More from Bifrost. Bifrost, Manitoba.
Or, the "rainbow bridge connecting heaven and earth” -- Odin's realm of Asgard, and as I wrote, the everyday people place called Midgard -- otherwise known as Earth. Oh, small towns in Canada...
Heaven, earth, house and Air..."Dark Messages."
View the entire slide show of the Old Odin House here. Photos by Guy Maddin.
A repost. Because I miss my sisters...
In real life, memories don’t follow the patterns of a typical movie. Recollections are not played out in fully developed narrative timeframes, perfectly balanced and structured strands of thought, or tangible, easily understood events. Memories can be visited but never wholly embraced. They can be strong and unforgettable, but bit by bit, they lose their edges, making them, for many, even more melancholic. The more they elude us, the less simplistic they become -- never just happy or sad, but mysterious and bittersweet, replete with or bereft of emotion for reasons often beyond comprehension.
Sofia Coppola's poetic, tragic and mysterious The Virgin Suicides (released nearly ten years ago and, which emerged to me today, a memory itself while thinking of my siblings), captures the ambiguity of such hazy recollections with tender, albeit horrifying ennui.
Adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, Coppola's picture doesn't tell a story; instead, it leaves a swoony, foggy impression, a darkly beautiful intangibility filled with almost torturously elusive feeling. Set in Michigan in the early 70s, the film is marked immediately with the pall of death and the dangling unknown of why it happened. The five teenage Lisbon sisters -- all blonde and beautiful -- kill themselves, and a group of smitten teenage boys struggle to understand why. The suicides are a defining period in these boys' lives, but even as they narrate the film, they have never gotten their heads around the loss. In an unusual narrative and cinematic point of view, the boys wistfully re-create the girls' lives through a swiped diary, bits of bric-a-brac memorabilia and remembrances of voyeurism, idealism and fleeting carnality. Never really understanding these girls as living, breathing flesh, their communication acts much like modern ways of "connecting" -- through the computer, through online social networking, through pictures, through texts. Just as now, interacting with the real person as opposed to an idealized representation is usually much messier, much more real and much scarier.
Which connects to the death of 13-year-old sister Cecilia (Hanna Hall). The suicide places sisters Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook) and Therese (Leslie Hayman) into a mourning period marked not by obvious wailing drama, but by a peculiar inwardness that only sisters can understand. When one feels alienated by their parents, the bonding of siblings is frequently strong -- so intense that secret languages and, in the case with my sisters, coded words and private hand signals, are created to invent one's own world. These are the people who understand you. But blood bonds can be frightfully concentrated, and in the worst cases, veer into madness.
So when a psychiatrist tells the grieving parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods) that the girls need more social contact, they allow the sexually curious Lux (with sisters and their assigned dates in tow) to attend a homecoming dance with heartthrob Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). After an innocent, oddly heartbreaking transgression occurs, the strict Roman Catholic family (led mostly by Mom) cloisters the girls in the house, taking them out of school and depriving them of all social contact. Of course, this can't come without consequences. The girls will grow ever closer, ever secretive, and ever destructive.
But Coppola doesn't place those consequences within a moral straitjacket -- no one is demonized, and no one is entirely understood. Many criticized the picture for its lack of fully developed characters, but that is exactly the point. Who are these girls? These girls are memories, these girls are tragic beauties put on pedestals. These girls are characters one writes books about, but one never truly knows. And the not knowing is part of the tragedy (does anyone really want to know them? Or do they want to keep them? Or stare at them? Or, after a night of passion, leave them waking up alone and cold in a football field?). And then these are girls, who committed, really, in the plain light of day, an ugly act that turned their young, lilting beauty and promise of a full life into rotting corpses. Death. Teen death. A stepbrother's urn my hard-hearted, but privately heartbroken and morbidly curious stepsister opened after a game of Scrabble.
The Virgin Suicides is shot with a gauzy, haloed beauty that is obsessive but never perverse (and the haunting music by Air is especially poignant and otherworldly). The point is to capture an adolescence lost, both to the sisters and to the boys themselves. Coppola's intelligence, sensitivity and ethereal style avoids obvious irony and easy interpretation, which can be maddening -- but then suicide is maddening, both for those who achieve the act and those who suffer the aftermath. Coppola's vision of this uptight suburbia is made both erotic and exotic by these fairy-tale Rapunzels who live there -- troubled, creative and intriguing girls trapped in the unfathomable and misty glaze of worship and memories.
Though August in L.A., it's Autumn in...Manitoba, or so it feels that way. Perfect for a drive to the perfectly named rural municipality of Bifrost only to stumble across a perfectly derelict house, perfectly sinking in the middle of, seemingly, nowhere.
But the abandoned Bifrost abode residing in the Interlake Region of Manitoba, Canada -- a municipality on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg -- comes with Scandinavian baggage -- specifically from Norse mythology. Bifröst means “rainbow bridge connecting heaven and earth” (that's Odin's realm of Asgard, and the everyday people place called Midgard or, Earth).
And I assumed Bifrost simply meant...double cold. Instead it's something more exalted, Valhalla by way of the temporal world. Seems a rather heavy load for this home to carry. No wonder its foundation and spirits are quite literally, sagging.
Click on lower right, or here for full slide show. Separate shots here. Photos by Guy Maddin.
With madness on the mind, and a stay in Gimli, Manitoba where I'm happily, though perhaps crazily conducting research, and my constant urgings for viewers to watch this documentary, I'm returning to the movie Asylum. Please watch. And read.
"David...will you please stop talking. Please David. Please be quiet David..."
These are the urgings of beautiful, disturbed Julia, one inmate or rather, tenant in Peter Robinson's 1972 documentary Asylum -- a movie that should be re-discovered as one the greats of documentary filmmaking. A superlative example of late 60s, 1970s cinema verite, direct-cinema, Robinson's picture shares much in common with The Maysles Brother's Grey Gardens, Frederick Wiseman's High School and Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida. Without standard voice-over narration and nary an introductory statement (there is short scroll at picture start) the filmmaker shunts us into this world -- one that's frequently funny, terribly sad and continually fascinating. Once you settle into the place, you don't want the movie to end. After recently receiving a lovely, heartfelt email and later phone discussion from the film's cameraman/editor and in effect co-director, Richard Adams, and director Robinson's wonderful son, Kenneth I wanted to watch the picture, yet again, and run (now) an even longer piece on this fascinating document every cinephile must watch.
The picture begins with R.D. Laing, the controversial Scottish psychiatrist who, in the '60s started the anti-psychiatry movement, an idea based on the theory that insanity was less disease and more social construction. Instead of placing the mentally ill (largely schizophrenics) in white-walled, overly-medicated hospitals, Laing's "patients" lived communally in "safe houses" where they had free reign to subsist as they please. Laing believed that autonomy and understanding were necessary to aid mental health and that self reliance would make a person stronger and a successful part of the community. To Laing, there's no reason these people must be outcasts.
Robinson's study consisted of a seven week stay in 1971 at the Archway Community safe house in London, a row house on a residential East End street that harbors a dog, a cat, a bird, and a bunch of schizophrenics. But of course, the patients (some looking like modern day hipsters) are more than their disease as the film so starkly and often, eloquently reveals. We see them discuss feelings of terror in a very rational manner or ramble on conspiracy-theory-like about computers and various notions that range from gibberish to somewhat profound declarations. We see patients comfort each other with words like "don't listen to them, they're only voices" to rubbing heads together in physical bonds of empathy. We also see them ignore one another, cry out and fight -- and by film end, fight a lot -- particularly with one inmate -- David, who becomes such a nuisance to the others that they engage in serious discussion to eject him.
David -- a handsome, startlingly blue-eyed man in his 40's or early 50's, talks with an almost Richard Burton lilt -- but blathers incessantly and demands attention wearing dramatic scarves and, in one scene, a string of woman's beads. He's as mad as a hatter, but you also get the sense that he knows partially, some of the trouble he's starting and is remaining obstinate to change (which isn't so crazy when you think of people in the "sane" world). Nevertheless, he hits people, screams, scares Julia -- an angel faced girl who bears an uncanny resemblance to Gwyneth Paltrow (only lovelier) -- and continually utters “People in glass houses should not throw stones!”
