by Odienator
In Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979) and Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion (2006), the filmmakers respectively invoke death to gently chastise viewers for the imaginary crime of not affording them the appreciation they feel they deserve. Both works cry out, "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone." Yet for all their surface similarities, they are oceans apart in tone.
All That Jazz, one of my favorite movies, is meandering, infuriating and surreal, packed with dance numbers and music. Scripted by Robert Alan Aurthur, and owing Federico Fellini's 8 ½ a debt too large to repay, Fosse reimagines the musical drama of his own life, sometimes employing original cast members (Ann Reinking plays a character based on herself), while crafting a self-congratulatory piece that screams "I am Bob 
Fosse! I am breathing down the Grim Reaper's neck because I'm a drug-addicted workaholic! Partake in my world of cynical Broadway smut, and celebrate me before it's too late!" Prairieis also meandering, infuriating, surreal and full of music. Owing All That Jazz a similarly huge debt, Altman builds a dramatic frame around a facsimile of Keillor's long-running radio program and some of its recurring castmembers and characters, while crafting a self-congratulatory piece that declares, "I am Robert Altman! The Grim Reaper is breathing down my neck! Partake in my world of cynical Midwestern sing-a-longs and celebrate me before it's too late!"
In Flesh for Frankenstein, Udo Kier says, "To know death, you must fuck life in the gallbladder!" Both Prairie and Jazz aim for a more easily accessible point of penetration by envisioning the Angel of Death as a hot blonde chick dressed in virginal white. In Jazz, Jessica Lange plays Angelique, who appears to protagonist and Fosse 
stand-in Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) in a form he can appreciate. He knows that she has come for him; like the Ghost of Christmas Past, Angelique leads Gideon through the various events that led to their meeting. Though a chronic lothario who lies to the women in his life, Gideon feels compelled to be truthful to Angelique--and to resist her. When she moves to administer the Kiss of Death, Gideon stops her; it might be the first time he's ever resisted a woman's charms. Angelique seems vapid, but her dialogue reveals that her bullshit detector is on: "I always look for the worst in people," Joe tells her. "A little of yourself in them?" she asks. Fosse also alludes to Angelique taking the physical representation of one of Gideon's fans and former lovers: Gideon's mother tells Angelique, "He always loved you." Meanwhile, back in the real world, Joe Gideon is dying in the hospital while the backers of his latest Broadway show weigh their options. Gideon's death would potentially mean the demise of the show, unless the backers can convince Gideon's nemesis (John Lithgow) to direct it; however, their accountants state that if Gideon dies, they can make a bigger profit by letting the show die with him. Thus Angelique gets to claim Gideon's last potential triumph in a two-for-one sale on his soul.
Both living and dying are envisioned as intricately choreographed and rehearsed performances. A recurring montage of Gideon's bleary-eyed wakeup routine -- Alka-Seltzer, cigarette, Visine, Dexedrine -- appears several times in the film, always scored to Vivaldi's "Concert in G" and ending with Gideon looking in the mirror and declaring, "It's showtime, folks!" Fosse ends Jazz with a number titled "Hospital Hallucination, Take 1," a nearly 30 minute, self-indulgent tribute to himself--one final showstopper for Fosse/Gideon; since we're never asked to like Gideon, it's a ballsy way to end the movie. Costars Reinking, Leland Palmer, Erszebet Foldi, Ben Vereen and Scheider give a taste of what the film version of Fosse's Broadway hit Chicago might have looked like had Fosse survived to direct it--though like the "Air-otica" sequence earlier in Jazz, it seems a pre-emptive self-parody of his distinctive style. The deathbed number and the gruesome open heart surgery footage that precedes it are endurance tests for viewers.
In Prairie, Virginia Madsen portrays The Dangerous Woman, aptly named because her performance is dangerously bad. Madsen's Angel of Death has also come for the film's protagonist—the radio show itself. Sure, she picks off a few people en route, but her purpose is more symbolic. G.K. (Garrison Keillor)--Prairie's screenwriter, the creator of the real-life radio program, and Altman's de facto stand-in--vows to have one last great show before the theater in which he performs is razed. G.K's nemesis, represented by company man Tommy Lee Jones, could let this institution live, but he notes that they'll make more money without it. Like Gideon, G.K. is also a womanizer, as evidenced by Lola Johnson's (Meryl Streep) out-of-left-field freak-out during a duct tape commercial.
