Subvert Normality

Out of the Blue (1980, Dennis Hopper) is a punk Sirkian melodrama with the kind of vitality that’s found in so very few films. It grips you by the shoulders and knees you in the groin. It’s the uh stuff that independent is made of—a work of art baring its anguished soul with attitude.

     But more than anything, Out of the Blue gives focus to the performances of its actors. Mostly Linda Manz. What do you think of when you think of independent film? I would dare to anticipate your answer is based on an attitude. Something that defies mainstream. Out of Blue got me thinking about where independent cinema started again. This wouldn’t be the first time. For me the first independent movie is Othello (1952, Orson Welles). Many or most people say Cassavetes was the first. A commonality through Welles, Cassavetes, and Hopper is they started out as actors. And anyone can see the performances in their best work as directors is astonishing. Like Cassavetes, the authenticity in the performances of Manz and Hopper in Out of the Blue are dynamically from the gut, defy the formality of coming off as scripted or rehearsed, and exhibit a volatile mix of vulnerability and vitriol. My awestruck attention went from jawdropping to cringing to euphoria to nauseating to congratulatory for their courage.

     What struck me about Out of the Blue is that as a youth picture it captures so well the restless wandering reality of what it’s like to go out looking for something like fun or excitement and the random encounters you find. From dangerous to depraved. And so much of it fueled on alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and junk food. But it paints such a vividly realistic sense of the streets. And it’s some of these scenes, the ones that don’t serve the plot, that stand out as most effective. Like the quick bit where the Linda Manz character is walking the streets in the daytime and there’s the middleaged guy with bad teeth garbling something indecipherable portable karaoke with a dwarf woman on crutches hanging out with him. 

     So much of its art is in the spontaneously compelling. Like the scene where Hopper’s character is hitting the bottle at the dump and running around messing with the seagulls, which moves to his daughter, the Manz character hanging out there we see, in his convertible. When he goes up to her the first thing she says is “I just bit a penny in half.” 

 

But as far as dramatic truth goes, there’s nothing light or casual about Out of the Blue. Of course, the Neil Young lyrics it gets its title from’s full line is “…and into the black.” I took it as the alcoholic father and heroin-addict mother are in the blue: melancholy; but their daughter is in the black, nihilism. Or in other words out of the blue and into the black can mean the departure from depression to death. 

     Out of the Blue is the pure stuff I search for and spend the rest of the year watching the other 99%. It reinvigorated my love of cinema. It restored my faith in independent film. As a work of art it’s given me something new to engage with and begin my attempts to express what it is to me. It’s also one of the few lost films I’ve had the opportunity to see—and in this case impossible to understand how it ever went missing. 

 

12/16/2001 Plaza Theatre

Atlanta, GA

35mm print of 4K restoration (2019) by Chloë Sevigny and Natasha Lyonne

     

The Force Awakens

Are movies that explore the darker side of human sexuality inherently exploitative? Does watching movies that feature characters with kinky, depraved sexual fetishes mean that the viewer has kinky, depraved sexual fetishes?

There's no way around it, Toys Are Not for Children (1972, Stanley H. Brasloff) is an exploitation movie. And if this argument were based on the poster alone, I'd say no contest. But, whereas typical sexploitation movies of the Seventies frequently utilized non-explicit sex scenes and some nudity gratuitously, Toys Are Not for Children has a Freudian, highly dysfunctional family backstory that its lead character JAMIE GODARD (Marcia Forbes) is in constant torment from through psychotic flashback episodes that lead her toward a deeply troubled pursuit of a singular goal that unravels gradually through this twisted gem of low-budget filmmaking. I recently attended a screening of a 35mm print projected of Toys Are Not for Children.

I'm not at all ashamed to say I admire Toys Are Not for Children for its craft and bizarre imaginative attempts at melodrama. And for a low-budget, who the hell could this movie's audience possible be? venture, it is an inspiration that someone went through all the way with this. Also, on a technical and formal level, the tons of flashbacks, sometimes quickly intercut, running parallel concurrently alongside the present day narrative, sometimes jumbling adult and child Jamie interchangeably, electronic stinger cues (my favorite), great score, and deliriously taboo weirdness executed with a straight face are compelling. And every moment of Toys Are Not for Children ties into its overarching themes.

Toys Are Not for Children opens cold in an underlit bedroom with an undressed teenager writhing in her bed fondling a nutcracker-style toy soldier repeatedly moaning, "daddy." Her mother bursts in and goes into a hostile tirade that is and will be the only things the mother ever talks about: "It's unnatural!" So, we learn from this first crescendo rant that Jamie's mom is violently inconsolably distraught because Jamie's dad sends his daughter toys, but no longer lives at home, and is off "with his whores," as Jamie's mother will reiterate countless times to come.

Jamie it turns out, is actually in her mid-twenties and works in a toy store where she is loved by her boss, customers, and CHARLIE, whom she marries early on in the movie. They move into a new home together but the honeymoon is no sex for Charlie and Jamie stubbornly argues with him against giving up her toys, until he caves then she unpacks her toy soldier so she can sleep in peace.

Charlie patiently remains the understanding husband, and the toy store owner MAX is funny as Charlie's confidant, I mean these dudes are so bro'd out. When Max happily asks how married life is Charlie tries asking for help, "Maybe you can love toys too much, Max." But Max is sure there's no such thing.

Okay, this plot is way interconnected too. In the first toy store scene Jamie helps customer PEARL who happens to offer her a place to stay in the city, if she would ever so need. Turns out Pearl is one of the whores Jamie's dad slept with, and Jamie's mom knows it. So that's why Jamie's mom keeps telling her why men are no good and she doesn't want her daughter to end up like Pearl, "a painted pig."

Jamie actually thinks Pearl's occupation is really cool and wants in (unbeknownst to Pearl for quite some time). Pearl lives with her bf/pimp EDDIE who keeps trying to have sex with the innocent Jamie, Pearl's friend. One day when the ladies are out having a carefree lunchdate together, Jamie genuinely wants to hear more about Pearl's work and after some resistance on Pearl's part Jamie finally exclaims "But you are a whore aren't you?" The innocence and teenybopper pluck of Jamie gets me. The whole time all I kept thinking was what the hell am I watching and wow this is so good.

Back at home Charlie and Jamie are fighting now. And triggered from another flashback of her parents' ongoing fights Jamie relives her mom's defense of "Is that what you married me for? To get a housekeeper. Then stop complaining." Charlie starts drinking and going to the bar, having sex with random women, which he has no problem finding.

Well, by the midpoint Toys Are Not for Children gets even more awkward to watch as Jamie has succeeded in getting Eddie to pimp her out behind Pearl's back. New haircut and some really slutty work attire don't change Jamie's attitude though, she still projects herself as a nice girl working in a toy store. Oh and Jamie plays childish games with her Johns and calls them daddy. It's tough to watch. But okay, this is going somewhere. Jamie's really doing all this obviously just so she can find her real Daddy. And as the third act climax, it's definitely unnervingly suspenseful when their date becomes imminent. The foreshadowing up to this point has described her Daddy as Pearl warns "a lousy drunk and a John who gets his kicks by putting down women."

Jamie's so happy to be reunited with her Daddy. And the John is loving his date. And it takes him a long time to realize that the reason she keeps calling him Daddy isn't part of the act. He flips out and starts yelling at her, a struggle ensues and Jamie pushes him out of the window to his death.

Poor Jamie. The final low angle shot of her naked, slumped in a corner, staring off into space catatonically as the camera zooms into her eyes while the closing song plays, with the lyric "How Lonely Am I?"

--Dregs

We Must Be Doing Something Right to Last Two Hundred Years

I'd prefer to avoid being repetitive. However, I wish to express again the marvel of seeing a film projected in 35mm in a theater; and, rediscovering a movie that I've already seen on DVD at home several times. It's like time travel. It's like experiencing the same thing audiences did when the film was first released.

When I was nineteen Mike Clark's Movie Madness Video and More in Portland, OR was like being Charlie in the Chocolate Factory for me. It offered the chance to see anything I wanted or could think of. Now there are subsequent generations who have the internet for the equivalent of what for me were the VHS archives. I still enjoy home video. But, after seeing something like some of Altman's work from the Seventies on film, larger than life, it almost makes me want to throw my TV in the trash.