As we see in drama worthy of Shakespeare's crazy/lovely Ophelia, mental illness is certainly not reserved for the ugly. Julia (as well as a few other women in the house) looks more like a Roman Polanski heroine, crawling about a la Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, a blonde beauty quaking with fear but giving in to the sporadic joke. As she rocks back and forth with internal horror and eventually reverts to an infantile state, we later learn that she believes she had let off the atom bomb and "made the air bad." Her family takes her out of the house for a spell (they are distrustful of the experiment) but return the beauty when others beckon her back. She sits in bed and tells the filmmakers of the stay, showing them a hair tie, and how her family wanted her to look pretty and presentable. You can only imagine what Julia's parents think when they behold their beautiful daughter lost in a maze of madness.
But I couldn't help but think that had Julia discovered some Swinging London or New York scene or kept the company of an Edie Sedgwick, she might not have seemed so nuts. You get the feeling Syd Barrett could have walked into the place (she does talk delicately of having a guitar and singing) and swept her out of there (I want to see Julia, like Emily, play). But then I remember how Edie and Syd ended up. But then, for their short brilliant, trailblazing moments, they lived. And created. Is Julia better off? Is she really experiencing life? A life that might become "normal?" And should she ever even have to live a "normal" life? Why should she? Since we tend to mythologize crazy people, especially from the late 60s early 70s counter-culture, it's a good question.
But looking at our current overly medicated society, in which people pop Prozac and Lexapro and Wellbutrin or whatever is readily available instead of simply enduring some hardship and perhaps, learning from them, or even fueling creativity from it, I champion these people. These people endure real mental illness. Mental illness is hard. And it's tough, if not impossible to find your way out of that Shining-esque topiary maze. But that beautifully scary place can often provide insight. And maybe you need a human hand, even a "crazy" hand, to guide you through, at least some kind of understanding -- or remain lost forever.
Which leads me to another compelling, heartbreaking moment -- when a young tenant's father arrives to fetch him for indefinite time away. Talking to the film's resident therapist and rent collector, he admits to hiring his son a girlfriend (not a very pretty one, he points out) with the hope that she'll give him the extra confidence to "hold his chin up" and feel like a man. Fearing his son will go the other way without some female companionship and clearly, failing to understand the depth of his son's problems, we watch the suited-up son leave after he's shyly informed others his desire to stay. He's too afraid to tell his father.
Watching the personalities emerge as they work chores, prepare food or...write on the walls creates the film's "characters" within its loose structure. Omitting any opinion concerning Laing's procedures, the film demands that you study it yourself, deciding if you think this kind of living is actually helping these people.
With my modern entertainment mind thinking toward banal to addictive Reality TV, I couldn't help but consider how much more interesting these people were than the generic faced dolts on shows like Big Brother or the sad exploited celebs being exploited (and exploiting themselves) on shows like Sober House (Tom Sizemore could not face off with with David -- and I mean that as a compliment to David), and wished the picture were an actual series. As the people of Archway are "crazy" they are not constantly acting up to the camera and often appear oblivious to the two-man crew. If focused on, they appear to be talking as they probably always do and often give the impression of bemusement. With that, there’s never a feeling of exploitation -- if they don’t want to talk to the cameras, they simply walk on by. They're not seeking their 15 minutes. You certainly won’t see that on Reality TV.
And sticking in the thoughts of Reality television, there's even a Survivor-like moment when the group has a meeting to, essentially, vote David off. But unlike the tricks of television, there’s no closure and David stays (maybe) with an end discussion of his past jobs in computers and the military. Speaking, for once, in a lucid manner, you'll mull over the truth of his statements and, suddenly he doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. In fact, after this mind expanding experience, the world seems crazy and sane all at once.
An important, affecting and masterful document, Asylum is a re-discovered treasure that demands viewing. Direct and powerful yet obtuse and mystifying, the film and its people remain etched in your mind. You’ll watch them again, hoping to glean more and only to become frustrated when you cannot. Fittingly, the film’s so good that it becomes...maddening.
And once more with the brilliant Mr. Barrett:
Ike and Tina Turner and Phil Spector make me wonder...who is ever in control? Of anything? And who wants to be? Oh sweet mystery of life at last I've not found you.
"River Deep Mountain High," and in particular, through this enigmatic clip, shines a noirish spotlight on those mysteries that make life and most especially, love, so beautiful, frustrating, compelling, magical, dysfunctional, painful and crazy. And love should be a little crazy. And it is painful. If anyone understands that, it is the brilliant Ike and Tina Turner. And Phil Spector.
But who shot this? I'm imagining a little boy Guy Maddin who just happened across Ike, Tina and the Ikettes performing on some Winnipeg subway platform (if there is such a thing there), while beating the freezing cold on his way home from school. I wonder, did he have a puppy, that always followed him around?
My god, this is so powerful it makes my heart hurt. And yearn. And as John Donne wrote, "break, blow, burn." One should feel like this, even if it leads to ruin -- at least once in life.
It was May, before she went to Cannes, before she lost her passport, before she went all Eleanor Parker and was shut in the slammer. Of course, her incarceration wasn't as bad as Caged. But it certainly wasn't any fun for the freckled one.
In a dumpy Burbank motel, the woman I've defended too many times to count, a woman who's endured more than her share of gossip, family drama, personal demons and quite literally, mean girls, sat down with me to discuss her role in the upcoming movie Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story.
Of course I'm talking about Lindsay Lohan, a talented actress I root for, and an actress who should be judged for that -- her acting. I don't care what so-and-so movie writer from whatever newspaper or Web site feels about Lindsay's partying or sexy lifestyle (there's a strong strain of misogyny in this kind of critique), the real question is, can she act? And if so-and-so movie critic doesn't think she can act, then I can only wonder whether he or she is judging the actress for her off-screen behavior. That's a shame. If critics assessed Jack Nicholson for his off-screen behavior, he might not have the Oscars he so richly deserves. And I won't get started on legends like Warren Beatty, Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and the late, great Oliver Reed. And then there's younger names, like...Colin Farrell.
I revere these men for their work and for their legend. But these are movie stars. Take off your sanctimonious, hypocritical Hedda Hopper hats for a moment and think about it -- since when are movie stars role models? How boring Hollywood would be if stars had absolutely no scandal in their lives. How boring life would be if anyone didn't dip into a pool of scandal every once in a while. God bless you sinners! Lindsay's antics aren't anything new -- actors have often been wild, especially young ones. "It" girl Clara Bow (whom Lindsay adores), was for a time, shunned from "decent" Hollywood society because of her supposedly "crazy" behavior. Still, she didn't have TMZ filming her every move.
And with Lindsay on board, even in the middle of the night No-Tel, Motel, paparazzi showed up -- in the Parking Lot. We were all amused by their desperation. And Lindsay handled it in stride. She's used to it. Thoughtful, funny and good, Lohan depicted her shoot, which were essentially, stills from the movie (written and to be directed by Matthew Wilder), with impressive, shifting emotions, gritty strength and intense poignancy. As photographer Tyler Shields snapped the dramatic pictures, based on an especially sad moment in Lovelace's life, it was fascinating to watch her go in and out of character.
When it was all done, Lindsay sat on the bed with me while I asked questions (and here, simply listened, like a therapist), and she talked quite easily about the sadomasochist relationship of Lovelace and Chuck Traynor, at one point saying the script reminded her of her parents. Yes. She has been through some things.
Oh, Frances Farmer. She died 40 years ago today and for those of us who love cinema, the power of performance and brave, talented, intelligent "bad girls" who do not go gentle into that good night -- we should feel a pang of sadness. And frustration. Deep frustration. And we should be frustrated by the movie version of her life -- Frances. Based on how many times I've watched the picture, I'm beginning to believe I harbor some kind of frustration fetish. I've viewed the movie more than necessary, in spite of its flaws and, finally had to concede that, even with Jessica Lange's genius, kick-out-the-jams-motherfuckers performance, the movie is not going to change through time. I'm never going to be happy with how it fully depicts Frances Farmer, I'm never going to accept its romantic side story, and I'm never going to know the truth anyway (whatever that is), so why be frustrated? See, the frustration turns into questioning frustration. Which is...frustrating.
But my god, how I love when Jessica Lange loses her composure and understandably smacks that bitchy hairdresser ('Your hair's so thin, you're gonna lose it if you're not careful.") in the face. And the intense power and pain I feel when she screams "You got no fucking right!" as the police break into her room, wake her up naked, and drag her out of the Knickerbocker Hotel. That hotel isn't far from my apartment and every time I pass by, I not only think of Frances, but of Jessica spitting out her rightful invective. That moment comes to me with such immediacy that I've uttered "You got no fucking right!" spontaneously, perhaps disturbingly, under my breath. But this is my instinctive duty as a fellow native Seattleite. For some of us hailing from the soggy, boggy PNW, Frances is our girl, and not just our original riot girl who will one day get her revenge (god bless you Kurt Cobain), but our patron saint of "don't fuck with me fellas!" -- and the tragic aftermath that kind of behavior creates. Alas, no Pepsi for her.
