The Coolest Cover

Vadim's highly readable autobiography, MEMOIRS OF A DEVIL, benefits strongly from this Swedish black metal conception of the title, with shocking Gothic red over black, and the three most well-known of Vadim's hottie wives on display.

Vadim doesn't really worship Satan anywhere in the book. The above cover is from an out of print 1977 edition of the book. I've no idea of subsequent printings had the same art. What makes it the coolest cover in the history of printing is the way it's his autobiography but only his big life-changing loves appear. I for one am not a big fan of the covers where you see the author as they are now--old and sanctimonious, sitting in some forced photo studio pose in very clean beige monochromatic clothes and staring into the camera with a quizzical look, as if to say "What? Whaddaya want ta know?" In leaving himself out altogether (though he appears on the back in a shot along the beach) Vadim shows he's a) magnanimous, b) a natural huckster (knowing what sells) with no sense of shame, and c) a genius. Special thanks to Kim Morgan, for turning me onto this, and to so much else.

Painting Influences Film - Fuseli/Whale

The Nightmare (John Henry Fuseli 1781)

Frankenstein (James Whale 1931)

Note Boris Karloff's Monster framed by window at left.

The Throwers of the Tantrums

What does Jacques Rivette's LA BELLE NOISEUSE (1991) and THE ROCKER (2008) have in common? That's right: they both depend on nudity for substance, and they both suck. You heard me.

I hate to Emperor's New Clothes it with Rivette; the man makes a pretty picture, and there's some great subtle naturalistic work from Jane Birkin (second fiddle to husband Serge Gainsbourg for so many years, she's the ideal rich artist's nurturing aesthete hostess). But the film is a pretty, airy bore; the worst part is - the "artist" played by Michel Piccoli can't even draw!

We see him spend so much time dabbling around his big studio--stalling, wiping off the flop sweat, wandering through his lovely estate and pontificating evasively about passion, positioning his model (Emmanuelle Béart) around in different positions, and then when he goes to dip pen into ink or get a paint brush going, we see that he has absolutely no skill whatsoever. The guy who does his painting for him (we see the hand) is either playing possum or totally talentless. We cringe in pain as the dry quill of an ink-dipped pen scratches ineffectually at the paper, making a horrible scratching noise; we cry "why not use charcoal?" and it takes him an hour to figure that out. In the end he fobs off pathetic rendering of Béart--one of the most beautiful women in the cinema--where she's crouched in a "pose of the child" yoga position, head obscured, ala Picasso's 1902 "Blue Nude."

A three-year old finger-painting would have been much more interesting.

Which brings me to THE ROCKER-- a film that is so inane that even the points of tantrum don't make sense. (continued on Acidemic)

A Filmmaker Evolves - Spanky: To the Pier and Back (Guy Maddin 2007)

I offer this clip as follow-up to my post re The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (Guy Maddin 1995). It shows the degree to which Maddin’s style and thematic concerns have evolved in the 12 years since the earlier film was made.

Note the differences. Most obviously, Eye Like a Strange Balloon is a photographed dream. Spanky: To the Pier and Back is photographed real life. Eye Like a Strange Balloon is heavily dependent on mise-en-scène - artificial sets and carefully storyboarded compositions supported by brilliantly orchestrated sound effects - while Spanky: To the Pier and Back is silent and achieves its effects through rapid-fire editing, an impressionistic montage of dog, trees, ocean and sky. Style-wise, Eye Like a Strange Balloon takes it cue from the surrealist and avant-garde films of the late ‘20s and early ‘30s. Spanky: To the Pier and Back is more like the personal home-movies-as-art created by Stan Brakhage in the 1950s and ‘60s. (Compare to Brakhage’s Sirius Remembered here.) One could say that Spanky: To the Pier and Back is like Brakhage’s Dog Star Man without the Star and the Man, or - to put it less facetiously - like Dog Star Man without the painting/scratching on the film and cosmic superimpositions.

Some critics and reviewers get miffed whenever an artist ceases doing the kind of thing he or she was doing before. To note a recent example, Kenneth Turan, writing in the Los Angeles Times, seemed deeply and personally offended that the Woody Allen who made Vicky Cristina Barcelona is not the same person who made Manhattan and Annie Hall three decades ago. Hey Kenneth, I’ve seen Manhattan and Annie Hall, and I can see them again any time I want. I’m glad that Woody is using his remaining years to do something different.

As for Maddin, his problem is the opposite – many reviewers assume that he is doing the same kind of thing he was doing all along when, in fact, he has evolved quite radically. Yes, his style is still "weird" and "quirky," but in very different ways from his great early features (Archangel, Careful). Those early works were primarily inspired by other films. Maddin’s most recent work, his "Me Trilogy" (Cowards Bend the Knee, Brand Upon the Brain! and My Winnipeg), is primarily autobiographical. I expect - and hope - that what he comes up with next will continue to surprise us.

Ten Cents a Dance!