Before Prêt-à-Porter (1994, Robert Altman), Short Cuts (1993, Altman), and The Player (1992, Altman), there was Nashville (1975, Altman). Nashville is the Altman template. Nashville has a prestigious notoriety that caused me to see it on DVD many years ago. I wasn't a fan. It felt bloated, boring, and initially caused me to file Altman's status as possibly the emperor not wearing any clothes. But after returning to Altman's work, I found different aspects of his talent rewarding. Talents I began to realize were featured in Nashville.

As part of a mini-Altman retrospective here in Austin, a couple of days ago I again found myself spending Saturday afternoon alone in a dark theater surrounded by strangers. Quickly, once immersed in Nashville's panoramic, rich, colorful, aurally-assaulting portrait frame, I regretted how it'd taken so long for me to give this film my full attention. The 35mm print was clean, and provided the scale with which I was able to truly engage with the film. It's like the whole vocabulary of shot selection took on a new strength.

The opening credit sequence blasts a radio station DJ voiceover hurrying through a list of cast members as he advertises a greatest hits album that features them while illustrations bombard us front and center, their names scrolling up one side of the screen and the titles of their hit songs scrolling down the other, all to some twangy good ole country and western music. Sidenote: I can't think of any other instant in my life that I've not only tolerated country music, but enjoyed it.

The Altman template I'm talking about uses his large ensemble cast, intertwining plot threads, a satirical focus on some niche aspects of American culture, improvisational dialogue, and typically a limited temporal range, in general. But where Nashville stands apart is the music. There are so many performances, done by the cast, and featured extant.

The opening scene is with Henry Gibson as HAVEN HAMILTON in a recording studio working on his patriotic anthem (which has always managed to stay stuck in my head) with the chorus, "We must be doing something right to last two hundred years." Geographically, the ensemble aren't always in the same place, with the exception of the Airport scene at the beginning and the concert at the Parthenon that ends Nashville. And while many of the ensemble recur popping up with varying degrees of screen-time, Haven Hamilton feels like the lead to me, if for no other reason that he seems to be the biggest star in Nashville and wield the most clout.

Nashville's structure follows its locations. The primary locations, in order, are:

• Airport
• Freeway pile-up
• Hospital
• Haven's cabin picnic
• Opryland concert
• Church
• Race car track
• Parthenon concert

Between all of these there are smaller concerts, night clubs, and like, the boarding house that the Keenan Wynn character runs and the Lily Tomlin character's home.

And the glue that bonds these set pieces together is a technique of mosaic conversation jumping. Often intimate, these nuanced moments are accompanied sometimes by fragments, varying from comedic to odd, but always captivating. These characters all feature in a symbiotic relationship to each other. Altman doesn't play favorites and that is one of his most accomplished feats in Nashville--he's concerned with both those who made it as stars and those who didn't. Fame and stardom is the draw in Nashville, and Haven, CONNIE WHITE (Karen Black), BARBARA JEAN (Ronny Blakey), and BILL, MARY, AND TOM reside at the top, while at the bottom are the parasites that constantly seek them out.

The stars obviously need the parasites. But with OPAL, the BBC journalist (Geraldine Chaplin) as the most desperate, L.A. JOAN (Shelley Duvall), ALBUQUERQUE (Barbara Harris), and SUELEEN GAY (Gwen Welles) a pattern begins to emerge that tends to show how much sex as the currency of the female characters buys them in Nashville. Never one for on the nose depictions, Altman keeps these intricacies graded, with for example, Albuquerque appearing the most desperate and the only one of these women specifically motivated by being a star herself, while not using sex to her own ends. Albuquerque's opposite is Sueleen, who uses her sexuality for what she hopes will be fame until in the heartbreaking surreal scene where she performs at the nightclub and gets booed off and coerced into stripping nude. (It's not easy for me to buy her complicity in that moment.) And to add further insult, when the Ned Beatty character drives her home and propositions her, she sadly amounts to nothing more than a sex object.

But I shouldn't get too analytical here. I mean Opal and L.A. Joan appear as though they have no regrets about all of their different sexual partners and having a good time. They're just drawn to the scene. But another big thread that's set up early and takes time to play out is Tom's (Keith Carradine) pursuit of gospel singer LINNEA (Lily Tomlin). There's that moment when he keeps calling her house when you realize this guy who at first sounds like a harassing pervert stranger is Tom from folk group Bill, Mary, and Tom--and yet further, that Linnea wants him too. This leads to his performance of "I'm Easy," where he dedicates the song to a special lady, and there are singles on Opal, L.A. Joan, and Linnea, each sure he's talking about them.

Next to fame, and sex, there's power. Nashville makes so much more sense than the first time I saw it, as then a random series of vignettes. The opening Hal Phillip Walker campaign voice of God van that keeps appearing is connected with Michael Murphy's character, whom we find out is trying to sign all of the big music stars to perform at a political rally. Everybody needs something from somebody.

Keenan Wynn's (Damn I can't even begin to describe how much of a fan of Ed Wynn and his son Kennan Wynn I am) character generates so much pathos is because he's mixed up in this frenzy and is the only person not eager to worship the Nashville stars, but to get his niece--L.A. Joan--to go along with him to visit his sick wife, her aunt. The aunt dies while L.A. Joan's out cruising the scene, and the last scene of Nashville shows the Keenan Wynn character's desperate search for his niece. And this rounds out for me, just about everything that could have been put in Nashville. And now, I don't feel like it's bloated or boring, but the amazing portrait I'd long ago heard it hyped as.

So along with the satire on fame, sex, politics, there's race (I haven't gone into the Charley Pride parody), and several bursts of comedy. The freeway wreck is silly funny and great. The Elliot Gould as himself cameo is a lot of fun (wow, what a cool shirt). The line BARNETT (Allen Garfield) shouts at his wife Barbara Jean, as her manager, "Don't tell me how to run your life. I think I been doing a pretty good job of it," cracked me up and was spontaneous. Tom trying to score dope, requesting "speckled birds, L.A. turnarounds, uppers?" was neat. And Haven's wife's obsession with the Kennedys is very funny in an awesome, odd way.

Like Brewster McCloud (1970, Altman) before, Nashville's cinematography is never dull--roving long lens work, wide angle authentic location time capsules, and requisite slow zooms give the film its character. Nashville is Altman's perfect mix.

--Dregs

The Birds

With a career that spanned five decades and a personal vision that always remained uncompromising and experimental, Robert Altman, more than any other American filmmaker, requires time when one attempts to warm up to his talent. Most of the time I've spent has been laborious, tedious, and sometimes disappointing. But so has my search for great films in general. Now that isn't to say the payoff wasn't exceedingly worthwhile on numerous occasions. Yesterday downtown at a movie theater here in Austin I was lulled into a sublime hypnotic trance by Brewster McCloud (1970, Robert Altman).

For someone who considers themselves a fan of Independent American cinema Altman's is one of the most revered of reputations. However it was only after seeing Magnolia (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson) that led me to Short Cuts (1993, Altman), which I thoroughly and profoundly connected with, due to its vast array of troubled, struggling, funny, romantic, believable characters. Short Cuts is serious Altman at his finest.

Later I found 3 Women (1977, Altman) to be indecipherable, frustrating, and bewildering. But also funny, captivating, poetic, and a real treasure. Again, as has he always been reputed for, the ensemble casting, namely Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, are revelatory. 3 Women is surreal Altman at his finest.

And finally the most impressive of all Altman's work, which I'd seen only recently is his made for television opus Tanner '88 (1988, Altman). It is his most serendipitous, inventive, and enjoyable narrative, in the guise of a political satire.

If the aforementioned three titles are his crowning achievements--and I realize McCabe & Mrs. Miller might belong there but I haven't seen it and I demand the opportunity to watch it projected in a theater--then their other, their counterparts, their vital components are Altman's rebellious comedy satires. For me those have been O.C. & Stiggs (1984, Altman), The Player (1992, Altman) and now Brewster McCloud.

Not quite having to structure my thoughts here as either a movie review or film criticism, the Reviewiera platform is my medium for expressing the bliss of truly, sincerely, and without pretense, enjoying the hell out of a movie.

All I'd ever heard about Brewster McCloud can be seen in its poster. Bud Cort plays the title role, lives in the Astrodome, and builds wings to fly with. As great as MASH (1970, Altman) is, and an admirable beginning to Altman's canon, that he followed it up with Brewster McCloud really makes me appreciate his reach.