And Jessica Lange gets this. Her ferocious, fearless beauty saved what could have been yet another studio mangling of the life and legend of a notorious woman. Miss Lange reminds viewers that once upon a time there was this actress named Frances Farmer, a gifted but troubled actress from the 1930s who was not just crazy, but superb. And was she even crazy? Certainly no more, and probably a lot less, than many a young, intelligent woman struggling in the often alienating business of show. Frances Farmer had a soul, natural born talent, a real, thinking, searching brain, an outspoken temper, inner demons and pure beauty. You're not allowed to have all of those things at once.
And these elements are presented, though not as skillfully or as layered as they should have been. A chance to really tell her story, a tale straight from Nathaniel West or Horace McCoy, was clearly at hand when the film was conceived (read Farmer's autobiography "Will There Really Be a Morning?"-- never mind its questionable veracity, read it -- and you can see why), but through script problems, studio requests, and one strange association with the conspiracy-obsessed ex-convict and probable liar Stewart Jacobson (played in the film as "Harry York" by Sam Shepard), Frances veers into fantasy -- a fantasy Frances Farmer would not have appreciated.
Many fine films based on real lives or events stray from facts, add characters, or reinvent history (JFK and Nixon are supreme examples. Inglourious Basterds, brilliantly creates its own insane, inspired, collage mixed tape), but that's not what makes Frances suffer. It's more that the movie, though lovely period detail and certainly good, isn't entirely focused, and so never creates a strong case about just why Farmer had to endure such torment -- Harry York is an easy character to throw in. And as harrowing as many scenes play out, it also soft-pedals the core story -- about one woman's fight against both the indignities of Hollywood and the abuse of the mental profession. What happened to Frances Farmer is an abomination, and not because we'd never see her again shine as an actress but because her life was perversely and hideously stolen from her.
But in the hands of Lange, Frances is thoroughly watchable even when becoming an almost traumatizing experience. Lange not only looks like Farmer, but also embodies everything we've ever read about the talented star: The understandable drinking (who didn't tear it up in Hollywood?), the rage (how many stars were under studio control? Farmer was just too strong-willed to take it), and the desperation to find freedom. But the powers that be -- Mother, Hollywood, and the Mental Institution -- helped keep this intelligent woman from getting healthy and furthering her art -- and she had so much to give. Though much of Frances Farmer's biography is speculative (including the book "Shadowland"), I'm not with those who believe she deserved to be incarcerated. She was a drunk, she was hard to work with, she was, to some, really crazy. So what? Some even think her stay in the mental ward has been over-dramatized. I'm not certain. My unique, beautiful great-grandmother was sent to the literal Cuckoo's Nest (the State Institution in Salem, Oregon) as a young woman, and she died there. She should have never been in that awful, stinking, soul sucking place. Even sadder, she was stuck in that snake pit for so long, that when anyone realized she was fine to leave, she chose to stay. The past was over and she knew no other life.
These things happen to "different" women. And like the young ones who exhibit their so-called "eccentric" free-thinking thoughts, Frances would both be ostracized and praised for her precociousness. The picture begins in 1931 when a 16-year-old Farmer writes a high school essay entitled "God Dies" (At 16? In 1931? How fucking great is that?). This is just the first of many cases where she enrages Seattle's moral majority, who later branded her a communist (her trip to Russia doesn't help). A talented stage actress in college, Farmer lands in Hollywood, where she declares "I'm not a glamour girl." Nevertheless, she marries a young actor and makes movies (mostly to her chagrin), including Howard Hawks' Come and Get It (a film she was proud of, despite what this movie wants us to believe).
Lange carries us through this hell with brilliance, but Frances decides to shift the focus of the relationship with Farmer's deranged mother (perfectly played by Kim Stanley) to the more romantic overtures of Harry York. Lange and Shepard have wonderful chemistry, and he's charming, but the poetic license here bothers me. According to the film, York tried to reach out to Farmer after her inconceivably unfair and colorful court appearance (well-documented in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon in which we learn Farmer wrote her profession down as "cocksucker" -- thankfully we see that in the movie as well).
Nice thought, but I'd rather see the entire courtroom dramas played out in their ball-busting, gory detail. Frances kicking and screaming in her sensible, disheveled suit is as iconic to me as Marilyn Monroe standing on the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. The hair, the cigarette, the smirk -- this is some woman, goddammit. I want more of her. Not some guy attempting to save the damsel in distress. But according to Frances, York was responsible for Farmer's first escape from the sanitarium and the reason she was presentable for a hearing that excused from her first asylum (the film contends Harry sneaks into her ward and convinces a doctor to inject her with a drug that would make her more lucid). He also, allegedly, asked for her hand in marriage when she was under the legal guardianship of her mother, and he loved her until the end of her days.
Oh, life is but a dream but... bitch, please. I would burn down every rotten, abusive, mismanaged mental institution to bust Frances Farmer out of the loony bin. I understand the romantic impulse. But the idea that, despite everything written to the contrary -- Farmer may have had a chance at a decent life had she just ran away with this Prince Charming is an ill-conceived cinematic fantasy, and an insult to Farmer's memory.
It's the ultimate irony that the story of "the bad girl of West Seattle," the troubled non-conformist, the short lived Hollywood star who rarely censored her thoughts, was, even after death, under the control of a major studio who deemed her real life too depressing. As director Graeme Clifford states in the commentary on the DVD, you don't want to "nickel and dime the audience with facts." Pity. Farmer's "facts" were never boring. And the movie isn't either thanks to Miss Lange. Had she been given a little more control, or maybe had she been allowed to smack Stewart Jacobson in the mouth, hell even the hairdresser (without getting arrested) she could have directed this film -- she's the picture's real auteur. St. Frances would have approved.
He rightfully declared her imminent revenge on Seattle, but Kurt got Frances with this one too...
Porter Wagoner shakes me up. He sings of the cold hard facts, the promise of murder, lock-downs in rubber rooms, and the power of the lord, sometimes alongside beatific, brilliant Dolly Parton and her sweet face, her gorgeous peroxide hair and her plentiful bosom and I just think...there's something so profound going on here.
Subterranean. Fathomless. American, but far beyond that. Dance of the Spirits. Or, to quote Mr. Young, "Aurora borealis, the icy sky at night." Cries and whispers.
If only Wagoner had worked with Ingmar Bergman. He's the Antonius Block of country music.
I'm not one to write extensively about movie trailers. Though seductive, and often artfully created, they are, after all, teases. And all too often, tedious, loud, inane teases. Or worse, false advertising. But every once in a while, a trailer will come along that gets to me -- socks me in my soft underbelly and actually makes me think. Or worry. Or dread. Or experience something that I'm not even sure I can articulate. And why should I? I haven't watched the movie yet. Such is the case with David Fincher's haunting two and a half minutes on Facebook -- The Social Network.
Just as Fincher's superb, salient Fight Club (more so than Chuck Palahniuk's own novel) was darkly humorous, cynical and heartbreaking enough to reveal, within its own time, that the New World Order created by Tyler Durden/ insomniac Jack can lose control of itself, The Social Network, trailer alone, makes me wonder about Fight Club's assertion of impotence, desolation and delusion. The impotence of losing one's soul. Or power. Or uniqueness ("I wish I was special"). Or trying to retrieve/dominate it all. In the case of Fight Club, finding yourself was via fist to face. Sweaty, bloody, I want-to-throw-my-desk-at-my-boss releases of rage, submerged eroticism and quick stop enlightenment. But before Facebook even existed, Fincher revealed fearless leader Tyler Durden was a false creation. An avatar in one man's mind.
