Jeff Bridges

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Bob Rafelson says that during the shoot, Arnold Schwarzenegger told him that some day he would become California Governor.

A movie about shady land deals and stormy bodybuilding competitions in 1970s Birmingham, Alabama, Bob Rafelson’s Stay Hungry has such an eclectic cast, such strange tonal shifts and such general oddness of all sorts that it never found the audience it deserved. It’s by no means a perfect movie but still one that should be seen, if only for its audacity to team Jeff Bridges, Sally Field, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Englund and Fannie Flagg.

Craig Blake (Bridges) is a well-born, sad-faced Southern gent who’s been in mourning for two years, since the accidental death of his parents. Searching for something to occupy his time, he gets roped into a dubious land-acquisition scheme in which some good ol’ boys are buying up local businesses and fleecing the mom-and-pop owners. Blake is charged with purchasing for peanuts a dingy gym, but his mission becomes complicated when he falls for one of the establishment’s fetching employees (Field) and befriends a hulking bodybuilder (Schwarzenegger) who’s training there. These two and others at the gym become an unlikely surrogate family for Blake, and he introduces them into his genteel and snobbish society at some risk.

Stay Hungry is teeming with talent, even if it doesn’t always know what to do with it, sometimes clumsily mixing comic scenes with disturbing ones. But at its essence, it’s a gentle if eccentric story of a wounded man slowly realizing that he needs to move beyond his comfortable milieu if he’s to find the things he needs to live. In addition to that, there’s Robert Englund as an exercise instructor and Arnold Schwarzenegger dressed in cowboy garb playing a fiddle. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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Jeff Bridges is reuniting with the Coen brothers for their upcoming version of "True Grit."

As destructive country singer films go, Crazy Heart can’t come close to matching the unbridled intensity of the subgenre’s best effort, the blistering 1973 drama Payday, which starred a young Rip Torn in an orgy of unrepentant malevolence. Scott Cooper’s 2009 drama, which helped Jeff Bridges score his long-deserved Oscar, is a far gentler thing, focusing on an older alcoholic cowboy performer who has five wives and an adult son he doesn’t know in the rear-view mirror.

Vomiting in a garbage can outside of a New Mexico bowling alley where he’s performing, 57-year-old Bad Blake (Bridges) knows he can’t go any lower, but he has no intention of rising again. Bad tools around in his weathered pick-up from one Southwest rathole to another, playing his old hits, picking up barflies and staring at the bottom of a bottle, which might as well  be the barrel of a gun. As his health deteriorates, Bad is afforded a pair of unlikely shots at redemption. His protege, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), who has eclipsed his mentor by a thousand miles, wants Bad to write some new songs for his album, which would mean a good deal of money to the penniless performer. More importantly, Bad meets a younger single mother (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who sees the goodness in him. The sympathetic woman and her young boy may be Bad’s last chance at some semblance of family.

“I wanna talk about how bad you make this room look,” he says to his new girlfriend as he sits in his fleabag motel room. “I never knew what a dump it was until you came in here.” But changing isn’t easy and redemption seldom comes in the form we desire, though  it comes just the same if we try. (Available from Netflix and other venues.)

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Jeff Bridges, only 23 when this movie was released, would somehow not win his first Oscar for 38 more years.

An under-the-radar 1972 Western bursting at the seams with young talent, Robert Benton’s Civil War picaresque, Bad Company, never got the attention it richly deserved. Considering the year it was made and the fact that it revolved around a group of draft dodgers, you would think it would have had a natural entree into the youth market. But Benton’s film is no thinly disguised Vietnam parable; it loyally sets out to tell a story of the miseducation of a young man in a specific time and place and does so wonderfully well.

Drew Dixon (Barry Brown) is a well-raised Methodist boy from Ohio whose older brother has already perished fighting for the Union Army. His parents can’t bear another loss, so they hide him until he can head out for Virginia City, which is beyond the reach of the Union. On the road, Drew is coldcocked and rolled almost immediately by a rogue named Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges). While trying to get back his money, Drew falls in with Jake’s rough-edged crew and they traverse miles and miles of the untamed land, alternately playing the role of prey and predator.

Co-star Barry Brown (right) committed suicide in his Los Angeles home in 1978.

Drew fights with all his might to maintain his morals in a world that cares little for such niceties, but he comes to realize that there may be something deep inside of him that is just as wild as the West. Benton investigates this tendency in his young protagonist with relentless energy, right down to the film’s perfectly calibrated and fluid ending. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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Are you ready to take the green car challenge?

Jay Leno: I am so glad [Jeff Bridges] won. He’s a good guy, he’s been married, he has a nice family.

Decoder: I like to rate the quality of other people’s family lives, like when I’ve pointed out in past that Conan O’Brien and others are good family guys. Judging which Americans have the right level of family values is a job that should be handled by someone like myself. You know, a childless TV comic with an exaggerated sense of self-importance who’s trying to pander to Middle America in the same desperate way that politicians do.

Jay Leno: I’ve seen all these [war] movies and, I’m sorry, they all end with the American soldiers doing something wrong, doing something for the wrong reason, accidentally killing someone–they’re always the bad guys. Here’s a film [Hurt Locker] about Americans that are going out and risking their lives to save Iraqis. I watch it and I feel good about the people in it, whereas some of these other movies, I come out depressed.

Decoder: I know all war movies don’t end that way; I’m just being manipulative. It’s not that I don’t care about the troops, but this statement has nothing to do with them. I will wrap myself in the flag and stick the pole up my ass if that’s what it takes to make gullible Americans love me and watch my show. Patriotism–at least this pandering type of patriotism–is the last refuge of a lout. Politicians always behave this way when trying to win votes, but in my case the election never ends.

Jay Leno: I thought Avatar was treated unfairly [at the Oscars]. I would guess that last night’s telecast was the highest rated in five years was because you had Avatar fans wanting to see their picture win. Hurt Locker is a great picture and I saw it, but not many people have.

Decoder: When something is really popular–like my show for instance–it should be given awards even if it isn’t of the best quality. Despite my popular success, I’m still insecure about the lack of critical acclaim I’ve received.

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