American Perfekt (1997) Mojave Noir

  "Road Trip to the Twilight              Zone" (Noirsville)

Written and Directed by Paul Chart. 

Paul started out as a painter and sculpsit and made short films. He did it all wrote, photographed directed, and edited a number of award winning short films. This is a One off Noir.

Cinematography by William Wages (Into The West). Original Music composed by Simon Boswell

Stars Fairuza Balk (American History X, Almost Famous) as Alice Thomas, Robert Forster (Reflections in a Golden Eye, Jackie Brown, both Mulholland Dr.'s , Too Late, The American Side, Twin Peaks 2017, Better Call Saul ) as Jake Nyman, Amanda Plummer (Pulp Fiction, The Fisher King) as Sandra Thomas, Paul Sorvino (The Panic in Needle Park, Cry Uncle, Dick Tracy, Goodfellas) as Sheriff Frank Noonan, David Thewlis (Naked, The Big Lebowski) as Santini, Chris Sarandon as Deputy Sammy, Joanna Gleason as Shirley, Geoffrey Lewis (Thunderbolt And Lightfoot, Way Of the Gun, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) as Willy, Jay Patterson as Bertnie, Judson Mills as Junior, Rutanya Alda as Gloria, and Belinda Balaski as Rita. 

This film came out the same year as David Lynch's Lost Highway and Tarantino's Jackie Brown and between the Coen Bro. Fargo and The Big Lebowski. No wonder nobody's heard of it, but it fits right in to that same Bizzarro Neo Noir universe.

Story

As the credits roll on a black background, we hear appropriately the Platters classic Twilight Time. 

The credit title cards are intercut with our heroine Sandra Thomas on the downhill side of 35 is driving down a highway.  She's a red head headed east. She pulls out a silver lighter and has to flick it twice to light. We see a passing a leaving Los Angeles County sign. 

At sunrise she's probably pulled off the highway for a morning wiz, and we now see her perched on a boulder backlit by the rising sun. She wears a yellow dress and the sunlight shines through it. She's a sort of a sting bean Shirley McClain with a disheveled mop top. We also see her car a bright orange 1980 VW Rabbit convertible. 

She pulls into Marge's Cafe for breakfast. When she comes back out her Rabbit is blocked on the drivers door side, by a '72 Ford Galaxy 500 station wagon. 

She parked too close to the wall on the passenger side. 

She solves her dilemma by climbing up between the two and then walking along the two cars to get to where she can drop down in, through her open Rabbit window. 

She backs out of the slot and heads down the highway. Soon we see the '72 Galaxy coming up behind her. 

The Galaxy pulls along side Sandra, and the driver holds up something that catches the sun and temporarily blinds her enough to cause her to swerve the Rabbit into the Galaxy. The Rabbit goes off the road and blows a front tire and comes to a stop. 

The Rabbit is covered in dust, Sandra is Ok. She starts her wipers and when the windshield is cleared she observes that the Galaxy pulled over further up the road. However it peals out leaving her stranded in the desert. She ties to start the car it turns over but won't catch, so she turns the key harder and breaks it off in the ignition switch. 

She gets out of the car and she is all alone on a two lane in the desert wind. 

The wind blows her door shut. 

She walks back to the car and gets in, kneeling on the drivers seat cushion to reach the passenger side glove box for something when suddenly her open door is tore off by a 1984 Jaguar XJ6 traveling a little too close to the shoulder. 

The Jag stops and Jake Nyman gets out. He's wearing a suit with no tie. He's Sandra's knight in shining armor to her rescue. Jake runs over to the Rabbit.

Robert Forster as Jake Nyman

Jake: My God are you alright?

We cut to Sandra dragging her rabbit door back to the car while she's telling Jake about the incident with the Galaxy. 

He is looking under the hood (she probably told him she couldn't start the car but neglected to mention it was because she broke the ignition key). It's like she's got a neon sign flashing "I'm ditsy" for everyone to pick up on. 

Sandra: Whatever it was, a crazy guy, there's no other explanation for it. I'm telling you my sign said something about me having a weird day today. But I don't believe that stuff. do you? My god, you can't get out of the city to have a nice easy day and look what happens. What do you think he wanted? Am I talking too much? 

Jake: If he was crazy he probably didn't want anything, and it's perfectly normal to want to talk about a traumatic experience. 

Jakes hand are dirty from looking over the engine. 

Jake: You got a cloth?

Sandra: Sure I've got some in my bag [walks over to the Rabbit and starts rummaging around]. I'm sorry about your suit. 

Jake: Don't worry.

Sandra: No, are you kidding worrying is my specialty. It's what I do. I work for a law firm, selling insurance. 

Jake: Insurance huh?