So as ever prescient as Fight Club was, Facebook seems the logical step -- and even more meaningful since it's happening as I type these letters. A new club. A club of "friends" -- real or not. A club of affirmation. A club of alienation. A club for your face. A club in your face. I'm a member. When used properly, FB can be an incredibly beneficial place, exciting, even. And I have few negative rages against the internet. It's where I work and practically live. And one can block out the dumber aspects (even with so much inanity, noxious gossip and oh-the-humanity revealing comments online) by simply turning away. And god bless email correspondence. But in darker moments, I wonder if social networking, if used too frequently, will make us become even more disconnected from ourselves. People text, they twitter, they communicate online -- again, a positive thing but often, a confusing, toxic thing. I suppose that's life, online and off. But I fear that the old phone, where at least we can hear an inflection in a voice, is becoming an irritant to those who wish to drop you five words and five words only. I won't start with the sensation of talking to a real live face -- where we can see the sincerity (or indifference) in a person's eyes. That's nearly before my time. And I stay in a lot.
If I'm in a certain kind of mood about the world and my life, this trailer makes me overwhelmingly sad -- sitting directly in my era and sad about it. As if we're all embracing Big Brother. It makes me want to hide. It makes me realize I do hide. And reveal. And then hide again -- unhealthily wishing I could always sit in the house Daniel Plainview built -- alone -- drinking my fucking milkshake. Or your fucking milkshake, holding out hope that Warren Oates will arrive to whisper sweetly in my ear, "Lighten up, Francis."
Facebook is a place of communication but also loneliness -- loneliness among many. And it's sometimes just better to be alone. Could I, would I, drop everything and search for Durden's "dilapidated house in a toxic-waste part of town"? Perhaps. But only if I had a high speed cable connection. And that is yet another, false creation -- Tyler's house. A place of movies. One can't really drop out anymore. But one can hide in plain sight. So I suppose the next best thing is friending Tyler Durden. I hope he accepts my request.
Never underestimate the power of a pleasing pink hotel room.
I am pining for Winnipeg pink.
As presented, I quite literally, yearn to come back.
A dorsal, thoracic, lumbar return.
Click on lower right for full screen. Photos taken at Fort Hotel Garry. Photos on Flickr.
This re-post is dedicated to a brilliant friend. You know who you are.
American cinema isn’t really that dangerously sexy anymore. Not in any mysterious way. It lacks the edge and thrill of say, Peggy Cummins shooting between her legs in Gun Crazy. Or Decoy’s Jean Gille laughing with maniac, orgasmic glee after she’s offed her duped boyfriend who’s just dug up the only thing that turns her on -- money. Or Cloris Leachman’s hard panting, hyper-ventilating co-mingling with Nat King Cole’s silky singing over the credits to Kiss Me Deadly. Or, dear God, Lana and that lipstick in The Postman Always Rings Twice. American films can pretend they're sexy, and some are. And yes, some stars will put it out there (in nude scenes, in magazine spreads, or the sublime Pedro and Penelope, who don't count because they're not American, or the entire life and current work of one misunderstood actress/artist/bad girl beauty named Lindsay Lohan..."Li-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.") But in my mind (and with some exceptions obviously), the look John Garfield gives Lana Turner when that tube of red rolls across the floor is worth one thousand contemporary sex scenes. Or Richard Egan getting an eyeful of Wicked Woman Beverly Michaels. Or Tierney tossing and turning over Trevor, wanting to rape, murder, kiss, kill...and she wanting it to.
But, clearly I’m showing a bias. Based on my examples, it’s not surprising that film noir is the place (or rather, my place) for screwy sexy made all the more erotic because even as sex, often toxic sex, motivates many of its character’s actions, the genre’s aim isn’t merely to steam your glasses. So when it does hits an arousing bulls-eye, well, as the lady says, put your lips together and blow.
Which led me to a film I hadn’t seen in years -- Robert Siodmack’s Phantom Lady -- a picture that features a performance by Ella Raines that’s so sizzling and yet so alluringly poignant, you’re a little overwhelmed by it.
Adapted from the Cornell Woolrich novel, Phantom Lady was Siodmak’s first American screen success and he would later craft some sublime noirs including Criss Cross, Cry of the City, The Dark Mirror, The File on Thelma Jordan and The Killers (among others). I’ll run down the story: Ella Raines (her character’s nicknamed “Kansas” -- which seems like a Wizard of Oz reference given the subterranean world she will find herself in) works as Alan Curtis’s secretary. When he’s framed for the murder of his wife, she sets out to help him because she doesn’t believe he did it. She's also besotted with him (lucky fella). Sexing up her image as cub private dick, she’s off to find this “Phantom Lady” with the help of Curtis’s friend (Franchot Tone) and an off duty police detective (Thomas Gomez, so wonderful in Force of Evil). OK, so that's the story, but what I really want to discuss is Raines's interaction with the hep cat, hopped up jazz drummer, played by noir staple, the great sap/sleaze Elisha Cook, Jr.
I am absolutely gob-smack over their famed moments together. Ella’s seduction of Elisha -- an overwhelming sexy, conflicted, crazily drugged sequence (you can practically smell the booze, marijuana, heroin and dexies permeating the joint) in which Raines plays hot-to-trot, seems to be eating up her vampy method of getting to the straight dirt and yet, is repulsed by both Cook (that kiss!) and herself for having to go this far. Showcasing Siodmak’s (and cinematographer Woody Bredell’s) evocative, angled compositions (used gorgeously throughout the movie), the style brilliantly underscores the mounting hysteria and varied state of Raines’s psychology. This is an extreme example, but what Raines reveals is something many women feel when finding themselves in the belly of the sleazy beast. It's a little fun and a little horrifying and you're definitely not in Kansas anymore.
Not that this situation isn't also sickly erotic -- it is. And the frantic, psycho-sexual, hop headed-ness makes me feel high (I'll have what Elisha's having, thank you). It sure as hell makes me want to put on some Gene Krupa -- his drum boogie was, in real life, probably a lot sexier, dirtier and seedier than we even know. I'll bet Ella knew.
I adore Winnipeg. I love the curious quiet. I love the odd streets. I love the nighttime thunder storm after a long hot day. I love the collection of characters, staring at cars after eating grilled, processed cheese salmon sandwiches (processed, they don't lie about the cheese). I love the confusing drug stores. I love the Kit Kat markets. I love how leisurely cabbies take you to your destination. Angelenos might find them dilatory drivers. They're simply calm. And they're always friendly.
I love the gorgeous hotel I'm currently residing. A national landmark of chateau, Francois I style, complete with opulent ornamentation, steep roof lines, and my favorite -- turrets. It's also haunted. Even better, opening in 1913, it was formerly the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway hotel and offered luxury to weary train travelers. As many know, I love trains. Alas, I flew to Winnipeg.
And I love the resplendent, primal, epic, bizarre, baroque grandeur of Guy Maddin's aesthetic as he crafts his newest, ambitious project right here, in his Winnipeg. Keyhole, starring Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini and the great Udo Kier, and a series of short films called Hauntings. Enchantment all around. And work. And the dress. And the hair. And for Mr. Maddin casting me as elegant Udo Kier's gun moll girlfriend...and his kidnap victim...and his wife...and a woman on a wolf...well, I'll explain more later. Processed dream. And no salmon sandwiches. So far.
But the Winnipeg washrooms, I suppose, like many, can be quite woeful.
Roman Polanski emerged from the womb understanding the art of filmmaking. Or, rather, understanding the art of wombs -- diseased, depraved, disordered wombs. Cruelty, violence, twisted sexuality, madness, absurdity -- all of Polanski's hallmark obsessions -- are almost always confined to one space. The director loves nothing more than trapping his characters in devil worshiping apartment buildings, phallic, knife-wielding boat trips and unhappy, unsound houses. And water continually means something. The superb Cul-de-Sac (1966) is his bats in the belfry, bat shit crazy house picture, and what weird, sexy, subversive, screwy fun it all is. Party at Polanksi's? I'm there. Even if Shelley Winters is invited.
And yet, Cul-de-Sac is so under-seen. (When will it be released in the United States on DVD?) A precursor to
themes he would continually dabble in: tortured relationships,
bizarre blonde behavior, infidelity, cross-dressing, even film noir, via
the stalwart, gravel voiced Lionel Stander, alas, best known to some for his role
in Hart to Hart ("Mrs. H, she's goooorgeous!") but who should also be remembered as the blacklisted, veteran
hard-boiled American
character actor, Cul-de-Sac (considered minor by some), is stunningly, at times, brilliantly unhinged, while being, decidedly Pinteresque. But this is pure Polanski.
