- Produced, written and directed by J. Neil Schulman
- Starring
- Nichelle Nichols
- Ethan Keogh
- Susan Smythe
- Claudia Lynx
- Alexander Wraith
- Executive produced by Nichelle Nichols and J. Neil Schulman
In putting together the movies to be reviewed in this Original Crew Month, I tried to represent every permanent fixture on the bridge of the NCC-1701. Some of them had long and fruitful careers after Star Trek; some of them had only a smattering of work, but their Trek fame guaranteed that the few roles they did take were in genres appreciated by frequenters of this site (not to mention me, the guy who would have to write the reviews). The one crewmember who proved problematic was Nichelle Nichols. After the TV series and outside of the movies, she did the occasional TV episode, more than half of which was as a voice actor in animated series. Not exactly the focal roles which would qualify for this Video Binge. Sure, she did the Confederate zombie flick The Supernaturals (1986), but I had already reviewed that. Would I be forced to track down a bootleg of the impossible-to-find TV-movie The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space (1995), or cover her five-episode run on Heroes?
Fortunately, Nichols has recently starred in (and was one of the executive producers on) an indie film which is currently doing the festival circuit, and the writer/director/other executive producer was happy to send me a screener. As far as I can tell (i.e., as far as the IMDb tells me), what you’re reading is the first full-length review of Lady Magdalene’s anywhere on the IntarTubes. Woo! Go me!
“But if this is my toiler paper roll, what did I do with my turban?”
It’s a movie that is in equal parts clever and unpolished. The premise, which originally drew me to ask for a screener, involves an IRS agent who is put in charge of a Nevada business in receivership — specifically, a legal brothel. That’s comedy gold right there, I tell you. And most of the shortcomings in the movie stem from not mining that gold industriously enough.
Jack Goldwater (Ethan Keogh) is the perfect government agent in the post-9/11 age. Though technically an IRS agent, he’s been on loan to the Department of Homeland Security’s air marshal program thanks to his fluency in Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi, and has had all of the tactical and anti-terrorism training that goes with being part of the DHS. Unfortunately, his spot-on instincts run afoul of political correctness. After he detains an Arab-American airline passenger (Alexander Wraith) for acting suspicious about his carry-on violin case — which contains, naturally, a violin — he gets dressed down by a supercilious senator (Angela Rosiek) and busted back to the IRS.
Of course, we know that the passenger, Yassin, really is a terrorist, because we’ve already seen him in a cave in the Middle East, talking with the bin Laden-like “Director” (Mark Gilvary, and no, that false beard isn’t fooling anyone into thinking he’s Middle Eastern) about a mission into the heart of the Great Satan. What the mission is is part of the mystery, don’t'cha know.
“I don’t care if your middle name is ‘Tiberius.’”
Goldwater, now back with the IRS, is given the “widowmaker” assignment that has already ruined the lives of two former agents. It seems that Lady Magdalene’s, a legal Nevada brothel, has gotten far enough behind in its federal taxes to fall into receivership. Congratulations, Agent Goldwater — you’re now running a whorehouse!
Now, it’s been a lot of setup to get to this point, so the audience is expecting, and hoping for, much hilarity as Goldwater finds himself in charge of Lady Magdalene herself (Nichelle Nichols), aka “Maggie,” and her six girls. There is of course the scene where Maggie and the girls all introduce themselves seductively, not letting Goldwater explain that he’s not a client, he’s the new boss. And there’s a scene in which “Scheherazade” (Claudia Lynx), one of the girls, tries to win some extra favors from Goldwater. But to an overwhelming degree, the comedic possibilities of the situation are left to lie. Maybe it’s because everyone’s too well-behaved; Goldwater is a competent, phlegmatic nice guy, and Maggie and the girls are all reasonable, well-adjusted individuals. If someone had asked me my opinion when this was still in the script stage (and the number of productions which suffer for not taking advantage of my consulting services is staggering), I would have said to take the situation one of two ways:
1)Downplay the DHS competence and make Goldwater a career IRS deskjobber with short-sleeved dress shirts and a bad-to-nonexistent history with women. How does the straight-laced government accountant deal with a business immersed in passion and lust? Or…
2)Play up the “hard-edged government agent” angle to contrast with a “pampered sex-kitten” lifestyle at the brothel, and make this essentially a remake of Kindergarten Cop with boobs.