TCM had another one of their Stanywck days today, and tivo nabbed me TEN CENTS A DANCE (1931). Stanwyck is on a great slow burn here, starting out as a prematurely world-weary dance hall girl and ending as a wizened world-weary dance hall girl. She exchanges lots of great double entendre dialogue with a newcomer. The newcomer is explaining what the Haye's Office-style matron of the hall, Miss Blanchard, told her about dancing with the guys: "She said be very careful, but not so careful. She tole me to be inna... inamit..intimate but lady-like. Now what do you make out of that? To feel my way along until I got the hang of things..."

Hmm, re-reading it now, it's not so tawdry. But it's how she says it, and where, in the context of crowded pre-code dance hall, feeling your way until you get the hang of things is not only a double entendre, it's site-specific! We all snug in our masturbatoriums at home don't have to worry about it, but there was a time when people lived with no privacy, a time when several generations lived under the same roof and no bed however small wasn't guarded by at least some embittered virgin equivalent of an East German Stasi. You do the math, especially when you hear Babs explain to her rich suitor the job of glowering matron Mrs. Blanchard as "keeping it hot enough to avoid bankrupcy and cold enough to avoid raids."

The whole issue of censorship codes and codes of conduct for ladies and gentlement itself was, these films slyly reveal, once NOT fixed in the stars. Nowadays we're so trained by post-code Doris Day systematic abuse that we never even think to, for example, whip off our clothes and have sex in public, or grind up against a sailor during one a' dem slow ballads. Apparently it was not always so. Apparently, the mangy bigfoot of "the code" hangs in the middle of Hollywood history, obscuring both sides of what should be an uninterrupted stream of sexual how-tos and do's and doesn'ts.

Take the loser Babs weds, for example, she hasn't been schooled in how to spot a social climbing drifter, so she passes over the amiable, slightly besoused rich business guy bachelor who "sees something very special in her," and marries a talentless Mr. Ripley who proceeds to insult her cooking, her choice in wall colors and her dresses as she scrimps and saves on the nickels he throws her from the job she got him. Naturally when he embezzles money for his social climbing (he's a terrible bridge player) it's saintly Miss Stanwyck who goes back to the bachelor--now her husband's boss--to "earn" her husband's freedom.

(read the rest of this torrid rant here!)

They Done Her Wrong

I first fell in love with THE LADY IN RED (1979) when it turned up on late night cable around 1984. The fast moving tale of a young farm girl led into a life of crime, prostitution, communism, love and finally, bloody machine gun vengeance, it was everything an alienated teenager trapped in suburbia could want in a movie, rolled up tight into a lean 90 minutes. The lead actress, Pamela Sue Martin was gorgeous beyond description; the impression she made on me when she played NANCY DREW in the early 70s came roaring back up through my unconscious. I watched it 100 times in a row, then forgot about it. Now I just noticed the DVD is out of print and selling for over $125. Strange as it sounds, I don't think I'll be selling my copy... I don't trust the Corman Empire to be remaking it anytime soon; what the hell is the matter with them anyway? Give us a decent print of CRAB MONSTERS!

Even the LADY IN RED DVD doesn't look so good. It's presented in full frame, blurry and discontent. But it hardly matters; in fact the VHS-ness of it all goes fine with the cheap period mis en scene! Produced by Julie Corman, directed by Lewis Teague (ALLIGATOR, CUJO) and written by John Sayles (BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, MATEWAN), it's like one of those high pedigreed rich brainy cool chicks that ruin your life then jet back to Dartmouth while you die in the gutter! And you regret nothing!

That's right. The same John Sayles/McTeague/Corman team that gave you ALLIGATOR first did this incredible yarn, and you can tell they loved it; so much time and attention (relatively speaking, this is Corman after all) is poured int into Sayle's pinko screenplay and the crafty editing that it zips along at the speed of one of those post-GOODFELLAS stream-of-narration ADD biopics, (only LADY, see, don't need no narration). Farm waif Polly (Martin) grows up fast--but not too fast--into a machine gun-toting badass, and does so with exciting and well modulated character development, in other words, believably!. Scenes and situations flow like cheap but tasty wine down an alabaster neck with a black velvet choker, from Polly's gullible virgin surrender to a fast-talking sleazeball, through taking it on the lam with gangsters, working in a sweat shop and standing by her communist agitator roommate, to being jailed and then farmed off to a house of ill repute where she shacks up with, amongst others, Robert Forster!

And that's all before she becomes "The Lady in Red" who was with Dillinger the night they shot him down. And after that, the real fun begins. In addition to the cathartic vengeance and valuable socialist lessons, subtextually it's a big middle finger to the petty morality of the post-1934 production code gangster movies, and yet throughout its mayhem and amoral glee, LADY tells an abosrbing story, rich in period detail, with a large cast of characters, all deftly sketched, complexly (for this sort of film) motivated and interesting.

In addition to Martin, there familiar faces are Christopher Loyd as a sadistic gangster, Louise Fletcher as the madame, (she gets in a searing monologue toward the end)...and Corman regulars like Dick Miller. Robert Conrad is DIllinger and the only guy in the cast who can't seem to get the TV out of his blood, but that's okay; he dies quick.

