Harvey Keitel

...One is the general view of the future and how things are going...that will burden the incumbent—Gore...

...Walsh, another gifted second banana...

...Instead, Fine has written a book that goes a long way toward making the reader respect, admire, and even like an actor who has spent virtually his entire career playing characters who are not even vaguely likable...

...But Keitel kept working...

...And when it does, they will have every right to be angry...

...Of all those in government who ought to shoulder some responsibility, the vice president will stand above the rest because of the image he has so carefully and calculatingly crafted as a high-tech guru...

...But that doesn't mean that [the mood] can't come roaring back again with a bad economy...

...GOP pollster Glen Bolger says that the factors which gave rise to the anti-incumbent mood of the early nineties have abated...

...This is the most sustained period of optimism in America since Ronald Reagan's second term," says Republican pollster Bob Teeter...

...At the time, I was sure that the magazine was a Spy or National Lampoon parody, because if there was ever an American actor whose career was not ready to explode, and would never, ever be ready to explode, it was Harvey Keitel...

...Al Gore's Year 2000 Problem "It will happen right in the middle of the presidential campaign," says Tony Blank-ley...

...The reason...

...Incumbents of both parties will be too fearful of catching the blame for system failures if they fail to vote for replacement purchases...

...Even after reading The Art ofDarkness, I am not entirely sure that the world actually needed a biography of Harvey Keitel anymore than it needs a biography of the equally fine, though dearly departed, J.T...

...Sometime between now and mid-1999, they will do as the IRS has done and start asking for more money to buy brand new systems...

...The other way is if Gore's opponent could tie it in a specific way to Gore and some action he has, or hasn't, taken...

...Now 59 years old, Keitel has passed the better part of the past three decades in pursuit of an elusive, and probably unattainable, goal: winning mass public acceptance as a leading man...

...And the federal government may not be the The American Spectator • August 1998 75...

...Keitel is the subject of a respectful, informative, and sometimes highly amusing new biography by Marshall Fine, entertainment writer and film critic for Gannett newspapers and former chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle...

...needs...

...The record of Senator Moynihan's unsuccessful efforts to warn the administration may be just the linkage Gore's opponents (including fellow Democrats in the primaries and a Republican nominee in the fall) need to make their case...

...Hello, First-Class Second Banana 74 August 1998 • The American Spectator hello, this is Harvey Keitel," the actor rasped into the phone, then snorted: "You wouldn't do this to Marlon Brando...

...Fine, like theater critic Jacques le Sourd and a handJOE QUEENAN is the author most recently of Red Lobster, White Trash and Blue Lagoon: Joe Queenan's America (Hyperion...

...Americans have been feeling better recently...

...Just as Bush was bewildered and confused by his sudden drop in popularity after the Gulf War, Gore may be in for a shock when the voters connect him with the Year z000 computer crashes...

...When the predicted systems failures occur, Gore and Clinton will have had almost eight years in the White House — precious lead time they will be seen to have squandered...

...I am not...

...It almost makes you willing to forgive Roosevelt for the way he deceived, manipulated, and generally snookered everyone he came across...

...He was not always treated with respect...

...Marine, and a New York court stenographer for eight years, Keitel toiled in the vineyards through the early part of his career, repeatedly failing his audition at Lee Strasberg's prestigious Actor's Studio, and did not gain entry to that elite institution until he had already made a name for himself in Martin Scorsese's classic Mean Streets...

...Coppola did the wrong thing when he stranded him in a Philippine jungle tributary with nothing but some extras and a walkie-talkie...

...no shape to assume the burdens of the presidency for another term, yet terrified of leaving the White House since that would mean being cooped up with Eleanor for the rest of his life—is affectHarvey Keitel: The Art of Darkness Marshall Fine Fromm International / 288 pages / $25 REVIEWED BY Joe Queenan A bout five years ago, I was walking past a newspaper kiosk on 14th Street in New York when I spotted a copy of Esquire magazine whose cover I will never forget...

...This, combined with the economic downturn, scuttled Bush's reelection campaign...

...The movie is about vampires and special effects, and he took the job because he likes to work...

...According to Bolger, "the economy is the Number One driving factor of the political environment...

...He remains what he has always been— a superb character actor who is most convincing when he plays flawed, creepy, small-time losers, sometimes exposing the crown jewels...

...Memorable roles such as Sport, the vile pimp in Taxi Driver, served only to further typecast the already aging actor, and then when his luck seemed to turn—when he was cast as the star of Apocalypse Now—he got dumped from the role in favor of Martin Sheen after shooting had begun...

...Almost, but not quite...

...All things considered, the guy should be grateful for the career he has had...

...For me, he falls into the same class as John Malkovich and Christopher Walken: intriguing weirdos who have trouble carrying a film...

...Keitel either does not know, or has never been able to accept, that he does not possess the magnetism and range of a Pacino or a DeNiro, and does not possess the charisma of a Clint Eastwood, a Bruce Willis, or a Jon Voight...