“Hi, we just wanted to set our neighbors’ minds at ease about having a brothel in the neighborhood by coming out here on a Sunday morning and shaking our groove thangs.”
Either one of these scenarios would have played up the fish-out-of-water angle, which is the root of half the world’s successful comedy, and allowed for the kind of hilarious double-intendre miscommunications which are the root of the other half (or at least of the entire run of Three’s Company). Instead, Goldwater and Maggie get along tolerably well — heartening if you dream of movies that showcase understanding and cooperation between people of disparate backgrounds, but boring for a comedy.
And for a movie set in a brothel, it’s a remarkably sex-less movie. I’m not saying that it should have been an epic of grindhouse sexploitation; I don’t mind that there was no nudity (though I was surprised). But still, it’s a movie about a business that revolves around sex. This movie should be awash with sexual situations, at least as many as are found in the average office sitcom sex in a non-sex-industry establishment (or, again, in the average episode of Three’s Company). (Note: There are various cuts of the movie. Mine is the “producer’s theatrical cut,” but footage used in the closing credits show that there were unused scenes between Goldwater and the girls; maybe most of what I’m looking for ended up on the cutting room floor.)
Even the G-rated comedy is kind of thin on the ground for a comedy. Most of it is pretty lighthearted, but the only truly farcical scenes revolve around the non-Arabic jihadi cell that Yassin has to deal with in the States (including writer/director J. Neil Schulman as Ali), who are a bunch of over-eager amateurs. The only sleeper agent who isn’t a bumbler is the one who works at… Lady Magdalene’s! Boy, what are the odds? That’s how Goldwater ends up back on the trail of the al-Qaida agent who got him kicked out of the air marshals.
Whoa! WHOA! Let me introduce the concept of a “firing line” to you, babe!
Possibly the reason that the sleeper cell is the only group shown as bumblers is that it’s a very pro-patriotic movie. Goldwater is motivated by dedication to his country to accept the “lesser” post at the IRS instead of seeking a higher-profile position with the Mossad, and that dedication is conveyed without irony. The various federal agencies, especially the FBI, are shown as overtaxed but not incompetent; in fact, the only characters portrayed as reprehensible are the Director, who spews anti-semitic invective whenever given the chance, and Senator Kensington, whose smug and curt assumptions about the motivation and intelligence of the likes of Goldwater dominate the hearings where she passes judgment on his activities.
It’s a cheapish movie (around $500,000), though it only rarely exceeds its budget with ambition. (Most notably in some bad, bad digital superimpositions in some scattered shots.) Clever use of stock helicopter footage of Hoover Dam, for instance, combined with chopper sound effects in the scenes of our actors on the ground, gives the convincing impression that there was actually a chopper there, despite never being seen.
As with many indie flicks, the acting is all over the place. Nichelle Nichols is, of course, a consummate professional. (She also performs three songs, which probably explains the “vanity project” vibe from seeing her name as executive producer.) Ethan Keogh as Goldwater is acceptable, though a little too muted in his reactions (that could easily be a problem more with the director than the actor), and Susan Smythe as “Angel” (the prostitute who turns out to have been the previous IRS receiver, who then turns out to be… naah, I promised the director I’d stay light on the spoilers) is acceptable, and gorgeous enough to make up for any thespian shortcomings. Most of the rest of the cast ranges from adequate to “Seriously, that was the best person who auditioned?”
Agent Goldwater agrees with me. She’s cute.
The movie as it stands is a pleasant enough, low-key diversion, but I felt disappointed in the end that, in a movie that billed itself as an action-comedy, neither the comedy nor the action-suspense really hit a peak, and I suspect that most audiences would come away similarly unsatisfied. Maybe a re-edit, putting in more of the sex-comedy footage (if, indeed, there is more sex-comedy footage) and tightening up the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of the last hour might give Lady Magdalene’s the lift it needs to become a minor cult hit.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 3
- breasts: 0 (pretty amazing, huh?)
