More Than Meets The Mogwai

IMAGINARIUM of Vacant Dreams: An Interview with Terry Gilliam

2010-06-16T17:56:00.001-07:00

2010-02-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: An Interview with Critic/Director Gerald Peary

2009-11-17T22:38:00.001-08:00

Sarris at Work

The following is the full transcript of an interview conducted in early November with Gerald Peary, Boston Phoenix film critic and the man behind the documentary, FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM.

Aaron Graham: What initiated the project?

Gerald Peary: Many-a-year ago, at the Toronto Film Festival, (Canadian documentarian) Ron Mann and I were at lunch - I actually worked as an informal story editor for him. He’d been impressed by my ability, so he made this offer that he would executive produce something if I had a topic that I would like to make a movie about.

Immediately, I was excited and told him I wanted to make something about barbecuing – that could be my first feature. And he asked me what I meant. I told him I wanted to make a film about barbecue and these guys who get up in the middle of the night to go into pits and use special sauces, and to document this phenomenon that happens all around the world.

He said, “Nah, I don’t think so. That’s not a film you should make. What you should make is a film about film critics, because that’s what you really know.”

So, Ron was the person who came up with the idea and was the original executive producer. But, since I am an American, at some point we ran into money issues, because he was hoping to fund it through Canada.

With him as executive producer, we shot the first few months of the film, and then I bought the footage and continued on making the movie myself.

AG: And then you had to continue with very off-the-cuff interviews?

GP: Well, it was at that point that the film became very, very low budget.

In the U.S., as you know, there’s no government money for anything, as opposed to a movie that could be funded in Canada. Here it’s completely private funds. You can’t get a cent from any city or state.

My wife, Amy Geller, a producer on the film, would just find a film festival with lots of critics and we would go with a camera and talk to people.

I would get the festival to cover me being there, and then she would arrive, sharing the hotel room. We couldn’t go to a fest where we weren’t actually put up by the festival itself.

When Ron was involved, we actually had more money so we could plan for a bit. The first thing in the movie is the end of the movie -- inside the World Trade Center, for a meeting of the New York Film Critics, a few months before 9/11.

Then, we went to Toronto and Montreal with Ron in support and did a bunch of interviews there. And, still with Ron in charge, we did a Chicago shoot where we interviewed Ebert, Michael Wilmington, and Jonathan Rosenbaum. We followed it up with one 2-day New York shoot with Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, and Stuart Klawan – at that point, it broke down.

That was the footage we had and the rest we just had to scramble to get.

We went to SXSW several times, and whoever was there we filmed, but the biggest one was when we went to Cannes and sort of stayed in this crummy place several miles away. Amy was camera and I was - not sound, but the questioner - so we’d walk with this camera and heavy equipment two miles to Cannes every morning. I don’t know if you notice, but there are a lot of scenes shot in this awful red room, with huge glaring windows, and people and their waiters clacking in the back. That was the only place we were allowed to shoot in Cannes – a press room. If someone came into that room, we interviewed them. And if nobody came in, we just didn’t interview that day.

So there were critics who never got in there, and who were actually kind of pissed off later that I never talked to them. So it was pretty arbitrary - it’s not that we could choose the people, and I’m sure there are 10-15 other articulate critics that could have made the film if they were in the right place at the right moment.

AG: Did you try to arrange an interview with (New York Press critic) Armond White?

GP: Yes, actually. Armond was on the next wave when Ron left the project. We were going to do two more days, but when Ron left, Armond couldn’t do it. But he certainly would have been a really interesting person to have in the movie – the loose cannon of all critics, who will say exactly what he thinks in the moment, very spontaneous and not at all guarded. It would have been some great colorful stuff.

AG: And there was no question of doing something with Pauline Kael, as she was quite sickly at the time you began?

GP: Yes, she had Parkinson’s when I began and was quite ill, so I would never try to arrange something. But I met her twice in my life – once, when she came through Boston and sat in a hotel room for the day as critics talked to her. I spent an hour and a half and she was very cordial, and once in New York, she invited me along to dinner with a lot of other people, and that was also cordial. Those are my two meetings with Pauline.

But we used TV footage and interviews that are rare and people just haven’t seen, including the McNeil-Lehrer report with Woody Allen. She has a daughter named Gina James who cooperated with the film and provided pictures of Pauline Kael and knew about this really obscure interview for South Carolina Educational television – so we contacted the TV station and got this interview that nobody’s seen in forever, since it first aired.

AG: And Sarris?

GP: We simply went to Sarris’s apartment in New York.

People watch the movie and can’t figure out whether I’m with Sarris or Kael - where I fall on, but the answer is: I was a Sarrisite when I was a young student at NYU. There was Sarris every week in Village Voice, and The American Cinema came out around that time. He was my first influence. I read Kael a few years later and she was the second person. But I’m not a Paulette, but I’m a sorta Sarrisite.

Not that I don’t think Kael is terrific - I’m just not an acolyte like a lot of others.

