. Characterized by a tendency
towards down and dirty gritty realism involving characters at crossroads
running counter to the world’s way, films of its sort including but not limited
to dramedies like Five Easy Pieces starring Nicholson or Easy Rider again
starring Nicholson were episodic road movies functioning either as character
studies or ensemble allegories for a changing nation still reeling from a
recent unpopular war.
Initially a shock to the ears with its unapologetically foul-mouthed
dialogue, reportedly dropping the F-bomb more times than had been heard in a
film before as well as frank sex and nudity, drugs and boozing punctuated by
rowdy fistfights, the tragicomic slice-of-life tale The Last Detail is
exceedingly simple conceptually: two career sailors are tasked with escorting a
young rookie from their Norfolk, Virginia base to Portsmouth Naval Prison in
Maine.
Court martialed and honorably
discharged before being sentenced to eight years of hard prison time for trying
to steal $40 from a charity box, lifer Billy “Badass” Buddusky (Jack Nicholson)
and Richard “Mule” Mulhall (Otis Young) feeling they’ve thrown the book at the
young Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid) decide to take pity on him in an aimless
series of fun and lively misadventures leading up to the fateful day of his
incarceration. While they seem to be
having a good time together, the looming sentencing casts an increasingly heavy
pall over the unlikely trio and begs the question whether or not the punishment
fits the crime.
Talky, naturalistic and seemingly playing out in real time, The
Last Detail is ostensibly in Ashby’s hands a buddy Navy sailor movie
focused on lifers coasting through lives that reject the strictly ordained
social norms imposed on the then-American populace at the time as a whole. Take for instance an early sequence where the
three sailors go bar-hopping and the underage Meadows is refused service. The ever-rebellious Badass Buddusky springs
into action demanding a beer for the kid and when the bartender threatens to
call naval police, an incensed Buddusky pulls a gun angrily declaring he is the
naval police. It’s an explosive aside
that is punctuated by laughs of the impish Buddusky laughing together about
what they just got away with. Like the
now infamous restaurant scene in Five Easy Pieces with a small
inconsequential battle that’s a loss for all but personal victory for Jack’s
character, it speaks to Jack’s propensity for diving into characters who know
what they want and refuse to accept no as an answer.
The militaristic soundtrack by Johnny Mandel funneling
in sardonic notes of “patriotism” as the film’s heroes gradually come to grips
with the fact they’re about to bury a young life in death for eight years feels
appropriately at odds with the audience’s feelings. As it drones on, not unlike the drum rolling
at the public court-martialed execution closing Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of
Glory, the soundtrack takes on a feel that’s tap dancing between patriotic
and pessimistic. Their duty is righteous
so to speak but their hearts tell them what they’re carrying out is very wrong.
It goes without saying the film would not exist without Jack
Nicholson. Ashby, a Hellraiser himself,
was busted for marijuana possession in Canada and while the studio was
reluctant about intervening Nicholson’s devotion to the project ultimately
bailed Ashby out and they resumed production. Nicholson is both a wild and explosive force of nature onscreen, giving
off airs of bravado and overconfidence but then in quieter scenes of him simply
gazing at the camera or staring into space he exudes interior conflict and
uncertainty. Almost like a raging
thunderstorm that slowly percolates before building up to lightning strikes,
Nicholson’s performance helps to permanently imprint The Last Detail on
moviegoers minds not just for that year but for all cinematic time.
The real revelation here is Randy Quaid as the troubled emotionally immature
rookie Meadows who frequently bursts into tears, tries to escape a couple of
times and later finds himself drunkenly laughing with his comrades. Ordinarily a comedian whose own life story
seemed to echo that of Meadows, the role represents one of Quaid’s few Oscar
nominated performances. Also fans of
Carol Kane, Nancy Allen, Gilda Radner and Michael Moriarty are inclined to
watch out for some most sneaky cameos if not unexpected bit parts late into the
film.
Against a small budget of around $2.3 million and a large
amount of expletives in the script, The Last Detail was an instant
commercial success grossing around $10 million and garnering three Academy Awards
nominations for Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid and screenwriter Robert Towne for
his transcription of the dialogue and story of the novel while changing around
a few of the details to make the film somehow bleaker.
Though not winning the Palme d’Or for which
it was nominated at Cannes, Nicholson took home the Best Actor award at Cannes
as well as the National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics
Circle. A cherished, perfectly
constructed and poised slice-of-life experience of storytelling, Hal Ashby’s
film saw a prequel film adaptation of novelist Darryl Ponicsan’s 2005 book Last
Flag Flying from director Richard Linklater sometime in 2017. Though that film never caught on with the
same fervor as The Last Detail, it speaks to both the novel and the 1973
film’s lasting artistic and social value.
While debatable whether or not this is THE quintessential
Hal Ashby effort with many pointing to either Harold and Maude or Being
There as the grand prize winner, this rare unlikely collaboration between
Ashby and a seismic screen power on the rise to superstardom nevertheless is
unquestionably a quintessential piece of New Hollywood filmmaking of the
then-modern 1970s. With the Alexander
Payne dramedy The Holdovers currently up for Best Picture and Best Actor,
the spirit of Hal Ashby, the snarky attitude of Robert Towne and screen titan
power of Jack Nicholson is very clearly alive and well in today’s silver screen
output and speaks to young-troubled characters facing an uncertain future with an
equally conflicted elder at the epicenter as their mentor/gatekeeper.
--Andrew Kotwicki