- explosions: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actor who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
- Nichelle Nichols, obviously
Is it considered wrong for the filmmaker to comment on some of the points raised in a mostly kind review?
First off, we went through around a dozen cuts before we got to this one. There are two more comedy scenes at the brothel I would have liked to leave in. But while in my view they play well and add to the character of the movie I was getting audience feedback that it was slowing down the story. And the comedy was more outrageous in the earlier cuts. I was getting complaints from people who watched it saying, “Is this a comedy or an action movie?”
From my point of view that’s the problem in a nutshell. A movie is supposed to fit in a neat category. It’s a comedy. It’s an action movie. It’s a thriller or a slasher movie. Where’s the tits and the mandatory soft-core sex scene? Where’s the “exploitable” elenments?
It puts the filmmaker in a prison made up of expectations when cutting the movie. Instead of cutting the movie to the internal logic of the available elements — a Zan approach — the movie has to be cookie-cut.
My movie didn’t get accepted to festivals or win any awards until I cut it as close to acceptable categories as I could. With no budget for car crashes or pyrotechnics it could never compete with megabudget action movies. I’d never intended it to be a wall-to-wall gagfest — which is what an audience expects when you stick the label “comedy” on a movie these days.
I wanted to tell a straight story and have the what comedy there was come naturally out of the characters. I did throw in some gags — and there are more than the one Star Trek reference mentioned in this review.
Does the movie succeed? From my standpoint, it’s more thsn I’d hoped for, and I’ve found audiences that are interested in my story and laugh in most of the right places.
As for it being patriotic, yes — but in the original sense of the word. Not jingoistic. Not racist. My two most gorgeous actors are the al Qaeda agents. It’s quite subversive if you’re paying attention.
When this movie finally makes it into distribution I pray you’ll get a chance to see for yourself.
Meanwhile, I’m grateful for just about any attention we get.
Neil
What about Truck Turner? Seems like the perfect Nichols/Coldfusionvideo demographic choice to me.
Neil,
Thanks for commenting. After further thought, I think the problem is that a comedy movie should be funny, more or less, all the way through. (It’s one of Aristotle’s lesser-known unities.) Screenwriter Bill Martell talks about a script’s “DNA” — that one should be able to clone the entire screenplay from a single scene, because that scene will contain all of the themes that power the entire movie. Lady Magdalene’s has some lightly funny scenes, but those are almost all confined to the first half, and the second is dominated by the dead-serious intrigue of the terrorist plot.
Mark,
I have to admit, I don’t to blaxploitation much, and I don’t have a lot of grounding in it, so a review of Truck Turner would be mostly a showcase for my ignorance.
Nathan,
As I said (and writing my comment late at night I was bleary-eyed and my typing sucked) I wish there were a way to cut a movie without having to worry about labels like “comedy” or “action” and let the Zen of the movie’s natural elements let it find the audience that will appreciate it for what it is rather than what the labels lead them to expect. These category expectations are the death of originality and instead of getting new art you get paint-by-numbers.
I have straight and comedic elements all the way through the movie. I have laugh lines in my most serious scenes; I have serious scenes in the beginning and comedy scenes in the end.
I call the movie a “suspense comedy” because that’s the least offensive label I can think of to convey this to a potential audience. But I wish I could just tell the audience, This movie tells what its writer/director considers to be a pretty decent story. We have suspense. We have some decent action — as much as we could afford on an ultra-low budget. (No use of stock footage by the way, and I bet you’d be wrong in identifying precisely what and where we composited, since all of our action was shot as real stunts without green screens.) We have a romance. We have music. We have a happy ending. If the movie was shot to any formula it was the kitchen-sink approach of old studio movies — the formula still used in Bollywood.
Is that a “comedy”? Is that an “action movie”? These terms are ephemeral. To Shakespeare’s audience a comedy ended with a wedding and a tragedy ended in a funeral. Why must any movie be judged by how well what it actually is fits into the pigeonhole of a marketing label?