AG: One of the most intriguing moments in the film for me was J. Hoberman speaking out about Kael, and the idea in that in actually reading her reviews, you could tell she could see from the auteurist lens.

GP: Yes - that she was even more of an auteurist, which is probably true. The people who are associated as being Paulettes were much more vehement about the directors they cared about: De Palma, people like Spielberg - a key figure - and Altman. But odd ones like Ron Shelton and people like Philip Kaufman, who are often associated with Pauline’s worldview. They’re championed by these same people.

AG: Do you wish the section on Manny Farber could be a bit longer?

GP: Farber was one person who I couldn’t interview. I don’t know him, but it seems every other critic on earth seemed to be his pal, but I never met the guy.

I talked to his wife Patricia, who collaborated on his later stuff, and she was trying to get him to work with me.

Once I just called his number and I think he said two words on the phone – “Go away”. There was - at one point - the idea to go to his house and have him interviewed, but it didn’t work out. But I also think he was elderly and perhaps not speaking with quite the same fluidity – but this is just a total guess. So we ended up using the San Francisco Film Fest footage. There’s missing footage of him speaking at Telluride with Jimmy Stewart, from maybe ten – fifteen years ago, but we couldn’t locate it. That would have been great.

AG: What kind of extras can we expect on the DVD?

GP: It’s just come out, and there are 40 minutes of extras: my favorite is John Waters talking about his favorite gay critic, Parker Tyler, an author who began in the 1940s. His stuff is completely inscrutable, but I love inscrutable. Waters says that you can’t be gay unless you know Parker Tyler.

We also have more Ebert on the thumbs up and down way of reviewing. And more Stanley Kaufmann, the dean of criticism, who’s in his 90s and still writing for The New Republic. All in all, maybe 40 more minutes.

AG: Do you foresee a day in the future when criticism will only exist online?

GP: I’m afraid so. Not that I’m criticizing the writers online, it’s just that I’ve been a print person my whole life. I’m used to sitting in the morning in my big chair with the paper and a cup of coffee – and, to me, that’s what life is all about. But I think it’s very obvious we’re moving away from print to an internet world. That’s the reality. There are just too many damn critics on the web and, although there are some really, really good ones - including young ones – there’s just an ocean of reviewing that’s very hard to swim towards your way to critics who mean something. To me, the most important thing is to get to people to go to movies. Maybe the internet works for niche and horror movies, but the influence just isn’t there like it used to be. And that makes me sad.

I’m despaired about how little reviews matter, but the Boston Phoenix has its share of erudite critics who know so much that it’s a shame it’s not influential.

Word count has gone down as the paper shrank, like every other. In its heyday, like, say, 1978, the Phoenix was the paper where the Pauline Kael style review of 2000 words was the norm. And there’d be a few of them every week. And now the lead review is probably 1600 characters or less than that. The others are down to 200 words or less.

I don’t blame the Phoenix they’re trying so hard, and they’re an independent paper. It’s not part of a chain, so it’s impossibly hard to keep it going, but the owners are doing just that.

AG: What would you say are the prerequisites of being a strong critic?

GP: The biggest thing is be an incredibly good writer, which is often forgottenabout. And to have your own style. But the biggest word for me is “contextualize”. People who can see movies and put it in terms of history or politics or literature and the other arts, also in terms of filmmakers and director’s careers or genres.

There’s a great quote from Richard Linklater in the film – about how he can smell in the second paragraph of a review if the reviewer’s got it – a knowledge about his movie, his career, genre, and other movies. That’s what you need to do. Whether it’s good or bad is oftentimes the least interesting or important part for me.

AG: Who do you read yourself?

GP: I’m in Boston, so I’m very lucky. We have the Globe, with two very good critics: Wesley Morris and Ty Burr. And then on the Phoenix - my paper - Peter Keough. I also read the NY Times with A.O. Scott and Manhola Dargis, plus the Village Voice with Hoberman, but that’s just the start. Then I get the magazines: The New Yorker with Denby and Lane, and The Nation, with Klawan. After I read the print critics, I’ll investigate certain movies on the web, like Rosenbaum, who’s moved his column to the web.

AG: And you’re self-distributing the film yourself?

GP: Yes, we’re self-distributing by choice, which is not what the history of the world has been. Usually you get a distributor and kiss the distributor and walk away relieved. We’ve had interest, but we figured we’d do it ourselves, through AE Films, which is myself and my wife Amy.

[Finally, after the interview ended, Peary has some thoughts about the Canadian city in which I presently reside.]

GP: I’ve been trying forever to Winnipeg. I’m proud to be one of the first critics to write articles on John Paizs, and some stuff on Guy Maddin and (animator) Richard Condie. And there’s a day a billion years ago when the Marx Brothers were in town and went to a theater and saw Chaplin on stage. So there’s something special about Winnipeg. Some day I hope to get to there.

For even more information on FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM, go to: http://www.fortheloveofmovies.net/

Nigel Kneale's BEASTS: During Barty's Party (Don Leaver, 1976) UK

2009-10-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

I can’t think of anything more pitch-perfect to put someone in the Halloween mood than British TV auteur Nigel Kneale’s 1976 limited-run anthology series, “Beasts”.