Donald Pleasence plays an odd fellow (a grand understatement) who lucks out (or not) with a gorgeous, beguiling wife (the ever poignant Francoise Dorléac; sister to Catherine Deneuve, and an actress who left the world too soon), whom he keeps in an enormous, isolated house on a tiny island off the northeast coast of Britain. Playing like an especially kinky Desperate Hours, the couple will be forced to host two escaped criminals (Stander and Jack MacGowran) after the thugs land at their nutty abode. And then things get...really interesting. But it's not just crime and entrapment that make the story compelling, it's all of the Polanski touches, particularly when he observes the idle activities of Dorléac.
Dorléac is cheating on her husband (who takes to wearing ladies clothes a la Roman's tortured Tenant Trelkowski), she's also perpetually bored, stuck in the house like a more spirited, extra primal Virgin Suicide sister, and engages in childlike activities to amuse herself. She tears around the house barefoot, applies exaggerated eyeliner (or helps her husband with his), messes with rifles and, the best, most hilarious, lights a sleeping Stander's feet on fire with burning pieces of newspaper between his toes ("It's called a bicycle" she taunts). Oh...you just don't do that to Lionel Stander. Or perhaps, you do. Between these two mismatched misfits, it's disarmingly sexy. These characters don't establish things like "safe" words nor do they understand the concept of such a thing, so the perversity, stark beauty, the isolation, the bleakness, the menacing sexuality and the insanity make the whole experience a strangely good time. A romp, in fact. A Roman romp.
What better way to celebrate the flag waving, fire cracker popping indulgence of Independence Day than with great American Warren Oates, whose birthday comes one day after? Here, a re-post of Oates at his sexy, demented, sensible (to me), romantic best. Happy Birthday Mr. Oates. You left us too soon.
I blame Warren Oates. Or rather, his white suited, blood spattered beautiful loser named Bennie. This is the man who ruined me for all others -- romantically, sexually, heroically, pitifully, existentially, all of it -- throw in the filthy kitchen sink soaking a seeping red sack.
I may never find a romantic paramour as powerful as Oates’ Bennie, or by extension, Sam Peckinpah, the man who blasted my brain with such wild-eyed, gritty grandeur, bleeding sweaty passion and maniacally sincere poetry. This movie, one of the only pictures Peckinpah had total control over, isn’t just personal, it’s fucking personal. For Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia isn’t merely declarative for those seeking the headless bounty, but for those demons rattling around Peckinpah’s near nihilistic noggin.
I say near nihilistic because the movie isn’t as hopeless as many perceive it to be and Peckinpah isn’t the mean-spirited misogynist he’s painted as. Like Bennie, he’s a fighter and a lover, dammit. Though the picture begins with a Mexican land baron violently extracting the name of the man who seduced his daughter, it remains oddly sensitive, even as the girl is stripped and beaten. You feel for her. And in the end, Bennie feels for her. And you feel for Oates’ Bennie, the piano playing drifter hired to collect the million dollar bounty. Bennie’s desperate determination to make a better life for himself and his lovely, seasoned girlfriend Elita (Isela Vega) who just happens to be a whore (and is all the stronger for it), can be summed up in his assertion: “Nobody loses all of the time.” No, they do not, particularly when they’ve experienced love, no matter how doomed, and happiness, no matter how fleeting. Maybe in a world filled with insensitive one-nighters, phony thinkers, blood-sucking scumbags, casual rapists and reprobate renegades, these two supposed lowlifes are deluding themselves, and maybe they know it.
But really, who the hell isn’t?
And yet, their love isn’t a delusion. In one small moment that moves me more than a hundred sweeping melodramas, Bennie senses Elita’s sadness as she take a shower. It’s soon after she was nearly raped, something he harshly convinces himself: “She can handle it better than I can.” Opening the curtain, tough Elita sits wet, vulnerable, sad-eyed, and Bennie simply, movingly says, “I love you.” Stated with such empathy and gentleness, this is all she needs to hear. This is all I need to hear. 
It makes me realize just how much this critique of capitalistic greed, this ingenious, viscerally violent orchestration of madness and dread, is at its heart, a love story. So when Elita is killed, it makes perfect sense that Bennie goes nuts, finds Alfredo’s rotting head and, with a perverse sort of respect, drives around with it, talks to it, swats at the flies swarming around it and stops to cleanse and ice the foul cranium. Bennie bonds with that head, the head of his dead lover’s ex, possessed by a crushing nostalgia for his girl, a gleefully gruesome bloodlust for her killers and a passionate, single-minded self destruction for himself, that’s as ruinous as it is valiant as it is romantic and it is just...so...beautiful.
Forget “We’ll always have Paris.” What gets me to the core is Bennie repeatedly shooting a dead man and exclaiming, “Why? Because it feels so damn good!” Yes it does. Over-the-moon crazy love dripping crimson romantic damn good -- which is how it should always be. Damn you Warren Oates.
Originally written for GQ.
With the July 6 release of Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics, Vol. 2 (Human Desire, The Brothers Rico, Nightfall, City of Fear and Pushover), I'm re-posting one of my favorites -- Jacques Tourneur’s Nightfall.
"Mixing fear and the ridiculous can be very exciting." -- Jacques Tourneur
Nightfall is a work of striking juxtapositions and tones that by picture end, come off like an unforgettably disarming person -- you’re charmed, discombobulated, even slightly disturbed, and you're not sure what to make of it all. You just know you like it, no matter how bizarre it all ends up. And you know you're gonna follow it, Holly Martins style, no matter how dangerous it all becomes. That's Jacques Tourneur and his beauteous beasts. From cat to zombie to Mitchum to Aldo in the snow, you find yourself falling in some kind of ambrosial, demented love.
Nightfall is love of a rougher sort. We have Aldo Ray to thank for that. And then, Tourneur's terrain. The movie opens at night, in a neon lit Los Angeles jungle shimmering with welcoming Hollywood haunts like Miceli’s, Firefly and Musso and Frank, and ends within the blinding white snow of the foreboding Wyoming Wilderness. It pits an older doctor and his younger, artist friend against two thugs -- one a grinning eager beaver, violence-lusting psychopathic creep, and the other, a cool-as-a-cucumber, clever crook whose relaxed manner makes you wish he was your friend. Never mind he's a murderer. It features an ultra chic fashion show with a modern Anne Bancroft as a “mannequin” followed by a cuddly rural bus ride during which Anne and Aldo express mutual romantic feelings after rising to (decidedly non chic) whiskers. There’s ruthless violence committed against good Samaritans mixed with quippy one liners and deliciously dark humor. And did I mention Anne Bancroft falls in love with Aldo Ray? They seem mismatched, but then, perfect together -- and their moments are exceptionally romantic. In short, Nightfall is a trip.
And what a trip, quite literally, and a noteworthy addition to noir innovator Jacques Tourneur’s oeuvre (which includes, among other splendid pictures, the horror/noir classics Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie and his key noir, Out of the Past).
Adapted by Stirling Silliphant from hard boiled writer David Goodis's 1947 novel (this guy knew how to write a novel as a movie -- dear lord) and exquisitely shot by Burnett Guffey (who also lensed Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece of existential ennui, In a Lonely Place and Arthur Penn’s savage blast of brilliance Bonnie and Clyde, as well as other magnificent movies), the picture is considered by some, a minor film noir -- something that’s always baffled me. Made in the later cycle of the genre (released in 1957), the picture ingeniously weaves a convoluted story, blistering violence, existential angst, naturalistic acting and gentle romanticism without ever feeling forced. And as stated earlier -- it’s very funny -- something Tourneur always intended. And though the theme song seems a bit overheated (Al Hibler crooning “Nightfall…and you!” -- a tune that really ought to grace a Ross Hunter production) even that works. Akin to the startling laughs spiking the movie, it echoes Tourneur’s own sly sense of humor.
The story is structured much like Out of the Past, with our hero (who's not guilty, unlike Mitchum), Rayburn Vanning (Ray) relating his waking nightmare to a woman. Only in this instance, that lovely lady, Marie Gardner (Bancroft), isn't so innocent -- but she means well. Pulling a damsel in distress act for the benefit of two thugs intent on jumping Ray, she sets up the poor lug thinking these jerks are police officers. Vanning is then accosted by Red (Rudy Bond) and John (Brian Keith) and taken to a deserted oil derrick (an unsettling yet amusing scene) where he’s set to be tortured. They want to know where that money’s hidden, something Vanning continually states he does not know. Vanning escapes, finds his way to Marie’s apartment and gives her the skinny. Or rather, the thick skinny.