Neil
Nathan Shumate wrote, “If someone had asked me my opinion when this was still in the script stage (and the number of productions which suffer for not taking advantage of my consulting services is staggering” …
Okay. I just sent Nathan the script and budget for my next project. :-)
Neil
What would be interesting, assuming more comedic versions of scenes were filmed, would be to edit a comedy version and include it on a DVD release along with the action version. I think they did something like that with 1000 MIles to Graceland with the Kevin Costner edit and the Kurt Russell edit which I understand where drastically different movies using the same basic source material.
As it is I hope to see an audio commentary track or two.
It’s rather pathetic that the fellow who almost singlehandedly created this bad movie, felt the need to post a personal rebuttal to the review, even though the reviewer was far more generous to the movie than it honestly deserves!
I didn’t think it was pathetic, nor did I think it was really meant as a rebuttal. I always pay attention to an artist or craftsman who says, “What I was TRYING to do was…” especially if the finished product may have been less than completely successful.
So R.A. Ranieri — who obsessively posts a dozen comments a day on the IMDb message board for the TV series “Chuck — and who illegally obtained a working interim draft of Lady Magdalene’s then made it the sole movie he or she has ever written a user comment about on IMDb — has now showed up in a forum where I can defend myself from this cowardly piece of diseased excrement. I’m also pretty sure that this subhuman troll has faked another IMDb account opened just a day before writing an almost identical trashing of Lady Magdalene’s — an account that has been used for nothing else.
I don’t mind a bad review based on an honest disagreement with the producers’ intents, but when someone makes it his or her purpose in life to set forth a tissue of lies about a movie not yet in distribution and attempts to make sure no one else will ever get a chance to see it so they can possibly disagree with this anonymous guardian of public taste, it’s time for this louse to put up or shut up.
Who the hell are you, RARanieri? Have you ever done anything creative yourself? Ever put yourself out there in front of an audience or a readership? Ever worked years to learn a craft? Ever suffered through more rejections you can count before you made a sale … and did it again for the next project … and had to prove yourself again each time you did something new?
I’ll bet you haven’t. Nobody can go through that experience without developing a respect for the peers who simply manage to survive the brutality of exposing your inner soul every time you work, and managing not to get beaten down by god damned liars like you.
Come back here, you creep, and fight like a man.
Yeah, R.A., don’t discourage directors from adding new insight into reviews.
In the fifth screenshot, Goldwater looks like David Boreanaz!
Nathan,
One of the reasons I only rarely sent out screeners of Lady Magdalene’s to reviewers was that I knew the movie needed more work before commercial distribution. This past month film-editor Kent Hastings and myself went back into the editing bay for several weeks and produced what we’re calling the “Special Preview” edition, which is being shown this coming Saturday in the events center of the Pahrump Nugget Hotel and Gambling Hall (one of our shooting locations during principal photography back in 2006) and this is the edition that will be released as a DVD available on Amazon.com in September, along with a two-disc CD, Lady Magdalene’s: the musical soundtrack. Still going through the proofing process on these so can’t give you a firm release date.
You might be interested that in this new cut I was aware of the critiques you and others made and kept them in mind while recutting. We restructured the narrative flow of the movie, added back in some scenes I missed and cut some scenes I no longer thought worked, and added a whole bunch more deleted and expanded scenes — plus bloopers — to the end credits sequence.
I think the new edition is better as both a straight suspense film and is funnier than the version you reviewed. I specifically put more of the “fish out of water” scenes back in.
We also improved and finished some of our digital composite work.
Overall, I’d say I’m not 95% of where this movie can be without actually going back and reshooting — which I don’t have the budget to do.
Thought you and your readers should know, and keep your eyes on the official website at http://www.ladymagdalenes.com for further updates.
Cheers!
Neil
In previous comment, that should read: “Overall, I’d say I’m now 95% of where this movie can be without actually going back and reshooting — which I don’t have the budget to do.”
Neil,
I’m happy to have contributed to the process. As George Lucas has so, er, ably demonstrated, no movie is ever “done.”