PET PEEVES IN MOVIES – 1992 column

There are many implausibilities in the new thriller Whispers in the Dark, starring Annabella Sciorra and Alan Alda, but perhaps the most outlandish incident is one of the quietest. And chances are it would only be noticed by a New Yorker.

After a first date with pilot Jamey Sheridan, he drives her home to her apartment building on West End Avenue, pulls up in his car and finds a parking space right in front. There's even room for a second car! This scene, by itself, might classify the film as science-fiction.

My "outrage" is exaggerated, of course; this is a minor point in a movie with more serious questions of credibility. But New York goofs happen to be a pet peeve of mine.

Many's the film that has a character talking about heading "uptown" and then going in the opposite direction (noticeable only to someone familiar with the city, who knows which way the streets run). In Look Who's Talking, Vancouver doubled for NYC--which became obvious during a car chase through a series of alleyways. There are no alleys in Manhattan. Surely I'm not the only one who notices things like this.

We all have pet peeves when it comes to liberties that moviemakers take. A doctor would notice inaccuracies in an operating-room scene, and a lawyer might take issue with some courtroom dramatics.

But I think my number-one gripe is bad piano faking. Mind you, I'm no Horowitz, but I know just enough about playing the piano to be distracted--badly--when an actor is particularly inept in this field. Truthfully, the blame should be laid on the director, whose job it is to make sure the performance is convincing--but when he has no musical sense either, we're really in trouble.

John Barrymore was one of the most dynamic actors who ever lived. In 1932's A Bill of Divorcement he plays a man who's just been released from a sanitarium; he's so fragile he might crack at any moment. He returns to his home, and sees not only his wife but the daughter (Katharine Hepburn) who's grown to womanhood during his absence.

In the midst of this delicate drama, he ventures to the parlor piano and begins to play. And Barrymore, that great actor, screws his hands around on the keyboard so ludicrously that he pretty well scuttles the scene. At least for me.

Compare that to the scene in Intermezzo in which Ingrid Bergman fakes a concerto so convincingly you'd swear she was really playing the proper notes. Or, much more recently, The Competition, in which Richard Dreyfuss and Amy Irving are totally believable as gifted amateurs in a musical Olympics.

It's so easy to disguise the truth--through cutting, and clever camera angles--that there really is no excuse for a performance that distracts from the drama and truth of a scene. On the other hand, to a non-musical moviegoer, there might be no distraction at all.

No director, and no actor, can be knowledgeable about every profession or hobby. I certainly wouldn't recognize a mistake in a medical or judicial scene...or even a football sequence. But I'm sure almost every moviegoer has some area of expertise that makes them an unforgiving judge.

And if you think I'm exaggerating about the parking situation in New York, think of the scene in Sleeper when Woody Allen is awakened after being frozen for 200 years. It happened after he went to the hospital for a minor procedure. His reaction? "I knew it was too good to be true," he exclaims. "I got a space right on the block!"