The Justin/Jeff Project: California Split (1974)

In the spirit of the Julie/Julia project in which writer Julie Powell chronicles cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 524 recipes in 365 days, I bring you the Jeff/Justin project. The Justin/Jeff project chronicles my descent into the filmography of Jeff Goldblum and will take as much time as it takes.

While Jeff Goldblum's character in Death Wish was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad kid, at least he played a noticeable character, integral to the plot, and got a decent amount of screen time. In California Split, featuring George Segal and Elliott Gould, he gets only the quickest of cameos, enough time to show his dorky face and then fade away. What do I remember of Jeff Goldblum's performance as Lloyd Harris in California Split? I remember him coming out of an office, talking to one of the main characters, smiling (maybe), and then I remember waiting for him to show up again. This was especially difficult in a movie that didn't seem too concerned with plot.

In all of the descriptions of Jeff Goldblum's appearance in California Split you'll read how Robert Altman really liked Jeff Goldblum. Altman found him performing in the comic review El Grande de Coca Cola and he just had to have Goldblum in his films. So, Goldblum pops out of an office and then he disappears. He is only noticeable years later when fans, like me, skim through his filmography trying to gain some kind of sacred knowledge from seeing every single Goldblum performance. This isn't even the Altman film that will help Goldblum's career. That will come in 1975 with his performance in the Academy Award nominated Robert Altman film Nashville.

What do we know of Jeff Goldblum's character Lloyd Harris in California Split? He's not really much of a character. He could be anyone. He could moonlight as Batman, or he could zip out of the office here and there as Superman. He could be the same character from Death Wish, only grown up, with a job, and a penchant for violating kind citizens. He could be the american psycho for all we know. But if we are to paint a picture more akin to the clues Robert Altman has given us, it seems pretty clear that Lloyd Harris is just a dweeby co-worker who probably doesn't have much of a life.

Thank goodness Jeff Goldblum went on to bigger and better things, because Lloyd Harris is not exactly the kind of character who sells an actor. Lloyd Harris is the kind of character you want to keep behind closed doors.

The Justin/Jeff Project: Death Wish (1974)

In the spirit of the Julie/Julia project in which writer Julie Powell chronicles cooking all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 524 recipes in 365 days, I bring you the Jeff/Justin project. The Justin/Jeff project chronicles my descent into the filmography of Jeff Goldblum and will take as much time as it takes.

If you were born in time to experience the 1990s you are likely to adore Jeff Goldblum with a fiery passion. Few films are more quotable than his 1993 film Jurassic Park, and few actors can pull off long pauses and verbal junk ("Uhhhhh") better than Jeff Goldblum. Jeff Goldblum is to 90s cinema what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are to 90s television. Of course, the TMNT film trilogy complicates this analogy, but that's not important right now.

What is important is Jeff Goldblum's cinematic excellence. The strongest of rivers often begins as a trickling mountain stream, and so too with Jeff Goldblum, whose first cinematic role is a character named Freak #1 in the 1974 Charles Bronson revenge flick Death Wish.

Freak #1 is one of three disturbed twenty-somethings who run around New York City looking for trouble. Viewers are lead to believe that the three freaks are capable of horrendous acts of carnage by the uncivilized manner in which they knock items off of shelves and eat snacks they haven't paid for at the super market. Shock! Menace! They are like velociraptors hunting in a pack formation.

Another similarity between the three freaks and velociraptors is that they all know how to open doors, which leads to the beginning of the movie's revenge theme. Freak #1 and his posse assault two women named Joanne Kersey and Carol Anne Toby in their own home after getting their address from a grocery store delivery slip. The whole crime is perpetrated with the use of their amazing door-opening skills.

In the aftermath, Carol Anne is comatose. Joanne dies. The family's partriarch Paul Kersey goes on a criminal hunt. All this and the fate of Freak #1 is never revealed. I imagine that Kersey's highly publicized vigilante justice scares Freak #1 off the streets. He cleans up and goes back to school where he studies criminal justice or city-planning and goes on to make New York City a better place. Maybe there's a Mrs. Freak and some little freaky children. He does all of this in the name of the Kersey family.

Why this optimism? Because Jeff Goldblum is a better man than Freak #1. He stands up for a dinosaur's right not to be cloned (Jurassic Park). He stands up for Earth's right not to be destroyed by alien death rays (Independence Day). This is why Freak #1 becomes a pillar of his community in the off-camera future of Death Wish.