Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

Let me preface this comment by saying, first, I am an actor in LA, and second, that I am well aware that this is a very bad movie. Stupendously bad. Mind shatteringly bad. Life alteringly bad. OK, fine...it sucked!

But, I feel there are some points that must be made to explain (but by no means excuse) the well-meaning but misguided souls that worked so hard to bring us this dreck.

First, PBS. Granted, this production should never have made it past the first table read. But one must remember that, only a few years before, PBS had been responsible for one of the greatest pieces of sci-fi ever to appear on TV: The Lathe of Heaven. This was a wonderful, faithful adaptation of Ursula LeGuin's story.It was a genuine masterpiece. They probably thought they could do no wrong. How wrong they were. But, for an organisation that is notoriously strapped for cash, the attempt to widen it's appeal is understandable (if not forgivable). At least they hadn't started showing John Tesh concerts, yet.

Second, Raul Julia. A great many people that make comments on this site like to say of a famous actor in a bad film, "he must have needed rent money", or something to that effect. Well, I hate to break it to all you non-actors out there, but the fact is, some of us actually do NEED TO MAKE RENT MONEY. Raul was a great actor, an actors actor, but he was never a superstar. And, at the time Overdrawn At the Memory Bank was made, he had gained some success on the Broadway stage, but he probably still needed the job. The fact that he was a firm supporter of public broadcasting was undoubtedly a bit of gravy. Not all actors are Jack Nicholson, w/50,000,000 off the back end of BATMAN. Some of us are Raul Julia, in 1984, drawing a paycheck, and hoping our talent will show through, and elevate a piece of crap like OATMB.

Third, MST 3000. OK, granted, they had nothing to do with the making of this film. But, they took an unwatchable (while well intentioned)film, and turned it into an incredibly enjoyable film. And they were nice (as they reasonably could be) to Raul.

Like everyone else I saw this 'movie' on MST3K. Oh the humanity...

What I'll add is that if you've ever been involved in any kind of low-budget filmmaking this thing is great fun to watch. It's shot on videotape so it looks like some community college media class' final exam. Like so many others they use a modern mall as a bland future-scape. They obviously spent a huge amount trying to look 'high-tech' and it all just comes off looking silly (even, I think, back in '85). And add in the inexplicable presence of A-list actor Raul Julia (who had already appeared in John Cassavettes "The Tempest" and Francis Coppola's "One from the Heart" in 1982) and you've got a 'wriggle-uncomfortably-and-embarrassingly-in-your-chair' masterpiece!

Try and not shudder as:

o Raul Julia does a bad Bogart impression!

o Raul Julia does a voiceover while pretending he's a drunk monkey!

o They repeat the phrase 'fingal-dopple' over & over!

Think Matrix meets Brainstorm meets Casablanca meets Rollerball meets Dr. Who!!!

As I've stated before, there is a special place in my heart for Overdrawn At The Memory Bank - it's similiar to those Saturday afternoon WNET movies that I'd watch when I was either sick in bed or just plain bored and channel flipping. (The Tripods come to mind, for one.)

It's not strange that Raul Julia, an ardent public television advocate who lived in New York, would do it. The question of why and how it came about is, though.

For one, the movie was part of a series of science fiction productions by WNET in 1985, all adapted from short stories and novels. The people who produced Overdrawn At The Memory Bank also produced The Lathe of Heaven for PBS in 1979 as well. After The Lathe of Heaven, they had planned to produce a series of science fictions films, though they only got to do Overdrawn afterward. You can read an interview with them here: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue162/interview.html .

As stated before, Overdrawn was one of three films in a series, which also included Kurt Vonnegut's "Between Time and Timbuktu". The movie was deliberately shot on video so they could include the digital effects. Considering the budget given, the visual effects were actually effective, if a bit psychedelic.

Raul Julia does do a very good job acting in this movie - someone on an MST3K site said he looked "embarrassed". Hardly. He actually sold the part pretty well. Incidentally, PBS had the rights to both Animals Are Beautiful People and Casablanca, which is why they made good use of both. The movie was shot in Toronto, and most of the actors are from there - so blame Canada if you must.

(Incidentally, Animals Are Beautiful People is the funniest (and oftentimes sad and touching) animal documentaries you're likely to find, earning an Oscar nomination and directed by James Uys, who also did the classic The Gods Must Be Crazy.)

The woman who plays Appolonia James, Linda Griffiths, also did a very successful one woman show in Toronto as well -http://www.aislesay.com/ONT-ALIEN.html - based on the life of Gwendolyn MacEwen called Alien Creature: A Visitation From Gwendolyn MacEwen. She also has had steady work since Overdrawn, too.

In the end,is Overdrawn At The Memory Bank a bad film? Maybe. MST3K fodder? Oh, most definitely. However, for me, it brings back happy memories of childhood, and there is one quality that makes it better than most seen even in Hollywood flicks:

Everyone seems to be having a GOOD TIME making the film. They're having FUN. Donald Moore in particular (who plays Walenda Irving, the huge chairman of the board) is having a hammy ball with the material. Unfortunately, after Overdrawn, he only did Blue Velvet then passed away.

