Mask (1985 film)

Mask is a 1985 American biographical drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, starring Cher, Sam Elliott, and Eric Stoltz with supporting roles played by Dennis Burkley, Laura Dern, Estelle Getty, and Richard Dysart. Cher received the 1985 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actress. The film is based on the life and early death of Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis, a boy who had craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, an extremely rare genetic disorder known commonly as lionitis due to the disfiguring cranial enlargements that it causes. Mask won the Academy Award for Best Makeup at the 58th ceremony, while Cher and Stoltz received Golden Globe Award nominations for their performances.

Plot
In 1978 Azusa, California, Rocky Dennis, a teenage boy with the extremely rare genetic disorder known as craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, is accepted without question by his freewheeling biker mother's boyfriend Gar who is a father figure to him, his "extended motorcycle family," and his maternal grandparents who share his passion of baseball card collecting; but is treated with fear, pity, awkwardness, and teasing by those unaware of his humanity, humor, and intelligence.

Rocky's tough minded free sprited and loving but unstable mother, Florence "Rusty" Dennis is determined to give Rocky as normal a life as possible, in spite of her own wild ways as a member of the Turks biker gang, as well as her strained relationship with her father. She fights for Rocky's inclusion in a mainstream junior high school, and confronts the principal Mr Simms who would rather classify Rocky as intellectually disabled and relegate him to a special education school, despite the fact that his condition has not affected his intelligence.

At Rocky's semi-annual physical, Rocky claims to be feeling pretty well despite recurring headaches that his mother can remedy by simply singing to him. A young doctor tells Rusty that Rocky's life expectancy is limited to only six more months; but Rusty scoffs, pointing out that many other doctors have made claims about Rocky's condition (e.g he would be deaf, blind, intellectually impaired etc.) that were completely disproven.

Rocky thrives at school, making lots of friends with his wit and humor, tutoring his classmate for $3 per hour, as well as assisting a fellow student with his locker combination and telling an entertaining rendition of the Trojan Wars to his history class. One summer, He is asked by the principal to accept a job as a counselor's aide at Camp Bloomfield, a summer camp for blind children. At his graduation from junior high, Rocky takes home several academic achievement prizes in mathematics, history, and science.

Rocky feels the need to leave his chronically depressed and drug-addicted mother, and helps her break her drug habit. At camp, Rocky falls in love with Diana Adams, an attractive but blind teenage girl who cannot see (but feel) his genetically disfigured skull but is entranced by Rocky's kindness and compassion. Rocky uses his intelligence to explain to Diana words like "billowy," "clouds," "red," and "green" by using cotton balls as a touchable vision of "billowy clouds," a warm rock to explain "red" and "pink," and a frozen rock to explain "icy blue." At the end of camp, Diana introduces Rocky to her parents, who are horrified by Rocky's deformed appearance and privately forbid Diana to spend time with him.

Later, Rocky faces the pain of separation from the two people to whom he feels closest. His lifelong dream of a motorbike trip through Europe is shattered when his best friend Ben, who was to come with him, reveals one day that he is leaving Azusa and permanently moving back to Michigan to live with his father. After taking a bus trip to visit Diana at the equestrian stables, located near Griffith Park, Rocky learns that Diana's parents had prevented her from receiving his phone messages and are sending her to a private boarding school for the blind and will never see each other again. Rocky vows that despite being separated, they will always love each other and will always be together.

To make matters worse, Rocky attends a high school where none of his old friends from junior high go, and he continues to encounter cruelty from students regarding his deformed face. However, where Rocky used to respond to it with wit and humor, Rocky one day fed up with the teasing shoves a bully against the lockers and dares him to "take your own mask off, you son of a bitch!"

One evening, when Rocky's biker family is visiting, Rocky is fighting an excruciating headache and quietly withdraws to his room, removes the tacks from his map of Europe, and goes to sleep. The next morning, Rusty tries to wake up Rocky for school but Rocky is unresponsive and not breathing. Rusty then flies into a fit of grief-stricken rage and destroys the kitchen upon realizing that Rocky has died in his sleep. After destroying the kitchen, Rusty mourns the death of her son and says, "Now you can go anywhere you want, baby," as she re-pins his map of Europe.

The film ends with Rocky's biker family, Rusty, Gar, and Dozer, visiting his grave, leaving flowers and some 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cards by his headstone, as Rocky's voice is heard reciting the poem he wrote earlier for English class.

Production
Rusty Dennis sold the film rights to Rocky's life story for $15,000, most of which went to pay medical bills for her son Joshua, who was undergoing treatment for AIDS. She originally hoped the film would focus on Rocky's life and intrepid personality rather than giving equal emphasis to her story, but was won over by Cher's role, stating: "Cher depicted the way I am very well. I always thought I was perfectly normal, that the rest of the world is nuts."

In 1984, camp scenes for the movie were filmed at Camp Bloomfield. Campers and staff got a preview of the finished film at Universal Studios in February of 1985.

Bogdanovich had originally intended to use several songs by Bruce Springsteen, the real Rocky Dennis' favorite singer. But due to an impasse at the time between Universal Pictures and Springsteen's label, Columbia Records, the songs were pulled from the film and replaced with songs by Bob Seger for the original theatrical release. Rusty Dennis was unhappy with this, and voiced her displeasure in a 1985 appearance on San Francisco talk show, People Are Talking, saying: "I don't think [Rocky] even knew who Bob Seger was". Bogdanovich sued Universal for $19 million, alleging the film studio switched the music without his approval in violation of his final cut privilege. The Springsteen songs were eventually restored for the 2004 director's cut DVD of the film.

Box office
The film was a box office success, garnering US$48230162 in total. It placed in the number 13 spot on its opening weekend, but moved up to the third spot in its third week, and eventually the second spot in its fourth week, where it remained for two consecutive weeks.

Critical reception
Reviews were mostly positive. The film has a 93% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10.

Roger Ebert wrote of the film, "A wonderful movie, a story of high spirits and hope and courage," with Stoltz's performance establishing a believable character that transcends his deformity and Cher's characterization of Rusty as "one of the most interesting movie characters in a long time." Gene Siskel described Mask as "superb" and also singled out Cher's portrayal of Rusty as the heart of the film, but criticized the marketing campaign that kept Stoltz's face secretive as a revival of a freak show mentality. Dolores Barclay of the Associated Press declared Mask was "directed with great sensitivity by Peter Bogdanovich" and carried by Cher and Stoltz's performances but believed the depiction of Rusty's biker friends was "perhaps a bit too sanitized to be believable." A contrasting review by Vincent Canby in The New York Times read in part, "Mask is one of those movies that try so hard to get their supposedly universal message across (don't we all hide behind a mask of one sort or another?) that they are likely to put your teeth on edge more often than they bring one little, lonely teardrop to the eye."

Filmink magazine argued "The cuts insisted on by the studio were actually reasonable. This film should’ve brought Bogdanovich back to the A List, but he carried on, trying to sue to studio for millions."