William Bayer once wrote something to the effect of, ‘a successful movie must somehow predict exactly what fantasy the public will want to see a year ahead of time. The public doesn’t know what it wants to see … films that catch fire magically align with an unperceived need.’ Paul Schrader’s third-directed feature film American Gigolo fits that idea to a T. None of its elements were a Sure Thing, not even its compelling image of a swank Los Angeles lifestyle. But it hit big — the public ate it up.
Schrader’s first film Blue Collar had garnered critical praise but little business, and the ‘dangerous’ subject matter of his second picture Hardcore had simply scared people away. American Gigolo jumped onto the screen as a must-see picture early in 1980, leading with haute couture credibility on all levels. Richard Gere stood out as the classiest clothes horse since Hollywood’s golden years, and the movie reportedly put designer Giorgio Armani on the map. Gere had been well-cast in Days of Heaven but only now was recognized as a full-fledged movie star… he had the kind of looks that could keep a guy’s career afloat even if he coudn’t act. Extra credibility was provided by his love interest, played by the era’s hottest model, Lauren Hutton.
The primary appeal was the film’s vision of a Consumer Paradise. A special scene shows Richard Gere’s Mister Beautiful going through his closets and cabinets, filled with fine clothing; the camera trucks back and forth across a lineup of trendy shirts and ties he’s lined up on his bed. Suddenly we see what it’s all about — it’s the key scene of The Great Gatsby come to life in a way we understand. Everything about our hero is a lifestyle choice — his Mercedes convertible, his perfect wardrobe, his Westwood ‘hotel apartment’ with room service and maids on duty.
Paul Schrader had written scripts for others reconfiguring Hitchcock and Bresson, but this was his most Robert Bresson-like story to date, channeling in particular aspects of Pickpocket. Schrader also pulled in story elements from classic film noir. It was one of several cinematic styles that, as a critic writing in English, Schrader had been instrumental in defining.
As was the case with Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, Schrader writes about people that we probably wouldn’t want to know in real life. Our glamorous protagonist Julian Kay (Richard Gere) is a currently super-hot high-end gigolo, a specialist with wealthy older ladies in a Los Angeles green belt between Malibu, Brentwood, Bel-Air and Beverly Hills. Tall and tanned and in perfect condition, Julian speaks several languages. He is presently studying Swedish, to service the exotic clientele of his main ‘booker’ Anne (Nina van Pallandt). Julian isn’t very popular with either Anne or his other sometime booker Leon (Bill Duke). He’s become so in-demand that he can demand his fair share. He’s also not above cutting his bookers out of repeat business with clients they’ve referred.
Julian manages his illegal lifestyle by not causing trouble and keeping his customers happy, but events cause his life to spin out of control. The beautiful Michelle Stratton (Lauren Hutton) meets him in a bar, finds him fascinating and won’t leave him alone, upsetting his normal stay-in-control rule. Michelle is the unhappy wife of a politician, which makes their trysts truly dangerous. But the real trouble comes when Julian does a favor for Leon, servicing a weird couple in Palm Springs … she wants rough sex and the husband wants to coach from the other side of the room. A few days later Julian learns that the wife has been murdered by an apparent lover-attacker, and that he’s a Person of Interest. Homicide detective Sunday (Hector Elizondo) soon learns everything about Julian that Julian wished to remain confidential.
Publicity on Julian is like sunlight hitting a vampire. His contacts in ‘the game’ now see a chance to get the upper hand. His clients refuse to give him an alibi, which would tarnish their reputations. Julian tries to keep Michelle out of the problem, but her husband finds out. ‘New’ evidence points to Julian … and he suddenly has no friends to turn to.
As a character piece American Gigolo is certainly interesting, especially for people who daydream about living the Good Life in Los Angeles. Julian gets red carpet treatment at all time — there’s always someone around to make sure his $200 shirts don’t get mussed. The coat check counter at one swank watering hole keeps a change of jacket for him. Julian may have started as a less glamorous sex worker, but now he only has sex with women. He takes his profession seriously and prides himself on helping older women have orgasms.
Julian Kay’s ‘friends’ Anne and Leon find it arrogant that he no longer lets them take the lion’s share of his earnings. And Julian does have a kind of foolish, innocent arrogance. He tells Detective Sunday right out, that any man truly in control should make his own morality, that he thinks he’s above the law. That’s a risky philosophy for a man in an illegal profession. Julian doesn’t realize that his bookers see him only as an employee to exploit, that he can not count on them, that they are not his friends.
