Harvey Wallbanger
What we talk about when we talk about Harvey Keitel’s manhood.
When did you come to Harvey Keitel?
It is a question we filmgoers must face at some point or another. For many, his tenure through the 70’s will have undoubtedly left its mark. Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. Ridley Scott’s The Duelists or even James Toback’s Fingers. But for a certain generation, born too late to initially partake in Keitel’s cinematic machismo alongside such greats as De Niro and Pacino, we were exposed to Keitel at a different, possibly far darker, period in film history…
We need to talk about Harvey.
And his genitalia.
Let it be said: Keitel has never had any qualms baring his soul — and his bum in the process — exposing himself in such early roles as Who’s That Knocking at My Door and The Men’s Club. But let us focus on a particular spurt within Keitel’s cinematic output, namely between the years 1992 to 1993 (arguably Keitel’s renaissance period), where this method actor peeled away layer after layer of his characters’ very psyche… and their clothes, to boot.
For my generation, whose hormonal floodgates cracked open in the 90’s, Harvey Keitel’s junk was a journey into the heart of adulthood’s darkness. That thick tangle of hair between his legs was a bird’s nest that possessed a most dangerous egg — the depravity of man, laid bare.
Let’s focus on two films in particular:
Bad Lieutenant
Reservoir Dogs was the gateway film for arthouse-genre fare to trickle into the suburbs. Beyond the crop of knockoffs heading our way (Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, anyone?), there were other films — bolder films — crafted by idiosyncratic auteurs who found themselves inadvertently caught within the maelstrom of Tarantino’s success. None of these films would achieve the critical or commercial fever pitch that Reservoir Dogs did, but they left their own indelible mark… particularly on the poor, innocent middle schooler exposed to them.
One particular film was Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant.
I pillaged this film from the local video store one Friday night purely based upon its star-power. Here was Mr. White! But nothing — no ear-slicing, no Mexican standoff — could prepare me for the descent down one dirty cop’s man-parts. To the tune of Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love,” we watch as a vodka-soaked ménage a trois unfolds before us. There is hardly any titillation to the scene. Quite the opposite. Their lust is supplanted with despondency, drunkenly going through the motions of the sex act. These three are too far gone for penetration. Each of these three characters seem to be isolated in their own inebriated island of debased dejection. Slowly, staggering dancing punctuated with dry-humping.
And then — the moment.
The stunning moment.
A cut of Keitel alone, naked at age 53, lurching to the music. He’s weeping onscreen. Openly weeping, like a Russian weight-lifter well past his prime. Or perhaps a distant uncle of yours who got a wee bit too tipsy at the family reunion and took off his shirt. And his pants. There was something so unnerving about his portly torso, that stout trunk, once so strong but now expanding beyond its normal proportions.
Try to imagine this moment through the eyes of an 8th grader. Try to fathom the emotions of this man, baring it all onscreen. What I’m seeing, what Keitel is showing me, all fourteen years old of me, is not nudity… but something much more bare. Something far more depraved. Craven. If we’re being completely honest with ourselves here, the ding-a-ling in question doesn’t have as much of a screen presence as its possessor — which only furthers this wonton display of degeneracy.
This man is old. This man is naked. This man is nothing. Has nothing… and I find myself privy to the future of masculinity. My own? Who knows… This is not the stuff of sex ed, mind you. This is nowhere near the lesson plan we middle schoolers were subjected to.
In that moment, Keitel is the embodiment of failure. Of rock bottom. Of impotency. This is how adults are behind closed doors. This is lust without passion.
Arms outstretched, it’s as if he’s trying to fly away — a bird plucked of all his feathers. Then the pose takes on a more Catholic aspect, a see-sawing crucifixion, embodying many of the themes of Ferrara’s film in a single crystalized moment. A familiar whimper, shrill in its pitch, lifts up from his throat — and I’m reminded once again of his mournful bellow at the bloody end of Reservoir Dogs. That cry, that keening, will become signature Keitel in my brain.
Plus his junk.
The Piano
In 1993, The New York Times claimed Keitel’s “tree-trunk” body with “his knotted chest, his gnarled face and insistent frown,” would “represent masculinity in the 90’s, in all its discomforting, frustrated and violent extremes.” If so, Jane Campion’s The Piano would put Keitel’s slab of masculinity on display once more — at age 54 — and soften it. Portraying the mid-19th century settler George Baines in the New Zealand outback, we see Keitel’s body in a suppler, dare I say doughier, light. His face laced with Maori tattoos, Baines blackmails the mute mail-order bride Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) by promising to return her beloved piano in exchange for discreet “music lessons.” Far more profound than these veiled sexual encounters is a scene where Keitel cleans the piano in the buff. The casualness of his nudity, the commonplace routine of cleaning while completely naked, forces McGrath — and the viewer — to confront our notions of the male body, its potential for sexuality but also its love handles.
At fourteen, I saw myself in Keitel.
I saw my body’s future.
Its paunch. Its salt-and-pepperiness. Its eventual decline. But with that came a sense of fearlessness, a lack of inhibition within its liver spots.
If Keitel could expose himself in front of millions in his 50’s, what was I capable of in my early teens?
But what does Keitel have to say about all this? How about we look at an interview from Premiere Magazine in 2005:
PREMIERE: You’ve … appeared completely naked onscreen.
KEITEL: I’ve done no nudity in my career.
PREMIERE: What do you mean? Besides Bad Lieutenant, you do full-frontal nudity in The Piano and Ulysses’ Gaze.
KEITEL: An actor doesn’t do nude scenes. An actor plays an event and tells a story.
PREMIERE: But it’s still your penis that millions of people are seeing.
KEITEL: It’s not about nudity, it’s about revelations. So if anyone wants to discuss nudity with me they can forget about it because it’s not relevant. Any of my colleagues that I know would go all the way, just the way I did. I’m no exception. I just happened to have that part at the time.
…And I just happened to have seen those parts — that part — at the time.
Movies can leave a mark. Some imprints linger longer than others. Keitel came at the right time for me. Or the worst, if you want to play pop psychology. His nudity was something of a warning — a sign and portent for the darker side of masculinity, lurking within all men. Whether we as filmgoers choose to explore this darkness within ourselves, Keitel was at least brave enough to show it, expose it, wave it in our faces… Now it’s up to us — to me — to look inwardly, to delve down, all the way down, and see what shape my own masculinity takes.
The question Keitel forces us all to ask is simple:
Are you a grower — or are you a shower?
Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, children’s books, comic books and films. He lives in Brooklyn.