He explains the convoluted predicament that’s left him understandably paranoid. Shall I repeat? OK...here goes. While on a camping/hunting trip in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with best friend Dr. Edward Gurston (Frank Albertson) during which a rather sticky discussion of Doc’s much younger wife (whom we learn later has a thing for Vanning and sent him letters saying so) commences, their conversation is cut short when a car crashes off an embankment (naturally). Out emerge two shady characters (Red and John), worse for wear but jacked up on crooked adrenaline. Doc fixes John’s arm, soon realizes they’re now unlucky witnesses (the men just robbed a bank) and then, shockingly, Doc is shot dead. Vanning is left injured and the crooks blaze off. But in a perfectly stupid film noir blunder, they make an enormous mistake -- they grab the doctor’s bag instead of their loot. Vanning stashes the dough and high-tails it -- moving from town to town under suspicion that he killed Doc, and ending up in Los Angeles, where the poor, sensitive lug is being tailed by insurance investigator Ben Fraser (James Gregory), who can't see Vanning committing the crime. He ain't the type.
And as played by Aldo Ray -- he doesn’t seem the type. One of the more striking aspects to Nightfall is its casting, and the barrel-chested, thick necked Ray, who was a natural born actor (watch his first and largely unschooled leading role in George Cukor’s The Marrying Kind and you’ll see how immediately gifted the man was. Also in Anthony Mann’s brilliant Men in War.) Ray is the consummate good guy in-over-his-head. With his razor blade, yet uniquely delicate voice, masculine, yet boyish appeal (he looked like he literally walked off a football field, which is why Cukor made him take ballet before The Marrying Kind) Ray always exuded a different kind of mystery than say, Mitchum or Ryan or Widmark -- men, with Widmark on exception, who rarely appeared “normal.” Ray, an ex Frogman who fought in Iwo Jima, was a brawny man’s man certainly, but he always looked like he was hiding something -- something nice. That inside he had the soul of a poet or artist -- a man of depth beyond his tough exterior. And perhaps being nice in a nasty world (and I'm talking about Ray on film. Let's put aside his rocky real life for a moment) is a curse. Appropriately, in Nightfall, he’s a nice artist. He's really gonna struggle.
And against Brian Keith, Ray's artistic vulnerability really rises to the surface. Like Ray, Keith feels so real and new school/ old school (if that makes sense). His delivery manages to be both distracted and pithy rather than rat-a-tat. And he’s so agreeable here that the sweeter side of Ray works like Keith's catnip. But he's a meanie. A funny meanie. When he humorously claims that Red’s homicidal kicks stem from his lack of childhood play (“When Red was a kid they didn’t have enough playgrounds. He’s sort of an adult delinquent.”) he’s both revelatory and teasing. All of his banter towards Red is cleverly berating: “The top of your head never closed up when you were a kid. Neither did your mouth.” Cracking wise with Red, the two spar like men fixing to off each other, but who are, quite simply, getting on each others nerves (preceding some of Tarantino’s talky criminals or the Coen's chatty/stoic crooks in Fargo). They talk and argue and Keith is all sexy, fatherly menace, but darker fates await them in white, silent snow, secret snow.
This wild, almost ridiculous fate was something Tourneur excelled at. It was practically encoded in his DNA -- a result of real life trauma. Based on the oddball, mean spirited treatment at the hands of his filmmaker father, Tourneur developed a dark sense of the absurd. As written in John Wakemen’s “Film Directors Vol. 1 1890-1946,” Tourneur believed that the childhood he endured -- one of “grotesque punishment” lied at the root of his cinematic obsessions. Relating that he was sent to a poor school and teased unmercifully for his square suspenders, Tourneau claimed: “I think this is what prompted me to introduce comic touches into the dramatic moments of my films…Mixing fear and the ridiculous can be very exciting.”
Indeed they can. As Red can’t wait to torture a terrified Vanning, he sinisterly and bizarrely sings: “The tougher they are the more fun they are tra-la.”
Today is Billy Wilder's birthday and one must celebrate. One must watch Wilder. All day, if possible.
There are many masterpieces and near masterpieces to choose from (The Major and the Minor, Some Like it Hot, Ace in the Hole, Double Indemnity, The Apartment, One, Two, Three, and more and more. And then, the movies he scripted, from Ninotchka to Ball of Fire to Midnight...). Everyone has written about Wilder. And there's plenty other under-seen pictures I need to discuss here (Wicked Woman, Play It as It Lays and Cry of the Hunted to name a few, as well as all the pre-code delights I've digged into). And besides, when it comes to Wilder I don't know where to begin. But he's too important to not discuss. And he's one of my favorite filmmakers -- ever. So here's a start -- Wilder pictures I watch on a continual, obsessive, bizarre-o basis. These are two movies I revisit so frequently that it confuses me. I'm not sure if they're even my favorites (Ace in the Hole might be tops), and yet, I drop in on these films like old friends. They provide me with a twisted kind of comfort, clearly the only kind I can stomach these days.
Twisted? Oh, yes...Sunset Blvd. Billy Wilder's cynical look at Hollywood was so scabrous that, as the story goes; famed studio head Louis B. Mayer left a preview hollering, "We should horsewhip this Wilder! We should throw him out of this town that's feeding him!" Yes, the movie was that disturbing to its own, and for an understandable reason -- Mayer and company didn't like their dream factory revealed for what it often was: a nuthouse. The story of washed up silent screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and her deranged, desperate attempts to re-enter pictures (for all "those wonderful people out there in the dark") is a noir of sorts, but really, a pitch black satire that reveals how disposable the industry treats their talents. If you're not significantly saddened when silent film stars Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson, and H.B. Warner show up as cameos called "The Waxworks," then you don't love movies.
And Wilder loved movies; he just knew how cruel the business was.
Within this dark vision, William Holden's struggling screenwriter turned
hustler, Desmond's kept boy and reluctant writing
partner (remember how he reads her long draft of Salome, written
in her "childlike scrawl") lives in her rambling, bizarre mansion
off Sunset Boulevard that at one point, harbors a pet monkey. A pet
monkey. If only I could find that mansion. And Miss Desmond. I'd stick
right by her. It's tough out here for writers.
Brilliantly scripted with all those legendary lines, perfectly cast (with the heartbreaking touch of director Erich von Stroheim starring as Desmond's devoted butler/chauffeur), expertly, expressionistically shot and thematically resonant, Sunset Blvd. remains the most salient peek at, in this case, the extraordinary, sick and desperate underbelly that is Hollywood. It's still the same, only, and this is perhaps most tragic, no one is as interesting as Norma Desmond. No one dares that kind of melodrama. And with such style. Pity. I find myself resenting Bill Holden for interrupting her perfectly fine delusions, for using this lovesick woman and taking her over the edge until she's carted to the pokey. Though, Desmond will handle herself in prison. And she'll always have Max.
And then there's Wilder's dipso-masterpiece The Lost Weekend, a film I watch so often that I can't see a glass ring on a bar table without thinking of Milland (screw cocktail napkins and coasters). I'm not exactly sure why I must view Milland and bottle so often and yet, I do, especially in the wee-hours when I'm suffering from insomnia. And there's been a lot of sleepless nights. I suppose there are obvious reasons why the film is so engrossing -- it's a deserved classic and Ray Milland is funny, tragic, sexy, mean spirited, sneaky -- everything an alcoholic you would know and, unfortunately, love would act like. I get that. (I manage to love drunks). And then there's the story, an important chronicle within the history of addiction movies, and one Wilder chose to relay not as a tired warning tale, but in part, as a clever horror movie -- creepy, potent use of Theremin and all.
The movie is oddly humorous, but tough and rough and sad and erotic (drugs and booze are turn-ons, and Milland is a seduction). It's a nice cross-pollination of Wilder's wonderfully cynical sense of humor and seriousness towards his subject. He seems to both love and hate Mr. Milland, and we are right there with him, questioning, in my case, such deep attraction to the movie.
Why is Ray Milland such a lovable jerk, beyond his charming, deceptive alchy ways? Why is Jane Wyman so adorable and yet irritating (could it all simply be that beautiful leopard coat!)? Why does Wilder hand him dishy Doris Dowling ("I'm just crazy about the locks of your hair") and he isn't allowed one wild bender with the woman? Why is that drunken hallucination at the opera so damn horrifying and hilarious and flat-out entertaining to the point of yearning for some D.T.'s? Why do I get a simultaneous kinky kick and a chill when Milland is confronted by the dry out nurse Bim in that oh-so homoerotic episode? (OK that one's easy to answer). Why do I know he's gonna fall off that wagon directly after the picture ends? Why do I believe the only way he can write that novel is in a dipsomaniacal stupor? Why do I hope that he does finish it drunk? And finally, why does the movie (and this is going to sound terrible) make me want to pour a stiff one and spend all of the day and all of the night with Milland? As the spunky, sexy Dowling might answer, "Because I'm just crazy about it. Don't be ridic'!" Words to live by.