I am sure many people probably saw this PBS made film back in the day because back when it was made there were less channels and stuff and sometimes it was either something like this or nothing! Granted, I am sure a majority of people chose the latter. I saw this film thanks to the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 and I am quite sure a good number of people were exposed to it for the first time thanks to the show. Even those who may have seen bits and pieces of it back in the day, probably did not witness the whole thing until it was featured on MST3K because I just cannot see anyone making it through all the jumbled mess that this film consisted of. Though, I just said it was a film, but it is not shot on film...rather it looks as if it were recorded on a camcorder. They did manage to land Raul Julia, but he was not as big when this one came out as he would later become. Then again, he did star in Street Fighter so he may not be too picky about parts; however, he had a sweet reason to be in Street Fighter and that was because I believe a nephew was a fan of the video game. Here, maybe he was a fan of PBS and thought he would star in this film and give it some merit. Which he probably did, as bad as it was, I do not think Mystery Science Theater would have even touched this thing without such a big star being in it.

The story, well it is kind of difficult to explain. This is probably due to several factors as I do not think this was a whole movie to begin with, but actually a film that had parts to it. Then there is the fact it was a MST3K episode, which means that it was probably further edited down to accommodate the show's run time. Still, even when you take into account this things the film is rather confusing. A future society where everyone works and are no longer able to watch cinemas like Casablanca. One man tires of the routine and finds a way to watch said film and others, though Casablanca is apparently the only one they were allowed to partly show. He gets caught and gets sent to rehab which consists of having his mind placed in a baboon. His body is lost because even in the future they do stupid things like allow children into areas they shouldn't be in and he is soon placed in the computer where he meets Rick and soon Aram Fingal (the hero) tries to interface with the computer while Apollonia James tries to help Fingal, but she also eats and gets fat off flav-o-fives while the fat man gets mad at Fingal messing around his computer! Aram and Rick are both played by Raul who does put some effort into his role here.

The film made for a very funny episode of MST3K as there is just a lot of things to make fun of. The strange names of the people and of certain things, the whole Casablanca setting in the computer and when Raul's character makes his moves on a blond. There is no shortage of things to riff here, which in turn makes this a very strong and consistent episode with no real weak spots within. The bumps were pretty good, with the one featuring Servo being doppeled being the highlight.

So no, this is not a film I would care to see without MST3K. Granted, there may be a few things one could gain as far as understanding the plot, but this thing is such a mess that I just do not believe seeing it uncut is going to help all that much. This was just one of those strange movies or whatever you wanna call it that would occasionally come on after you watched Sesame Street that bored you to tears, but you just did not have the ability to turn the television yet! Of course, I did learn something from this film and that is that the anteater is the most horrific animal ever!

I actually had some hopes for this adaptation. The original short story on which this adaptation is based was from John Varley's creative peak period, and was funny, clever, inventive, and even moving. It is, in fact, a classic of the Sci Fi genre, which why PBS ranked it along with "The Lathe Of Heaven" as deserving of exposure to a wider audience. And the PBS adaptation of "Lathe" was actually decent - not mind blowing or anything, but watchable and understated and patient in the way it developed and used the ideas from the story.

And Raul Julia was a brilliant actor. There are movies in which the Julia shines like the surface of the sun ("Kiss Of the Spider Woman"), and he is (was) almost always the most interesting actor in any movie he appears in. So I had hopes that this wouldn't suck.

But ODATMB takes this potential and wastes it. While the story is funny and smart-mouthed and satiric and gets in and out quickly after riddling its targets with dozens of sharp-witted barbs, the video adaptation just lumbers along like a bad soap opera. Lines of dialog and exposition that seemed so clever on the printed page just fall flat here. Blame for this falls squarely on the director, who doesn't seem to be able to keep up the snappy pace and rhythms of the story, or get the supporting actors to inhabit the characters or invest them with any charisma. Especially egregious are some really crappy performances by minor actors, walk-ons and extras that simply drag the movie down several notches. Don't know if the blame rests with them, or (again) with the director for not insisting on keep doing takes until they came up with better readings of their lines. Julia himself is still a live-wire and a fire-hose of energy, but he's out there all alone with no acting support.

Also to blame are the dreadful video and special effects - especially lame are the documentary stock film sequences which have Julia's voice-over trying to tie the grainy footage with the sci-fi elements of 'doppling'. It's a cheap trick and a cheap attempt to do an end-run around the need to depict the central concept of 'doppling' into a specially prepared animal as a vacation from the pressures of life in 'the future', and it doesn't work at all.

And the whole 'Casablanca' tie in just lies there. The one good thing about it is that if any modern actor could do Bogart properly, it might well be Julia. The thought of him actually being in a remake of 'Casablanca' generates practically the only good-will I felt for the movie.

I can't bear to give anything with Raul Julia in it a '1' (not even the movie version of 'Street Fighter'), so I give it a '2' out of 10. Maybe a 2 1/2 for making the attempt in the first place, and for recognizing a great story.

Poor John Varley. Maybe there is something in his style of story telling that just doesn't translate well to movies and screenplay..."Millennium" was another great story that completely fell apart in the film version. Who can say???