I’ve binged on all six episodes this week, all of which uphold a shrewd, shared, (if interpretive) purview that the obvious title hints at. In mixed combos, each story contrasts man’s inherent, under-the-surface bestial nature alongside a supernaturalized member of the animal kingdom that has somehow learned to attack back.

[Digression: well, all of them apart from “The Dummy” -– where an actor in a monster suit goes berserk while filming a horror movie sequel on a Bray Studios-esque soundstage; the underlying cause of his madness is his discovery that the man who ran away with his wife and child has landed a bit part. In “The Dummy”, Kneale only concerns himself with the increasing lunacy of this mad individual and, for once, the overriding emotions are not due to the constant impingement of omnipotent creature(s), whether real, imagined or of a more ghostlike nature.]

Back to “During Barty’s Party”: Roger and Angie Truscott (Anthony Bate, Elizabeth Sellars) are an older married couple who reside not-so-contently in the countryside. Returning home late from the office, Roger finds Angie frantically unnerved due to the combination of what she suspects was an afternoon nightmare and the possible threat of an idling automobile parked just outside their home. (Roger reasons the car’s just packed with teenagers-on-the-make, but a more sinister rationale is later offered.)

Instantly disagreeable with one another, they begin an unreasonable feud that mounts as the horror element is appended.

The two tune into the radio call-in show of the title -- Barty’s Party –- and listen to its self-satisfied host addressing what seems to be the start of a plague of vermin. Much to Roger’s swelling belligerence, this leads Angie to the conclusion that this may be the source of the constant scratching underneath the floorboards.

Eventually, Roger will relent and admit that he, too, hears rats and Angie will call into Barty’s program, alert the host of her increasingly deafening problem -- before being systematically cut off when the rats chew through her telephone wires. Mishearing her last name (Truscott becomes Prescott) and only getting the general whereabouts of her address, the host can do nothing but plead on-air for Angie to telephone back, before briefly entertaining the notion that it was nothing but a put-on.

This leaves the Truscotts with a long night of awfulness ahead of them -– as the seemingly multiplying “super-rats” joked about by Barty scratch and masticate their way through to the living room.

“During Barty’s Party”, like the rest of “Beasts”, relies on theatricality in both the exaggerated acting and restricted sense of staging. Performances are embellished from the get-go, eventually becoming ecstatically crazed when the rampaging terror or otherworldly presence intrudes on the hapless people populating Kneale’s tales.

Perhaps out of place for Kneale is the witty use of pop music, with Lulu and The Luvvers’ cover of “Shout” sounding out from a Pye label 45 to drown out the incessant noises of the scraping of the pests. Some other rock tracks drone out during the radio show, but none have the impact of that initial blast of Lulu’s overexcited, raspy vocal stylizations.

The rats may never be glimpsed and the 50-minute episode never strays away from the downstairs area of the homestead, but there’s still an adequate sense of fear that breeds alone from the intensification of the sound design.

Though not as revolutionary as his Quatermass quartet of television plays, “During Barty’s Party” and “Beasts” is still top-form Kneale. It’s astounding to think that it’s only recently resurfaced in the past few years after originally airing in the 70s, all thanks to a Region 2 2-disc set (that thankfully includes PDF files of the Kneale teleplays).

If you’re to discount “Night Gallery” due to many of its uneven, tired conceptual entries (Serling’s own “Midnight Never Ends”, anyone?), “Beasts” may prove to be the most consistently note-perfect and thought-provoking and well-written anthology series of the 1970s, all thanks to the solitary, diabolical pen of Kneale and the astuteness into the more perturbed and hypocritical characteristics of humanity that his teleplays bear out.

Brief Notes on "Les Redoutables": Coup de vice (Claude Chabrol, 2001)

2009-08-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

Written by relative neophytes Stéphane Gateau and Mathieu Guillermo, this lightly likable 8-minute segment – directed by Chabrol in-between NIGHTCAP [Merci pour le chocolat] (2000) and THE FLOWER OF EVIL [La fleur du mal] (2003) -- is all about subverting logical screen evidence, as a woman motorist (Sylvie Granotier) is put off by the inappropriate chatter of a hitchhiking man (Didier Bénureau) who sells screwdrivers out of a suitcase. The middle-aged paunchy fellow just can’t stop his misogynistic babblings about his horrid ex-wife and women at large, his time spent as a butcher (or, LE BOUCHER), nor can he refuse stealing glances at Grantoier’s bare neck. After a radio broadcast warns of a Screwdriver Madman on the loose, the man even postulates on the artery that the killer must have severed in order to induce death. Of course, in the macabre twist, the woman turns out to be the psychopath, and the man an unfortunate victim of his Big Mouth. She allows the corpse to take the blame post-mortem, thanks to the considerable coincidental proof located on the body and her ruse to get him dressed as the suspect.

