Robert De Niro is waiting… (Photo by C-Mon.)
Engorged with lots of holiday cheer (and too many empanadas), Celso and I decided to watch Michael Cimino’s 1978 Vietnam drama, The Deer Hunter. If you haven’t had a chance to see the picture, here’s what you need to know: it’s got lots of bleak footage of Pennsylvania mills, one loooong-ass wedding scene, oodles of Vietnamese jungle shots and more Russian roulette than a freaked-out Christopher Walken can handle.
My favorite visual comes towards the end of the movie. It’s a simple shot of Robert De Niro arriving at a veteran’s hospital, to visit a buddy who was maimed in the war. The moment is rather unremarkable. What got my attention, however, were the luscious colors of that ’70s wallpaper in the hallway, a saturated rainbow sherbet of hues such as tangerine and papaya. It’s as if De Niro (in full-blown intensity-mode) is emerging from a tropical womb. All I’d like to know is: Who was the set decorator for this? And can someone please give him a job decorating real hospitals? I’ve had it with all the beige.