Richard Dreyfuss 10 greatest movies
Stand By Me
Directed by Rob Reiner in 1986 is one of the stand out coming of age movies that the 80s were so fond of (The Goonies, The Breakfast Club, The Lost Boys etc) but it was uniquely taken from a novella by horror writer, Stephen King. Most of the movie is famously a journey into the wilderness of a group of 12 year old friends but the movie is top and tailed by Dreyfuss, playing the adult version of Will Wheaton’s character, Geordie.
Adult Geordie documents the adventure and he’s obviously playing a kind of King character, reminiscing on his childhood when the summer days were always hot, when all you had to do was hang out with your buddies and nothing really seemed to matter too much. But then, all of a sudden, the adult world crashes in and childhood is destroyed forever.
Dreyfuss has always seemed a bit like a child in his movies, he’s nearly always bouncing about, rattling through dialogue and acting out when others are more calm and collected, he fits in perfectly here. Adult Geordie doesn’t want to really put away childish things as he realises this was a time he really was happiest. We can all be guilt of viewing our past through the prism of nostalgia and Dreyfuss plays the character with a wearisome knowing along side all the memories of adventure. By this time in his life, the actor had been in some massive commercial and critical hits and it does seem like he’s taking stock a bit here. The movie came out just 3 years after his first trip into rehab after flipping his car.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Coming out two years after Jaws and the same year as that other big space movie, this was totally Dreyfuss’s show. Playing one of Spielberg’s famous ‘Everyman’ characters - the increasingly erratic Roy Neary - Dreyfuss sets off on a spiritual and physical quest to uncover the mysterious messages invading his brain about a weird shaped mountain and that something otherworldly was controlling his life. Dreyfuss inhabits the role of Neary to such an extent that you come to doubt whether there was much separation between the two. He’s even more hyper than Hooper was. The actor says he bad-mouthed every other actor in Hollywood to insure he got the role.
“Pacino’s crazy! De Niro’s got no sense of humour!” But it worked.
The film was as personal to the young Spielberg as Schindler’s List would be to the director in later years and in Dreyfuss he found an actor who could essentially play him (Spielberg) on screen. He had the nerdiness, the earnest, obsessive mannerisms of a man so caught up in a subject that he can’t see that his life is actually falling apart.
Spielberg claims he could never make Close Encounters as he did when he was a younger man because in the movie Neary walks out on his family to be with the aliens. He’s an incredibly selfish character when you look at him closely and very sad. Dreyfuss would soon be on his way to this state of affairs in his life off the screen, he just didn’t know it yet.
Mr Holland’s Opus
A nuanced and yet towering performance from Dreyfuss as a man who lives to compose music but is forced to take on a role to pay the bills - a music teacher at a school.
Dreyfuss has quite often come across as someone who is holding back, that his talent is too great for the material he gets put in (consider the trio of Poseidon, Piranha 3D or Daughter of the Wolf) and he’s probably got a point. But he knows if you wanna be seen, you gotta be seen. Meaning there comes a time in most people’s lives where you’re not top of the heap anymore, you’re maybe on your way down a little. So you make do.
Mr Holland does just that but finds that his new career is his salvation. That’s not to say a lot of Dreyfuss’s later roles have shown him what he really should be doing with his career - it’d be great to see him in a big cinematic role or two these days - but Holland’s character is still Dreyfuss to the core. He’s manic and depressed, morose and chipper - all at the same time.
Stakeout
Whenever I hear Miami Sound Machine I think of one thing. Richard Dreyfuss in a big hat running around Madeline Stowe’s house trying to avoid the police officers watching the building from the other side of the street. A massive hit when it was released 1987, it saw a reenergised (so double the manic energy) Dreyfuss having a huge amount of fun in this 80s buddy cop action a comedy that’s sort of like a cross between Lethal Weapon and a romance. Some critics didn’t find the mix of beady comedy and quite tough action a natural fit but it’s still good fun to watch Estevez and Dreyfuss as they clown their way through what presumably is an important part of their job as police officers (although you might not guess it from how they approach the stakeout).
Watching it through modern eyes some may find the objectification of Stowe’s character and the leering through binoculars at her as she undresses more than a bit creepy but it is a well put together movie and it was certainly a return to form for Dreyfuss.
American Graffiti
A movie about cars, rock n roll, Ron Howard before he became Richie Cunningham or an Oscar winning director, Harrison Ford before he piloted the Millennium Falcon or started punching Nazis and Little Ricky Dreyfuss playing Curt Henderson, a man who becomes obsesses with a mysterious woman in a white Ford Thunderbird who he never gets to meet. The film is a fictionalised autobiography of George Lucas’s teenage years in Modesto, California (where the film is set - but not filmed) and whether or not Dreyfuss was playing a version of his director and the beautiful woman in the incredible car was meant to represent ‘the unattainable life’, is open to interpretation but it certainly seems that way. Its a movie set before the Vietnam War when perhaps things seemed a little bit more free-wheeling and fun. But then that’s the beauty of nostalgia again.
