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Golden Age Of Dzundza

I watched The Deer Hunter the other night – for the first time, really. I’d seen it on Showtime when I was a kid, back when uncut films playing on pay television were a novelty. I realized, revisiting it, that I’d never watched it through to completion. It was a conversation about George Dzundza, of all things, that brought the DVD to my house. Tom Myers sent it via Fed Ex from California, following a late evening chat about original Law and Order cast members one hot, mid-July evening on my Brooklyn roof. Not sure how the topic came up – probably had to do either with staring at the blue-green glow of lower Manhattan from an almost aerial vantage or simply because it’s fun to try and say “Dzundza” after having had a few beers. Whichever the case, Tom was all over it, his knowledge of film and actors being near encyclopedic. “George Dzundza,” he noted. “He was in The Deer Hunter.”

Robert DeNiro is in the film too, along with Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep and John Cazale. Tom included a note saying that they “don’t make films like this anymore” which would have been cliched if not pointedly true. It’s three hours for one thing; an instant hurdle in trying to pass a movie through the studio system. And it takes its time to develop, including a wedding scene that seems to run almost in real time from formal vows to drunken reception. I found myself becoming impatient, perhaps a result of Internet Age conditioning. And yet as the film progressed, and even several days after watching it, the manner and nuances of the characters established during this sequence came back to validate their subsequent actions. It was almost true to life, like recounting a long, shared trail with seasoned friends and commenting on the stuff you might have seen coming. It’s odd to note that, as I get older, many of the things I retain longest seemed unremarkable upon initial occurrence.

Deer Hunter is an imperfect film, implausible in parts and difficult to accept in an historical context. But the performances make most of this irrelevant. DeNiro gained sixty pounds to play the older Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull and drove a cab in New York City to prepare for Taxi Driver, but it was Deer Hunter that he called the most physically and emotionally demanding project of his career. He got in-role by socializing with local steelworkers in their Pennsylvania homes and drinking with them in the bars. Watching the film you get the sense you probably would’ve wanted to steer clear of him for several months after the production. This was not the same guy cranking out Meet The Fockers sequels today. Cazale was near the end of his life during the filming, sick with cancer and in a relationship with Streep. She threatened to quit upon learning the producers wanted to drop him because of his illness. There’s a rawness of emotion pervading Deer Hunter that would seem difficult to create from nothing.

Michael Cimino directed the film, a reputedly difficult character himself who was obviously at the top of his game. With rare exception, Hollywood is reluctant to put loose-canon geniuses at the reigns anymore. There is no modern-day equivalent to Deer Hunter, and it’s indeed true that they don’t make them like this anymore. Maybe it’s a good thing that they don’t even try.

 

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