Chabrol re-uses the audio of the hitchhiker’s vocal intonations of butchered pig-bleats on the cut just as the woman strikes with her unconventional weapon. Disassociating shot: the skin of the neck, seen from the hitchhiker’s perspective, the first one to break from the monotony of impartial shot-reverse-shot of the two’s dialogue. I guess this would be comparable to a minor “Hitchcock Presents”, an allusion Chabrol would no doubt favor.

James Ellroy's "Blood on the Moon" (1984)

2009-08-04T22:53:00.000-07:00

“If his seventeen years as a policeman had taught him anything, it was that your expectations diminished as you realized how thoroughly fucked-up the bulk of humanity was, and that you had to go on a hundred seemingly contradictory discourses to keep the major dreams alive”.

Now, if only James A. Harris had kept this crucial description in mind for COP (1988), his adaptation of James Ellroy's "Blood on the Moon" -- the book that would introduce the run-ragged, womanizing, generally all-around fascist detective sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, a character that would further be the subject of Ellroy's pen for two other rousing criminal manhunts, "Because The Night" and "Suicide Hill" -- his film would be better by tenfold.

Richard Matheson: "TV Legends" Interview

2009-07-20T22:30:00.000-07:00

Throughout the course of this 7-part interview with short story writer/novelist/screenwriter Matheson, he waxes poetic (if uneasy and uncomfortable in the first part) on just about every one of his main projects, from I AM LEGEND to THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, and on to DUEL and TRILOGY OF TERRORS.

If you've got three-and-a-half hours to spend, you could do far worse than:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twv0UCvZkJY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf98Ch1awZQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOvQSk8wlWo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGWm1WxrYt8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyPQkzrcGMU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I56MEYl2h7I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZmRG7b0UFQ

(I would embed, but the footage has been disabled on request -- with such stunning material, I can understand why.)

Paul Wendkos and THE LEGEND OF LIZZIE BORDEN (1975)

2009-05-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

In Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi’s auteurist study “The American Vein: Directors and Directions in Television”, the writers describe Paul Wendkos’ best work as “having a clinical detachment that prevents any easy transference onto the characters. It’s as if we’re viewing them as insects under a microscope.” While the authors may refer to THE LEGEND OF LIZZIE BORDEN as being a failure (while contending that it’s still an interesting one), this crucial precept is still firmly in place here. In Wendkos’ television movie, he presents a rather sobering character study of the supposed (if likely) hatchet murderer from Fall River, Massachusetts, played here in a career re-defining role by Bewitched’s Elizabeth Montgomery.

Part courtroom drama, part foray into the basic psychology of the character, BORDEN really gets down to business during its last act, when screenwriter William Bast (HAMMERHEAD) has some fun with facts in this Edgar-winning teleplay and divulges that Borden (Montgomery) really did methodically slaughter her father (played by Fritz Weaver) and stepmother Abby (Helen Craig). Presupposing that Borden removed her clothing before picking up the axe, Wendkos visualizes a tour-de-force sequence in which Borden acts out the defining moment: the fateful weapon coming down as refracted flashes of history are scattered in front of our eyes – skirmishes of past arguments and never forgotten punished acts due to childhood disobedience.

It’s heightened, it’s intricate, it’s galvanizing, and it’s unadulterated Wendkos, calling to mind the best of his early crime features, THE MEPHISTO WALTZ and even his First Season episodes of “The Invaders”.

Sarris may have relegated him to the Oddities, One-Shots and Newcomers category in 1968, correctly assuming the influence of Orson Welles (in particular: KANE and TOUCH OF EVIL). It’s just that it took some time after ’68 (aka: the 1970s) for Wendkos to come to grips and assimilate any of those borrowed stylistic flourishes. And, for a time, flourish he did.

Masochistic Merriment: NIGHT WORLD (Hobart Henley, 1932)

2009-04-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

A snappy, concise (58 minutes!) pre-code from Universal with several main attractions, first and foremost being Boris Karloff as the perverse, merciless ‘Happy’ MacDonald, owner of a prohibition-era nightclub with the obvious name of Happy’s Place.

Adding to the darkly comic fun is an unsympathetic performance by actress-later-gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and an early stylized, if predictable, dance number by Busby Berkeley.

Set over the course of one extended evening, NIGHT WORLD’s ostensible (though immobilized) hero is Happy’s regular Michael Rand (Lew Ayres), the son of a cold-blooded matriarch (Hedda Hopper!) who’s been acquitted for the murder of her husband / Michael’s father.

Suspecting Ruth Taylor (Mae Clarke) to be his father’s former mistress, Rand aims a few barbed comments her way before relenting to her charms after she convinces him that she’d just been a good friend to his deceased dad. After a tense, terse confrontation with Hopper, Rand and Taylor attempt to make their escape out of the dreary, boozy atmosphere and onto a new life.

