HBO Original films bring weekend to life

An inspirational story and an entertaining documentary are in the viewing lineup.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
If the major networks are typically asleep at the wheel this Memorial Day weekend, cable giant HBO boldly enters the fray with not one, but two original films.
"Something the Lord Made" (premiering at 9 p.m. Sunday) is the sort of inspirational true-life story that seems designed to sweep the Emmy Awards. (Director Joseph Sargent's two previous HBO movies, "Miss Evers' Boys" and "A Lesson Before Dying," both won Emmys.)
The less-starchy -- and considerably more entertaining -- "Elaine Stritch at Liberty" (premiering at 8 tonight) offers an intimate portrait of the Broadway legend onstage and off.
A superbly judged central performance by rapper-turned-actor Mos Def is the best thing about "Made." As Vivien Thomas, a poor Nashville carpenter who takes a job as lab assistant to esteemed medical researcher Dr. Alfred Blalock (British character actor Alan Rickman with an affected, distracting Southern accent), Def brings such innate dignity and intelligence to the role that he's positively riveting.
Moving scenes
Although Thomas played an instrumental role in developing then-revolutionary surgical procedures, the fact that he was black and living in the Deep South kept his achievements cloaked in Blalock's shadow. The most poignant scene is when Thomas sneaks into a segregated hotel dressed as a bellhop during a banquet in Blalock's honor. While Thomas stands on the sidelines with the real service staff, he hears his mentor thank everyone but him in a self-serving speech.
The fact that Thomas eventually went on to an illustrious academic career, teaching young doctors at John Hopkins University and even receiving an honorary doctorate, makes the film more uplifting than depressing. Peter Silverman and Todd Philips' script addresses the racial injustices that plagued much of Thomas' life, but is more interested in a a feel-good homily than a hard-hitting indictment. Just the way "A Beautiful Mind" -- which this inevitably recalls -- put a smiley face on schizophrenia, "Something the Lord Made" does the same with socially ingrained racism. I wasn't convinced. Not helping matters is arch dialogue layered with textbook jargon and too many scenes where characters scribble complicated medical diagrams on chalkboards.
Sargent gives Thomas' story the measured, stately pace -- less sympathetic viewers might call it plodding -- of an old-fashioned TV docudrama. He also covers an awful lot of ground, perhaps more than any two-hour movie can comfortably handle. With rich subject matter that spans decades and a potentially fascinating lead character, "Made" might have worked better as a "Band of Brothers"-sized miniseries. At times I thought I was watching the abbreviated Cliff Notes version.
Documentary
"Elaine Stritch at Liberty," the one-woman show that earned Stritch her first ever Tony in 2002, is generously and gloriously excerpted in DA Pennebaker's documentary of the same name. Stritch remains an indomitable force of nature at the ripe young age of 79. Perched proudly onstage at New York's Public Theater in a pair of form-fitting leotards, the foghorn-voiced Stritch regales us with priceless anecdotes from her event-filled life and 60-year-plus show biz career.
Equally delicious are the backstage glimpses of Stritch in rehearsal and some rare archival footage taken from the recording of the "Company" cast album in 1970. Watching Stritch really nail the Stephen Sondheim musical's most famous (and famously difficult) song, "The Ladies Who Lunch," will bring tears to the eyes of Broadway Babies everywhere.
Whether describing a disastrous first date with fellow acting student Marlon Brando, her years of chronic alcoholism, or how she was able to make it to New Haven, Conn., from Manhattan eight times a week for a Broadway-bound revival of "Pal Joey" while still understudying Ethel Merman in "Call Me Madam" on the Great White Way, Stritch is pricelessly funny, unstintingly candid, and remarkably gracious about her triumphs and failures. (" ... and we all know what a bad decision that turned out to be," she says with a shrug about dumping Ben Gazzara for Rock Hudson while shooting 1957's "A Farewell to Arms.")
In the good old days, Stritch is the kind of ageless trooper who'd be referred to as a "great broad." Politically incorrect or not, that appellation still fits -- and she's got the gams to prove it.
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.