Hearing that a movie was a flop, panned, alienated audiences, or was weird often makes my mouth water, and Brewster McCloud was known for all of those things. But what a payoff. It opens showing the MGM studio card without sound and as the lion roars we hear "I forgot the opening line." It's unbelievable that MGM distributed Brewster McCloud and the only one other Altman film, O.C. & Stiggs. O.C. & Stiggs also plays with the MGM opening logo card. There are several similarities between both of these MGM Altman comedies: rampant drug use, offensive racist slurs, misogynist jokes, adolescent male protagonists, contemporary pop soundtracks, non-sequitor gags, car chases, violence, and satirizing American culture. Yet they were both commercial flops, though destined for cult status.

Brewster McCloud is full of references to birds. His name sounds like rooster and his surname is a nod to the clouds. And parallel with the entire film is an inexplicable completely set apart classroom lecture by a character played by Rene Auberjonois, who is evolving into a bird before our eyes. Altman's got imagination.

There's also Michael Murphy playing a Bullitt spoof pursuing a string of homicides where there's bird shit at every crime scene. (The Murphy gags about his obsession with personal appearance and his turtlenecks is killer.) All of the cars have license plates that refer to a type of bird. The Road Runner driven by Suzanne (Shelley Duvall) has the license plate DUV 222.

The movie also has some marijuana humor that feels a lot like Cheech and Chong. Coincidentally Brewster McCloud was produced by Lou Adler (that tall skinny dude with the white beard and pink shades who always sits next to Jack courtside at the Lakers games), who managed Cheech and Chong and would go on to produce and direct Up In Smoke in 1978.

More references to flight include Sally Kellerman as Brewster's guardian angel (who in yet another bird reference plays a scene bathing nude in a fountain that also recalls her exposed shower prank in MASH), Brewster's construction of his own wings, and the name Astrodome itself alluding to a celestial monument. There's also some remnant of the Icarus myth, but Brewster McCloud becomes its own fable. It's not for me to question why Brewster is pursued as an object of physical desire by the women characters, but it adds to the anti-Hollywood feel of this comedy. Like the character Hope wrapped in a blanket masturbating while wrapped in a quilt as she bounces on Brewster's inflatable raft, how do you explain that to a producer? There's so much different stuff going on in Brewster McCloud that I'm just glad made it into the cut.

And what a debut for Shelley Duvall, more than ever I honed in on her naive nuances as the virtuous ingenue with a hint of worldliness. I'd just happen to rent Thieves Like Us (1974, Altman) a couple of weeks ago and began realizing more than ever before what she brings to a performance. Furthermore she is like the Altman actress.

A refreshing break from my usual high art preferences and mainstream interludes, Brewster McCloud won me over with its sumptous 2.35:1 canvas, Houston streets, whip zooms, long lense work, and deserves its own special place with my appreciation, due to succeeding while being unlike anything I've ever seen.

--Dregs

An Hour Ago Rudy Linnekar Had This Town In His Pocket Now You Can Strain Him Through a Sieve

The ninth film I was able to see in the Orson Welles series was projected in 35mm and it made a big difference.

So, I've seen Touch of Evil (1958, Welles) a few times on dvd before. And lately I've been realizing more and more the benefits of seeing something on a big screen in a theater over my tv at home; and, film over digital. But seeing Touch of Evil in a theater was like discovering it for the first time--this might also have to do with that I'm older, and maybe also because I've seen ten other Orson Welles movies in a theater in the last month.

First of what's most important in Touch of Evil is the setting: Mexico. Specifically the US-Mexico border. Welles had already photographed parts of the films The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Confidential Report (1955) in Mexico. Welles is also one of few filmmakers who has chosen not to employ subtitles when characters speak in a foreign language. And Touch of Evil features a lot of Spanish.

Secondly the Noir aspect. Let's presume I can use darkness synonymously with evil, alright? And noir also translates as black. So, the darkness in Touch of Evil can be read in many ways other than Hank Quinlan's (Welles) corruption. The Mexican setting delves into the dark criminal underworld of murder, blackmail, reefers, mainlining, brothels, stripclubs, leather jackets, hot rodding JDs, molotov cocktails, and peeping through windows. And this is the last Film Noir ever made. No I don't have evidence to support my claim, but I'm convinced. Trust me on this one.

Dark lurid trash was the producer of this film, Albert Zugsmith's specialty. Zugsmith also produced Douglas Sirk's trashy melodrama masterpiece Written on the Wind (1956, Douglas Sirk) and Tarnished Angels (1958, Sirk). Compare Written on the Wind and Tarnished Angels to any of Sirk's other films and you will definitely see Zugsmith's influence--they're way trashy darker than anything else Sirk ever did. Leather Daddy Butch Mercedes McCambridge's cameo as the Mexican villain who says "You know what a Maryjane is? You know what a mainliner is?" and "Let me stay. I wanna watch," is probably the most bizarrely vulgar one of Welles's films has ever gotten. She's awesome.

Tertiary is the Shakespearean tragedy of the whole affair. Quinlan refuses, like Macbeth, to sleep. This gives the film a unique dramatic unity and urgency--it will be resolved before he falls asleep, we know it. Quinlan is dying. Holy crap, the scene where Quinlan frames Vargas' wife for Uncle Joe Grandi's murder is shot with these slowly paced out strobes from somewhere outside through the small apartment room where the final struggle between Quinlan and Grandi takes place--the light bursts are evocative of Quinlan's life slowly dying out of him: the beat of a heart visualized; the light that's left of him diminishing into darkness; the poetry of that scene is very important.

Once Quinlan falls off the wagon and starts drinking bourbon--my own worst poison, but also the most seductive--he starts talking about his dead ex-wife. And the sheer madness and dementia that appears in the insomniac, old, tired, obese, man makes us think for a second: wait a minute did he kill her, his own wife? But it's only a glimpse. Even more intriguing. Later Menzies (the Master Swallow to Quinlan's Falstaff) defends Quinlan saying that he only thinks about his ex wife while he's drunk until even later Quinlan:

I'm always thinking of her. Drunk or sober.

What else is there to think about, except my job?

My dirty job.

Okay this is like as darkly romantic as it gets. This is poetry. That this suffering man has one friend and somehow has still hung onto his career makes the setup for the great tragedy of him unnecessarily framing Linnekar's Mexican son-in-law that results in him destroying what's left of his job, securing his own ignominy, and murdering Menzies, his only friend, the only one who loved him, powerfully Shakespearean. But, like the stuffed spiked black bull's head that the desperate Quinlan rests under in the brothel, he is a magnificent beast that holds our attention in the ring because some part of us is fascinated by seeing him slowly, methodically killed by a hero. But we are here for the bull, not the bullfighter. Yet the bull has to die. That is tragedy.

We also get all of the best the B genre has to offer. Dennis Weaver as the motel clerk who postures as erratically as an ostrich on angel dust, being the only human the sexy pointy cone brassiered Janet Leigh is stuck with in this motel two years before she'd meet Anthony Perkins at the Bates creates a whole different brand of suspense. Weaver really makes Perkins look like a ladies man compared to his awkwardness. 

Oh and Welles is on point with his mise en scène, but not just the famous opening. This was the first time I noticed how long the take was when Quinlan interrogates Sanchez at his apartment. That's an impressive sequence. But the opening still takes the cake. Man, you really realize how close that bomb is to going off right next to Heston and Janet Leigh's characters. And the litter polluting the river where Quinlan goes to die is gorgeous. The Joseph Cotten cameo is also a treat for Welles aficionados.

Yet one thing I can't quite get over is that Quinlan has Menizies take Vargas' wife to a motel he knows Grandi owns. Do you realize how early in the film this happens? That truly is evil of Quinlan is he had the foresight for this that soon after meeting Vargas. How can he despise him so? Is is because he's Mexican? Because he's younger? Better at his job? Smarter? Has that smoking hot Janet Leigh wife? Or is it because he knows Vargas is onto him? Quinlan is a fat, ugly, evil, monster villain. But again, damn if I don't still love him. Welles knows his magic.

--Dregs

Sleep No More

The sixth film in the Orson Welles retrospective that I was able to view was projected in 35mm.

Macbeth (1948, Orson Welles) is called a Mercury Theatre Production, but it was released by Republic Pictures--an independent studio. Seeing Welles emerge undaunted by lack of funds for costumes, sets, locations, and a large crew of technicians is most evident in this picture.