But G.K. seems far more dishonest about both his sexual history and his feelings about mortality than Fosse's alter-ego. When the show's resident horny old man keels over, presumably after taking a load of Viagra, G.K. seems apathetic. Later in the film, Dangerous Ginny comments that "the death of an old man is not a tragedy," which led me to holler out, “Bullshit, Mr. Altman." When Lola asks if he is concerned that this is the last show, G.K. says "every show is your last show. That's my philosophy." "Thank you, Plato," Lola’s sister Yolanda (Lily Tomlin) sarcastically replies, saving grumps like me the trouble of talking back to the screen again.
While acknowledging Altman’s importance, I find his tone here lacks the passion for life that speaks to me from Fosse's film. Even in Altman's brilliant breakthrough period--the era of M*A*S*H and Nashville--he has always come off as a curmudgeon. But the Kansas City native was 80 when he sat in Prairie's director's chair -- with acolyte-turned-protege Paul Thomas Anderson by his side, just in case the lady in white decided to drop in before the wrap party. This makes him the perfect director for the kind of film Prairie's radio fans hoped to see; Altman understands Midwestern stoic folksiness. Fosse, a Chicago native born two years after Altman, was 52 and a Broadway veteran when he made All That Jazz; his relative youth made it a more visceral ride to the same destination of deathly meditation.
But the Keillorites' gain may count as a loss for some. I am closer to 52 than 80, and more attuned to Broadway than Lake Woebegone; I know more about sex and self-destruction than the wisdom of age and the sense of entitlement one feels for living a long life. Most importantly, though, I also know something about being a grouch, and from that vantage point, Prairie’s subtle exhortations to go gentle into that good night seem a false comfort from Altman to his fans--a reassurance that displaces his usual blunt honesty. For a movie whose cast includes a sexy reaper, Prairie is too smug and passive about dying. The mortal coil is unraveling from the show and its participants, yet Altman chooses to deflect a universal fear by pretending that death is a mere nuisance.
This is why Madsen is so terrible; her air-headed angel's platitudes ring hollow in the Altman universe we've come to know. Would the younger Altman have let a character get away with such bullshit? This artist has never felt the need to embrace and console his audiences in the past, so why start now? Nashville’s 
final number, "It Don't Worry Me," was about willful denial; the whole of Prairie is about acceptance, yet it feels like a denial as well. The palpable fear that this is Altman's last movie is never honestly dealt with by the director’s stand-in, Keillor, nor the film itself. It seems almost as if Prairie thinks it holds the monopoly on dying, and that the show-within-a-movie is noble--and its demise a tragedy--simply because it's been around for so long. Altman's onscreen representative G.K. keeps pooh-poohing the distress his colleagues feel throughout their last show, going so far as to state that he doesn't want to tell people how to feel about his legacy; but his relaxed attitude never feels true. Altman throws out a hopeful, interesting curve when dealing with the fate of Tommy Lee Jones' character (a fantasy of how to deal with one's enemies). Here is the mean Altman we know and love, lashing out at his critics, informing you of his perceived greatness and how much it'll be missed once he's gone. But the film treats it as a throwaway; as quickly as it arrives, it defers back to that transparent, dishonest lulling. If Prairie weren’t so concerned with coddling us, we'd deduce that it's OK to acknowledge Death—-just don’t go looking for it; wait until it shows up to pull your number.
Both films are obsessed with death, but where Jazz dramatizes and fulfills its own prophecy, Prairie ignores the apparition in the corner of the room. Gideon's doctor says at one point that Gideon "doesn't give a fuck" about his life anymore since his hospital room is always full of sex and booze. While neither Joe Gideon nor G.K. seem to give a fuck about their own inevitable passing, Fosse the filmmaker is at least honest about his fear (and fascination)--an honesty that extends to self-destructively pushing up his date with the woman in white.
Fosse's semi-autobiographical confession was prescient: the heart attack that took Joe Gideon took his creator as well, and also claimed what might have been Fosse's final film triumph, Chicago. Altman, at this writing, is still with us despite having similar heart trouble. Perhaps, at 80, you look at life differently than at 52, which might explain why Prairie is slower, more passive and less defiant than Jazz. But if Prairie could act as elder statesmen and deliver a message back to Joe Gideon, it would come from Jearlyn Steele, who sings, "The day is short/the night is long/Why do you work so hard to get what you don't even want?"