So, good lord, with so much talent and beauty and sexy camp flowing through this (great editing too), why isn't it recognized more widely as a cult classic? Hell, I couldn't even find any screenshots to steal for this post.

My theory is it's the title.

Google or remember the words "Lady in Red" and what do you get: that smoov Chris De Burgh song and its shady affiliations with the Gene Wilder comedy, The WOMAN IN RED (1984). Right there it gets confusing. If De Burgh had called his song "WOMAN IN RED" or something ANYTHING else - then maybe the 1979 LADY IN RED would be a cult classic to this day... as it very much deserves! According to IMDB, it's been re-released as TOUCH ME AND DIE and GIN, SIN & BATHTUB GIN. Neither one gives the film a good patina - one seems like a morose rape-revenge thriller and the other a lame BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS cash-in. If I were doing marketing for this film on DVD, I'd rename it, POLLY WANTS A GUN. But it's probably too late, it's already dead by Wilder-De Burgh association... except of course for us few, hard, proud, pipe-hittin' revivalist hoods! We got ya, Polly... come on back to us, in a cleaned-up anamorphic transfer, we'll tell the people the truth, THE LADY IN RED STILL LIVES!

Early Jeanne, Early Louis, Early Miles

Ever see the flick about the young Parisian car thief who steals an American convertible, find a gun in the glove compartment, kills a guy, and goes down for it? How about the one about a young couple who are car thieves, get involved in murder, and fantasize about dying together with their pictures all over the newspapers?

Am I talking À bout de soufflé, aka Breathless?[1] Nuh-uh. Bonnie and Clyde? Again, negative. Way, way back in 1957 a 25-year-old kid named Louis Malle was ahead of the pack with an atmospheric thriller called Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows), starring Jeanne Moreau and featuring a soundtrack fashioned by M. Cool, Miles Davis.

Ascenseur has been hailed as the first vague of the nouvelle vague to hit the beach, with the possible exception of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur (1955). I’m all thumbs when it comes to splitting hairs, so I’ll just say that Ascenseur is certainly nouvelle-ish, and let it go at that. The main plot, ostensibly, at least, consists of an ingenious, “locked-room” muder mystery straight out of the thirties, except that we know who did it, trés suave Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet), plotting with the elegant, moody Florence Carala (Jeanne) to murder her hubbie Simon (Jean Wall). The scheme works perfectly, except that it doesn’t, and poor Julien gets trapped in an elevator overnight, while poor Florence, waiting for his call, which never comes,[2] desperately wanders the streets of Paris, sure that he’s abandoned her.

He hasn’t, of course, but Florence thinks she’s seen him speeding past her in his sleek, imported convertible[3] with another woman beside him. What happened is that, rather unbelievably, Julien left the car, with the motor running, to take care of that pesky detail that resulted in his incarceration a la ascenseur. In the meantime, moody bad boy Louis (Georges Poujouly), goaded by his girlfriend Veronique (Yori Bertin) has boosted the machine, with Veronique coming along for the ride.

The film’s plot plays a mean trick on its ostensible stars Moreau and Ronet, leaving them with nothing to do while Louis and Veronique go for a joyride that will echo down the corridors of cinema for decades to come. With his blouson noir, surly, self-pitying manner, and Elvisian pompadour, Poujouly is amusingly, even tediously authentic. Unlike his successors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Warren Beatty, he doesn’t look like a hip movie star; he looks like a young punk. Once they’re off, Veronique finds a handgun in the glove compartment (Julien is an ex-paratrooper, so he’s entitled), which Louis quickly pockets. He’s the man, after all.

As the two race along a well-lit divided highway (one of the wonders of postwar France, I guess) they pass and then are passed by the fanciest car of the fifties, a “gull-wing” Mercedes 300SL. Louis, his incoherent manhood challenged, floors the Chevy. Though he is, of course, hopelessly outclassed, Louis follows the Merc when it exits the intra-État and, in a burst of aggressiveness, manages to scrape the rear bumper. The car’s owner, consummate man of the world Horst Bencker (Iván Petrovich), accompanied by trophy femme Frieda (Elga Andersen), is (again, rather unbelievably) amused rather than appalled by Louis’ presumption, and invites the two kids to join him and Frieda for some champagne at what appears to be a French motel, which does sound like a contradiction in terms. French and tacky, at the same time?

Horst, speaking impeccable French and seemingly not at all embarrassed by the bloody and horrifying course of Franco-German relations over the past forty years, listens genially while Louis tells one whopper after another, borrowing Julien’s war record and claiming to have fought in both Vietnam and Algeria. After the two couples retire, Louis leads Veronique to the garage, where he attempts to steal the Mercedes, but he can’t figure out how to operate the damn thing. When Horst and Frieda show up, he (again, rather unbelievably) kills them both.

With the party pretty much over, Louis and Veronique head back to Paris, where they hole up in her flat. Veronique, in a sort of morbid ecstasy, decides that death is preferable to separation. They’ll commit suicide together, and be at peace. “Our pictures will be all over the papers,” she says.

