The nicest man I ever met in present enterprise was additionally maybe probably the most underrated film director of his period. His title was Stuart Gordon, and if him in any respect you in all probability know him for his breakthrough horror movie “Re-Animator” from 1985 — a cheeky, extreme, blackly comedic masterpiece of the ’80s horror renaissance loosely primarily based on H. P. Lovecraft however principally primarily based on Stuart’s cheerful subversive streak.
“Re-Animator” is a form of Frankenstein improve within the Grand Guignol method, and the film’s cultural imprint was giant sufficient that it acquired talked about within the Best Picture winner “American Beauty.” Lester, the mid-life agonistes character performed by Kevin Spacey, has smoked a joint with a neighborhood child and asks, “Did you ever see that movie where the body is walking around carrying its own head… and then the head goes down on that babe?”
Yep, that was “Re-Animator,” an vital a part of Stuart’s cult film legacy, alongside together with his different basic ’80s chophouse titles like “From Beyond” and “Robot Jox.” With his frequent collaborator Brian Yuzna, he additionally co-conceived “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” a blockbuster that he prepped and was about to direct till he acquired sidelined by a medical challenge.
“Honey” was Stuart’s one clear shot on the A-list — the director who changed him, Joe Johnston, remains to be on it — but when he had any regrets he by no means shared them. When I first met Stuart in 2006, the Disneyland experience “Honey I Shrunk the Audience” was nonetheless operating, and I requested him if he was raking within the dough for conceiving the premise. He smiled wryly and stated, “Ray, if there’s one lesson everybody on this enterprise ought to be taught it’s that no person will get a chunk of Disney.”
I met Stuart whereas instructing my movie class at Loyola Marymount University, the place he graciously and rapturously launched a theater stuffed with undergrads to the wonders of an alternate pantheon that locations Fellini or Bergman or Kurosawa above Spielberg and Scorsese. It was the primary trace I had that I used to be within the presence of a Renaissance man who was additionally a key determine within the Motion Picture Academy’s choice course of for the (then) Foreign Language Film nominations.
Stuart and I hit it off instantly, partly as a result of I used to be an enormous fan of some his outdated films and will ask him questions like, “What was it like to work with Charles Band?” however principally as a result of Stuart was so vivid, light and deeply . He was all for me. He was all for my college students. He was genuinely on the planet round him.
Stuart affirmed this for me when he requested to display his new mission “Stuck” as a work-in-progress for my class. “Stuck” shouldn’t be a horror film — not within the typical sense. It’s a cat-and-mouse thriller a couple of middle-class lady (Mena Suvari) who by chance hits a homeless pedestrian (Stephen Rhea) after which hides the automobile in her storage, with the gravely injured man actually caught in her windshield. She then shuts the storage door and takes a taxi to work, hoping the homeless man will die — horribly, slowly — in order that his dying received’t damage her upwardly cell way of life.
It’s a small however riveting premise directed by a visible classicist, somebody who selected his angles with meticulous exactness for what they specific, and whose sense of editorial rhythm rivaled Hitchcock’s. Two many years into his profession, Stuart was, in his means, as exact a stylist because the Coen brothers, on a naked fraction of the budgets.
Like a whole lot of the administrators who grew up within the American ’60s, Stuart had a powerful social conscience, though in his case it was knowledgeable primarily by a strong sense of irony and a deep feeling for black comedy. “Stuck” may be very a lot concerning the mindset of American haves towards American have-nots — the sensation that they’re disposable, particularly in the event that they get in the way in which of the relentless pursuit of middle-class materialism. Stuart had been impressed by a real story, however…