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Angels of Death: A Prairie Home Companion and All That Jazz
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12 comments:
Interesting stuff ... I usually see everything by Altman, but I have to confess that I missed this one in the measly two weeks it played in the theater in my little corner of the world .. Oh well, I guess there's DVD
You've certainly identified one of the weaknesses of PHC in the empty-headed epigrammaticisms of the Angel of Death, who seems to think she is far more profound than her words suggest. But still, despite Masden's breathy and vanilla coated performance in this vacant role, I thought that the film had so much more to offer, from the free-flowing camera and dialogue to the magnificent performances (Marsden excepted), and such an ultimately joyful embrace of The End that I was completely won over by film's end.
As for All That Jazz, the film may vibrate with more energy, but I also found it so much more self-serving and navel gazing (qu'elle surprise, given the director) that I wasn't drawn me into Fosse's world with nearly the same enthusiasm.
Fascinating. I haven't seen Prairie, but this post makes me want to rush out and rent All That Jazz; it's been so long since I've seen it. I mainly remember how intoxicating the editing was, just like all of Fosse's films. Is the Sally Kellerman character in Brewster McCloud an antecedent for Madsen's angel of death?
interesting stuff...i've never seen all that jazz so that comparison was very interesting to me.
--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com
Well, Odie, we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. "A Prairie Home Companion" is my favorite movie of the year so far -- a statement you have to take with an asterisk because I've been living in a hermit cave for about three months -- and right now, if I had to make a list of Altman's ten best, this one would definitely be on it.
You astutely detail the differences between "All That Jazz" and "A Prairie Home Companion," but I do think they share one big similarity, namely their belief in the inherent nobility of being a professional artist, somebody who views performing not just as a job or an obsession, but as a compulsion or a calling. You're right that in Altman's movie, all three incarnations of "A Prairie Home Companion" -- Keillor's real-life source, the "show" within a film and the film itself -- are in some sense attempts to keep dying cultures alive or reanimate ones long dead. John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson's characters, while comic, are keeping alive some vague facsimile of cowboy/rural humor, a school of comedy that wasn't relevant to mainstream American culture when "Hee-Haw" was doing it 30 years ago. The family of Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and (finally, though it takes some doing) Lindsay Lohan are still grieving for their own dead relatives, all of whom presumably were musicians, too; they keep the memory of their loved ones alive by performings songs they used to sing together -- in some cases songs the deceased personally taught them. Kevin Kline's Guy Noir (one of Keillor's most admittedly tiresome and irritating characters on the radio program) is an incarnation of a certain hardboiled 1940s radio/film noir cliche, an embodiment of a certain type of suave, cynical, macho man who was a museum piece when Altman dusted him off again -- and with help from Elliott Gould, reinvented him -- in "The Long Goodbye" back in 1975. And so on and so on.
I know I'm walking off a cliff by citing these examples as proof that Altman (and Keillor) have a grand design, and some other tricks up their sleeves besides simply giving us a movie about death and dying (which God knows they do in a big way, as you point out). One could certainly counter that some archetypes and performance schools are better left to die-- that evolution is the natural order of things, art and entertainment included, and nostalgia acts don't really reanimate anything, they're just a form of taxidermy. But I guess that depends on whether you value that particular art or not, or find some nobility in the professionalism of the artists keeping it alive (or resurrecting it) -- a sort of Hawskian admiration for another human being's willingness to commit wholeheartedly to the task at hand and stick with it, though not without a bit of self-awareness and even self-deprecating humor. (I felt as though the Reilly and Harrelson characters, for instance, knew deep down that they were riding along on schtick ponies, that they might as well be dressing up as Vikings or cavemen for all the relevance they had.) Altman's made a lot of movies in this vein -- movies about the compulsion to perform, to testify in some quasi-religious sense -- including "The Company," "Nashville," "Kansas City" and even, in its fucked-up way, "Pret-a-Porter"; the man's a curmudgeon, yes -- he sees through everybody's personal/emotional bullshit even if they aren't capable of doing the same -- but curiously, the one aspect of life where he's not snide, where he is in fact shockingly sincere, is the respect he accords performers. He has affection for everyone with a performer's instinct, even the people who stink ("Nashville" deliberately has more mediocre to bad singers as good ones, but when the characters make an ass out of themselves, Altman usually mocks them not for daring to express themselves artistically in public, but for other delusions they harbor, and for their obliviousness to their own lack of talent). This might, in fact, be the one area where he most nakedly reveals his heart -- his buried sentimental streak. Anybody who devotes his or her life to transforming life into art or entertainment gets a gold star from him, no matter how many balls of dung he flings their way.