At this point Ascenseur gets less nouvelle and settles back into the sort of kismet/karma ironic twists typical of the traditional thriller. A series of chain-smoking police detectives, all of them looking and acting exactly like Yves Montand, stumble and struggle over the evidence. They’ve got a couple of corpses, after all, and someone’s got to pay. Will Julien go the gallows for murders he didn’t commit, instead of the one he did? Will Florence go “free,” not realizing that it was her error that sentenced the man she loves to death?

I confess that at this point I wasn’t caring very much. Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is a fantastic period piece, but I wasn’t knocked out by either the script or the performances, or anything else, except the soundtrack. Miles Davis always had more attitude than talent, in my opinion, but I gotta admit, Paris at night in black and white with Miles on the soundtrack? It’s a perfect fit.

Afterwords
The soundtrack to Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is available in both CD and MP3 formats. Miles is joined by Barney Wilen on tenor sax, Rene Utreger on piano, and Pierre Michelet on bass, with legendary expatriate Kenny Clarke manning the “batterie.”

Ascenseur itself is available on a classy, two-disc set from Criterion. It is my wont—and a self-satisfied and self-indulgent wont it is, too—to skip all the “extras” on DVDs these days. Too much backscratching, too many “insights.” Fortunately, Pam Grady, over at Reel.com, is, in fact, keepin’ it real, and gives us the low down on the “extras” disc, which along with “vintage” interviews with both Moreau and Malle, features an early short by Malle based on Charlie Parker’s recording of “Crazyology” (or “Crazeologie,” as it’s spelled à la français), clips from the actual recording session for the Ascenseur soundtrack, and more!

A version of this article first appeared at my blog Literature R Us.

[1] Breathless? Breathless? The correct translation, of course, is “Dude, where’s my soufflé?” But, thanks to those ham-handed Neanderthals in Hollywood, we’ll never be able to recapture that elusive Gallic essence. Damn!
[2] They didn’t have cellphones back then. Amazing!
[3] His sleek, imported ’54 Chevy! I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. Either that or a Pontiac. It’s a “pre-tailfin” car—they came in in ’55—and the idea that a ’54 Chevy could be considered glamorous strikes me as pretty funny. It does have an automatic folding roof, which is pretty cool. I must admit that I never would have imagined that a ’54 Chevy would come with such a feature.

Olympia!

It's August 15th, do you know where your unborn children are? Bombs! Chaos! Bigfoot! Chupacabras! aliens! Russia vs. Georgia and - and THE 2008 OLYMPICS in China!

China, the most deadliest of all the nations what with its crushing of spirited student leaders and beating of TIbetan monks and supplying of plastic goods at low low prices to giant faceless American behemoths like Wal*Mart. Maybe I'm biased, but the 2008 olympic games seem charged with aggro commie pomp. Methinks (based on all the latest soothsaying crackpot blogs I've been reading) that America's cockblocking of Iran, Russia and North Korea is but a smokescreen for the real menace! China and America's fundamentalist Christian voting bloc, these are the real enemies of mankind!

And to celebrate, here is Leni Riefenstahl's famous diving sequence from her 1936 film of the Berlin olympics, OLYMPIA.



There's something eerie about this film that connects (in my warped mind anyway) athletics with fascism - this rigid methodology where every movement has to be perfect - superhuman Aryan physicality and the like... you see it also in the faces of the 2008 Chinese athletes, the willing sacrifice of self into the larger social unit. They're all trying to move like automatons, to do these exercises perfectly--like machines. The idea of someone training and sweating and crying over jumping into a pool "just right" is, to put it mildly, fucked up, especially when it becomes such a national pride obsession. Riefenstahl obviously understands this and emphasizes the beauty of these human figures - she slows the footage down so that the divers hang in the air like slowly circling hawks. As the sequence moves forward she both speeds things up and slows them down even more; night falls and the divers become silhouettes, tumbling around in a cloud or extending themselves out like kites or flying Jesuses. It's gorgeous and mysterious and totally surreal, and yet also an Olympic document made by Hitler's favorite girl director!

Interestingly, I saw this same segment playing on the flatscreen monitor at my local bagel shop earlier this week, which is why I thought to present it to you here. It was folded into some long satellite fed news assemblage... the sort of thing that now plays on airplanes and taxis and subway entrances... the most inescapable of screens. "Olympic moments in history - 1936 Berlin, diving competition" was the only context for the footage; no mention of Nazis or Leni Riefenstahl, no mention of the incredibly surreal montage effects (love the dude tumbling out of liquid sky). Somehow this seemed scary and sad... like the way Chinese commercial fisherman will cut off the dorsal fins of sharks (an alleged aphrodesiac), then throw the now rudderless, bleeding bodies back into the water, still kicking and tumbling, their blood attracting more sharks until there's a feeding frenzy and the seas run commie red.

Once there was a protest against a satire about a film within a film...