Here's to Billy Wilder. And now, time for a drink. Enjoy a long, lost night, as Milland did below.
Just be mindful of the cute little mice and the murderous little bats.
When Cagney smacked ya, he did so with grace.
He could, quite literally, tap dance on yer face.
An accidental poem to wish my netless Dad, who'll never see this, a Happy Father's Day. Ya Lady Killer.
Today Psycho turns 50.
And for those of us who revere the picture, this we know. It was a masterwork of
modern filmmaking, black humor and transgressive art, and remains one of the most influential, disturbing and
over-analyzed films of all time. Though perhaps considered somewhat tame by
today's tiresome Saw standards, Hitchcock's picture was deeply shocking in its time.
It still is. Not only did it break convention by killing off its star character less than midway through the picture, it showed filmgoers more violence, sexual
tension and perversion (and the bathroom -- the bathroom is so wonderfully sexy and sick here), than they had ever seen in a mainstream picture. For those who had never watched Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, or
the films of Kenneth Anger, Psycho was a mind-altering event of
mass emotion -- a film that aroused viewers through what Hitchcock
famously called "pure cinema."
He thought of his audience first, but Hitchcock also intended Psycho to stimulate filmmakers. He asserted to director and Hitchcock scholar François Truffaut: "Psycho, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to filmmakers, to you and me." Would Hitchcock have included director Gus Van Sant in the esteemed company of Truffaut? Though purists shake their heads in disbelief, the answer is yes, of course he would.
A consummate showman, a
risk taker, an artist, I think Hitchcock would have been amused/honored by Van
Sant's vision, an undertaking that many deemed unthinkable. Hitchcock's Psycho,
was such a technical, experimental triumph that it begged inspiration.
So many movies were already inspired by or had copied Psycho, why
shouldn't Van Sant go all the way -- nearly frame by frame?
Whatever his reasons, the picture Van Sant seemed to make as a middle finger to the studios ("I can make any film after Good Will Hunting? OK, I’ll make Psycho” ), his 1998 remake was not only one of his most daring experimental films (before his superb works like Gerry, Elephant and Last Days), but one of the most brilliantly audacious re-makes ever. In our current film climate of remake frenzy, boring remake frenzy, Psycho, 1998 is a revelation.
Like Hitchcock, Van Sant shrewdly attempted an experiment of technical trickery in the repackaging of Psycho for a 90s audience -- an audience stumbling into the theater, curious, annoyed or unknowing. Toying with viewer's notions of modern and classical filmmaking, Van Sant, like Hitchcock, ran the risk of offending an older audience schooled in the idea that certain things are just untouchable, and that any attempt of the new Psycho was vulgar. Vulgar? Psycho is vulgar. And yet, graceful and delicate and oddly tender too. Never mind that. Some nay-saying cinephiles seemed as stuffy as the 1960 film-goers who were mortally offended by the infidelity, transvestitism, and Oedipal deviance of the original Psycho.
From the Saul Bass opening-credit sequence to the Norman Bates close-up ending, Van Sant (and the excellent cinematographer Christopher Doyle) replicated Hitchcock's Psycho (both versions adapted from Robert Block's novel by Joseph Stefano) almost exactly -- scene by scene, similar story. Again, we have a woman named Marion (Anne Heche) running out of town with a bundle of stolen money. During a storm she stops at a creepy motel, chats with its creepy innkeeper, and is soon murdered by the freaky proprietor, Norman Bates (Vince Vaughn). A detective (William H. Macy in Martin Balsam's role) is hired to look for her, while Marion's married lover, Sam (Viggo Mortensen in John Gavin's role), and her sister, Lila (Julianne Moore in Vera Miles' role), anxiously await his call. When the detective disappears, the sister and the lover set out to find Marion themselves, only to discover that, yes indeed, Norman Bates keeps his dead mother preserved in the basement -- and that Marion is dead.
The story holds up, no question. But does the movie work? Yes. It works because by replicating the brilliant original picture (almost) shot by shot, line by line, and note by note (music by the great Bernard Hermann), the picture far excels most movies of late, particularly remakes (thank god Van Sant didn't add some stupid origin story), and is daringly avant-garde at the same time. Though the passage of time might change the picture's shock value -- modern eyes cannot feel the original's shocking impact of drains, showers and sexual role reversal -- it doesn't hamper the experience. Though closely identical, Psycho 1998 is a curious marvel that subtly alters the tone, the psychology and the movie experience. It deserves to be watched as more than just a lark.
The most significant changes come from the actors. Heche, who watched Janet Leigh's scenes before every take, duplicates Leigh's Marion down to details as precise as how she clasps her purse (Hitchcock really knew how to shoot/fetishize a purse -- see Marnie, Rear Window and The Birds) and how she moves her hips when she walks. Yet Heche exudes a ditsier quality than her sexier counterpart. Leigh created an impulsive creature, a troubled, unconventional (she's having an affair with a married man) but an ultimately kind woman. She's both mysterious and down to earth. And her empathy for Norman Bates makes her all the more intriguing and likable.
Heche's Marion seems simply flirty and slightly stupid. She's bolstered however, by her sister Lila, a tough gal who gives you the sense that she had watch out for Marion all her life. And Moore's Lila (with those Walkman headphones!) is even more pissed off than Miles' version. She is also appropriately brave, curious and horrified by the Bates household. And Macy in Balsam's role -- well, there's nothing like Martin Balsam tumbling down the stairs -- but Macy is just fine.
The biggest and most controversial redo is the casting of Vaughn as Bates. Then, best known as the Lothario from Swingers (this is pre-Vaughn revival of the naughts) who spent most of the 90s miscast in films that didn't allow him to flex his genius comic ability, Vaughn gives us a fascinating twist. Perkins expertly played Bates as meek, effete and shy, but Vaughn is all boorish, masculine evil. Vaughn’s Bates is like the school bully who pulls wings off insects and shocks girls with sexual threats (which may account for one of the film's major missteps -- showing Bates masturbate to Marion, leaving out the sexual ambiguity of the original). Initially, Vaughn may seem too handsome for this sociopath (not that some psychos weren't lookers -- Bundy and Ramirez come to mind), but as the film rolls on, he becomes grotesque. With his huge forehead, icky laugh and deceptively normal manner, the character actor Vaughn becomes a master fake a la Ted Bundy.
And I never bought for a second that this Bates thinks he is "Mother." When he smiles at the camera in his last shot, he seems to be saying "the jokes on you" and we sense that he will, no doubt, escape from the institution -- like, again, Bundy who escaped, once.
While Vaughn's portrayal
was a wise deviation (it would be hard to follow Perkins' exact footsteps), this is not a sympathetic performance, and the entire film remains a cold, shrewd exercise. Part of this coldness is a result of Van Sant's purposeful lack of auteurism (and yet Van Sant's style is there), which makes his Psycho much less the vanity project many critics accused him of. His version is truly an homage to Hitchcock and a celebration of experimental filmmaking.
Van Sant's Psycho makes one realize just how timeless, yet modern Hitchcock's film really was. Psycho 98 may be perverse, but quite obviously, Psycho is about perversion, and the power of cinema. After all these years, current movies can still be this beautifully crafted, still pace themselves at this speed (I love watching both Marions drive and drive and drive) and can still work as both ballyhoo and art. And 50 years later, I think Hitchcock would have appreciated such in-your-face audacity.
“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”
-- Edgar Allan Poe
Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr's grandly surreal Werckmeister Harmonies is a picture that slowly grows with such emotion and transcendence that its ultimate effect is curious and rare -- it manages to be subtly shocking. It’s also beautiful and ugly, dreamlike and grounded, celestial and primal. And it features a waterless whale.
Drawing viewers into its black-and-white world of a decaying city amidst various forms of intrigue, it's the perfect synthesis of image to subject. To say the film is beautifully shot is understatement. To say it’s quietly bizarre is oversimplification. To attempt gleaning any easy meaning cheapens its epic eccentricities.