Sandra: With the world falling apart these days, the way it is, you need all the protection you can get.

Jake tells her to get in the car and start it, and now she tells him its broken. "Oh," replies Jake known he just wasted his time. So he goes back to close the hood and Sandra asks isn't there...

Sandra:  ... a way to start it with the wires? You're the mechanic.

Jake: Mechanic, god no I'm a doctor.

Sandra surprised tells Jake that her father was a doctor and that was how he met her mother. He saved her life. Sandra is starting to come on to Jake.

Sandra:  Well I have to get to Pearblossom tonight, so if there's anything you can do, if there's a chance you could help me out. Otherwise I'm stranded. In the desert. Do you know what I mean?

Jake: We can flip for it.

Sandra laughs and asks Jake if he has anything cool to drink. Jake tells her he's got a cooler in his car. We watch Sandra hop in and crack open a soda, and then concerned about her appearance now checks herself out in the mirror. 

Meanwhile back in the Rabbit we watch as Jake flips a coin. He nods at the result and grabbing his jacket, gets back in the Jag. Sandra is applying some lipstick. They make formal introductions and take off down the road.

They pull into the first place they come to The Oasis Bed and Breakfast to call for a tow truck. 

Geoffrey Lewis as Willy

They tell Willy, the proprietor that the Rabbit is about seven miles back down the road, needs a new ignition switch and the door fixed. Sandra asks Willy if he has a rest room and he directs her to do around outside to it. As Sandra walks she talks to her self. 

Sandra: Ok Sandra, straighten up, you don't even know this guy and you're coming on to him like  a steam train. What is your problem. I'll tell you what your problem is... [using the toilet and then reapplying her lipstick in the mirror] So A guy comes out of nowhere and saves your life, get real because by tomorrow you wont even remember his name. She says bye bye Jake to the mirror and walks back outside. 

Upon opening the door she is startled when the Galaxy is parked right outside. She walks over, and rubs off the dust coating the rear window and peers inside. 

She spots a suitcase and opens the tailgate and climbs in. She opens the suitcase and spots decks of cards, magic trick items and below a partition a roll of hundred dollar bills. Probably figuring the damages to her car she peels off a thousand dollars and stashes it in her purse. 

She gets out of the Galaxy and runs back to the front of the Oasis and meets Jake, Excitedly she tells him the crazy guy and his car are out back, and she implores Jake to get her out of there. They drive off down the highway.

We cut to the Jag, pulled over on the side of the road near a Pearlblossom 17 miles sign. Jake ran out of gas. Sandra is sleeping beside him.

Jake informs Sandra that she has been sleeping for 72 minutes.

Sometime later Sandra is walking in the road She stops and looks up at the sun.

Sandra: Might as well face it we're dead. No one is gonna come.

Jake: Sure someone is going to come I had a patient that did this all the time. Someone always picked him up.

Sandra: What did you treat him for complete stupidity?

Jake: He was a professor of mathematics and a very good guy, until he woke up one morning convinced that his whole life was one huge inescapable mathematical equation. 

Sandra: So he took up hitching that makes sense.

Jake: Thought a little random adventure might throw a little wrench in the works.

Sandra: Did it?

Jake: You could say that. His name was Max Tinder, he killed seven people in eleven days.

Sandra stops and looks at Jake.

Sandra: What kind of doctor are you?

Jake [pointing]: A Truck! 

Sandra turns and does a Cloris Leachman and runs to the center of the traffic lane to wave the truck down. 

It turns out to be the tow truck pulling her Rabbit. Its doesn't look like its gonna stop and Jake has to scramble down and pull her out of the way. 

Sandra: My God what is it with me today? What is my problem?

Jake: Wrong place wrong time. That's all don't take it personally.  

They laugh and Sandra confesses that she doesn't work for a law firm, she works for a collection agency or at least she did until her boss sacked her after he screwed her. 

Jake: What about Pearblossom?

Sandra: Oh Pearblossom's there I'm gonna pick up my stupid sister, and we're gonna drive the rest of the way to Utah together. Since dad died she's is all mom can think about, and I can bet you that she wont even turn up. 

Jake:  You can. how come?

Sandra: Because Alice is a loser.

We cut to Alice. 

Alice is seated on her duffel bag laying on the gravel at a truck stop exit. She wears a leather cowboy hat and jacket, white sunglasses, hoop earrings, blue jeans and cowboy boots. In her lap is a cardboard sign that says Pearblossom. 

We get a little V.O. from Sandra during this sequence mentioning that "last year she waited two whole days in the middle of nowhere just waiting for her to show up. Later I found out that she was shacked up with some junkie musician type halfway through Nevada. That's Alice for ya, never gives a shit and has all the fun."