I couldn't believe it was almost two hours when I looked at my watch after exiting (I saw the version with an overture) this movie. Macbeth begins with an expertly crafted supernatural tension, and like The Lady from Shanghai (1947, Welles) feels like a quick nightmare. The plot device of the three witches telling Macbeth and Banquo their fates makes for a tight straightforward narrative structure which was rare for Welles at this time; except of course for The Stranger (1946, Welles). Also the Scottish palace sets contribute to the minimalism of the world of the story in their limited quantity and sparse landscapes, combined with Macbeth's drugged out looking two weeks he spends as King without sleeping make this movie a scary bad dream.

Another motif that springs up constantly with Welles is corruption at the highest levels of wealth or power, and Lord and Lady Macbeth are still jarring to one's sense of morals by today's standards. They're like hey what if we just killed everyone who is above you so you could be the highest boss. And what an oddly comic tone that underlies the horrific abrupt moment when Macduff's son is happily not at all worried about his missing father and prodding his mother to remarry right before some paid thugs break in and murder him. What? The child murder is so over the top I think it was a little funny. Damn.

So yeah, the locations and camera work aren't as baroque as Welles's earlier films, but the world of Macbeth has a compelling look throughout. And the girth of Welles stomping around with his horn goblet, regal robes and crown is commanding. While this may be the only of Welles's films that deal with supernatural elements, I guess this type of magic would make sense in interesting the famously practiced stage magician Welles.

John L. Russell photographed Macbeth, Samuel Fuller's Park Row (1952), then a lengthy career in television before returning with the iconic and polished Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock). This film feels like it's always dusk or midnight. But one sublime frame worth mentioning takes place as Macduff returns to confront Macbeth in a duel to the death: a medium close-up of the armored Macduff is backlit, leaving him in complete darkness with his cross topped helmet towering toward the camera with foggy smoke bathed in waves of diffuse light behind him. This is another of Welles's films with a grand climax of action suspense that sees an arch villain thrown from a high place down into a plummeting death.

Again, how clever of Shakespeare to have guilt keep Macbeth from sleeping. This one definitely translates well to the screen in Welles's hands.

--Dregs

Not Every Man Is Sincere

The third film in the Orson Welles retrospective that I've been able to attend was projected in 35mm.

Journey Into Fear (1943, Norman Foster Orson Welles), the third film released by Orson Welles as a Mercury Production--his stock cast and crew from radio and subsequently Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)--and released by RKO Radio Pictures, which was one of the Big Five Hollywood studios then, is a minor work in Welles's oeuvre.

Journey Into Fear is a B movie spy yarn about American engineer Howard Graham (Joseph Cotten) on the run from Nazis in a Turkish port on his way to Georgia. It is a standard genre thriller that follows a linear plot. It also lacks the overarching grand reinventing the wheel style narratives that Welles's previous two films displayed. Welles's name isn't even on this as director. Nor does it at all explore memory, shift time, contrast class and wealth, or combine highs and lows of its central protagonists in sentimental nostalgia.

But the reason it should be attributed to Welles as director is because it is embellished with low-key lighting, cavernous shadowy sets--the first time Graham descends the staircase into the nightclub/underworld--and bizarre canted, wide-angled, low and high perspective angled, and reverse track back leading shots that float on butter.

Welles's turn as debonair hulk Colonel Haki is hammy, but funny. Everett Sloane and Aggy Morehead also provide nothing more than comic relief, in contrast to their earlier roles in Welles's films. But the villain Banat must be the most memorable character in Journey Into Fear with his foreboding overweight physique, nearly silent performance, rumpled hat, spectacles and the menacing scene where he combines corpulence with homicidal mania as he confronts Graham while destroying his crackers into his soup as he slops it up, staring down his target.

The grand finale outside the top of the ledges of the building in the rain storm showdown is an edge of your seat payoff, and the film lacks too much charm to be dismissed.

--Dregs

In Those Days, They Had Time for Everything

The second film screening I have been able to attend from the Orson Welles retrospective was also projected in 35mm.

How fresh the beginning of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles) remains. The quaint homespun narration voiced over by Welles, the digression into the evolution of men's dress during the nineteenth century somewhere back East, and the picturesque bucolic tone of sentiment and genuine fondness for a bygone era are warming and retain an innocence that is untarnished and eloquent.

The Amberson estate is baroque and the more access we gain upon entry, the more we realize the same space never seems to appear twice. The shadows and low key lighting are complemented by a camera that waltzes through the interiors with poised grace.

The dialogue is typically radio Wellesian with its brisk pacing, snappy comedic punctuations, and see saw balance that levels the playing field regardless of sex, income, or intellect.

And there's that staircase. That magnificent staircase. It is a visual key. From the moment George Amberson Minafer begins pursuing Lucy Morgan--an instance of high class courting low class--he guides her. After their back and forth struggle of wills, he is about to lead her up that grand staircase just as she abruptly cuts him off to reveal that Eugene Morgan, "that queer looking duck," is her father. George will never get Lucy up those stairs. A parallel to this motif is after the midpoint when Eugene returns to fight his way back into the mansion for one last attempt to see the dying Isabel, the love of his life. Uncle Jack appears on the upper floor at the railing of the staircase and asks Eugene, who's down at the bottom floor, to please come back later. Of course, Isabel dies and Eugene will never make it up that staircase (or see her again).

The Magnificent Ambersons is a tonal study. The luminescent innocence of the film's opening that culminates in the carriage ride through the snow--snow symbolizes the loss of youth in Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, as George, Lucy, Isabel, Eugene, Fanny and Jack sing gaily, and significantly trail into the deep background to be irised in on, is eclipsed by the bulk of the latter two thirds of the narrative. Dark tragedy engulfs the film like a cancer. Aunt Fanny's breakdown is bleak and hopeless. And, General Amberson's death scene, with its surreal tone, the frontal framing of his withering visage and rambling pleas accompanied by Welles's eulogizing mournful almost whispering narration, ends as a sublimely melancholy piece of cinema.

Georgy drives the narrative. What a toxic breed he starts out as, a borderline sociopath who views the lower class as riff raff. The coy framing in wide angle of his speech in defense of attacking the other boy with him center weighted and postured level to the camera as he mocks the adult who turned him in as he self-righteously confesses that the man wouldn't be fit to shine the general's shoe is another of Welles's finest achievements.

Georgy is a monster, and that he desires Lucy as his bride dooms him to rejection, but his comeuppance is so much more. This is a film about social tragedy. The Morgans are such good people, and because Isabel Amberson is good-natured and sweet, Eugene is ideally suited for her. The twist that Georgy could actually stop this match is heartbreaking, but wonderfully paints the reality these characters are confronted with.

This proves the fondness and mastery of melancholy and melodrama Welles was apt at executing.

--Dregs

I'll Bet You Five You're Not Alive If You Don't Know His Name

A two month retrospective series of the films of Orson Welles has begun here in Austin.

It is a joy for me to write about the first of these screenings that I attended, which was in a theater downtown and projected in 35mm.

My Declaration of Principles

I.   I will provide the readers of this blog with a review of Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles) that does not in any way mention the context of the film's production, any of Orson Welles's other films, first time innovative techniques, or the basis of its central protagonist on any real people.

II.  I will also provide them with a review that doesn't mention anything about the man Orson Welles, his life, his career, or any of his other personal aspects or characteristics, or the reputation of this, his first film, as being widely considered to be the greatest film of all time.

Citizen Kane focuses on character over plot. What perfunctory plot there is to speak of is nothing more than a journalist trying to track down Charles Foster Kane's last words: "Rosebud." The journalist visits Kane's widow--Susan Alexander, goes to the archives of the late Thatcher--Kane's banker and guardian, then to Bernstein and later Leland--Kane's business colleagues. And finally, the film ends with a reveal that shows Rosebud was Kane's sled he lost as a boy.

The prologue (following the shattered snow globe) is original and riveting in its imaginative execution. The newsreel is constructed as a media decoy that is believable in its authenticity. We are introduced to Kane through a wide array of diverging viewpoints of opinion. Many of them negative, few sympathetic. But we are hooked and want more.

The magic of Citizen Kane arises out of the scenes of memory; melodramatic, and fanciful, the first of which being the boarding house scene, which relies on Kane's until recently destitute mother (Aggy Morehead) morosely ascribing him to the care of Thatcher after she's inherited a goldmine (literally) to get the boy away from what's hinted at to be an abusive domineering father.

Chronologically Kane begins as a sympathetic hero that overcomes tragedy to crusade for the poor masses of Americans. He's not interested in money or power--he wants to make a change. This is the germ for what proves the arching toxic melodrama. Kane works at his career and his marriage because of altruistic principles. Then we see his eventual ugly, inexplicable, saddening decay and departure from everything he once stood for.

