November 8th: TROUBLE IN MIND (Alan Rudolph, 1985)

An ex-cop is paroled from prison after serving time for murder and crosses paths with old friends, a dysfunctional young couple, and the criminal underworld.

Before writing and directing his own films, Alan Rudolph worked as an assistant to and protégé of the legendary Robert Altman on his classics Nashville, The Long Goodbye, and California Split. While Altman's influence can be seen in the handling of actors and certain camera movements, Rudolph's work is significantly more stylized not only in the visuals, but in the otherworldliness of the stories and scripts.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Rudolph started a decade-long collaboration with producer Carolyn Pfeiffer, co-founder of independent production company Alive Films, which eventually partnered with Island Records president Chris Blackwell. The success of Rudolph's romantic comedy Choose Me led him to propose a more ambitious project, a tribute to film noir set in a fictional city in a vague retro-future time period.

The film was shot on location in Seattle, renamed as "Rain City". While various local icons like Space Needle, the Asian Art Museum, and the metro monorail were featured, production designer Steven Legler was instructed to make contacts within the local art community, which was enlisted to create background artwork as assist in finding and designing locations. Alternative municipal signs were created to post in all the exterior scenes to further distort reality.

The cast is partly made up of past Rudolph collaborators, including singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson (Heaven's Gate), Keith Carradine (Nashville, TV's Deadwood), Genevieve Bujold (Dead Ringers), as well as newcomer Lori Singer (Footloose), Joe Morton (John Sayles's Brother From Another Planet), Albert Hall (Apocalypse Now), and in a stroke of casting genius, drag icon Divine in his only film appearance dressed as a man. Morton was responsible for his character's outlandish look, which influenced other designs, costumes, and hairstyles in the film.

While looking for someone to compose the musical score, with little money in the budget, Rudolph came across an album in a record store bargain bin of new age/jazz instrumentalist Mark Isham. The two worked to find a blend of classic romanticism and modern sounds. Kristofferson contributed a song for the soundtrack, and looking through the Island Records roster Rudolph found Marianne Faithfull, who would wind up singing several recordings for the film.

Trouble In Mind received positive notices from many domestic critics, won a critics' award at the Berlin Film Festival, and an Independent Spirit Award for Toyomichi Kurita's cinematography. It failed to reach an audience at the box office, but has gone on to become a cult favorite.

Running time is approx. 110 minutes.