American Gigolo shows how Julian masks his pay-for-sex associations with respectable wealthy women. He accompanies them to luncheons and advises them on buying sprees in Beverly Hills; he becomes a good-looking, well behaved addition to their parties. Julian has a tasteful familiarity with luxury goods of all kinds. One lady (K Callan) can mask her friendship with him because he helps her evaluate antiques. But he doesn’t realize that people like Detective Sunday consider him a ‘hanger on,’ a leech. He’s found such a comfortable niche that he forgets his essential status as illicit and ‘unclean.’ Exposure would turn him into an instant pariah, someone not to be acknowldged in public.
For glamour appeal the movie offers all those slick fashions to admire, and the ultra-hip music of the moment, Giorgio Moroder’s hit pop song “Call Me” by Debbie Harry and Blondie. Were those assets Paul Schrader’s idea, or things brought in by his well-connected producer? There’s also the lovely Ms. Hutton, whose face was already an icon on hundreds of fashion magazines. Schrader develops their relationship around the give and take of love and sex. Michelle helps Julian realize that his emotional life is out of balance … he gives pleasure but cannot receive it, and thus ‘cannot love;’ his transactional relationships are a barrier to simple open trust.
We wannabe-film students admired most of Paul Schrader’s writing in Gigolo… with a few well-placed obscenities Schrader efficiently sketches extreme characters, like the client who wants his wife abused. Yet these scenes are brief. We also can’t help note that Schrader’s worldview isn’t particularly sensitive to LGBT issues. Julian has a certain familiarity with the Hollywood gay scene, and may have begun his sex work there, but we get no details. Both Leon and a gay dance club are presented in negative terms. The main villains are gays, building a frame around Julian.
The rather simple film noir trap invented by Paul Schrader makes Julian seem perhaps a little too gullible. Anybody as successful as he in the sex trade would be expected to have plenty of experience with vocational exploitation, perfidy and betrayal, yet Julian seems far too trusting. He has no mechanisms in place to insure that his clients can’t make him take the fall for their misdeeds — exactly the kind of double-crosses we noir fans anticpated at every turn. Schrader of course made Gigolo for a mainstream audience, not film students. On our first viewing we were almost offended when Schrader quoted dialogue almost directly from Robert Mitchum in the classic Out of the Past:
“I think I’m in a frame, but I don’t know … all I can see is the frame.” *
Schrader and Gere do manage to make Julian simultaneously arrogant and innocent. Average unfashionable males might not like Julian at all. Watching Gigolo, I’m reminded of John Patrick Shanley’s spot-on dialogue exchange between Ossie Davis and Tom Hanks in Joe versus the Volcano:
“What kinda clothes do you got now?” / “Well, I got the kinda clothes I’m wearing.” / “So you got no clothes.”
Living in his particular Comfort Bubble, perhaps it is credible that Julian should be so gullible about his interpersonal politics. Everyone else in Hollywood goes crazy, so why should’t the ‘nice’ Julian believe that his associates will stand up for him, when he’s arrayed against the law plus the rich and powerful? Observing from the outside, we’re inclined to believe that Detective Sunday is fair, and not part of the frame-up. He could be on Julian’s side if given a chance. Julian’s lack of cooperation works against him just as much as do the planted loot and murder weapon. But Julian clings to the illusion that he’ll be able to walk away and retain his status as everybody’s Golden Boy of the Silk Sheets.
Gere and Hutton generate just enough chemistry to make the central romance function. Editor Richard Halsey manages just enough skin and flesh contact to convince us that we’re not looking at soft-focus shots of their body doubles. Bill Duke is convincingly nuanced as a careful operator with plenty to hide; Casting director Vic Ramos found a corps of very effective supporting actors to play the rich folk, with nary a hint of exaggeration or parody. The only scene we don’t really believe is Richard Gere’s fey goof act at the pre-auction viewing, where he almost breaks the lamp, But it does set up his deceptively happy relationship with one of his clients, K Callan. The film’s most original scene is the stock scene of the police line-up — Schrader finds a way to goose it with a really funny twist.
Nina van Pallandt’s Anne is another unique character sketched with a minimum of strokes. Anne doesn’t want Julian around on her child’s visiting day, because she might lose what little court-ordered custody she’s been granted. Ms. van Pallandt was the focus of an article that imagined that film noir characters might have continuity between roles: her Anne in this movie could conceivably have been the conspiratorial wife in Altman’s The Long Goodbye, and later on Jeff Bridges’ bored Santa Barbara pickup in Ivan Passer’s Cutter’s Way.
The ‘dangerous iconography’ of American Gigolo would begin to fade as the mainstream tilted toward less disturbing content. Exactly ten years later Richard Gere starred in Pretty Woman, a fairytale glamorization of prostitution that makes Schrader’s noir confection look like a True Life case history. We have to admit that the sight of Gere gliding into hotel lobbies in those designer suits will persist as genuine Hollywood glamour iconography.