For the man who seems on a sure track to the United States presidency, and the sky being the limit, his options diminish rather quickly.

Citizen Kane also shows the intertwining relationship between melodrama and tabloid. The bitter comeuppance Boss Jim Gettes has in store for Kane, the tabloid love nest banner, is the surprisingly sudden final nail in Kane's coffin.

The rise of Kane is full of hope. The depiction of the Inquirer offices, the revelry and celebration that go on there, the snappy witty dialogue all paint the past in a brilliant luster that gives the film its lasting glow. On the contrary, it is Xanadu that crushes all hope with its decadent darkness, oppressive painful remorse and chaotic lack of any principle other than avarice of property--including Susan, who becomes nothing more than one of his statues.

Another trait worthy of admiration in Citizen Kane's structure is the continuous jumping from one location to the next, both geographic and temporal. The film's pace is relentless. And the efforts bestowed upon each of the different locations is evidence of the finest craftsmanship the classic Hollywood Studio System was capable of.

What else is there to say about the lasting draw of this fictitious larger than life, spoiled, impulsive, shallow, hedonist? Other than asking ourselves how far really are our own ambitions and dreams from his?

--Dregs

The More You Look at Something the Less You See

After Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, and David Lynch, the Coen Brothers are the most crucial American filmmakers I have followed, appreciated, and critically studied for my entire adult life.

To separate movies from films, the Coen Brothers' widely praised works are typically their movies: Raising Arizona (1987), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007) and True Grit (2010); and unfortunately, it's been a long time since I've had the desire to revisit these in hopes of finding something new.

However, their films: Barton Fink (1991), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), and A Serious Man (2009) easily remain some of the most intellectually stimulating and classically entertaining narratives any American filmmakers have crafted since the 1990s, in the modern era. Yet, their movies are necessary to identify them as auteurs, and their films only become stronger if you take their body of work as a whole.

Yesterday The Man Who Wasn't There screened in a 35mm print at a theatre. Since this movie was shot on 35mm and converted to a DI, watching it on DVD or digitally projected in a theatre leaves something to be desired. However, seeing the film projected in 35mm returns the black and white converted DI to its native analog look because the print shows dirt, dust and other debris and feels like you're watching an old black and white movie from the 40s.

The black and white look and the film's period small town somewhere near Sacramento, CA setting make this a Film Noir. Normally I confine Noirs between 1941-1958, but this 2001 movie qualifies because they set their film back then. But this isn't merely a Film Noir. It's more like the Coen Brothers making a Neo Noir because they are drawing heavily from the established conventions of historical Film Noirs, but have crafted the film as an existential crisis--with a plethora of big questions, most notably: "What kind of a man are you?" And in addition to all of this, they have succeeded in delivering one of their most sparkling deadpan comedies, with one of their most uniquely droll and prosaic assortment of everyday small town folk, dryly skewering all things ordinary.

The look of this film separates it from B-movie Noirs. Roger Deakins primarily using the barbershop, photographs sublimely contrasty, detail cluttered set pieces almost as gorgeous as images Henri Alekan achieved in Der Himmel über Berlin (1987, Wim Wenders). Also, the Nerdlinger's department store features cavernous shadows and broad pillars of blackness against smoky shafts of light that create geometrically designed representations of the protagonist's psychological inner chaos like the films John Alton shot in the late '40s. And notice the striking use of medium to medium close up-framed dolly tracking shots, overcranked, and often rain soaked; these are among the most lyrical segues in the film.

Some of the strongest evidence to support categorizing this film as a Film Noir is Ed Crane's guarded near-paranoia. He's cynical, as are most hard-boiled Noir protagonists. And he's our narrator, so in a way, the film is cynical. Film Noir often means an American looks around sometime after The War and realizes people, society, or the government aren't what they seem. This is Ed Crane's path. Sizing people up seems to be his only reason for living. And he usually concludes that they're all phonies. Think about how often he slings that slur.

Birdy almost takes on an existential significance, as she's obviously something like a manifestation of Crane's ideal female. And in the glorious scene where she attempts to give him fellatio as a consolation prize, Crane's dreams are finally shattered once and for all, causing him to take account of his place in the universe one last time.

Existential is a big label that gets thrown around way to much. I'm not saying I'm the one to categorize this film as such, but I think it does ask big questions instead of setting the same conflicts and resolutions as most plot-driven works. There is something said without words that floored me when Crane gets his leg shaved before his execution--because we remember that everynight he used to shave his wife's legs in the bathtub--like, how odd that on his last night alive someone else would be shaving his. There's no point. It's a mere observation. But, what else is there? These shots may support the motif that Doris' marriage proposal suggests ("Why? Does it get better?").

She has a point.

Maybe this is all there is.

Doris (Frances McDormand) is a riot as the comedic relief, and Crane is here merely to serve as her foil mostly. She's got the balls and spits fire like one of Hawks's gals. And what cracks me up is that religion or a higher power isn't a governing factor for Ed or Doris (or anyone else in this movie really) but, she kind of symbolizes everything the ten commandments try to dissuade. Doris cusses like a sailor, loves to use blasphemy, "Enjoy your goddamn cherries," is racist, "I hate wops," is an alcoholic, commits adultery, commits grand larceny against he employer, and finally is convicted of murder. The irony is that even though Doris didn't kill Big Ed, one wonders how long before she might have.

Her first line in the film is a riot, "Bingo!" I saw McDormand on a Charlie Rose interview from the time of the film's release and I remember she said some of the best direction she had was in that scene because Ethan told her, "when she gets bingo, it's life or death for her."

The casting in this film is brilliant. No one holds a candle to Tony Shaloub (as Freddy Riedenschneider). Riedenschnieider's machine-gun rapid-fire dialogue as a fast talking big money attorney from Sacramento takes the second half of this film into vastly entertaining dimensions. Everyone is a small town rube, but he kicks the cobwebs off of the mausoleum once he arrives. He talks fast, eats fast (and voraciously), and thinks fast. He's arrogant, rude, manipulative, and driven. His musings on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle are ridiculously hilarious. Although my favorite Riedenscheider lines have always been his curt summary of how crummy Doris' case looks:

FREDDY

You say he was being blackmailed. By who?

You don't know. For having an affair. With

who? You don't know. Did anyone else know

about it? Probably not, you don't know.

Carter Burwell (he's scored every Coen Bros. movie) wrote one of the only scores in a Coen Brothers movie where I actually felt like they were being sentimental. The Burwell excerpt I'm talking about doesn't play until Act III, when Frank has to sell the barbershop over to the bank. And it is after this point I feel like the Coen Bros. have transcended most of the stuff they usually do, and why The Man Who Wasn't There is so important for me. (I wonder if Burwell's similarly heart-breaking score for Being John Malkovich (1999, Spike Jonze) was a breakthrough that paved the way for this?)

In closing, the haircuts for kids were:
The Butch
The Heine
The Flattop
The Ivy
The Junior Contour
(And occasionally) The Executive Contour

 --Dregs

Watch This and Grab the World by the Asshole

A few months ago I had received some movies from a guy who downloaded the files on a drive for me. There was one title I didn't recognize. After I looked it up I learned it was a 1975 Blaxsploitation movie about a pimp who drives a custom-paint jobbed orange Rolls Royce, and that copies of the movie on home video are virtually non-existent (a local video store has an old bootleg VHS, and an inscription that says, "Samuel L. Jackson's favorite Blaxsploitation movie!").

I hesitated watching the movie because Blu-ray and a city that shows and cares about movies makes it hard for me to watch low-res shoddy transfers, if I can help it (often I can't, i.e. Warhol's films). Thanks to the Alamo Drafthouse there was a screening of The Candy Tangerine Man (1975, Matt Cimber) projected in 35mm.

Style is what this movie has going for it.

The genre is Blaxploitation Crime. Blaxploitation isn't really a genre because, like Film Noir, it's more of a feeling, an attitude, and hopefully, acknowledged to be historic. I date Noir from '41-'58. I think Blaxploitation is probably somewhere around the 70s.

I haven't done adequate critical work to call myself knowledgeable about Blaxploitation movies. I grew up watching Dolemite, but that's about it. I do like a movie called Emma Mae (1976, Jamaa Fanaka) that I saw fairly recently. That was some of the best Blaxploitation because of the way that it used real locations and non-professionally trained actors to evoke a vérité Compton.

