{"id":39294,"date":"2023-03-24T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=39294"},"modified":"2023-03-23T20:02:12","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T00:02:12","slug":"the-bootleg-files-the-dumb-waiter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/24\/the-bootleg-files-the-dumb-waiter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: The Dumb Waiter"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 826:<\/strong> \u201cThe Dumb Waiter\u201d (1987 film directed by Robert Altman and starring John Travolta and Tom Conti). <\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube. <\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> On VHS home video.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> There seems to be a rights issue that has yet to be cleared.
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\nCHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: <\/strong>Not likely at the moment.<\/p>\n

By the mid-1980s, filmmaker Robert Altman\u2019s career was going through a rough patch. During the 1970s, he was praised by critics as being one of the era\u2019s most original and provocative creative artists, but that adulation did not win him favor with studio executives with whom he had difficult relationships. After a series of box office flops and the indignity of having one film \u2013 the 1979 all-star \u201cHealtH\u201d \u2013 shelved by 20th Century Fox, Altman found himself focusing on small, lower budget works that were released by smaller art house distributors. He also pursued projects for television, which was highly unusual for a director of Altman\u2019s prestige.
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In 1987, Altman received an invitation from the executives at ABC to create productions as part of a proposed dramatic anthology series. He recommended adapting one-act plays by British dramatist Harold Pinter, but initially doubted his idea would be well received \u2013 he made a similar pitch a few years earlier to HBO and it was quickly rejected. To his astonishment, ABC was interested, particularly in an adaptation of Pinter\u2019s \u201cThe Dumb Waiter,\u201d a two-man drama set in a single space.<\/p>\n

However, there was a major string attached \u2013 ABC wanted John Travolta to star in \u201cThe Dumb Waiter.\u201d Not unlike Altman, Travolta was going through a rough patch in his career during the mid-1980s and he put himself on hiatus after the commercial failure of \u201cPerfect\u201d in 1985. Altman later admitted that he was not familiar with Travolta\u2019s work and didn\u2019t see the logic in the casting. For his part, Travolta was initially disinterested because he feared that doing a TV production would be seen as a step down for someone who had been considered box office gold a few years earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year Gary Pudney calls me to offer me to do something on TV,\u201d Travolta told an interviewer, referring to an ABC producer of network specials. \u201cI always politely refuse. When he asked me to meet him in his office to discuss an ABC project I thought: how am I going to get out of it this time? But when he mentioned Altman and Pinter, I couldn\u2019t believe it!\u201d<\/p>\n

One cannot blame Travolta for wanting to be part of a prestige production, nor could Altman be blamed for taking on the project \u2013 after all, there wasn\u2019t much money to be made in low-budget art house films. And even ABC deserves the benefit of the doubt for wanting to bring a higher pedigree of class to their prime-time line-up.<\/p>\n

But the resulting work wasn\u2019t just bad \u2013 it was a fiasco. Altman failed to capture the claustrophobic surrealism of Pinter\u2019s work, and the sense of mystery that the playwright infused in his work was steamrolled by the severe miscasting of Travolta and the egregiously hammy performance by Tom Conti as his sidekick.<\/p>\n

While the stage version of \u201cThe Dumb Waiter\u201d is confined to a drab basement apartment, Altman\u2019s film makes the initial mistake of showing Travolta and Conti driving up to the seemingly vacant mansion where the room is based. The pair grudgingly make themselves at home in the space \u2013 there are two beds on an elevated platform surrounded by mesh wiring that gives the impression of a cage, a toilet behind a swinging door and a grimy large kitchen with dishes piled in the sink.<\/p>\n

Travolta is supposed to be a working-class Englishman, but his attempt at Britspeak sounds like a second-rate imitation of Dick Van Dyke\u2019s \u201cMary Poppins\u201d Cockney \u2013 Travolta\u2019s natural New Jersey dialect constantly percolates throughout the dialogue. The Scottish Conti is either trying to articulate an Irish brogue or his character has sinus blockage \u2013 his line readings are cartoonish, and his outlandish appearance with a ridiculous mustache and a black wig that looks like it was soaked in a shower gives the impression of the incompetent disguises favored by Peter Sellers\u2019 Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies.<\/p>\n

It is initially unclear why these two unlikely characters are sitting around in the basement apartment of a supposedly empty house. Slowly amid a stream of non sequitur conversation \u2013 there is a length debate on whether the proper phrase for making tea is \u201cput on the kettle\u201d or \u201clight the kettle\u201d \u2013 it becomes apparent they are hit men awaiting orders for their next kill. <\/p>\n

But the wait becomes thick with strangeness. Someone pushes an envelope under their door that contains a dozen matches, and the pair begins to receive notes delivered from the house\u2019s upstairs via a creaky dumb waiter (hence the title). The notes demand that the men cook and send up elaborate meals, but all they possess are a bottle of milk and some snacks they brought while traveling to their location. <\/p>\n

For those unfamiliar with \u201cThe Dumb Waiter,\u201d I will not give away the ending \u2013 except to say that Altman\u2019s ending is not Pinter\u2019s ending. And, ultimately, that is the problem with this production \u2013 Altman\u2019s adaptation robs the drama of its intellectual tension and paranoia. Most theatrical productions of this work offer a bare bone setting where the seedy characters play out their neuroses and agitation with slow boiling fury. This film, however, feels like a cartoon \u2013 the basement has a silly steampunk visual style, Conti behaves like he wandered out of British pantomime and poor Travolta does a lot of posing and scowling but ultimately fails to extract any menace from his emoting. None of this is aided by an unsubtle music score by Judith Gruber-Stitzer that laces the film in a noisy manner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dumb Waiter\u201d was broadcast on ABC on May 12, 1987, to mostly unsympathetic reviews and little audience interest \u2013 many critics complained the commercial breaks constantly disrupted the tone that Altman was trying (and failing) to create. Altman also directed a second Pinter inspired film called \u201cThe Room\u201d starring Linda Hunt, Donald Pleasance, Julian Sands and Eurythmics\u2019 Annie Lennox \u2013 that was paired with \u201cThe Dumb Waiter\u201d on ABC under the banner \u201cBasements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dumb Waiter\u201d never had a second broadcast, but in 1989 it turned up on VHS video from the Prism label. However, that company badly misrepresented the work with cover art that showed Travolta and Conti dressed as restaurant waiters, with Travolta fumbling a serving tray full of money while Conti gingerly holds a gun upside down. The back of the video box has a publicity photo of the actors with Travolta glaring at the camera while Conti peeks over his shoulder with a lopsided grin.<\/p>\n

To date, \u201cThe Dumb Waiter\u201d has never turned up on DVD or Blu-ray \u2013 I don\u2019t believe it ever played on U.S. television again, although it did get a rare big screen presentation as part of 2015 retrospectives of Altman\u2019s work at New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art and the Harvard Film Archive in Massachusetts. For those who are too curious, a copy is available online with Hebrew and Arabic subtitles. You have been warned. <\/p>\n