Allan Arkush’s strengths are musical energy and comedy, carried from rock films into a long television career. We rate his contribution to Moonlighting in particular, with a reservation about the programme’s fondness for its own cleverness.
Fi1m perspective
In Moonlighting (1985), Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis make quarrelling look like a good reason to keep someone around. We laughed at their bickering because the flirtation survives the irritation. Arkush directed 12 episodes, and the programme’s mixture of screwball comedy and noir is a useful starting point for a director with a gift for energetic comedy. We recommend it despite the moments when it stops getting on with a scene and starts congratulating itself. The actors are a considerable reason to forgive it.
Arkush worked with Joe Dante in Roger Corman’s New World Pictures trailer department before they co-directed Hollywood Boulevard (1976). The Ramones musical Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979) gives his aptitude for lively musical sequences a direct outlet. During the 1980s, the feature work, including Get Crazy (1983), gave way to a career primarily in episodic television. It is tempting to make the rock films the whole story, since they offer a tidier way to describe him. That would leave out too much of the work worth watching.
St. Elsewhere (1982), which he also directed, usefully complicates the picture of a specialist in rock music and comic disorder. The flawed hospital staff hold our attention because the actors make them worth following. It is good television, though the pace can drag and the writing sometimes labours a lesson we have already understood. The praise for both programmes belongs to their writers and actors too, which is worth remembering before making Arkush responsible for everything we like about them.
Music remained part of his television work through the miniseries The Temptations (1998), which he directed. His later work included both directing and executive-producing on Crossing Jordan (2001) and Heroes (2006). Those later credits need not displace the earlier comedy as the place to begin. Start with Moonlighting for Shepherd and Willis, and allow a little patience for a programme that sometimes finds itself funnier than we do.
Biography
Allan Arkush (born 30 April 1948) is an American film and television director and producer. He grew up in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and studied at New York University Film School from 1967 to 1970.
He began his career cutting trailers for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and co-directed the films Hollywood Boulevard (1976) and Deathsport (1978). He later directed the cult film Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979).
Arkush has directed many television series, including episodes of St. Elsewhere (1982), 12 episodes of Moonlighting (1985) for which he received an Emmy nomination, and 11 episodes of Heroes (2006), on which he also served as executive producer. Other credits include Crossing Jordan (director and executive producer) and Ally McBeal.