But The Candy Tangerine Man doesn't transcend any of its low budget limitations in any significant way. Style does go a long way though. The star of the film is John Daniels, who plays The Baron. The Baron is a pimp, but in this film he's glorified and heroic.

Something about the score really stood out. It's so slow. It creates a constant sense of foreboding because of its menacing slow nature, but this also compliments The Baron--he's slow and menacing. The Baron is an anomaly in this film because every other character whines in obnoxious high registers except him. And everyone else are two-dimensional stereotypes but him.

This milieu is so rich. The Candy Tangerine Man doesn't come anywhere near having the verisimilitude of Iceberg Slim's masterpiece 1967 novel "Mama Black Widow," but it does cover the same turf (procuring and prostituting as run by Black people in a metropolitan US city). There is a scene where a rival pimp challenges The Baron: "I ain't into the slave trade," which seems like a pretty hefty accusation, but The Baron (and the movie) let this comment slide.

The big twist in this movie is that The Baron has a beautiful wife, child and home in the suburbs that he visits by day, and who are unaware of his alter ego's profession. So if one were to look at the morals (I'm not gonna dare attempt to say racial politics) this movie upholds, it is clear that it sees the pimp as industrious and prestigious rather than exploitative or immoral. And why not? I like seeing movies from alternate viewpoints, and the rare movies where crime does pay are always  fun.

--Dregs

Hideous Mutant Freekz

The Golden Age of Pop Culture for me dates from around 1989 to 1999, and I'm not just talking about movies. For the purposes of this post, I cite one of the most influential early 1990s television programs MTV ever aired, "The Idiot Box," created by Alex Winter, Tom Stern, and Tim Burns and running from 1990-1991. "The Idiot Box" was a half hour sketch comedy series that would be better labeled as deranged humor than absurdist. It's manic, kinetic, non-sequitor assortment of satirical parodies featured exclusive use of ADR, and mostly Winter's VO, resulting in Winter and Stern's characteristic style of mocking mainstream television corporate structured advertising and production.

One of my earliest childhood memories was visiting a house where I remember playing with Lite-Brites and being astounded at something on TV that an older boy was watching. All I recall is seeing the dude who played Bill S. Preston Esq. (Winter) being chased through a set that resembled The Evil Dead (1981, Sam Raimi) with the Ram-A-Cam by a bald woman, while Bill yells, "Oh no, it's Sinéad!"

"The Idiot Box" was my introduction to television sketch comedy programs and I've been keeping up ever since. "Portlandia" is a lot more like "The Idiot Box" than it is "Monty Python's Flying Circus," "Saturday Night Live," or "The Kids In the Hall."

And then there's the tale of one of the rare instances in Hollywood History when someone slips something past a major studio, gets a ton of money, makes something the studio ends up disowning, but because the film survives on home video and repertory screenings, becomes a cult classic. The way the story goes basically is that after the success of Bill & Ted, Alex Winter pitched a similar vehicle to star he and (a disguised in dog makeup) Keanu Reeves to Twentieth and they gave him fifteen million dollars before they realized they hated his film, Hideous Mutant Freekz.

Have you ever found the style of a filmmaker so brilliant and enjoyable that you wish you could see other work they've done in the same vein? Jackpot!

The $15,000,000, Twentieth Century Fox-produced, Special Effects by the most elite and legendary artists working-endowed gross-out comedy Freaked (1993, Tom Stern and Alex Winter) screened in a 35mm print, and I was able to attend the viewing.

The plot is that Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid) illegally purchases a toxin called Zygrot 24, which has hideous freak side effects, and shanghais a band of victims to perform in his sideshow, Freek Land.

This is "The Idiot Box" the movie, for sure. Fans will get all of the trademark ADR cheesiness, interchangeable absurdist roulette structure that gives "Family Guy" a decent run for its money, Alex Winter, and stupid gross humor; and Freaked opens with a VO PSA that it's safe to return to your homes because the "Flying Gimp," has been killed.

I've had a few memories of watching a movie for the first time in the theatre and being shocked at the consistency of the amount of times I'd laugh. Usually upon revisiting the films, I could not recreate the alchemy. I think for me it was BASEketball (1998, David Zucker) first--I'd learn that ZAZ did this as early as The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977, John Landis); then there wasn't really anything similar until "Family Guy." Yeah, when I first saw "Family Guy" I was enthralled because I felt like I was laughing every 30 seconds non-stop, every episode for the first season.

Anyway, I haven't been able to watch "Family Guy" since the previous millennium. But Freaked was as good as I'd always remembered.

The big budget shows. The production design, sets, costumes, and especially the prosthetic special effects are dynamite. Alex Winter as Ricky Coogin spearheads the adept comedic ensemble in the raucous, rowdy, raunchy, ribald, rotting putrid gem of a freak show.

I love Stuey Gluck (Alex Zuckerman) in all of his overly-sentimentalized, Steinbeck meets The Champ adorned goofball screen appearances.

The sound design is as aggresively Hollywood as Jablonsky doing Transformers. And this production comes off seamlessly because the creators actually worked for 2 years on development before the cameras were brought in for production. They left nothing to chance, which is very impressive for a first-time director.

Some of the pop culture references might be lost on some (like the "Jake and the Fatman" diss.) But most of the gags are, what Winter describes as, "dumb jokes that only guys get." I laughed the hardest I have in a long time at the scene where they reveal flashbacks for every freak to show how they were shanghaied by Skuggs. The last flashback tilts down to a hammer on the ground. Next, intense suspensful music, sound effects, lighting and editing reveal through flashback that once upon a time Skuggs bought this character as a wrench in a hardware store.

Aesthetically this movie is important because I love all things toxic, pop culture, and absurdist black comedy. And I really can't express how important this film is to me, being one of the trashiest oddities I actually hold as high art.

--Dregs

When You Hear the Words Foreign Film, Think of France

Okay, so you've all heard the distinction between films and movies, I'm sure. As a filmmaker, I define film as pure cinema. My basis for this definition consists of three broad groupings. The categories are as follows: the Alfred Hitchcock style of pure cinema (Hollywood), the Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claire Denis respective styles of pure cinema (France), and the Terrence Malick style of pure cinema (The New Hollywood). There are subtle variations inherent in these distinctions.

Sometime around the early to mid aughts I had repeatedly skimmed the title Beau travail (1999, Claire Denis) in print articles found in the New York Film Society at Lincoln Center's monthly "Film Comment," often in best of lists. I'd also been hounding David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film and come across his monograph of Claire Denis--he specifically refers to her biggest fans being "the 'Film Comment' critics." So, I finally gave Beau travail a chance around 2009.

Claire Denis is probably my most recent discovery that has allowed me to find that elusive scent I hunt down so desperately--that of creative aesthetic brilliance. (Actually, Bruno Dumont is the most recent, to be accurate.) Beau travail won me over firstly with its short running time, splendid Benjamin Britten score, and insurmountably calculated final shot.

I love Beau travail as a foreign film. It's foreign in many senses of the word, especially for me. Denis uses tiny details to establish the Djibouti location in ways that evoke its people, markets, landscapes, transportation systems, and merciless barren deserts along with marvelously azure coastal planes. When I watch this, I always appreciate the quality of being transported to Africa for an hour and a half--and I've never been to Africa, but it strikes me as the most foreign of continents because I have the hardest time imagining what it would actually be like to visit.

The iconic French veteran actor Denis Lavant (he's got a mug like a French Dafoe) stars as Sgt. Galoup, an inwardly-turmoiled French Foreign Legionnaire who struggles with his jealousy over the new thin recruit Sentain. So the foreigner stacking piles up here: Galoup is a Frenchman in Africa, appears to be either a closeted homosexual or conflicted similarly with a dark impulse that arises out of his jealousy over Sentain, and all of this was filmed by a 43 year old French woman who AD'd for Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch throughout the 80s (Don't tell me you can't think of Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) or Jarumusch's Stranger Than Paradise (1984), or Down by Law (1986) as having a similarly foreign protagonist in a foreign place, typically encountering other foreigners).

The Djibouti discotech scenes are easily some of the finest craftsmanship Denis has arranged, infusing the bleak desert locale with lively colors, seductively corporal gyrations, darkness and energy. This counterpoint evokes part of the mysterious inner life of Galoup.