Given all this, it didn't surprise me that "A Prairie Home Companion" turned out to be a valentine to the whole "The Show Must Go" on cliche -- a means of sanctifying it, and linking the artist's desire to achieve immortality, even in a small way, with every living person's doomed wish to somehow cheat death. There is a sense in which to leave a legacy of art or entertainment, however modest, is to achieve some measure of immortality -- to leave some permanent mark, even if it's within your own family. After I saw this movie for the first time, I went home and popped in a compilation CD of my maternal grandmother, Hazel O. Volkart, who composed and performed piano music in Kansas City, Altman's hometown; nobody except the occasionally piano student recognizes her name, but I sure do love that CD, and when I listen to it, I can picture hear clearly, sitting at the piano in the recording studio my mother rented back in 1983, overcoming the pain of bone marrow cancer long enough to pound out some of her own concertos and love songs.
Granted, at this point I'm not really defending any specific aspect of "A Prairie Home Companion" the movie so much as I'm grafting my own family history and my own emotions onto Altman's film. But on the other hand, I think it's designed to evoke those sorts of emotions. The Dangerous Woman is a device, not a character, and yeah, Madsen's pretty flat and many of her lines are a bit high school; and yes, Keillor's character is a benevolent whitewash of Altman's impresario tendencies, and a means of reassuring viewers that even though the great director can't stay alive much longer, don't grieve for him, becuase the death of an old man isn''t a tragedy, death is just a natural part of life, and so forth. You're absolutely right to say that Altman never would have tolerated such bullshit 30 or even 20 years ago. But I'm inclined to cut the guy a lot of slack because of the legacy he's going to leave behind when he passes. There is such a thing as an Old Man movie, and this is one of them; I think John Huston's "The Dead" is another, and if I recall correctly, that one got reviews similar to Altman's latest -- even the pans or mixed reviews were respectful, as if nobody wanted to insult a beloved uncle who probably wasn't long for this world. But that's a type of sentimentality I'm willing to indulge. Again, it might just be a personal thing -- it probably comes as no shock that this movie is the right movie for me at this particular time in my life, and yeah, I admit I'm probably grading it on a curve, out of personal need and my own rather slavish love of Altman. (Along with Spielberg and Coppola, he's probably the 70s giant whose work has meant the most to me, from childhood onward.) But what the hell; a lot of this stuff is subjective anyway. I would never defend "Field of Dreams" as a pinnacle of cinematic art, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't cry watching it, because when that actor playing the dad took off his face mask, he reminded me of old photos of my grandfather. Half of moviegoing is what you bring to it -- sometimes more than half -- and any critic who presumes Olympian detachment in this regard is lying to himself and the reader.
Now I've wandered so far off my original point that I don't have the energy to talk about "All That Jazz," a movie I probably love as much as you do, Odie. In fact, I'm listening to "On Broadway" as I write this. But it's late, so I'll have to wax rhapsodic on Fosse's masterpiece some other time.
Dan: I thought that the film had so much more to offer, from the free-flowing camera and dialogue to the magnificent performances
Altman deserves credit where it is due, and I acknowledge that he creates a more visually interesting movie than I expected. And any movie where Meryl sings gives me something to smile about--witness my unhealthy love of Postcards from the Edge. In fact, I was surprised at how much I liked some of the musical numbers in the film, because A Prairie Home Companion is not aimed at my age bracket.
After I saw Prairie, I wrote a friend of mine and the word I used to describe the film was "offensive." I was offended by the self-congratulatory amount of bullshit Altman was trying to cram down my throat: "I'm dying! Be nice to me."
Altman, as Matt says, "sees through everybody's personal/emotional bullshit even if they aren't capable of doing the same" but he gives himself a pass here. For someone so celebrated for being as mean and nasty realist as Altman is, this is hypocritical. I hate hypocrites like Yosemite Sam hates rabbits.
