Now featuring Florida
Sunshine in the Dark is a surprisingly vast reminder of Floridian impressions on film, from the Marx Brothers to John Sayles.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published September 3, 2006
One wonders how many VCRs, DVD players and old-fashioned film projectors sacrificed their circuitry for researching Sunshine in the Dark: Florida in the Movies, a meticulously detailed history of Sunshine State cinema.
The sheer volume of films uncovered and described by University of South Florida professors Susan J. Fernandez and Robert P. Ingalls impresses even when their writing is occasionally burdened by cross-referencing and the need to fit in all those details. This is a comprehensive cinema studies textbook suitable for occasional fast-forwarding because the authors' rewind and pause buttons are tired.
No fewer than 332 films are alphabetically noted in an appendix for containing scenes based in Florida, from the 1981 journalism thriller Absence of Malice to Zaat, a cheapo horror flick from 1975 (although misdated 1971 in the reviewed galley copy). That's a lot of possible information even with only basic details. Ingalls and Fernandez diligently try to include all, if only in literary cameos, for a satisfying chronicle of transplanted citizens in a paradise found then lost in steady processions of frivolity, crime, sex and real estate shenanigans, from Groucho Marx shilling swamp land in The Cocoanuts to developers putting "nature on a leash" in John Sayles' Sunshine State. The good and bad aspects of Florida living - beaches are great until hurricanes strike, after all - are outlined with theater screen masking for margins.
How many of those films mattered to audiences and scholars is evidence that our constantly trumpeted claim of being Hollywood South - amended from Hollywood East when New York butted into the pictures - has validity. Fernandez and Ingalls aren't much concerned with the economic imperative behind that boast, or decades of erratic political and marketing attempts to deserve it. Trust me: Their book is far more entertaining for that decision.
Sunshine in the Dark - love that title - is a surprisingly vast reminder of Floridian impressions on film, smartly divided into chaptered categories of various character demographics, a trio of recurring plot types and our trump card in attracting film projects, our photogenic settings. If one topic doesn't mention a movie that comes to mind, it will likely appear in a later dissertation, usually making a better point. That happened when an early section on undersea dangers left me missing 1953's Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, that was later invoked while mentioning Tarpon Springs' photogenic Greek sponge-diving culture. I also thought I caught them napping with Honky Tonk Freeway but simply wasn't patient enough.
Fernandez and Ingalls aren't perfect, although the sheer volume of plot details, quotations and historical perspective would be tough to completely dispute. Film buffs will enjoy trying to catch them with misinformation or a loose thread of information, as trivia buffs love doing to anyone claiming expertise in a widely scrutinized art form.
I would ask them to consider two minor oversights: The mob-controlled nightclub in Donnie Brasco was a real-life Pasco County dive transplanted on film to more glamorous Miami digs, a creative decision that should inspire a brief statement on Florida's image vs. truth. Second, their purist decision to explore only movies clearly identified as Sunshine State stories prevents any mention of Central Florida's entertainment corridor except as tourist lures. Surely, Disney's animation studio that did the heavy work on Tarzan and Mulan, plus other films using statewide resources and calling them someplace else, deserve a short chapter explaining why.
Far more often, Sunshine in the Dark made me nostalgic for films such as Elvis Presley's Follow that Dream, and enjoying the authors' take on its (and loads of other films') reflection of Florida's centuries-old promise of golden living, and perpetuation of such myths. Ingalls and Fernandez often remind readers that from Ponce de Leon's search for the Fountain of Youth to Aileen Wuornos' murder spree in Monster, the Florida dreamers in life and on film are often rudely awakened. Most high hopers in movie dramas - Ned Racine in Body Heat and Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy are two finely worded examples - wind up, at least figuratively, shot down like Tony Montana in Scarface.
In their best passages, Fernandez and Ingalls take the movies "outside the theater," shifting from briskly worded listings of related works to concentrate on singular movies that sometimes inadvertently expose their eras. Where the Boys Are becomes more than another spring break flick cashing in on 1960s' youthful rebellion; the elimination of a Cuban political subplot in Glendon Swarthout's novel is an interesting hint of Cold War skittishness. The same spring break section uses the obscure 1998 comedy Black Spring Break as a springboard to a sharp summary of public beach segregation through decades. The authors' take a similarly historical approach to 19th-century Seminole Indian wars and geographically misnamed 1950s "Westerns" such as Distant Drums and Seminole Uprising.
A hefty collection of movie stills, on-set photographs and posters add flair to prose that at times reads more like a master's degree thesis than a celebration of art. Yet, within all that dutifully processed research readers find a generous number of intriguing tidbits either forgotten or never noticed. Noting that Charles Foster Kane's mansion in Citizen Kane is described as a Florida Gulf Coast locale - not California where the character's inspiration William Randolph Hearst lived and many viewers assumed - is such a head-slapping nugget. Sunshine in the Dark is a commendable chronicle of what happens when the Florida sun meets movie stars, and an inspired reminder that we've had our mercurial share of close-ups.
Steve Persall is the Times film critic.
SUNSHINE IN THE DARK: Florida in the Movies
By Susan J. Fernandez and Robert P. Ingalls
University Press of Florida, illustrated, $34.95, 336 pp
Reviewed by STEVE PERSALL
MEET THE AUTHORS
Susan J. Fernandez and Robert P. Ingalls, authors of Sunshine in the Dark: Florida in the Movies, will be featured authors at the Times Festival of Reading on Oct. 28. The festival will be held at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.