The Neon Ceiling

Henri Simoun and Carol Sobieski wrote this teleplay from Sobieski's original story about the unstable, unfulfilled wife of a dentist who occasionally takes off with her 13-year-old daughter for adventures on the road; this time they end up in the desert near Nevada, at a roadside café run by a drunken cook/mechanic/loner who takes a shine to the two ladies and invites them to stay. The premise for this TV-made character study sounds formulaic, though the results are anything but. Loaded down with talent (including director Frank R. Pierson, producer John Badham, and actors Gig Young, Denise Nickerson and Lee Grant, who won an Emmy), the film is sometimes scarily precise about the ways in which we interact with one another. It is predictable that the two adults will find solace with each other--and that the youngster will disapprove and want her father back--however the conversations which lead up to the final events are heartbreakingly real (if at times facetious). Grant's chronic irresponsibility and sadness isn't played for big melodrama--she's more like a wilted flower; Young, gaunt and grizzled, comes to appreciate her company and soon finds himself through helping her. Nickerson (who went on to play Violet Beauregarde in 1971's "Willy Wonka") is a precocious kid who talks like a grown-up, carries around a self-help tome about sex, and makes all the actual adults very uncomfortable with her probing questions. This is a sterling performance from the child actress, although there's too much emphasis on her near the end and she becomes an unreal creation by virtue of her actions. I have no idea what the filmmakers were trying to say with their confounding conclusion. Baffling, unsatisfying and off-putting all at once, it will surely leave most viewers scratching their heads, wondering what the point of the whole exercise was. Still, for a television enterprise, "The Neon Ceiling" is mature and impressive, with excellent cinematography and wry horse-sense. It's worth finding.

Several posters have been wondering where a copy of this movie can be found. There is a website called modcinema.com that specializes in hard-to-find films (including made-for-TV movies) from the '60s and '70s. "The Neon Ceiling" is available from that website. The movie is well worth seeking out.

The work of all three main characters is first-rate. Gig young just came off of his Oscar-winning role in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They" and here delivers a completely different performance as a grizzled, lonely greasy-spoon diner owner who is effected by the mother & daughter visitors. Lee Grant was at the top of her game at this time. She had just gotten nominated for an Oscar for "The Landlord", then won an Emmy for this movie. 4 years later, she won an Oscar for "Shampoo". She, too, plays a lonely soul looking for an escape. Denise Nickerson was the true revelation here with a performance that exhibits the transition between childhood and maturity. Her next acting job would be as the gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory".

"The Neon Ceiling" makes the most of its locations, from the clean, white, antiseptic and confining suburbia to the expansive, darker and freeing spirit of the desert.

... in spite of all of that navel gazing! This film was a good effort among a string of mainly made for TV films made from 1967 until about 1973 in which middle class people opined and whined about how unhaaappy (yes I know that is a misspell) and unfulfilled they were. These people were usually too old to be boomers and too young to be the greatest generation, having been born during the Depression but not having many memories of hardship. Thus their earliest childhood memories were of WWII, so they did not contribute to that effort, and up until the 70s they had plenty of material comfort that sprang from that effort and the 25 year postwar boom that came with it. During the late stage of this material comfort, these kinds of films came along.

So Carrie Miller (Lee Grant) is a very pretty very bored 30 something California housewife married to a dentist who is equally bored and has discreet affairs with his nurses to cope. Carrie copes by taking off on unannounced adventures across country. The night she leaves with her daughter -apparently she takes Paula with her with no regard for her schooling - her husband is awake and knows she is going. He just lies in bed. He is OK with it if it diffuses the tension for awhile.

Both mother and daughter have their car break down at a desert gas station/lunch counter run by a gruff ruffian known only as "Jones". At first, stranded there, nobody gets along with anybody. But Paula breaks down Jones' defenses, because underneath the explosive temper and the hermit demeanor is a guy who seems to want a family, but that never came his way. Played by Gig Young, this is the kind of part that Robert Ryan would have excelled at in his day. You wonder just who is this guy? And you never get a complete answer to that question.

Paula plays the kind of kid you find in so many 70s films - she is thirteen going on a thousand as she is much more together than any of the adults. She actually wonders "What will mom do when the money runs out?" Meanwhile mom is happy to sit in the sun in a semi comatose state and sing "Hallelujah". The neon ceiling in the title? It is a ceiling in the desert diner full of antique neon signs that Jones has wired together into a Reddy Kilowatt kind of spectacle. It seems to be the only thing in his life that gives him pride.

The finale is very open ended, and you see lots of things in this film you would never see today. No mom would trust her daughter alone with ruffian hermit strangers today. In 1970 this still seems like a non threatening thing. To me the actual story is about a 6, but as an example of the changing culture of the time it is an 8. I average the two to give it a 7/10 rating.

This movie has many darkly lit scenes despite the title. Herb Edelman truly proves he can act in this tour-de-force drama of a bored housewife seeking adventure. Lee Grant is excellent also, but the stand-out is Denise Nickerson, who showed quite an acting range.

This movie has been haunting me for years and I'd LOVE to find a copy to see it again. Perhaps contributed to my love for the desert and a life that has definitely been on a lesser traveled road. Both performances by Gig Young and Lee Grant were memorable. This movie also contributed to a fascination with neon lights. Somewhere in Portland Oregon there is a house on a corner with a changing display of neon lights that during my 10-year tenure there reminded me of what am impact Neon Ceiling had on me. Current attempts to capture the unfulfilled lives of desperate housewives pale by comparison to this excellent drama. You can almost taste the barren beauty of the desert!