With his neatly trimmed moustache, Karloff surveys his patrons with glee, engaging in casual conversation and in-jokes, even lying about the whereabouts of one of his female customers who had been there earlier in the week with another man that’s not her husband. His joviality is but a charade though, as his wife, Mrs. Mac (Dorothy Revier), is carrying on an affair of her own. When he’s accosted by gunpoint in the finale by a couple of his former booze bootleggers, watch the almost masochistic merriment he takes in being shot to death – just as long as his wife is by his side, getting her just desserts.

George Raft’s Ed Powell gets to be as mean a bastard as he wants to be, running the gamut from insulting the size of an older chorus girl’s ass to abruptly cutting off conversations he doesn’t want to be having.

Comical folly is represented by a drunk, played by Bert Roach, repeatedly asking characters for a ride home to Schenectady (including querying a fey gay man and a foreigner, to no avail) and a black Doorman, played by Clarence Muse, who marvels and rhapsodizes all too briefly about the swinging patrons of the club as they enter and leave the swank location. Although the portrait of the latter is surprisingly inoffensive and even remotely noble considering the period in which the picture was made, it’s unfortunate that the filmmakers more than make up for it by having a black woman the butt of a horribly unpleasant joke by Raft.

There's also a rather random callback to Karloff's most famous role: reacting to Roach's face after it's been scribbled on by a couple of off-hours girls, the gay man declares him Frankenstein.

NIGHT WORLD’s heroes and villains all partake in either suspected or real infidelities, from Karloff’s put-upon owner on down. Happy’s is a place where women will leave their husbands with the bill while they go outside to cavort in cars with their boyfriends. The nightclub ambiance of seedy sex and illegal drinking fuels these seemingly unending evenings.

The story’s by the combined team of Allen Rivkin and P.J. Wolfson, with the film marking the first writing credit of either. Both would sustain careers in the industry until the early 1960s on a variety of assignments that couldn’t be said to be defining achievements. Still, with such capableness and journeyman adaptability on such a sheer amount of diverse projects, their work speaks for itself.

Richard Schayer, the obvious veteran of the three, is credited as the screenwriter. Although best known as one of the two Story progenitors on Karl Freund’s THE MUMMY, Schayer seemed to specialize in westerns. Born in 1880, he’d end his career in the 1940s and early 1950s on uninspired B fare for actor George Montgomery, from Phil Karlson’s THE TEXAS RANGERS (1951) to THE LONE GUN (Ray Nazarro, 1954).

Director Henley was a silent film actor turned director. NIGHT WORLD would mark his second last feature, even though he was but 45 at the time of its filming. It’s just as well – whatever sparks of ingenuity NIGHT WORLD has going for it has little to do with Henley’s tepid staging.

Auteurs and TV -- Incident at a Corner (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

2009-03-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

Hitchcock’s sole foray into color for episodic television came with the hour-long variety series “Ford Startime”; it was filmed roughly a week after PSYCHO and aired the same year on April 5, 1960.

Centering on a nasty, untrue rumor that works overtime in North Hollywood (a street sign for Radford Ave. is prominently displayed in the titular occurrence, see below), Hitchcock opens Charlotte Armstrong’s story in an inventive way: by showing the rather simple event of a woman disobeying a manned traffic sign from vastly different vantage points, revealing a second set of observers only in the third cinematic re-telling. It’s the explicit antithesis of RASHOMON as the events stay the same; just one solitary detail’s been occluded from the overall picture.

Angle on Incident # 2 (#3, below, to the left).

The incident, as recounted, has to do with a well-heeled, “officious” woman, Mrs. Tawley (Leora Dana), as she ignores an elderly crossing guard, James Medwick (Paul Hartman) and his outstretched, flailing arms protesting her to stop in order to allow a teacher, Grimes (Jerry Paris), to safely pass. She’s late to her PTA meeting, and so ignores Medwick’s proclamations; Grimes doesn’t seem to mind either way, instead commentating warily to Medwick about her official position for the school. The two shrug it off once she exits.

Hitchcock lets us observe this exchange play out three times in unhurried long-shots that move into mediums, with the audio being identical each time. Firstly, he focuses on the car as it reaches its parking spot; secondly, Hitch favors the jaunty stroll of Grimes, using a conveniently placed stop sign to obscure the mysterious second parties and their automobile, and thirdly, across the street as the middle-aged man, Harry (Jack Albertson), looks on. His companion, an older redhead whose name we later learn is Georgia (Eve McVeagh), rushes into their home, undetected and clearly concerned as to whether the participants in the minor scuffle have noticed her. They haven’t.

Fade out, and commercial break.

Pat (Peppard) and Jean (Miles) interview Grimes (Paris), a teacher.

Once Mr. Medwick arrives home, we’re introduced to what will become the unofficial detectives of the piece, soon-to-be-married couple (and Medwick’s daughter) Jean (Vera Miles) and Pat Laurence (George Peppard). As a wry nod to Hitchcock’s playful device of re-showing the incident times three, Jean is a geometry tutor, going over mathematical angles with Ron (Warren Berlinger), the teenaged son of Mrs. Tawley. A phone call is placed by the latter, all off-screen, demanding Ron to leave for home and to sever ties with Jean’s skillful tutoring. Jean’s naturally upset by this unforeseen turn-of-events, figuring a misunderstanding somewhere, but Pat comforts her with notions that everybody gets fired, sooner or later.

