Waking the Dead opened on 62 screens on March 26, 2000. The following week, it was down to 48 screens, and 13 the week after. Total gross was less than $1 meg. DVD release was September 16, but there was some problem with distribution, and it is just now widely available. The title refers to the monumental problem the ushers had clearing the unconscious audience from the theater after each screening. As the film begins, Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup) sees a news story that his true love, Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), has been killed in a car explosion. We then begin two threads -- one starting in 1972, where Fielding meets and beds Sarah, and one in 1982, where Fielding runs for congress while trying to cope with the loss of his true love.

Fielding meets Sarah at his brothers magazine, and they fall instantly in love despite their political differences. While they are both liberal Democrats, she is a total idealist, and he is more practical. He is in the Coast Guard to dodge the draft, yet not kill his chances of holding a political office. She believes that it is immoral of him to join any military branch. He is ambitious, wanting to climb up from his middle class working man roots, while she is a compulsive do-gooder. The brother, played by Paul Hipp, is a caricature of Sonny Bono at his hippest and worst.

The non-linear time sequence, which was used effectively by Atom Egoyan in nearly all of his films (The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica, etc.), and in Fight Club, doesn't work here. As a matter of fact, with each shift, they have to print the year on the screen just to keep the audience from getting confused. This is due, in part, to the fact that the two threads are always a mere 10 years apart, and set in the same locations, so they don't look much different. Both threads also involve the same characters.

Critics pretty much agreed with the theater goers. Berardinelli gives it a 1 1/2 stars and Ebert is overly-generous at 2 1/2. IMDB viewers have it at a surprisingly high 6.2/10. The film contains a short love scene between Fielding and Sarah (images 1 - 9), which is actually a montage of two deleted scenes (images 10 - 16) which are part of the 30 minutes of deleted scenes on the DVD. If you still plan on seeing this, skip the rest of the review, as it has spoilers.

Fielding begins to fall apart just as his dreams of going to congress begin to seem possible. The reason? Sarah is either alive, or he is hallucinating that she is. Director Keith Gordon worked very hard to make sure that we never got enough information to decide which was the case, to the point of deleting several scenes, and some sub-plot, when test audiences were able to defend a point of view that Sarah was actually alive. Sarah works for a priest assisting Chileans find asylum. Fielding and Sarah have lunch at the church, and a big fight. In the deleted portion of the scene, one of the Chilean women remarks that she looks much like Sarah, and is exactly the same size. In the following scene, Sarah returns home and informs Fielding that she wants to get pregnant. There is a long and steamy love scene, at the end of which, she stops him before ejaculation and says she can't get pregnant.

Armed with these two pieces of information, the audiences believed they could prove that she was alive and in hiding, and that it was actually the Chilean girl who was in the car. The idea was to turn government policy against the evil Chilean government. As the film ends, Fielding still doesn't know if Sarah is live or Memorex, but decides that he can go on either way. I have no idea why Gordon worked so hard to avoid resolution, but, long before the end, I stopped caring. Most of the nudity was in the deleted scenes anyway, and there was no other possible reason to watch this film. Also irritating to me was a lot of strange lighting which seems to have been used because Gordon liked strange lighting rather than to establish mood or atmosphere. Connelly certainly does have impressive breasts. Lets hope she can find a more worthy role for them.

The question here is how did this movie - essentially a big budget Hollywood release - avoid all the usual pitfalls and end up so frigging good.

First, it has the perfect combination of an indy spirit and a studio budget. They let Cameron Crowe make the movie the way he wanted to. He wrote, he directed, and he didn't have to listen to script doctors or marketing dudes. It's his vision, and he made the film the way he wanted it. Nobody told him what was funny. Nobody told him to dumb stuff down. Indy auteurs do this all the time, but they don't have DreamWorks supporting them. Crowe has had some real artistic and commercial successes (Say Anything, Jerry Maguire), and DreamWorks rolled the dice on him.

Second, this is his one great story. Most artists have exactly one great story inside of them. Tarkovsky had Andrei Rublov- cut in the passion of his love for the forces that shaped Russian history. Spielberg had Schindler's List - which was fed by his emotional involvement with the number one story of our century. Welles had Citizen Kane, which was fueled by his own relationship with Citizen Hearst. This one is Crowe's one big story, telling his most interesting life experience. I should point out that he also wrote the book Fast Times at Ridgemont High out of his own experience in going back to high school "undercover" in order to analyze the social interactions of adolescents. That was a great story as well, but not quite as universally interesting as his own work for Rolling Stone in the very heartbeat of American pop culture.

Third, it just so happens that in his case the one story is based on his own life, and real people that he knew. And, as a bonus, he didn't tell the story until he was far enough distanced from it, and old enough and wise enough to see it more clearly.

Fourth, it just so happens that his story is about something that most of us think is a very interesting topic indeed: art, truth, stardom, and retaining one's humanity in the world of big time rock 'n roll. That was especially interesting in the 70's, when rock was less important than rock stars.

A great combination of factors.

I think the characters are beautifully realized. Crowe created them vividly in real human form, he painted them with a love for humanity, and he cast the roles beautifully. Then he somehow communicated to his actors what those characters were about, and got them to deliver his vision. Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand, unknown Patrick Fugit, and Philip Seymour Hoffman deliver uncanny multi-dimensional characterizations of real people.

And the dialogue is dynamite. As always, his characters actually say interesting things to each other in interesting ways. The phone conversation at the end between the kid and Hoffman is as intelligent and touching and honest as any dialogue I've ever heard in a Hollywood movie. I also like the chats between Crudup, the taciturn but charming rock star, and McDormand, the loquacious professorial mom.

I don't know if this could be "best picture" or "best director", there's till plenty more to see, but I'll sure be surprised if anyone writes better dialogue.

And finally, how many movies have the elements necessary to please both the mass audiences and the toughest critics? Cameron Crowe - you are DA man.

General consensus. I guess you have to say four stars. Some of the highest scores I've ever seen at IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes.

Kate Hudson was topless briefly. The captures/collages were done by Sing, not by me.

Fairuza Balk was seen in a see-through top. (Not pictured here)

Still in theaters. Box Office is doing pretty well, but it doesn't look like it will be a megahit, and won't provide a spectacular return on its lavish 60 million dollar budget. It has been the #3 movie the last two weeks. The most current week, it was #3 behind Remember the Titans and The Exorcist, but it is sure to drop further, since Meet the Parents (also DreamWworks) is pulling in some spectacular numbers this weekend.

Cinema Score: All A's except for one B+, and that from young women. (Meet the Parents scored straight A's, but was schooled by Remember the Titans, which scored a perfect straight A+'s)

IMDB summary: 8.9 out of 10. (Meet the Parents 7.8, Remember the Titans 8.0)

Rotten Tomatoes summary. 86% positive, and 82% from the top critics. ( Meet the Parents scored 85/88, Remember the Titans scored 71/71)

Oh, and Oz's collage on Saturday of unnamed babes in the Patrick Swayze movie, Road House? The woman in the bottom right is Laura Albert, whose filmography is really long; and the woman in the top left pair of caps is Dawn Ciccone (I think) whose entire filmography is Road House. This movie is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures for me. I love Julie Michaels, think her strip scene is the just dandy and find the gratuitous nudity and violence... and the final revenge scene... to be, well, entertaining. My way or the highway, indeed.