It is by now an old story that with the collapse of the Hays Code and the struggles of the movie studios, a whole new class of American filmmaking emerged and even many old-time Hollywood stars and directors embraced the more realistic, more adult approach to the cinema.
A great example of the Hollywood establishment meeting the New Hollywood is Hickey & Boggs, a 1972 neo-noir starring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, directed by Culp, and written by Walter Hill in Hill's first screenplay to reach the screen.
By 1972 Cosby and Culp were already established in the public eye - but they were not established as movie stars. Cosby, 35, had established himself as one of America's top stand-up comedians and was well-known to TV audiences through his work on I, Spy, along with later short lived sitcom and variety shows. He was in something of a career lull, however, after his variety show tanked.
Culp's career, too, was in something of a funk. He was already a veteran, journeyman actor with a 20 year strong resume at age 42. Culp emerged from a string of TV guest spots with three seasons of I, Spy and a leading role in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. By 1972, however, he was back to guest starring roles on TV series and second-rate movies of the week.
Culp was a decent looking, classically Hollywood TV actor that hardly gave off the method vibe that was so popular by the early 1970s. He was probably closer to William Shatner than to Robert DeNiro, although he had a harder, less hammy edge than Shatner ever did while at the same time never taking himself too seriously. Culp had tried to break through as a writer and director, including writing several episodes of I, Spy, but success as a behind-the-scenes creative force never seemed to happen for him.
So the stand-up comedian and the journeyman actor find themselves in a new Hollywood, where location shooting, realistic acting, cynicism, and adult themes were suddenly considered the standard, and at a crossroads in their career. What else to do but dive head-first into the new school with a gritty little noir film about two down and out private detectives?
They turned to a screenplay by Walter Hill, a young guy (turned 30 in 1972) that had given it a shot trying to work his way up as an assistant director, but had taken to screenwriting and quickly became one of the hottest writers in town, working with Peckinpah, Bogdanovich, and Huston. However it happened, Culp ended up with control of one of Hill's earliest scripts, Hickey & Boggs (produced by Fouad Said, a cinematographer on I, Spy, so I think we can rest assured Culp was running the show here).
Hickey & Boggs are two struggling private detectives in LA that are unable to pay their bills and on their last leg as P.I.'s. Hickey gets a call from a prospective client, who wants the duo to find a woman named Mary Jane. We learn before Hickey & Boggs do that Mary Jane is involved in some nasty business and is attempting to find a fence to sell some marked bills from a major bank robbery in Pittsburgh.
Almost immediately, our two heroes discover that there is something more than meets the eye to this case, and find that they are trying to figure out why the leads they are investigating keep turning up dead, why there are some "torpedoes" that seem to want them dead, and why their client has suddenly disappeared. In between fulfilling their need for chili dogs (a recurring visual joke), they investigate the case while trying to stay out of trouble with the cops. When things take a nasty personal turn, however, they pull out their .44 Magnums and decide to see the thing finished one way or another.
While the story is pretty standard fare, it is at its best as a character study of two down-and-out, broken men that just happen to have become involved in a deadly case. The darkness of the story fits in well with the 1970s New Hollywood aesthetic.
Culp's Boggs is a self-loathing drunk who hires a prostitute the second he gets himself some cash, chases after his ex-wife (he helps her get back her old job as a stripper and then drunkenly goes to watch her as she teases him mercilessly), and basically is one thread away from losing it.
Cosby's Hickey is a mostly stoic, weary investigator whose only soft spots are his estranged wife (played excellently by Rosalind Cash) and child. When tragedy hits, you can sense the anger he feels even as he never once raises his voice.
As a director, Culp's work is surprisingly promising, though not without its problems. Early on he stacks quiet scenes against loud ones, with many of the juxtapositions feeling more sonically jarring than challenging. The editing overall is quite hit-or-miss.
Culp, however, often finds the perfect way to shoot the scene as a mix of intimacy and distance (the bar scenes, especially one where Boggs pleads with a stone-faced Hickey, are movie gold), and some of his location work is quite interesting (shot mostly in downtown area of LA). He nonetheless also sometimes doesn't seem to have the confidence to hold on a shot of a single character in some of the quieter scenes, leading to some very choppy moments. His camera drifts away too much from the two actors faces when its their faces that need to be front and center (these are grizzled, nearly broken men). The climactic scene on the beach also doesn't quite work as well as it could, although he gets the very last moment pretty much exactly right. I'd criticize the reckless homophobia that infects parts of the first act, but that's likely more about Hill's script than anything Culp does with it.
Ultimately, while Culp's work is not perfect, it is also quite promising - so much so that it makes you want to see what he did next. Alas, Hickey & Boggs basically disappeared amid bad reviews and no box office (the awful trailer you see below could not have helped). Culp's promising career as a director was over just as soon as it started - according to IMDB he would only go on to direct a few episodes of the 1980s TV show The Greatest American Hero.
Whatever else may be said about it, what really makes Hickey & Boggs work - and reach a level far above the pedestrian noir that you might expect given the elements on the poster - is the level of commitment that Culp and Cosby bring to their performances. It may be the finest acting that either ever put on film. Culp is particularly able to nail Boggs as a frustrated drunkard who adopts a veneer of smart-assed indifference even as he's an emotional mess.
Cosby commits to the seriousness of the role and portrays Hickey as a nearly unflappable stoic - but knows when to break the character's straight line (his grin when Rosalind Cash finally seems to be willing to come back to him is believable but jarring because it is so different than what we've seen from him). Given the stall that both men's careers had taken when they shot this film, it isn't difficult to see from where they summoned the weary, cynical characters that make the movie into a fine slice of hard-boiled entertainment.
Hickey & Boggs has enjoyed something of a minor second life in recent years and has been held up as an example of one of the forgotten films of the 1970s worth a second look. I had the privilege of seeing it many years back at a screening attended by Culp himself, and in the Q&A afterward it was easy to tell that Culp was still proud of the film. Justifiably so. This isn't a perfect film, but it is a pretty good one, and it is unfortunate that Culp never really had the opportunity for a follow-up.
Screened on DVD (it is sold on a made-to-order basis on DVD-R).
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