Dreyfuss was an obvious star who stole every scene he was in, purely because he was just better than everyone else. More than being a ‘star’ though, he was a first rate character actor who could sell an entire movie. American Graffiti would not only go on to be a massive hit but it put enough money in George Lucas’s bank account to allow him to start work on his next project, a Flash Gordon space adventure.
The Goodbye Girl
Richard Dreyfuss was the then youngest actor ever to win an Oscar, he was 29. Playing the role of a struggling actor who moves in with a friend’s girlfriend and her young daughter. Written by Neil Simon (Barefoot in the Park, Biloxi Blues, The Odd Couple) Dreyfuss plays Elliot Garfield, a neurotic wannabe actor. Somehow, Garfield lands the role of Richard the III in an Off-Broadway production but finds out that the director wants him to play the king as an exaggerated stereotypical gay version of the role. Garfield knows it’ll be terrible but agrees as he needs the money. He was right and everyone hates his performance. He manages to get work at an improv theatre and is spotted by a Hollywood director and offered a major film role.
Originally based on the life of Dustin Hoffman after he became famous (ironically Hoffman’s big breakout role was The Graduate, more of which later…) and the studio had wanted De Niro to star and Mike Nichols was going to direct.
The movie was hugely successful for a romantic comedy and Dreyfuss’s star continued to climb.
Dillinger
John Milius - the man who did the first real work on the USS Indianapolis speech - directed this tale of bank robbers and bullets.
Dreyfuss plays Babyface Nelson in a cast that includes Warren Oates as Dillinger, Ben Johnson as G Man Melvin Purvis, Michelle Phillips (of Mamas & the Papas fame), Harry Dean Stanton, Geoffrey Lewis (who would go on to star alongside Clint in a good few of the Hollywood icon’s movies) and Steve Kanaly who the more middle aged readers might remember as Ray Cribbs in Dallas. Milius was a bear of a man who classified himself as a ‘Zen Anarchist’ and who delighted in toying with Hollywood Liberals with his macho posturing and movies about men doing manly things. Dreyfuss was an inspired choice for Nelson who was diminutive and possessed an incendiary temper that would explode if ever anyone dare to challenge him or call him by his famous nickname - Babyface.
The Graduate
Really Dustin Hoffman’s movie, its the tale of trying to figure out what the hell you’re going to do with your life and trying your hardest to ignore everything anyone over 30 tells you. Dreyfuss uttered the immortal line “Shall I call the cops” and that’s all he does but it’s included on this list because not only is it one of the greatest films of not only the 60s but any decade but it also has a standout performance from none other than Mayor Larry Vaughn himself, Murray Hamilton.
But with Dreyfuss’s blink-and-you-miss-it performance, he’s still great. He’s bouncing about in the background, desperate to be noticed, over eager and just a little bit annoying - an art he perfected throughout his career and folded into most of his characters.
Dreyfuss puts his good fortune down purely to the generosity of director Mike Nichols who gave as many speaking roles as possible for any young actor who’s auditioned for the role of Benjamin’s Braddock but eventually lost out to Hoffman. Dreyfuss was the right age to play the lead role - he was just nineteen - but didn’t have the experience. Hoffman got the lead not because he could act, even though he was thirty years old at the time.
Down & Out in Beverley Hills
Released in 1986 the movie sees the rich but miserable Dave Whiteman and his wife Barbara (Bette Midler) trudging through their sexless marriage in the grounds of a gaudy Hollywood mansion. Dreyfuss plays a man who made his money from wire coat hangers - no wonder he’s fed up with life! A man so dull and lost in can’t see just how fortunate he is.
The movie then introduces Nick Norte as Jerry Baskin (a name that seems to be a double scoop of ice cream manufacturers), the ‘down-and-out’ of the title, who attempts suicide by throwing himself into the Whiteman’s pool.
Baskin becomes a saviour of sorts for Dave when he starts to recount his colourful past and Dave realises maybe life is for living (even though Jerry wanted to end it all).
The movie was another big 80s hit for Dreyfuss, pulling in $62 million from a budget of just $14 million.
Always
Dreyfuss came back to the Spielberg fold in 1989 with the movie, Always. A remake of the ‘A Guy Called Joe’, a movie that both Dreyfuss and Spielberg were obsessed by. The Director claiming that it was ‘the movie that made him convinced he wanted to direct for a living’. Both men spent a great deal of time whilst filming Jaws trading quotes and trivia about A Guy Named Joe and vowed that if they ever got the chance they’d do a remake together.
The original movie came out in 1943 and starred Spencer Tracy. Set in WWII, it tells the story of a flyer who’s friend appears to him as a ghost to help him survive missions and also assisting in matters of the heart. For fans of random movie trivia, further down the cast list came an actor named Barry Nelson, who would famously go on to be the very first James Bond on screen in the 1954 live TV version of Casino Royale. Always also starred Audrey Hepburn in her final film role and the WWII setting was changed to aerial fire fighters for the Dreyfuss movie, but other than that the story remained more or less untouched. At times it gets a little bit overly-sentimental but really, if you don’t dab away a little tear when you’re watching this, there’s something wrong with you.
Words by Tim Armitage
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