I'm sure this is the fifteenth thing you've read today about the TROPIC THUNDER scandal, vis a vis "Once upon a time, there was a retard..." but if you haven't, it involves mentally handicapped groups rising to protest the film within a film "Simple Jack," which boasts the tag line, "Once upon a time... there was a retard..." A simple google will lead you to more poorly spelled criticisms than you're likely to find this side of a Britney bashing... here's some choice (but correctly spelled) outrage from a certain Steve Gorelick just to catch ya up:

Because what this whole shameful episode makes clear is that this entire promotional campaign - the posters, the web sites, the trailers, everything - made it through the entire DreamWorks production and promotion process without anyone, not one person , ever stopping to ask themselves: Sure we can say anything we want. Sure we can use the word “retard.” But do we want to? Should we? Is it right? Is it kind? Who would we hurt?


The idea behind the whole "retard" aspect of the film is, apparently (I'm also presuming having also not seen it) to satirize Hollywood's cheap Capra-esque sentimentalizing of the mentally handicapped (FOREST GUMP, I AM SAM, RAIN MAN, THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY--which also starred Stiller--anything with Jerry Lewis or Jim Carey, (pictured) etc.) I can understand, of course, being riled up over the "R" word, if you've been bullied and so forth in a society that doesn't understand you...etc. But despite a mental handicap, one should be able to see that this not as an issue of "is it kind?" but of satire. It's not Simple Jack who is being dunked here, it's those sanctimonious wheatgrassers in Tinseltown. All this backlash hooplah does is prove their low opinion of the movie-going public right--that they are too dumb to get sophisticated satire, that humor belongs in the bathroom and the mentally challenged belong on altars and podiums where we can worship their benevolent simplicity... and win Oscars!

Not to be overly patronizing, but this sort of thing is supposed to create an ironic self-reflexivity! Such intertextually self-reflexive chocolate boxing is meant to champion the thing it allegedly attacks... it's even meant to help diffuse stereotyping by calling attention to it. In that sense "Once there was a retard," works to illuminate and diffuse "subtextual" prejudice, such as the kind found in FOREST GUMP, wherein being mentally challenged is regarded as a gift, as the only way one can, perhaps, respect and grasp American's governmental policies. The straight-forward unironic way GUMP was appreciated by so many Americans was a bad bad sign... but luckily the SIMPSONS and SOUTH PARK have in the years since been slowly educating us all in the finer points of satire, most of us.... TIMMY!

To ask "is it kind?" is to ask whether artists have a right to be intelligent and subtle or must hammer every point home in didactic literal terms. Think of "Springtime for Hitler" in THE PRODUCERS... is Mel Brooks the recipient of protests because he glorifies Nazism? No, and you know why? Because it's old hat. Like Mel Brooks, Ben Stiller comes from a line of "Borscht Belt"-comedians, Jewish comedy tends towards the self-lacerating, and to make a sweeping generalization, oppressed peoples know that if you ban jokes about oppression you are halfway to becoming an oppressor yourself, so acidic--even hurtful--satire should not only be permissible but ESSENTIAL for a free society. If the Simple Jack stuff seems too extreme and vulgar, just remember that jaded mass consumer tastes have forced comedians to continually push the envelope of the socially acceptable... by now that envelope has exploded into a pulpy splatter. But we must protect and defend that splatter. Otherwise.... well, if a Forrest Gump in the White House is what these people want then... oh wait.

Moving on... I believe this whole Simple Jack scandal is being played up in the studio-backed media to smokescreen any possible African American extremist backlash (due to Robert Downey Jr's post-modern black face gambit in the same film). I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Those lovable little bastards in Hollywood know no shame. I for one however can't wait to see Tony Stark get all Superfly on yo ass when TOPIC THUNDER comes out... on DVD!

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (Guy Maddin 1995)

Canadian Guy Maddin is virtually unique among contemporary filmmakers in that despite having made nine features - including The Saddest Music in the World, Brand Upon the Brain, and My Winnipeg - he continues to churn out film shorts. Dozens of them. As he notes in this great interview, "I put all my shorts on YouTube. My distributors take them down now and then. I love my distributors, but I kinda think that shorts should be out there, even if I have to pirate them myself."

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon was commissioned by the BBC. They invited Maddin to make a short film inspired by any work of art. He chose "To Edgar Poe: The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity" (left) by the 19th Century Symbolist artist, Odilon Redon. To catalog in detail all the influences on this 4½-minute film would take longer than it does to watch it.

Plot - Mainly, a condensation of Abel Gance’s La Roue (1923) in which a railroad engineer and his son are rivals for the love of the engineer’s adopted daughter. Maddin also borrows elements from Poe’s Berenice (the teeth).

Imagery - Redon and other 19th Century Symbolists. 20th Century Surrealists like René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, and Max Ernst.

Style - Gance’s Russian-style montage. Superimpositions and other techniques borrowed from the experimental films of the late 1920s and early ‘30s (Dalí/Buñuel, Man Ray, and Joseph Cornell).

Caveat - Cannot be watched without a taste for Surrealism, and a well-developed sense of humor.

This November, VOTE JOKER!