Later that night, during the course of a birthday celebration for Mr. Medwick, also attended by other relatives (Bob Sweeney, Alice Backes) and Medwick’s good-natured wife, Elsa (Charity Grace), principal Rigsby (Wendell Holmes) lands on the family porch to drop a bombshell: a note’s been found in Mrs. Tawley’s automobile, accusing the elder Medwick of being a “vicious old man” fond of “little girls”.

The rest of the episode adapts to Jean and Pat in a series of talky sequences reminiscent of Simon Oakland’s psychological profile of Norman Bates at the close of PSYCHO. The two question Uncle Jeffrey (Sweeney)’s belief that it’s best that this untruth be best forgotten about, lest it cast a pale glimmer on his business or on Jean’s and Pat’s upcoming nuptials. Uncle Jeffrey figures the grandfatherly figure is old enough to move in with them, and quietly live out the rest of his years rather than fight a battle that’s been tainted with such unseemly accusations. Pat’s the one who spearheads an inquisition into the matter: learning of the spat that Medwick had with Mrs. Tawley from Grimes makes him assume that she’s responsible for the note. Corroborating with her is Mrs. Sinden (Hollis Irving), a hysterical mother with an overbearing, huffing-and-puffing husband, Sidney (Joe Flynn).

The piece de resistance in these lengthy dialogue back-and-forths is the frank discussion between Pat, Jean, Principal Rigsby and the President of the PDA, Mrs. Parker (Mary Alan Hokanson). Mrs. Parker’s phoniness is readily apparent, as she calmly suggests that Mr. Medwick’s theoretical pedophilia is “an illness” and, accordingly, “you must think of it that way”. She’s not keen on attempting to get to the bottom of the matter, preferring rote, unimaginative answers to actually questioning the validity of the accusations.

Even when Pat assumes he has Mr. and Mrs. Tawley over a barrel (their young son is caught spying and, accidentally, harms Jean), his lawyer suggests that he wouldn’t touch the case because Medwick’s on “the wrong side of social opinion”.

The actual note-writer is a bit of a cheat and is played for whimsy with a dramatic tonal shift from the otherwise tense scenario. One can infer that Hitchcock figured it a cheap trick: why else would he foreground the facts so closely in the opening scene(s)? We know who it is, but half the fun is watching Pat and Jean righteously assume the worst in everyone, clinging to straw man theories before the actualities are revealed almost accidentally by happenstance. Pat and Jean pigheadedly refrain from even considering the possibility that Medwick may not be innocent, and their forthrightness is something that Hitchcock obviously doesn’t condone: they’re guilty in their own way for following simple logistics without giving thought that the reality may be a tad more complicated.

Hitchcock manages to discuss such a disturbing issue in 1960 an evenhanded way – we all know what “fond of little girls” equals without getting into the indecent specifics (something a newer program like “Law and Order: SVU” has no problem in doing, week to week). Even more are the subtle suspicious actions from secondary characters, like Ron and Sidney: why does the former spy on the Medwick household, is he afraid of being found out for something similar to what Medwick’s been accused of? And Sidney’s unwillingness to speak to his daughter, coupled with his wife’s frenzied demeanor, could very well be interpreted in a different, more sinister way.

So far, a North American DVD has yet to be released with the episode, but “Incident” was collected in France in a box-set comprised entirely of the 17 Hitch-directed half-hours of “Presents”, the one “Hitchcock Hour” (“I Saw The Whole Thing” starring THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY and TOPAZ’s John Forsythe), and his solitary “Suspense” (“Four O’Clock” featuring E.G. Marshall and Harry Dean Stanton).

Paul Hartman as Mr. Medwick

No Translation Needed: IL MERCENARIO/A PROFESSIONAL GUN (Sergio Corbucci, 1968)

2009-03-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

The climax from my all-time favourite spaghetti western.

Cassavetes Shoots LOVE STREAMS (July 1983)

2009-01-13T22:15:00.001-08:00

Outback Oddities: NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD

2008-12-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

For sheer unadulterated buzz and adrenaline alone, NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION! is one of the best films of the year, and without a doubt, my favourite documentary.

Director Mark Hartley painstakingly compiles and interviews the incendiary few who went about creating a blistering blend of pure thrills in Australia’s exploitation fare of the 70s and 80s. Forging friendships with these mavericks of genre -- Philippe Mora (MAD DOG MORGAN, HOWLING III), Brian Trenchard-Smith (THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, TURKEY SHOOT), Simon Wincer (HARLEQUIN, also known as DARK FORCES here in North America), and Richard Franklin (PATRICK, ROADGAMES), the latter dedicated in his memory as this would be his last on-camera interview before his untimely death in 2007 -- Hartley manages to encompass and showcase the amount of hard work and sweat that went into the construction of these productions. Fans, like Quentin Tarantino and Jamie Blanks (also billed as co-editor), are on hand to dish about their favourites, while actors like Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rod Taylor and George Lazenby wax enthusiastically about their time spent filming in the outback (although one slight complaint: far too little of Taylor for my liking). It’s also great to see screenwriter Everett De Roche (PATRICK, ROADGAMES, the underrated and soon to be remade LONG WEEKEND) get his due, so to speak.