The movie is horrifying and heavenly, and has resonated within me for years, not with a sledgehammer, but with its magic and mystery and music and faces and frames and its beautiful construction of the long shot -- shots that would make Max Ophuls swoon. The exquisite cinematography famously boasts numerous extended shots held for so long, that they nearly appear to morph into one another, even if nothing has changed on screen. Or, everything. It’s all in your perception. In a form of reverse ADD, I feel like I could look and dissolve into the screen while watching Tarr, and I think more viewers should activate this part of the brain. With so many flashes of information, clips, blurbs, blog posts, twitters, quips, pictures and whatever else swimming through our minds, often without rhyme or reason, it’s imperative one sits down, sits still and simply watches.
Setting off one of the film's principal themes -- that of humankind's placement in the solar system and how people, good or bad, feel and react throughout it -- town fool Janos Valushka (Lars Rudolph) humorously choreographs a bunch of drunks in a bar as the sun, Earth and moon. Janos conducts these lost souls circling one another in an odd celestial dance that, though funny, feels oddly in drunken tune with the universe. Janos is trying to sort out the confusion in this scene, a confusion that will later lead to obstructive actions within his town. Enter a curious circus that boasts a whale as its main attraction. Set up in the square of the barren Eastern European village, local men congregate to gaze at the huge mammal, bizarrely displayed amid the rubble.
Janos is captivated by the whale and its silent purity. But to Janos' uncle, purity is impossible. He detests 17th-century German theorist Andreas Werckmeister's godlike theory of the musical octave, proclaiming, "Pure music tonality does not exist -- unhinged arrogance wished to take control of all harmonies." I think he's right.
As the picture continues, discordant actions of a godlike militaristic fashion occur, led by Janos' aunt in alliance with the town police chief. Janos becomes her spy, bewildered and joined to a cause that grows in its revolutionary fervor. Though the picture is timeless, one senses a comment on Eastern Europe before and after communism, though it doesn't carry any overt, manipulative political message.
In the movie''s most terrifying scene, Janos witnesses an angry mob wreaking havoc on a hospital filled with sick men. They barge into a lavatory, where an elderly, bony man stands naked and shivering in a bathtub. The image is held for so long it shakes the soul. In its invasiveness the viewer feels a little of what the mob feels: Perplexed. Look, stare, can’t stop looking. What to do?
And yet, beautifully so. Mihaly Vig's brilliant score and Tarr's use of the musical in everyday life -- a walk down the streets, the clatter of boys banging away on instruments they can't play, a waltz between two people in which one holds a gun -- coats the picture with gorgeous uncertainty. Cinema can be an amazing illusion, as Tarr so well understands. He also understands the power of human emotion, something many cinematic stylists are frequently and wrongfully accused of missing – as if the beauty or style of a moment cannot connect to feeling. Tarr echoes Keats -- his images “will never pass into nothingness.”
I'm always obsessed. From one day, week, month or year to the next. Whether it's my recent, traumatic viewing of The Yearling (I'll get into that heart-achingly beautiful movie another time), or a vivid nightmare I experienced after watching Looking For Mr. Goodbar at 2 AM in a humid NYC studio apartment, my mind is usually possessed with...stuff. Too much stuff. So I frequently let these beasts loose with "Three Obsessions," a recurring entry that I'm far too behind on. Over a year behind, in fact. Have I been too obsessed? Or too lazy? Or both? I think I just answered that question.
Nevertheless, I'm due for some new obsession confessions. And this one was easy -- New York City. I recently vacationed there, so naturally it's lingering in my mind, hanging around like all those pretty girls in the East Village -- there's so many of them. I fell in love every five minutes. So here's some more love -- New York movies and, again...stuff. Some lovely, some bizarre, some violent, some demented and some oh so soothing.
1. Goldiggers of 1933 (1933)
New York City. 1933. The Depression. People wanted to escape. And not just through "nice" movies, but through sexy, subversive movies that tested the limits of morality. Though not as overtly socially conscious as other 1930s
Warner Brother dramas like I Am a Fugitive from
a Chain Gang, Wild Boys of the Road, or classic gangster pictures like Little Caesar and Public
Enemy, or pre-code delectables like Ladies They Talk About or the brilliant Three on a Match, Warner Brother's Goldiggers of 1933 showcases a bizarre-o balance between escape and grit, realism and surrealism. Directed by Fugitive helmer, Mervyn LeRoy and more importantly,
choreographed by that mad genius Busby Berkeley, the movie is not really a movie, but an experience -- an experience that spins into this alternate universe of New York that was probably both recognizable, and incredibly alien.
With a take on what Americans love most -- money -- the film presents a
wonderfully strange number of the famed song "We're in the Money" wherein a
comely Ginger Rogers sings it in both English and Pig Latin. (David Lynch must love this movie) Amazing for
its ability to be complex, yet light, a little dirty and a little innocent, socially relevant and then, fantastically inventive in terms of set
design and costuming, Goldiggers proves
that musicals were never mere escapism. And this is New York City -- New York City imagined in the state of show, and on the sound stages of Burbank, California, but weirdly, pure New York. The girls, or gold diggers, live in an unglamorous apartment, seeking glitzy lives, which was deemed a bit sinful by censorship boards, becoming one of the first American movies released with alternate footage. Even the rather innocent "Pettin' in the Park" was considered racy. But there's more meat on the bones. The great Joan Blondell ends
the film with the haunting "Remember My Forgotten Man," in which
WWI soldiers are shown trudging through bread lines. Very sad. You'll again
remember that even the oldest of musicals had something to say.
And this one is absolutely sublime. 2. Little Murders (1971) "Those guys in the park, they said 'Hey, fat-face! What are you staring
at?' If I told them I wasn't staring at them, they would've beat me up
for being a liar. And if I told them I was staring at them because I
wanted to take their picture, then they'd beat me up for being a cop. So
I told them I was staring at them because they looked familiar, and
they beat me up for being a fag. There's no way of talking someone out
of beating you up if that's what he wants to do." So says New York City denizen Elliot Gould in Little Murders a picture that underscores (and underscores with a pen that rips the paper) how scary the 1960s and early 1970s were. And the times are still scary. The world is still scary, in fact. But Little Murders plays like a twisted valentine to the varied anxiety and free floating existential angst felt while enduring hard, violent, New York City. So director Alan Arkin had quite the challenge on his hands when he decided to
direct what would turn out to be an impressive, pitch-black screen
adaptation of Jules Feiffer's stage play, a disastrous production that
only lasted seven days in its initial 1967 run (crazy). The movie fared better,
though not by much, and has remained a deserved cult item since its
release. Expressing the unease and understandable neurosis ending the
1960s (Feiffer wrote the play partially in response to the Kennedy
assassination), the picture merges comedy, violence, romance and anxiety
with a jangling wit that makes viewers increasingly unsettled, putting
them on the precipice of cinematic nervous breakdown. Elliott Gould
plays a photographer and "apathist" who allows violence upon himself
while his girlfriend (played by Marcia Rodd) receives daily obscene
phone calls from unknown perverts. The disparate lovers get married (for
whatever reason) but happiness isn't their future as their personal
problems increase and New York becomes even more violent and dystopian.
Arkin bravely paints broadly here, with standout performances (Donald
Sutherland is especially memorable as a hippie minister) and set pieces
(the first meeting of the family is brilliantly anarchic and hilarious)
that pile up the movie's absurdities and yet weirdly realistic feel for
the anxious. The disturbing Little
Murders is something of a masterwork and a cultural panic attack of a movie. 3. NYC Hotels, Diners, Central Park and AC I love hotels and my trip to New York City did not disappoint. I loved the new bed, even if thousands had slept on it before me. I loved the new view, even while looking at a lot of brick and windows, strangers and small street scenes. I loved the room service (from a diner across the street). I loved eating chocolate cake in bed at midnight and watching a movie, or simply listening to the sounds of the city. I love that the AC did its job while the humidity raged outside, and then, turning it off to open the window, allowing the thick, night air to float into my room. I love Central park and the roasted peanuts, the peanuts the extraordinary James Wolcott (who was kind enough to take me to lunch on my birthday, with the ultra charming Siren) doesn't dare eat. Too many squirrels. But I love squirrels too. And I simply loved lounging in my room. I did a lot of other things too, and outside of the room, but there's always something special about spending time alone in a hotel. Suspended partially, from real life, I could live in a hotel, especially in New York City.