...Marshall Fine is too nice a person to say that some of Keitel's work (Copland, Sister Act, Rising Sun) has a phoned-in quality, and that some of his public utterances are idiotic...

...Voters might be willing to exonerate Gore of blame for a recession triggered by something other than computer programming glitches...

...Hamstrung by average looks, Keitel is the kind of actor who, while born to play the types of smalltime hoods he has admirably fleshed out in Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Reservoir Dogs, Bad Lieutenant, Sister Act, and Pulp Fiction, has always hankered after the kind of fame Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro have garnered playing big-time hoods...

...In the summer of 1996, for the first time in six years, polls showed that a majority believed the country to be on track...

...By 1998 this number was 53 percent...

...Nor do I share Fine's opinion that "there is no one else working today who has the same courage and daring as an actor, the same restless urge to explore uncharted territory of the human soul...

...If the S&L bailout bill is any guide to go by, the taxpayers are going to be asked to foot the bill for a massive Year 2000 crash program that probably won't work...

...Fine reports that during the filming of Apocalypse Now, he was once stranded in a Philippine river with a walkie-talkie, and couldn't get anyone from Francis Ford Coppola's crew to tell him what was going on...

...But Gore's "partnership" with Koskinen sets him up for blame...

...Top estimates of the cost of fixing the federal government's computer systems are already $30 billion and climbing...

...The general anti-incumbent mood born in the S&L crisis catapulted Ross Perot's short-lived candidacy in 1992 and carried Bill Clinton into the White House...

...K eitel's elevation to the cult status he currently enjoys began in 1991, when he played a likable cop in Thelma and Louise...

...There are two ways it could have an effect on politics...

...As Mannie Lopes says, there was time to train most of the 121,000 technicians the U.S...

...Especially considering where it started out...

...Government agencies can only get so far by "defining down" their mission-critical systems...

...A panicked Congress will have little choice but to appropriate the funds through renewed deficit spending, perhaps for millions of computers...

...Taxpayers may also have to resupply the armed forces with reliable high-tech weapons systems...

...Assume for the sake of argument that the real financial impact of the world's Year moo troubles is no worse than the recession of 1991-92 (a fairly mild assessment, according to many experts...

...You can bet the house on it...

...A soaring stock market and a relatively peaceful world are setting up the American public for a rude awakening when the Year 2000 problem hits home...

...When the actor asserts that he appeared in Robert Rodriguez's slimy, stupid horror flick From Dusk Till Dawn because "it presents a theme that appears in many movies I do...

...Roberts/Year 2000 (Continued from page 33) perceptions of corruption, narrow self-interest, and blatant deception by most politicians...

...The war masked deep public discontent and brought Bush high popularity ratings throughout much of 1991, but focus groups conducted by the GOP still showed tremendous public cynicism about politicians...

...Ironically, shortly after the story ran it was Tommy Lee Jones, the other somewhat sinister, perennial second banana, whose career did explode...

...He is never going to get the parts Harrison Ford gets...

...It was this same rebellion—not the Contract With America—that gave Newt Gingrich control of Congress in 1994...

...Since then, he has done exemplary work in The Piano, Reservoir Dogs, Smoke, Clockers, Pulp Fiction, Blue in the Face, and Head Above Water, all of which have made him bankable, none of which have made him "explode...

...A Brooklyn native, a U.S...

...Many critics would have used Keitel's unhelpfulness as an excuse to tee off on him...

...But he did the right thing when he cut him out of the film...

...Harvey Keitel has always been the emissary of Not-So-Good...

...He made them good (Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), he made them bad (Mother, Jugs and Speed, Blue Collar, Saturn 3), and quite often he made them ridiculous (a Napoleonic hussar in The Duellists, a concert pianist who doubles as a mobster in Fingers, Judas Iscariot of Flatbush in The Last Temptation of Christ...

...The magazine carried a picture of the enduringly creepy actor Harvey Keitel accompanied by a headline which read: "This Man Is Ready to Explode...

...Convinced that this was his breakthrough, Keitel spent the next few years waiting for telephone calls that never came...

...The guy who goes up the river to deal with Marlon Brando has to be an emissary of Good...

...The economic impact of the S&L bailout, coupled with the cost of the Gulf War, were factors in the recession of 19912...

...04 ful of others, is a very bright spot in an otherwise substandard chain of publications...

...It's about faith and the loss of faith and the journey through hell to regain it," he is talking pure indy-flick nonsense...

...Shortly thereafter, the editor of Esquire was redeployed into another part of the work force, and Keitel himself went about his business: steadily working, garnering kudos here and there, continuing to entertain his tidy cult of film noir aficionados, but never actually exploding...

...The failure to act meant a lost opportunity...

...One thing I like about the author of Harvey Keitel: The Art ofDarkness (who has written favorably about me on several occasions) is that he has fashioned a fair, open-minded book about a subject who refused to cooperate with him...