Trenchard-Smith, a filmmaker I’d more heard about than whose work I’d actually seen, is tremendously funny in his detailing of the exploits about a less-than-eager Jimmy Wang-Yu during the making of THE MAN FROM HONG KONG (he despised white women); ditto Lazenby and stuntman Grant Page (a seminal stuntman, Page was also the serial murderer in ROADGAMES) on actually convincing Lazenby to play a scene with real flames burning on his back. (It’s a wonder more people didn’t perish during the making of these films.) Mora (and lead Dennis Hopper) speak out about the latter’s drug usage on the set of MAD DOG MORGAN, and Mora’s quite witty while explaining past admonishments to Hopper on the set.

Early 70s sexploitation fare is also covered thoroughly, though my interest in that area has never been great; expect plenty of discussion on THE ADVENTURES OF BARRY MCKENZIE (Bruce Beresford, 1972), ALVIN PURPLE (Tim Burstall, 1973), and FANTASM (Franklin as Richard Bruce, 1976).

Sandy Harbutt, lead actor, co-writer and director of motorcycle movie STONE, also comes across as positively loony – it would prove to be his only real work (Tarantino discusses STONE’s closing minutes as probably being the most accurate representation of the code of the road for motorcycle gangs, at least as far as cinema history goes). Not to be missed.

"He's in a Cowboy Band": Bob Dylan in Concert, MTS Centre, November 2nd, 2008

2008-11-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

The first time I saw Bob Dylan in concert was Summer 2002 at the Halifax Metro Centre in Nova Scotia. After some energetic introductory music (a bootleg of the show confirms what I’d always thought: it was Elmer Bernstein’s theme from THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN emanating from the speakers), Dylan strutted out center-stage to much applause with a guitar already strapped on, strumming the opening notes to The Stanley Brothers’ “I Am The Man, Thomas”. This cover became something of a constant opener with that leg of the so-called ‘Neverending Tour’, but I’d not yet heard it on any bootlegs, or knew of the song’s background: so, here I was, thirty seconds into the show, already thrown for a loop by lyrics of a number I couldn’t detect the name of, but blissfully unaware of the religious connotations of what was being said -- and glad to be hearing such a confidant, rousing chorus sung by the one performer I’d been looking forward to seeing live since my teenage years (which, now that I think about it, I guess I was still in). It was practically a chant from one of my heroes – strike that, the hero: “I Am The Man”, indeed.

A great show to be sure (“Blind Willie McTell” and a striking rendition of “Senor” were the highlights), it was hampered only by where I was sitting (and the incessant cloud of pot-smoke to my immediate left) -- on the main floor, but so far back in Row 30 with lights so dark that I could only detect the hard-lined shapes of the band on-stage. Still, Dylan performed with a guitar throughout (concluding the main set with an exploratory, emboldened “Drifter’s Escape”), and I feel privileged to have witnessed such a show in light of how much his performances have changed in recent years.

As for last night, I was sitting in a prime spot: second row on the floor of the MTS Centre here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a hockey arena altered with bucket seats for big-ticket concerts like this one. When I was escorted to my seat, I took note that I was directly in line with Dylan’s keyboards, and quickly spotted the ubiquitous Oscar for “Times Have changed” standing on an amp. This was going to be something special, no matter what -- even if it turned out to be one of his dreadfully substandard shows, I was still part of a rapturous company reveling to be his audience for that evening, and, in addition, I was close enough to witness the minutiae of decisions being made and movements being worked out as Dylan toe-tapped around the stage (more on that later).

Dylan emerged from the wings right on time, and the band -- Tony Garnier on Bass, George Recile on Drums, Stu Kimball on Rhythm Guitar, Denny Freeman on Lead, and multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron on whatever was needed for any given song -- erupted into the regular opener, “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35”. Up next was a curiously jaunty version of “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, which had everyone singing along, but it was the rollicking “The Levee’s Gonna Break” that first gripped me (beyond the immediate emotions of the realization that I was seeing Dylan so up close).

The opening strains for a quicker-paced “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” sounded a lot like “Mama, You’ve Been On My Mind” to these ears, but once the lyrics broke out, it was unmistakably nothing but this galvanizing (non-)love song from THE FREEWHEELIN’ BOB DYLAN. Upon realizing what it was, many of the younger members of the crowd in the first few rows cheered giddily, and it was heartening to see that the same Dylan tracks that drew me to his work still had their charms over new admirers.