Now more than ever, we need heroes like the Joker to show us the error of our ways. As we approach 2012, let us attempt to remember our deaths are waiting for us around the next corner, and no amount of "hear no evil see no evil" sensory deprivation, or bling wrangling, or money stock piling, is gonna save any of our asses. The Joker knows.

The most poignant moment in the new DARK KNIGHT movie is when the Joker sets fire to a giant mountain of money. The meta-textual similarity of this scene to the wasteful expenditure of the film's vast budget and its justification via the hug box office profit - all for what amounts to a big loud explosion of nothing - is eerily prescient. For DARK KNIGHT is really a big loud leftist version of DIRTY HARRY, with our sympathies reversed. We can imagine Batman rushing in to save that burning money, cradling it to his arms and screaming to the sky: "Damn you, fire! Damn yooooou! This money had just one more day 'til retirement!" Meanwhile we look on in horror, not at the burning money, but because we realize the Joker is right... he's the only sane man in Gotham and that the only "true" soul in this dark mess.

In the sleepy adolescent dream world of cinematic Gotham, only the Joker is awake. He's the only one with inner Zen stillness and joi de vivre, the only one not "hypnotized by their "life story." No matter how loudly and harshly he's screamed at (Batman growls and shouts until he's hoarse), Joker never loses his mellow gold cool; he's already at peace with himself, with his mania. He's in the flow like one of those old drunken masters in the Shaw Brothers films, or Colonels Kilgore and Kurtz in APOCALYPSE NOW.

Everyone else in the KNIGHT is, for lack of a better word, becalmed. They can't stop fretting about their possessions (and this includes wives and children - "my wife! He's got my wife!"), locked in identification with forms, what the Buddhists call "samsara." The Joker stands alone, a Tyler Durden in a world of pre-explosion Ed Nortons; he's Che Guevara divided by Hannibal Lechter in a sea of Batistas and Dr. Chiltons. What did Tyler say in FIGHT CLUB? "It's only after we've lost everything that we can do anything." What was it Kilgore said in APOCALYPSE NOW? "That smell, that napalm smell, smelled like... victory."

Take out your notebook, Batman, and learn what your money can't buy.

(This rant continues on my acidemic site, linked to here by request!)

3 L.A. Links

At the L.A. Weekly, a story about the making and promotion of David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and about the musician, Peter Ivers, who composed the unforgettable song, "In Heaven," lipsynched by the Lady in the Radiator (above).

Again at the L.A. Weekly, a piece about neglected director Richard Quine, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and about his troubled relationship with Kim Novak, pictured in Quine’s Strangers When We Meet (above).

[Thanks to Tom Sutpen for the image.]

Finally, via the Los Angeles Times - UCLA will be screening Charles Laughton Directs 'Night of the Hunter', two hours of carefully restored outtakes showing Laughton directing Robert Mitchum, et al. in his one-shot Expressionist masterpiece. Longer than the film itself!

ADDENDUM 8/11: Joe D'Augustine reports on the Laughton program here.

We Predicted It - FASTER, BRITNEY! SPEAR! SPEAR!

On December 4, 2006, we (jokingly) prophesied that Britney Spears would co-star with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan in a remake of Russ Meyer’s exploitation classic, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Our prophecy now turns out to be at least one-third true. Britney apparently IS going to be starring in a Pussycat remake – directed by Quentin Tarantino, no less.

You can read about it in the U.K. Telegraph, a story tastefully entitled Britney Spears to Play Lesbian Killer in Quentin Tarantino Film.

ADDENDUM 8/8: Access Hollywood says the story is fake here.

Smoke on, mighty Lohan!

I'm always happy to see pics of the very cool Lohan-Ronson team, but the blog who posted them, Dlisted misses a chance to champion free spirit, and instead takes the moral high ground, chastising the gals for being greasy and gay: "This time they're spreading the gayelle cheer in Miami. And by "cheer" I mean fleas. Lesbian fleas."

Someone should really give those poor bitter dlist dearies a hug, or a good shag, so they stop hating on all the people gettin' some. Bashing pop/film stars for how they're dressed when they're just trying to walk and smoke down the street? Come on! IRON MAIDEN T-shirt?! Sorry, but even my redneck brother is cool in his Iron Maiden t-shirt and Lindsay and Sam are cooler than all of dlist put together. Don't hate the players, dlist, hate the game.

Especially uncool of dlist is the vulgar cunnilingual commentary and questioning (which common human decency forbids my repeating). Dlists' rote sexual disgust bespeaks a lack of genuine experience (maybe they should try some instead of sneering like frightened republicans at a pot party); most of us stop saying mean stuff about that which we do not understand when we're in the 5th grade, unless we're in a frat... or the KKK, or the republican party, or otherwise not gettin' any. Luckily, as an antidote to those trash talkers is the always A-list Kim Morgan, who notes on her MSN blog:

I don't care if she probably borrowed the shirt from Ms. Ronson and hasn't fully experienced "The Number of the Beast." My entreaty? More sexy girls in Iron Maiden tee-shirts working it with their Brandon/Teena gal pals! More! It's a new world people. Wake up!