It was Godard who famously said that, "a film needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But, not necessarily in that order." Beau travail's famous final shot has been reported numerous times to have been found at another point in the script initially; only in post did Denis realize where she wanted to put it. But, this holds as a vital example to Godard's original intent.

This is the rhythm of the night.

Galoup's queer demeanor is a locked door. Perhaps we will never really know him. However, it is clear that he lives for the corps--the Foreign Legion, his body, their bodies, Sentain's body, and even Rahel's (Galoup's African mistress) body. But, the final shot nearly guarantees to us that there is something locked up behind that door that is bursting forth to get out--the subjective responsibility of the audience is to spend a moment trying to think about it.

Last night getting to watch this in 35mm (the print was a little scratchy) was a welcome and refreshing oasis in my week of watching big budget effects movies.

--Dregs

Dead But Dreaming

Who newly emerged in the US during the 80s as auspiscious personal filmmakers? It doesn't seem like there were many. Michael Mann, Tim Burton, John Hughes, Jim Jarmusch, (unofficially) Oliver Stone,  James Cameron, Tony Scott, Joel Schumacher, Rob Reiner, James L. Brooks, Lawrence Kasdan, Joel & Ethan Coen, Sam Raimi, Kathryn Bigelow, Susan Seidelman, Penelope Spheeris, Gus Van Sant, Hal Hartley, David Mamet, (barely making it) Steven Soderbergh and Cameron Crowe; and, Spike Lee are the only ones I can think of.

Impressively, it is Spike Lee that proved in the 90s to have the most prolific body of work, with 9 features and 2 documentaries. And they remain fascinating, varied and sometimes bordering on trivial, entertaining time capsules of 90s pop culture in a significant way.

Since it was over 10 years since I'd seen Summer of Sam (1999, Spike Lee), all I had been able to recall were a scene of a large black lab tormenting Berkowitz and the protests of a friend of mine in PDX who was aggravated and intolerant of the movie she continually renounced on the grounds of Mira Sorvino's character squeaking in Brooklyease, "I could taste her pussy juice all over your face," to her Leguizamo-played husband in one scene.

Interestingly, when I saw the film this past weekend those two scenes are still the ones that stand out most, and maybe even work best for me.

The two strongest elements supporting Summer of Sam are the self-destruction of Vinny (John Leguizamo) and Terence Blanchard's, umm, Harlem Renaissance-stately, Aaron Copeland-like, sweeping operatic swells contrasted against 70s punk rock--okay, I'm going to argue that as far as I've known The Who were never punk. Am I wrong?

The visual look is a kinetic frenzy closer to Oliver Stone than the suave rapture style found in Mo' Better Blues (1990, Lee) and Jungle Fever (1991, Lee). It starts with the classic Hollywood studio crane sweep of a cavernous set to evoke 70s disco glamor, but is one of so many similar sequences that even use the same music, like Boogie Nights (1997, Paul Thomas Anderson), The Last Days of Disco (1998, Whit Stillman) and Blow (2001, Ted Demme). Although the context of "Best of My Love" is sly here.

Lee's visual fever isn't as nauseating as Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone) because he's succeeded with something closer to the 90s MTV music video aesthetic, yet uses it strategically so as not to let it get stale. All of the Berkowitz cutaways are ghastly (the greens especially) in the distorted result of cross processing, and on top of that, he heaps a tilt shift on the lens. These moments are disturbing, and inserts within them like the homicidal messages misspelled with children's building blocks further enhance some of Lee's most ambitious stagings. And the plastic, commercial, store bought production design that's supposed to show Berkowitz's squalor looks like it's all brand new and they bought it at a Toys R Us--which I really enjoy.

The comedy fits well too. Lee again squares off two pressure keg factions in a Brooklyn neighborhood, and this time its an Italian-American civil beef. Ritchie (Adrien Brody) doing a Brit accent and taunting the rough and tumble heavy hitters in their dead end neighborhood is one of the main ingredients in this thriller, but those scenes are also often funny at the same time in the way some of the best scenes in movies can have you laughing one second, then recoiling in tension the next.

Ritchie is supposed to be some kid who would be prime trade at Warhol's factory, but as was the case with much of the 90s punk creations, looks like he bought all of his clothes at the mall brand new recently.

Vinny is not supposed to be Warren Beatty's character in Shampoo (1975, Hal Ashby), but he mostly is.

As most know, this film is about Vinny, Ritchie, their neighborhood, and incidentally the Son of Sam murders. The murders raise the tension, but I for one wondered why the film didn't bother to ever mention the victims' identities, any relevant details about them, or even the number of how many there were. The killings just kind of loom. Most of the film is dancing, sex, dancing in the sex industry, fighting about sex, fighting about where to dance, and people swearing. The first disco scene struck me as romantically special when the rest of the crowd disappear for a moment as Vinny and Dionna dance alone--yeah I eat that sugar up.

I find none of the ensemble grating, although I used to find Leguizamo really obnoxious. I think John Leguizamo is fantastic in Summer of Sam because by the end, he was what held it together--his plight was earned through its dramatic portrayal on the page and with his performance. And the escalating dementia of Vinny and Son of Sam parallel one another purposefully, to effective results.

While this film did a lot for me and I want to come back to it, by the end credits when I saw how the Brooklyn neighborhoods, New York Yankees, and other iconography seemed a perfect fit for Lee, I couldn't help being distracted thinking about what Fincher would do in SF 7 years later.

And one last thing I haven't checked: is that last beatdown scene copying the Rodney King beating? That's what it felt like. I thought if it was, that would be something to recognize the space and arrangement of those bodies and batons.

--Dregs

Seasons in the Abyss

After graduating high school I first began devouring Jean-Luc Godard's films and critical essays. I had not gained much from the films, aside from their spontaneous episodic structures and flimsy B movie plots; and, there were the pretty actors, brightly colored pop cinematography with text, novels, paintings and misplaced music cues; finally, the endless references to cinema, including his own.

À bout de souffle (1960, Godard) is Godard's first film and probably his most widely seen; and, it still holds up as a Bonny & Clyde style road film of early 60s Paris youth culture. He'd follow with similar works, but with increasing experimentation and a resulting distancing from audiences, due to his political bent, and ever-diminishing narratives.

Weekend (1967, Godard) marks the end of Godard's early phase, a style he would never return to, in favor of his form of visual essays or lyrical reflection. I'd always be primed for a sacred experience when I popped in a home video copy of Weekend, but last week was the first time I had a chance to see a newly restored 35mm print of it screened in a theatre.

To many, Weekend boasts the reputation of being something like Godard's weirdest, least accessible movie. The 8 minute tracking shot of a traffic jam is also mentioned often. And sometimes you'll hear people talking about the taboos: the lewd group sex monologue recounted by Corinne, the brutal murder of Emily Brönte at the stake, the filmed bludgeoning of a live pig, or the cannibalism. All of these elements assembled together still elude me as I look for deeper meaning.

But, I'm familiar with a phrase Godard often places in his films, "La Monnaie de l’absolu," which translates to the coin of the absolute, I think. To read this phrase as a metaphor for Weekend, it means something like the film is a currency that travels into foreign markets, but displays two sides.

First, say is the heads side. The heads side are the beautiful actresses outfitted in the latest trends in modern fashion, the shiny new autos, the bright colorful corporate advertising, the idyllic trip to the countryside to visit family.

But the tails side would then include Corinne's avarice, her deceptive debaucheries, her sociopathic obsession with materialism.

There's more. In general, I merely attempt to engage with both sides of the coin. Corinne's erotic monologue does recall the similar scene from Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman) where Alma tells the tale of herself, her girlfriend, and the boy at the beach. But in Godard's hands it feels explicit and gratuitous even, in the same way Marquis de Sade wrote. So if globalism and consumerism are clearly subjects that Weekend focuses on, it can be argued that the monologue pushes audience expectations and conceptions about erotic subjects in then-modern cinema. Because, out of context, is the scene nothing more than dirty talk? Does it matter that Corinne is filmed in silhouette? Does it matter that we don't know who the other people are she's talking about?

Corinne is the central protagonist of Weekend, and her journey is still one of the most modern of cinematic quests. She's gotta get to Oinville. Oinville points to something of a twentieth century Sodom and Gomorrah, of consumerism that is. And from point A to B and every stop in between, we can be sure that some form of satire is being launched. The thematic content is as antagonistic as the onslaught of car horns are abrasive--in the theatre I truly appreciated how obnoxious they sound.