A truck pulling out of the lot puts its airbrakes on and squeals to a stop. Alice gathers up her belongings and runs to the cab. When she opens the cab door and takes off her sun glasses, the driver is naked from the waist down with a shit eating grin on his face.

Faiuza Balk as Alice

Fun

Alice makes a face, but she gives you the impression that its not her first rodeo. A part time truck stop hooker for convenience, or a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do. All the fun, lol.

We cut back to Sandra squatting in the road. She confesses to Jake that that is why she made things up. 

Sandra: I must sound like a complete head case to someone like you

Jake: Like me. You sound perfectly normal. Well, no ones perfect.

Another car is coming down the road and you can hear it backfiring as it climbs the grade, it turns out to be the Galaxy. Sandra panics and runs up the side of the road cut. Jake goes and retrieves her. 

Jake: Wait, wait, Sandra

Sandra: Its him the crazy guy, the one that wants me dead. 

Jake: Sandra wait a second first of all you don't know if he's crazy and second of all if he wanted you dead he wouldn't have stopped, he'd have run right over your head. 

Sandra: That's not the point.

Jake: What is the point, its not the money.

Sandra: What money

Jake: The money you took out of his car.

Sandra: I've never done anything like that in my life, I want you to believe that. On top of everything else I;ve become a thief, and I always thought I was a normal person. 

Jake: You are a normal person, stealing money is a perfectly normal action.

Sandra: Not for me it isn't Jake. Normal people don't go into some guys car and steal a load of cash

Jake: Of course they do otherwise there wouldn't be a 17% increase in white collar dysfunction would we? 

Sandra: What are you talking about?

Jake: All over America sane people doing insane things. Things they never though of never dreamed of irrational, illogical, unpredictable, random things, professional people like you or me or even him. It doesn't matter whether its a good thing or a bad thing just as long as it makes something happen. Something they didn't have to plan half their lives, like taking a vacation don't you see. 

Sandra: No that doesn't sound very scientific. 

Jake: It's not scientific, its not about science, its not about economics its about [Jake flips a coin] chance! [points at the coin] that's where the real possibilities lie, even a scientist cant tell you if this thing is going to turn this way or that way, that's really neat!.

Sandra [Nodding at Jake]: You really did it didn't you?

Jake: What?

Sandra: Back at the car you really did flip a coin to see if you'd pick me up.

Jake shrugs.

Sandra: That's really neat.

Jake flip's a coin and Jake goes down to the Galaxy, and speaks to the driver. We don't know what he's saying as are view is Sandra's view. I'd guess he's telling the driver an excuse, that she had to pee. Which is what I would have said.

Anyway Jake goes back up the cut to a waiting Sandra.

Jake: He says he wants to chop us both up with a hatchet.

Sandra: He did?

Jake: No he didn't say that it was a joke. To relieve the tension [laughs] Come on. [leads her down the slope to the Galaxy].

As they are walking on the pavement to the car Sandra asks...

Sandra: You shure this is cool Jake? 

Jake: I told you, professionally speaking I detected no obvious signs of danger. 

Sandra: And what about unprofessionally?

Jake: Unprofessionally if there is a problem, we can always kill him. 

Sandra looks ay Jake

Jake: Just kidding [out of the side of his mouth]

They hop in the car with the driver who turns out to be Santini a traveling magician / cardsharp. who also tells bad jokes. When Jake asks him about the dent in the side of the Galaxy, we get Santini's version of the events we witnessed from Sandra's viewpoint. 

David Thewlis as Santini

As Santini tells it, he followed the Rabbit down the road to return a silver lighter to its owner, Sandra's lighter. It was the silver thing that Santini was holding up that reflected the sun into her eyes. Santini continues his tale. After she sideswiped the Galaxy, she threw up  such a cloud of dust that he had to hit the hooks and pull over to clear his windshield. Santini remarks that he wasn't going to check on the Rabbit driver, because anyone crazy enough to ram him was crazy enough to have a gun.

Sandra in the back seat looks foolish now after hearing Santini's side and she glances at Jake who smiles back.

At dusk, they pull into the Pearblossom Motel. 

Santini is the last of the major characters to be introduced, and of course it all goes Noirsville.

Noirsville

Paul Sorvino as Sheriff Frank Noonan

 

This has a nice unexpected Hitchcock-ian twist, with interesting quirky characters that keeps you entertained. 

Chart does a great job directing and all the actors are excellent and most bring a dash of cinematic memory to other well known Noir. Should be better known.

There's also a couple of similarities to a better know Coen Brother's film that makes you think that the  author Cormac McCarthy of the novel it was based on saw this film. You'll know what I'm talking about immediately when you finish watching this.  

Bravo, Paul Chart should make another Neo Noir 7/10.