Amen, Kim, and can we also get a few more bloggers like you?! More champions of the true rebel spirit and less of these Norman Bates-ish slander mongers?! I know those dlisters have to be foul for the hit count & cheek factor, but Lindsay deserves better; maybe she's never fully experienced "the Number of the Beast," but you know damn well know she counts!

Jack Hill Speaks

Director Jack Hill took the time to send along his thoughts on Noah Berlatsky’s article “Men in Women-in-Prison: Masochism, Feminism, Fetish” in the most recent issue of Bright Lights. Hill, as many of you know, is arguably the major architect of the women-in-prison genre, with such seminal credits as The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, and The Woman Hunt. He’s also responsible for other important female-centered exploitation films including Switchblade Sisters, Coffy, and Foxy Brown; as well as the infamous Spider Baby and Mondo Keyhole. Here’s his email to Noah that he agreed to share with BLAD readers.

Jack Hill: Your review is, as usual, very astute and incisive. Only, re The Big Doll House, I don't want to take credit — or blame, depending on your point of view — for ideas that were not mine. Actually, Stephanie Rothman developed the script with Don Spencer, a writer of her choice. Stephanie wanted to direct the picture herself, and she and her husband Charles Swartz tried their best to get me off the picture. Fortunately for me, Roger Corman had previously engaged my services on the project and was bound by that agreement. I was then handed the script and instructed to go to the Philippines to shoot it. I personally thought the script was a mess, and immediately set about rewriting it, and the rewriting continued throughout the production. To this day I can't separate out everything that I contributed from the elements that were given to me, some of which, frankly, I couldn't find better alternatives for and felt that I was just stuck with. The only things I do want to take unequivocal credit for on the record are Bobby [Roberta] Collins' lines, "Get it up or I'll cut it off," which invariably brought down the house; and "Hah! Now I'm in my own natural element," when she falls into the mud, which, strangely, didn't even get many laughs. And then, a lot of Sid Haig's business, of course.

Re The Big Bird Cage: I had carte blanche on just about everything and therefore have no one else to blame for whatever didn't work. The film was criticized for being homophobic, yet had its longest run in a theater in a gay neighborhood in Hollywood.

Re The Swinging Cheerleaders: I had the very valuable creative help of my producer partner John Prizer and the very talented writer David Kidd — the two being at opposite ends of the political spectrum. No, I didn't intend the film to be conservative; on the contrary, I wanted to make fun of both ends of the spectrum — but, I admit, especially the imbecile left. FWIW, when the football player beats up the hippy, audiences in Texas invariably cheered — although probably not for the same reasons that I enjoyed the scene.

Re Mondo Keyhole: Needless to say, I was quite restricted in content by the guy who was putting up the money, but also did some dumb things — as well as some things that I still think were pretty clever — by choice. But somehow, the film has acquired a cult following on home video, so I no longer feel the need to disavow it.

BTW, I was very much into Deleuze myself at one time, although not the specific works that you reference, to my best recollection. I found Heidegger much more rewarding on the subject of Nietzsche, for example, although I must say Nietzsche and his ilk never interested me much; once you've been exposed to the writings of the ancient sages of Kashmir, all that 19th-century western crap seems rather puerile and vapid, frankly — except perhaps for the late Schelling, IMHO. But then, Schelling's brothers-in-law were sanskritists and so I presume that Schelling himself had access at least to the basics of the true philosophy, and I find indications of that in his work.

Re: Switchblade Sisters: About the rape scene: It was patterned specifically on a similar situation and actual scene in The Fountainhead (both book and movie), which as I'm sure you know was written by a rabid radical conservative woman (as a kind of personal in-joke). I rest my case.

BTW, in November of this year, McFarland Publishers will be issuing the first book (above) on Jack Hill and his work. It’s already listed on Amazon.

And the Seventh Lamb opened the Seventh Seal and... Harpo Spoke

What with the Edgar Mitchell announcement of last week and the Montauk monster floating around in the surf and the news of the LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT sighting, it seems only natural that somewhere, somehow, there should be an mp3 online of Harpo Marx speaking, thus wrapping up all the enigmas of the first century of cinema and its lowly cousin, verite (or "reality").

The shock would be greater I imagine if we actually saw Harpo speak--in full costume--in a clip. especially as this deep, jazz announcer-style voice seems out of place being attached to the perennially young anarchist Harpo we know and adore from the films. At any rate, go visit this amazing site and know the truth... if you dare!

A Mad Tea Party - Alice in Wonderland (Jonathan Miller 1966)

When it comes to Lewis Carroll adaptations, Tim Burton’s upcoming 3-D Alice has a lot of competition. The IMDB lists 24 versions of Alice in Wonderland, including Burton’s, and that’s not counting at least 4 or 5 versions of Through the Looking Glass.

I have two favorite live-action adaptations of Alice. One is Paramount’s 1933 version, surrealistically designed by avant-garde art director William Cameron Menzies, and starring practically everyone on the Paramount lot at the time - Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields, Edna May Oliver, Charlie Ruggles, Jack Oakie - all of them wearing elaborate costumes and makeups that make them virtually unrecognizable. (Is that really Cary Grant in the Mock Turtle costume?)

