"Gonna Shoot Some Pigs"

“I don't know whats happening to me. I get funny ideas.”

Targets (1969) is the first film from Hollywood renaissance man Peter Bogdanovich and it doesn't show at all. At least not in the sense that one would expect from a first film. I didn't even know it was his first film until it finished and I started looking for information on the internet about it. Hard Eight by Paul Thomas Anderson feels like a first film. Even Reservoir Dogs at this point looks a bit clunky compared to the films that Tarantino has grown into making. Maybe not “clunky” but some effects definitely seem a little, well, like the film devices of a filmmaker finding his voice.

Targets hits all the markers of what I look for when I watch movies, including the all important, “Be under two hours long.” That's not a rule, I've actually been itching to rewatch P.T. Anderson's The Master ever since I saw the Gibney doc, Going Clear. But most film should be under two hours long because most filmmakers aren't as good or clever as they think they are and we're all living under the gun in the 21^st century, metaphorically and literally, with more to do and less time to do it.
                                                                                                                                                                    

It's a movie about movies, which is another tick in another box on the list of “Best Features To Find In A Movie”. I get my kicks on the meta train. Did I mention at this point that I didn't know anything about the film going into it? That's the way I like to view my cinema, having no clue what I'm about to experience so that the story is able to hit me in a way that I'm totally unprepared for (how often is anyone actually surprised these day?).
                                                                                                                                                                    

I started the film with the thought in my head that the movie was about hitmen. For some reason I think I may have thought that Targets was The Killer Elite. Or maybe a movie with Lee Marvin? I've had Lee Marvin on the brain recently so maybe I'm just hoping every movie I put on is going to have him in it. So the movie begins and I'm thinking, “Ok, lets see these hitmen shoot at each other or something.” and the opening title is over the scene of a Corman-esque European castle at night, with lightning and thunder and there's Boris Karloff running around and, is that Jack Nicholson too? What the hell is this movie?
                                                                                                                                                                    

No sooner do I start to think, “Ok, well I guess this is some kind of horror movie throwback” does the camera pull back to reveal a small room full of film executives and Boris Karloff, watching the rushes of his character, Byron Orlok. Also in the room is a surprisingly hot Peter Bogdanovich and I only say “surprisingly” in that I didn't think that he was probably ugly as a young man, but first coming to know him as the shrink's shrink on The Sopranos I never thought of him as, well, young and hot. But he's got this kind of intellectual sex appeal that just caught me off guard. Maybe that's just me, I'm a mess.
                                                                                                                                                                      

There are two storylines at play in Targets, the first is of Byron Orlok, an unapologetic and unashamed direct allegorical character of Karloff. Orlok is a giant of old Hollywood horror films, at one point remarking, “They used to say 'The Marx Brothers make you laugh, Garbo makes you cry and Orlok makes you scream!'”. There's a scene where Bogdanovich's character Sammy Michaels visits Orlok at his hotel room and joins him in watching the actual Karloff film, The Criminal Code on television. A publicity man for the studio is trying to convince Orlok to do an appearance the following night at a drive in theater, showing another actual Karloff film, The Terror. Michaels is trying to convince Orlok to do his script, promising him that it's a real part not like the old monsters he used to play.
                                                                                                                                                                       

The parallel storyline is of Bobby Thompson, who connects with the Orlok story in the beginning by spotting him down the scope of a rifle he's purchasing across the street from the studio. If you're thinking, “Bobby Thompson? That sounds like the most American male name ever. Particularly if we're talking mid 20^th century.” then you're correct. Bobby Thompson is an allegory of real life 1960s spree killer Charles Whitman, who shot and killed 16 people while wounding 32 others from a clocktower of a college campus in Texas. Bobby Thompson is Charles Whitman, besides being a dead ringer for him, he types a note on before murdering his family which mirrors Whitman's story perfectly.
                                                                                                                                                                    

While Orlok and Sammy talk the film business and the changing tastes of the day, Thompson buys guys and bullets, lots of guns and bullets. He buys these guns and bullets with incredible ease and a laid back air that perfectly masks the killer inside.
                                                                                                                                                                   
Reading an interview Bogdanovich did with The Dissolve he talks about the genesis of the film, how it had to be done with Karloff, for a certain amount of money over a certain amount of days, how it was a “for hire” job that he and another person cranked out the script for and made it in that Roger Corman, no budget style. He talks about how the story is definitely about America's gun culture (and obviously Whitman) and the impact that gun violence has had on his own life. But he doesn't mention what appears to me to be the most interesting angle of the entire story (or if he does mention it, he doesn't give it the full airing it deserves) which is that of old horror versus new.
                                                                                                                                                                    

At one point in the film, Orlok holds up a newspaper with a headline reading “YOUTH KILLS 6 IN SUPERMARKET” and makes a comment regarding how no one will find his old monster movies scary anymore because of how scary the real world has become. Yet in the climactic moments of the film, it's Orlok who terrifies Thompson into submission, lumbering towards him in the way that he menacingly lumbered towards so many over the years in countless fright films. Thompson represents “the new horror” not only of the cinema but the world, for his horror is one without reason. He tells his wife at one point (before shooting her in the stomach) “I don't know what's happening to me. I get funny ideas.” There's no explanatory back story for Thompson, we just see his life as it is. We do know that he was in the army (like Starkweather) but he doesn't seem plagued by flashbacks or even depressed. We see Thompson friendly, calm and calculating as he murders his family then takes his act on the road.
                                                                                                                                                                        

New horrors replace the old, yet the old horrors still have weight. The uncertain madness of the 20^th century can buckle beneath the concrete, old world monsters of the past. Perhaps the film is saying this on some level. Perhaps not.
                                                                                                                                                                       

There's more subtle clues to Thompson's madness by way of the madness of America as we see Thompson and his family constantly immersed in television or radio. We lose our identities and the quietness of our minds to the ever growing din of a mad and violent world.
                                                                                                                                                                       

While all of this incredible commentary is going on, there's classic Bogdanovich cinema love spilling out all over the place. Orlok mentions The Raven at one point, while we hear a television ad for Anatomy of a Murder as well as the aforementioned Karloff films. Orlok wearily looks out his window on his way to the drive in theater, where his path will cross with Thompson's again and says despondently, “God what an ugly town this has become.” The line bristles with reality and purpose, both for Karloff's own world of the cinema and the greater world at large.
                                                                                                                                                                     

Everything in Targets works on levels, giving the viewer a multitude of angles by which to view the piece. It packs biting American social commentary as well as genuine cinema appreciation into a violent, human, beautifully shot and wonderfully acted hour and twenty six minutes. Targets is like nothing else that Bogdanovich would go on to make which helps give it an otherworldly glow, like a film that fell through the cracks of another dimension where he develops a career making grindhouse pics rather than academy award winning dramas and comedies. If you want to see a film that feels like the bastard grandfather of American Psycho and Ed Wood, see Targets.
                                                                                                                                                                    

I was going to say “Take aim at Targets.” but I'm not really writing with the goal of getting quoted for press releases anymore which is a win for everyone.