Critics, sensing that Altman might meet the Dangerous Woman sooner rather than later, gave him a pass too. Personally, I don't care if he were on his death bed, having his heart shocked every day in order to complete this movie; he still made a subpar movie in my opinion. I'm sure Altman doesn't want a pass--and in that rare moment of honesty in APHC he has G.K. explicitly tell you this.
Unlike Fosse, who puts his own feet to the fire (via Gideon), Altman as G.K. never once gives thought to the worry that his legacy will die with him. I'm not saying he has to dwell on it, for Altman never would, but if this were any other character in any other Altman movie, Altman would have exposed this fraudulent notion. I kept waiting for that to happen, and it never did.
G.K. and Madsen are the two noblest characters in the movie, and I hated both of them. At least Madsen isn't as "made for radio ugly" as Keillor is, so I at least didn't mind looking at her.
Brilliant post, Matt. I hear what you are saying, and you know I'm a firm believer in bringing my own experiences, biases and beliefs to the movies with me. I mean, who the fuck else am I going to watch and review a movie as, Andrew Sarris? Art should never be looked at with the cold, clinical detachment I reserve for my real life job as a computer scientist. And while I can certainly relate to being mortal; I could not relate to APHC's attempts to comfort me about it. I don't seek euphemism at Altman movies.
Full disclosure: I was never on the Altman bandwagon, though some of his films are undeniable masterpieces (even Gosford Park, which I know many didn't like) and his contributions to film are well worth acknowledging. I just think the master of truth is a big assed liar here.
Odie: I just think the master of truth is a big assed liar here.
On the particular point you cite -- a pretty big one -- I can't really say you're wrong. I do think this is one of the rare instances -- maybe the only instance I can think of -- where Altman is telling us what we want to hear instead of the truth. But like I said, I'm cutting the man some slack here. I don't want him to die, either, and I'm going to be distraught when it happens, even if the Dangerous Woman final beckons to him at age 110, when I'm a grandpa myself. But this this particular lie is one that all people share in, to some degree -- maybe not such much a lie as a pleasant and necessary fiction. And until then, the show must go on.
Or as Gideon says, "It's showtime, folks!"
By the way, All That Jazz contains one of my favorite movie images of all time -- from that scene early in the movie where Gideon is seducing that tall knockout of a woman from the chorus line auditions, the one who's only an OK dancer and a terrible actress (she even quotes Blanche Dubois to him!). He tells her the truth -- that she doesn't have star quality -- even though he might jeopardize his chances of getting laid. She's upset and depressed at first and it seems like the the evening is done; but then she climbs those stairs, defeated but accepting, taking her top off as she ascends. Then we see the shot -- her silhouetted form in the foreground as she rises to the top of the stairs, and Gideon down below watching her climb those stairs. (Guiseppe Rotunno, Fellini's regular collaborator, shot the movie). He's diminished in the frame, and the look of matter-of-fact wonder on his face is one of Roy Scheider's finest moments as an actor. Everything about the shot -- the juxtaposition of light and shadow, that almost ethereal pop music, the extreme, almost raked downward vantage point diminishing him and abstracting her -- merges spiritual and sexual yearning. He's watching an angel rise up to heaven.
MZS:the extreme, almost raked downward vantage point diminishing him and abstracting her -- merges spiritual and sexual yearning. He's watching an angel rise up to heaven.
That's a fantastic shot, partially because it is so unexpected. I thought she was going to cuss him out and leave.
That shot provides major insight to Gideon's feelings about women, and why Angelique seems wiser than Dangerous Ginny. Gideon is afraid of women--he knows the power they wield over him. So he has to "control" them. In his mind, he sees them as otherworldly and superior.
In the scene between Angelique and Mama Gideon, Ma Gideon says "he always loved you." Perhaps "you" means "women." We have the two most important women in Gideon's life in the same frame--the one who gave him life and the one who's taking it away--and it makes an interesting mother/whore juxtaposition.