The other is Jonathan Miller’s 1966 BBC adaptation, directed in a stark black-and-white style reminiscent of early Roman Polanski and other Eastern European filmmakers of that era. In the clip above, we see Peter Cook as the Mad Hatter, Wilfred Lawson as the Dormouse, and Michael Gough as the March Hare - none of them wearing animal costumes. In contrast to Disney’s and other manic versions, Miller’s tea party scene is played with a sense of absurdist existential ennui - as if the participants were all Waiting for Godot. The once-in-a-lifetime cast also includes Michael Redgrave, Peter Sellers, Sir John Gielgud, and Leo McKern (as the Duchess). The score is by Ravi Shankar.

Miller’s 1966 Alice in Wonderland is available on DVD. The 1933 Paramount version, alas, is not, but wouldn’t it be great if they did release it, ideally in a box set with Paramount’s almost-as-surreal W.C. Fields vehicles, Million Dollar Legs and International House.

Bright Lights 61 posted

Issue 61 of Bright Lights Film Journal just went live.

from the editor

This time the dream's on us

features foyer

Counter Clockwise: Or Lay Quiet Awhile with Ed and Id Molotov — The Confused Machinery of Kubrick's and Burgess's A Clockwork Orange Re-examined

Men in Women-in-Prison: Masochism, Feminism, Fetish — "Nobody wants to pay to be castrated anymore."

articles antechamber

The Misery Business: In Which Your Agent Will Be Lauren Bacall — And your ankles will still be broken

To Slap a Dame: Sexual Violence in the Age of Reason — "He's the only one that enacts incest with one hand and bats away communists like flies from a dung pile with the other."

Psycho: Queering Hitchcock's Classic — We have met the cross-dressing closeted maniac, and he is us

iron man x2

Iron Man Takes the Reigns: Robert Downey, Jr., Lookin' Healthy — Racist and slow-moving, with occasional cool shit

"Heckuva Job, Tony!" Racism and Hegemony Rage in Iron Man — Kill a few Arabs and enjoy your cheeseburger

recent cinema roundabout

Across the Universe: Julie Taymor Made the Most Spectacular Film of the Year — Too bad nobody noticed

Think Globally, Role-play Locally: On Olivier Assayas' Thriller Boarding Gate — "Its failures are what make it so watchable."

Haneke’s Games: On Funny Games (2007, 1997) — "Should we enjoy being manipulated?"

Ghosts of the Present: On Aditya Assarat's Wonderful Town — "The film is both a bittersweet love story and a memorial to the tsunami victims."

the empty guest room

George Sanders: A Mitigated Cad — "Where on the screen I am invariably a sonofabitch, in life I am a dear, dear boy."

interrogation alcove

The Kids Are Not All Right: Larry Clark on Wassup Rockers and More — "For me it was like, How do I manipulate this kid so he can do this and he's comfortable?, which is all part of directing."

Paradise Betrayed: Talking with Terence Davies about Of Time and the City — "You can't stop time. It stops you."

Object in Mirror May Be Closer Than It Appears: Stuart Gordon Talks about Horror, the Absurd, and Stuck — "These two people are stuck in life."

The Mole Man: Going Underground with Alejandro Jodorowsky — "I think Spielberg is the son from when Walt Disney fucked Minnie Mouse."

"The Best Jewish Cowboy": An Interview with James Caan — "Hard times will make a monkey eat red peppers."

cassavetes x2: faces and the killing of a chinese bookie

Where Do We Find Ourselves? John Cassavetes' Faces Turns 40 — "How can one be a maverick independent filmmaker, and be an attentive, loving husband and father?"

A Real Director's Cut: Cassavetes Edits Himself in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie — "It is the subjective fever dream of a psyche carving fantasy out of reality as he goes."

revival room

Blood, Sweat, and Canvas: How Barton Fink Can Set You Free — "All the world's a hell ten feet square"

What's Your Edition Number? The Replicanting of Blade Runner: Final Cut — "There's a whole postmodern hall of mirrors you can wander through with the idea of a digitally re-colored 'final cut' of a 10-year-old 'director's cut' of a 26-year-old movie."

Facism, American Style: Revisiting Kazan and Schulberg's A Face in the Crowd — "Goodnight, you stupid idiots. Goodnight, you miserable slobs."

Plumbing the Depths of Capitalism: On Force of Evil — "It was like going down to the bottom of the world."

Homeless on the Range: The Lusty Men and the "Great American Search" — "He's always holding something back."

film festival flying buttress

Getting Better All the Time: The 2008 Tribeca Film Festival — Just lose the red carpet

bright sights

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: La Roue, The Last Emperor, Lost in Beijing, Popeye the Sailor, Satantango, Vampyr — An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

little stabs

Little Stabs of Homo Happiness (and Horror): Random Short Reviews of the Worthy and the Worthless in Recent Queer TV and Cinema — "The gays — they make too much big crazy!"

hiding in the stacks

Harlan Ellison's Watching, by Harlan Ellison