I remember that I chose that movie back when it came out because of Danny DeVito. He was one of my favorite actors and he still is. I had seen him in films like Ruthless People, The War Of The Roses and Batman Returns and I considered him one of the greatest actors of his time. Back then I had no idea who Elmore Leonard was and that he had written that comedic crime book called Get Shorty that was now a movie. I chose also the movie from its title and its poster. They both gave me the impression that it was something tasty and fulfilling.
Back in the 90s there was still that sense that good movies were not only the big ones which made a critical bang, but also the other. The ones that few people talked about. I had read a review from a dickhead critic that used to bombard almost every new movie that came out and believed that good cinema was long gone since the end of the 60s with very few exceptions. He photographed the movie as deeply mediocre. He wrote that the movie was childish and ridiculous at some points. Truth is that those were qualities that made me want to see the movie. 9 out of 10 times that some nasty critic had written that this movie was childish I had found one of my favorite movies.
Because at that time I was still in school I had to wait till Saturday to watch the movie. A thing which filled me with anger, because I wanted to see the fucking movie immediately. Above all that no one would come with me. My friends weren't interested in that movie because they didn't know it and had absolutely no interest in learning about it, so I had to go alone. Alone in the movies was something that I used to do very often. One screening that I'll never forget was at a shitty summer's high noon when I went to see Inception by Christopher Nolan. The first ten minutes I hated the movie and after that I was transferred to a place that I had never been before. The experience of that masterpiece left me speechless. When I came out of the theater I wasn't even paying attention to the heat anymore. I was somewhere else. I was in a fucking dream. In my dream this time there was no one that could get me away from there. From that unspeakable and inconceivable place that I had manufactured with the help of that brilliant movie.
Movies tend to have that effect on me. When I watch them, I get so emotionally attached to them that afterwards I have no time or appetite for reality anymore. That thing seems to have happened to me since a very young age. The first movie that I recall that had that effect on me was Terry Gilliam's The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen. Maybe the first movie that woke up the thirst for art in me. I couldn't believe the creativity of that movie. I was really young and those images made me lose my fucking mind. I was so amazed by it that on the way back home with my mother I didn't utter even one word.
When I stepped inside the theater to watch Get Shorty I realized that this movie was not even mildly popular in Greece and it would never become. There very few people in the theater. On one hand I was happy because I enjoyed being in a relatively empty theater, but on the other I felt sad about the movie. After some years I would be watching with my former girlfriend another famous and incredible movie and we would be three people. After the first ten minutes the third one left and we were left the two of us to a private screening. I'll never forget that screening as long as I live. I was in an open cinema, the weather was superb (not ever hot yet) and the film was an experience that you never forget. The movie was Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas a movie that I have seen more than twenty times in my life.
The first thing that I remember from Get Shorty was John Travolta and his impeccable cool style. That coolness of his still follows me. And it's a major thing to say that taking in regard the fact that Travolta had played Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction the previous year. Maybe the quintessential of the world cool. But it was and still is incredible to watch Travolta playing Chili Palmer maybe one of the most iconic comedic loan sharks that you can find in books and cinema. Travolta has the style for this type of role. He goes deep inside the core of the character and when he comes out there is nothing less than slick perfection. The way he stands, the way he talks and especially the way he smokes make him the guy that you want to have dinner with at night and then go four cocktails the rest of the night till morning finds you.
But to get back at the movie, I can easily say that Get Shorty is a swinging movie. Many films rock and that is a great thing for them, but this one swings, madly, like a contemporary swing revival band. It's the flavor of this movie. Everything about it is so tasty and so rhythmical. It's not a gangster movie yet it is a gangster movie. It's not a comedy movie yet it is a comedic movie. It features that ambiguity that I love so much in artistic pieces. Its agenda is blurred.
Directed by the former cinematographer of the Coen Brothers, Barry Sonnenfeld who had before Get Shorty directed one of the greatest black comedies of the 90s with a perfected cast called, of course, The Addams Family. With a touch of a painter who knows that character must be vivid and powerful, Barry makes the movie to, clearly, dance a naughty, sexy dance. If the movie wore shoes, it would wear spectator shoes, hands down.
Since that first time in the theater I have watched Get Shorty numerous times, and it always seems to have the same effect on me. Pure, roaring thrill. It's not a secret that there are moments in this movie that I simply want to get up and dance its fucking swinging rhythm. Watching only is not enough for me; I want to participate also in other ways. And that inner excitement, that outburst of passion inside me, is what brings again and again to this movie's arms. It's like the famous song by Pasty Cline, "Back In Baby's Arms" that you can hear in the spectacular Oliver Stone's movie Natural Born Killers. I will respectfully paraphrase it and say... "I'm back in Chili Palmer's arms!"
