I am a man of many tastes. (NOTE: poisonous tastes for my cannibal readers.) And on a particular, or perhaps every, night some time ago, I combined writing, drinking and watching one of my favorite films. Not owning any movies that are explicitly about drinking, I decided to just put in something about gangsters and call it good. So that’s how I ended up with “Miller’s Crossing” on the TV and two forties of Mickey’s malt liquor on my end table.
Mickey’s, ah yes, the sweet green embrace of mediocrity, my mediocrity. In the green bottle, I can only surmise that the drink itself is in fact green. A green liquid similar to what may have given the Green Lantern his superpowers—obviously I am not familiar with the comic book’s mythology. As far as I know, Mickey’s carries no real popularity and thus doesn’t suffer the stigma of being popular. This web site is only barely about alcohol though, so I’ll let it drift.
“Miller’s Crossing” doesn’t take place in any real city, nor really a specific time. As most of the characters are drinking during most of the scenes and the cops are occasionally interested in trashing nightclubs, it can be assumed to be during the Prohibition Era. Perhaps even a Prohibition Era in the future? Oh man, that’s be a great film concept. Just ban something other than alcohol and boom...a helluva story. Magic, perhaps?
Historically thinking, I have to say people in the 1920s drank between a selfish amount and a courageous amount of booze, or “hooch.” Simply, I don’t know how later generations had any alcohol left for them at all. Speakeasies make modern college bars look like a Mormon community. People would get off work, go home, go to bed, wake up just past midnight, go eat breakfast and then hit the town. They’d gamble, drink and dance until they literally had to go to work that morning. Unfortunately this meant showing up drunk more times than acceptable to people like Henry Ford, so Ford implemented a company-wide “Social Department” that cracked down on employees’ vices and canned their asses for anything less than model citizenship, not just work-based behavior. I seem to have strayed from the film. Regardless, we have our setting.
"I'm sorry, I'm recovering from a night of Four Loko...why are we in the woods?"
The opening of “Miller’s Crossing” is almost a parody of “The Godfather” in that there’s a slow focus on an Italian spilling his guts to a quiet mob boss. In fact, the opening line (“I’m talking about ethics.”) is carried with almost identical weight as “I believe in America.” Similarly, the speaker in each film is taking an audition-length route to ask for a license to kill while several cohorts and advisers drink liquor in the corners of the room. The intro scene acts as almost a red herring, a false set-up, for a movie that isn’t a parody but rather a familiar sandbox with familiar characters that the Coen Brothers move around. It’s as if they are neighborhood kids that discovered a new gadget on one your own toys that even you didn’t know about. Trying to make an honest dollar on a fixed fight isn’t just a throwaway line, but rather a theme of the movie.
Tom Reagan (played by Gabriel Bryne) swirls his glass, the cubes hitting the edges. Is his mind spinning? Is he nervous? I don’t know. It might just be Bryne having no real control over his own tendencies. I regret noticing this in the first scene because I suspect I’ll now see it in every following scene. Following this scene, Reagan wakes up with the biggest hangover this side of an Ed Helms movie and seeks the only cure known to man: more liquor and Marcia Gay Harden.
In one of the film’s best scenes, Leo (Albert Finney) and Reagan drink while discussing the whereabouts of Verna (Harden). Each of the characters know more than the audience and so the performances seem to change based on repeated viewings. Reagan also comments that his liquor is “better than the paint we sell at the club”—which makes me wonder if the quality of liquor since the Roaring Twenties has gone up like automobile safety or down like Bryne's movie career. We both take another drink.
The whole movie has a lot of the virtues and trappings of a typical Coen Brothers fare. We have an “evil incarnate” character, money as the driving motivation, linear plot lines, and multi-character storytelling. Hell, several cast members are hold overs, such as Francis McDormand, Steve Buscemi (a 21st century Peter Lorre) and John Turturro.
The plot continues with scene-starting lines such as, “Give me a stiff one.” During a police raid, Reagan is quick to grab a bottle of booze, or perhaps just floor cleaner, off a table before complete destruction—the destruction itself (in the real world and movie world) done mostly for show, not practicality. Reagan, looking for answers in the complicated plot, goes back to Verna’s crib for another drink and I begin to regret my dehydrating run earlier today. And yes, to a scene, Reagan swirls the ice in his glass, preferring the action of holding a drink to actually drinking.
Occasionally the film's audience is treated to violence with a little more orchestration than Francis Ford Coppola put together but with a certain gratuity not unlike “RoboCop.” Regardless, Reagan handles good news, bad news and boredom with the same antidote: enough liquor to knock out a team of mules. Tom Reagan gets beat up, no less than twenty people utter the line, “Jesus, Tom” and more drinks are poured, swirled and drank—though that last step might only be by muscle memory anymore. When people stop drinking, mistakes are made and can only be fixed by people drinking themselves back into oblivion.
I think Gabriel Bryne was just weird looking enough to not be a typical movie star but also not weird looking enough to be distinctive. Kind of a Gary Cole-slash-Sean Penn thing going on.
Burn...?
“Miller’s Crossing” is far from a documentary but I do think people drank more generations ago than now. Maybe water just wasn’t as safe then. Maybe people didn’t need to worry about driving drunk with their horses and get wrapped around a tree. It is strange then to read about historical figures (such as President Warren Harding) being considered heavy drinkers in their own times. When drinking after every meal was the norm, one would have to be swimming in the stuff to gain attention as a heavy drinker. Nowadays a guy can barely reach for his third beer in as many hours without disapproving looks from family members and strangers at soapbox-height.
But for all the drinking in the movie, nearly every gulp of escapism is only the first in what must be assumed to be a long, normal night. Only once is Reagan actively drunk, but he still carries himself with the confidence off all drunks and the eloquence of none. Reagan might be the boss man of Drink Town, USA—much like yourself—but he will not wake up with mysterious bruises, pee in public or otherwise string together enough forgotten introductions to mimic a real social life. No, Reagan at his worst is us at our best after one, two or ten too many drinks. Then again, I couldn’t see him writing a movie review either. Win for me, I suppose. I just think I could be a gangster is all.
Actually it’s just amazing that the characters in "Miller’s Crossing" had enough self-control to not pour a round of drinks at the ending funeral scene. Instead, Reagan soberly watches the girl get away. I don't think he chases after her. Wait. Did I miss something?
Okay, wait, now John Malkovich is beating people up. This isn't the same movie. When did I put in "Man in the Iron Mask?" Aw well. Isn't anybody else ever really proud of themselves when they can cook anything after having several drink? Shit. I got no frozen pizza.
I guess I'm walking to Jack in the Box.
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