This scene also highlights my earlier notion of Gideon's fear of women. Right after Ma Gideon rambles on about how "Joe never looked at any of the women" at the burlesque house he worked in, Fosse flashes back to Gideon as a young man (in the guise of DePalma regular Keith Gordon). Right before he goes onstage for his tap solo, Young Joe is accosted by several of the dancers in various states of undress. They arouse him into a humiliating representation of their power over him, going so far as to rub his rapidly overheating crotch. How Heim and Fosse edit that montage of the tap dance that follows brings Gideon's fear of the power of women to the forefront of the movie. That giant closeup of Gordon's panicked eyes is worth a thousand words.
Regarding Alan Heim, one of the most influential American film editors of the last half-century, I actually interviewed the man once about his work on All That Jazz -- for a piece that I never actually published, unfortunately -- and he told me something I didn't know about the film's creation. He said that Fosse first employed that nonlinear style in Lenny and that it was found during postproduction -- originally the tale was to be told in a much more straightforward way. He liked the results so much that when the time came to do All That Jazz, he and Robert Alan Aurthur, the screenwriter, actually wrote the script in that nonlinear form -- jumping back and forth through the past and present, reality and fantasy -- and then shot it in a form that's a lot closer to the finished product than you might have imagined. All That Jazz feels very free-flowing and immediate, but it's meticulously constructed, and if you watch it more than once, you can see that winging it would have been impossible; like dance, it's rigorously choreographed yet seems to be happening spontaneously, in the moment -- a great tribute to everybody who worked on it.
Odienator: This is an inspired comparison. "Angels of Death," indeed! But I'm with Matt here. I think you're missing one of the great jokes in "Prairie Home Companion," which is that Virginia Madsen's Dangerous Woman is lost and has no idea what she's doing. She just seems to wander around, out of place, like a ghost who can't "cross over" in occult tales. So, she goes through the motions, spouts the stuff she thinks she's supposed to say -- which, as you describe, comes out sounding like New Agey gobblydegook. She wants to comfort the dying and the living, but I don't think she's quite figured it out yet.
The key scene, I think, is the one in which she tries to guilt-trip G.K. for causing her to laugh so hard with a penguin joke that she crashed her car and died. When she asks him to repeat the joke, she's utterly mystified: It's not funny. GK says something to the effect of maybe, now that she's dead and an "angel," she's no longer capable of understanding humor. But, of course, she's right -- the joke isn't very funny. And that throws her for a bit of a loop. She has to revise her memory of her own death. Why did she laugh so hard at that stupid joke? Maybe she didn't really want to get where she was going... ?
I might understand how you could see PHC as Altman's self-pitying valedictory to himself if the movie had ended with Guy Noir walking off with F. Scott Fitzgerald's head while the workers tore down the theater. (Guy is an interesting character, fictional but alive -- yet just as lost and functionless [security?] as the Dangerous Woman. His get-up is as self-consciously "noir" as hers, too. No wonder he feels such a kinship with her -- they're both stuck between worlds.) But there's that last scene: Everybody's making plans, and then (apparently having figured out something) Death comes knocking. Guy flicks his finger around the table, nervously trying to ascertain who she's come for, but in the penultimate shot, she walks right into the camera. In the final crane shot outside the diner, none of the PCH gang can be seen inside. Ask not for whom the bell tolls...
Jim: The key scene, I think, is the one in which she tries to guilt-trip G.K. for causing her to laugh so hard with a penguin joke that she crashed her car and died. When she asks him to repeat the joke, she's utterly mystified: It's not funny.
I took this scene an entirely different way, actually. I thought it was the one time in the movie she actually said something that a)made sense and b)was accurate.
When Angelique appears to Joe, she appears in a form he can appreciate. When Dangerous Ginny appears to G.K., she also appears in a form he can appreciate: someone who isn't going to be told how to remember his legacy. He thinks the joke is funny; she doesn't anymore. She has her own mind.
She may have been trying to guilt-trip G.K., but I don't think that's how she died. She was probably trying to "drift" like the Fast and the Furious idiots, or imitating the opening of Basic Instinct 2.
The most significant difference between ATJ and PHC is the extreme narcissism of the former. (I'm not knocking it, just pointing something out.) The Angel of Death in ATJ is Fosse's personal death. The Angel of Death in PHC is the death that comes for everyone (as the last scene makes clear).
And yes, Wagstaff, Sally Kellerman's blonde, trenchcoat-wearing Angel of Flight in Brewster McCloud is a direct antecedent of Madsen's blonde, trenchcoat-wearing Angel of Death in PHC.
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