It's up to viewers to word their own ideas about Weekend, but I'm here to say I'm just starting myself, in any significant way. There are perhaps confrontations of old and new, or classical vs. modern, as evident in the Emily Brönte burning by Corinne and Roland. There's also the obviously scathing attack on too many people owning automobiles--the disaster of what a trip to the country may look like one day. But to be fair, I doubt I'll ever catch the full extent of the dozens of literary and obscure historical references. It sure is a fun challenge to attempt though.

I've personally been really crazy about dolly tracks lately and just can't get enough. I was astounded to discover how most of Weekend is filmed from dolly tracking shots that maintain a consistent speed throughout. It made the film feel like Godard was our tour guide and refuses to relinquish his dominance over what we see and when; it's like we expect him to yell, "Hey, keep all arms and legs in the ride! Look over here, not there!" Weekend is an alarm that still reverberates, even after having been set off 45 years ago.

To end with a coin analogy: Weekend identifies itself textually with two introductions. The heads side shows, "This is a film adrift in the cosmos." The tails side shows, "This is a film found on a garbage heap." It's both simultaneously.

And Weekend's Corinne saying one of the funniest most memorable lines in cinema, as she esapes the burning wreckage of a car accident, "My Hermès handbag!" still kills riotously.

--Dregs

The Most Hollywood Un-Hollywood Movie Ever Made

Last night, an acquaintance of mine invited me to attend a theatrical screening of a 35mm print of Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch) and I immediately decided this was something I could not pass up. My previous encounter with this challenging narrative, from quite possibly the most challenging auteur to tread the boundary between commercial and arthouse, from both within and outside of Hollywood, simultaneously, was about 10 years ago. A longtime David Lynch fan, I'd always gone out of my way to actively engage with his works, in my own way, finding my own meanings. Then, I kind of got burnt out after Inland Empire (2006, Lynch) and walked away for about 5 years--until last night.

So, I used to try to figure out what Mulhollalnd Dr. was about. Then, I decided that was no use. After returning to this film, 10 years wiser about life and with a recent BS in film production added to my cinematically analytic arsenal, I think I'd like to give another shot at attempting to explain what I think Mulholland Dr. is about--my apologies to David Lynch, as I assume he discourages this type of discourse.

Part 1: Decoding Messages

1A (Follow your dream)--In the 1940s, it was common to hear Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer described as "The Dream Factory." The first shots of the Jitterbug Competition in Mulholland Dr. accompany a POV shot of someone going to sleep, setting up the potential to read the following film as some one's dream.

1B (Sequence between the two gentlemen in Winkie's on Sunset)--This may be a key to decode the entire narrative. The key elements are:

• One person telling another about a dream they had with the other person in it.
• That first person then becoming frightened after seeing that the account of the dream scares the listener.
• That first person then attempting to confront the dream, in reality, and being killed by it.

My conclusion is that this structure is a model for the film in two other instances: The first part of the film (Betty wants to be a star and falls for Rita) and the second part (Diane Selwyn wants to be a star and falls for Camila Rhodes). Now, an important distinction here is that the structure of Mulholland Dr. is one that supports an emotional truth, rather than a conventional realism typically associated with Hollywood movies. Furthermore, the film is ridden with double symbols. Perhaps the most startling discovery for me last night was the scene where Betty and Rita first discover the corpse of Diane Selwyn and run out into the front yard--the photographic effect used is a double exposure--because it suggests that the entire film is an instance of the collision between dream (Betty plot) and reality (Diane Selwyn plot), cinematically expressed as one image exposed onto a film negative that has already been exposed and the perplexing nature of this effect; or, the collision between dream and nightmare; or, the collision between Old Hollywood clichés and New Hollywood auteur riffs; or, the collision between youthful naiveté and aged cynicism.

Personally, I'm currently obsessed with filtering my entire existence through the lens of a paradox--or, the collision between opposing forces.

1C (Hollywood movies and their formal characteristics)--In addition to the significance of where Lynch has employed the double exposure shot in Mulholland Dr., there are other instances of double meanings derived from decoding cinematic techniques and the implicit meaning therein.

Next, there's the old couple, Irene and her companion. For me, they're nothing more than a gratuitous symbol of the language of conventional Hollywood film language from the twentieth century. Consider this: we see them at the beginning and end of the film. They are a coin that shows first, the side of how Hollwood movies communicate a dream--in the car they don't speak, but by how they're filmed, we, the audience, imbue them with meaning (jubilation) because of the slow motion (or, overcranking the shutter speed)--then, second, they show how Hollywood movies communicate a nightmare--again they don't speak, but the fast motion (undercranking the shutter speed of the camera) imbues them with a terrifying, threatening menace.

1D (Hollywood Movies and their formal characteristics, continued)--The scene where we first are introduced to Naomi Watts as Diane Selwyn is a huge turn from the entire narrative thrust up until that point. It's jarring. It's bizarre. It doesn't really make sense. But, Lynch blocks this by intentionally Jumping the 180° Line (the convention established in Hollywood movies whereby spatial orientation through blocking and editing establishes a realistic visual geography for viewers) and actually seems to be the first director I've seen to do so, in a way, suggesting an almost cannibalistic comment he's making about his super un-hollywood Hollywood movie. Sorry, I prefer cannibalistic to meta--I don't like using the term meta too much.

1E (Hollywood Movies and their formal characteristics, continued more)--Lastly, I'll suggest that the opening scene of Betty's idealized image of herself as movie star appears overly white (or technically, burned out--a term in cinematography that means over exposed), implying that the type of "exposure" she seeks is "overblown;" or even that that pinnacle (as Valley of the Dolls hypothesized) of fame is the point at which one falls victim to Hollywood Burnout.

Part 2: Hollywood Burnout

2A (Hollywood Burnout as a model for Betty and Diane Selwyn's respective emotional cores in Mulholland Dr.)--For me, Hollywood Burnout is a symptom evinced in Betty's emotional requisition of her romantic object of desire (Rita). The symptom is, again, getting to the point where attaining your dream destroys your personal identity. The link is that of the realization that it won't last, no matter how desperate you may want it to--whether it be attaining the career of a movie star or attaining a chance to be with the love of your life--because it's all an illusion, albeit one that we believe we have mutually contracted ourselves into, and once we realize it's disintegrating, we often are unable to survive from.

2B (The director, Adam Kesher)--He also suffers from Hollywood Burnout, of the variety wherein he's gone from auteur to commercial hack. A very telling line of dialogue occurs when he's told by a financier, "it's no longer your film."

Part 3: References to Other Hollywood Movies

3A (Part 1, Old Hollywood)--Mulholland Dr. begins with an inventory of Old Hollywood bright-eyed, overly sentimental idealism. And we get all of the most saccharine chestnuts one could imagine: comical references to dog poop and a kagaroo that destroyed a courtyard; slapstick (the entire botched hitman thread is a comment on Hollywood violence because it's all gratuitous and goes absolutely nowhere and has practically nothing to do with the rest of the plot); etc...

3B (Part 2, New Hollywood)--Lynch's over the top lesbian scene is nothing other than Camp of the most intentional type. It's hilarious, not erotic.

3C (Specific references)--I'd always found the line Betty says to Rita before her audition hilarious: "...And don't drink all the Coke!" Anyone remember the line in Showgirls (1995, Paul Verhoeven) where Nomi is off to work and tells her roomate in a similarly overacted delivery: "...And don't eat all the chips!"?

There's obviously a ton more of these, but I'll just limit my observations to Showgirls and The Wizard of Oz (1939, ???Victor Fleming??? and way too many others). One of the biggest narrative devices that helped me understand Mulholland Dr. was that the second part is reality, because Diane Selwyn has obviously awakend from a dream and the people in her reality are versions of characters she'd created in her dream, just as Dorothy had done in The Wizard of Oz. In fact, the exact moment this occurs, Coco (Ann Miller) exclaims to Diane: "So you just flew in from Kansas... is that it?"

Conclusion

This movie is so close to the themes I find most important in films: feminine identity, Hollywood Melodrama, and artifice as a means to achieve aesthetic emotion are the big ones; but also, of course, the illusion of love and its analog, the illusion of movies. Or, as Mulholland Dr. says: "There is no band, but we hear music." Of course, the entire Club Silencio is an analog for watching movies, as important, if not more than the haunted house shown in Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette).

Ahh, these are just a few thoughts off the top of my head that I wanted to jot down while they're fresh. There's no telling what this movie will mean to me in the future, but I'm guessing a lot.

--Dregs