With my gaze affixed centrally, all I could take in was Dylan’s profile, with Herron behind him on a pedal steel guitar. After about a minute into “Don’t Think Twice”, something or other malfunctioned on the keyboards, and a technician came out to assist; Dylan kept up with the number, walking over to the old-style microphone and crooning the next few stanzas (apparently something he’s been wont to do for recent shows). His slick, pointy-tipped shoes glided all the way there, and his small, sprightly frame called to mind Chaplin’s Little Tramp with its very deliberate movements (it’s not lost on me that the comparison’s been made elsewhere). At one point, he turned his back to Recile on Drums, and as his gold-striped pants were obfuscated momentarily, and the warm light stripped away the years, I had instant recall of photographs of the man in 1965, recording BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME in a black suit (here, sans dark shades), unkempt hair poking out from the back of his white cowboy hat; ditto, later during “I Believe in You”, when an orange-y light played tricks on his face, removing the wrinkles and pencil-thin moustache enough to call to mind his younger self during any given decade. The facts are in: time has been kind.

A lighting effect came on that loosely resembled stars in the nighttime sky (after a very solid and assured “’Til I Fell In Love With You”), so I figured, out of left field, here would come “Shooting Star” -- but not so, logic was defied, and we were treated (and I, delighted) to hear a mid-tempo reworking of “Simple Twist of Fate”. Dylan’s reading came out in rushed spurts, but the clearly enunciated words rung out clearly, his raspy voice giving off a calming effect as opposed to the pained voice heard on BLOOD ON THE TRACKS. This was to be one of the major highlights.

A more faithful, if tricked-up, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” was up next, with SLOW TRAIN COMING’s striking “I Believe in You” providing a respite from its transient whimsy. During “Mobile”, Dylan came out from his keyboards, strolled over to a guitar lying dormant in front of the drums, chewed tentatively on what must have been a hangnail -- unmistakably deep in contemplation. He returned to the keyboards, then back again, picking up the guitar to finish the song off properly, roaring through a few chords before placing it on its back. (I couldn’t help but instinctually clap, my motor functions seemingly already engaged before my brain had told them to act.)

Literal gasps cascaded over the audience as “Desolation Row” was recognized (I think most, like myself, were expecting either a number from LOVE AND THEFT or MODERN TIMES to be interjected here, after the three old favorites). The starkness continued with “Blind Willie McTell”, two chilly, foreboding evocations in a row that were performed with pitch-perfect acuity (I’ll be excited to hear a bootleg of this concert to compare the two “McTell”’s I’ve seen live; right now, the 2002 Halifax version has a slight edge for its even barer, slower-paced performance.)

“Summer Days” offered up playful nostalgia, and Dylan, once again, emerged from the back of his keyboards, while “Nettie Moore” (exempting “Workingman’s Blues #2”, my favorite track from MODERN TIMES) carried forth in all of its tender glory (the Oh, I Miss You Nettie Moore /And My Happiness is O’er lines can’t help but cut to the bone). (Incidentally, this was my girlfriend’s favorite number all night -- ruined only slightly by the patrons to her left who decided to spark on their bright cell phones and check for missed calls!)

“Highway 61 Revisited” exploded out in all of its forthrightness as the true electric number of the evening, while “Ain’t Talkin’” cooled things down a notch, almost occupying a code of honor for its singer. Here, the mystical lyricism Dylan employs can’t help but captivate, and it’s a song that gains ingrained meaning when performed live, much like “Tangled Up in Blue” and the lines: But Me, I’m Still on the Road / Headin’ for Another Joint.

“Thunder on the Mountain” and two crowd-pleasing encores later (his anthem: “Like a Rolling Stone”, and an electrified tip of the hat to Hendrix’s cover of his own “All Along the Watchtower”) and Dylan left the stage, the band trailing behind him, his Oscar still beaming brightly amidst cacophonous applause.

So, was it an exemplary show or something in-between? Defiantly something in-between, with Dylan not exactly on auto-pilot, but only really showing brief glimmers of innovativeness in the reworkings of songs from his legendary oeuvre. While plunking on his keyboards, briefly strumming the guitar, or howling through his harmonica, Dylan never fails to impress, and his selection for which to employ those instruments last night caught on fire rarely, but modestly blazed throughout. The fire in his performative soul has not gone out, and I doubt that it ever really will.

Nothin' But the Dead and Dying Back in My Little Town: DEAD & BURIED (Gary Sherman, 1981)

2008-10-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

Unsettling, effective, and ultimately one of the more fatalistic horror films of the early 1980s, Gary Sherman’s DEAD & BURIED has a neatly encapsulated premise: a small coastal town overrun by members of the unknowing undead, forced not to munch on the brains of the living, but to prey upon any trespassers, disfiguring and burning the victims beyond repair in order for the town’s mortician (Jack Albertson, in his last role) to artfully reconstruct them. The opening’s startling revelation alone – a nature photographer thanks his lucky stars when an attractive blonde (Lisa Blount) quite willingly poses nude for his camera, before the rest of her unruly mob tie him to a stump, place steel-mesh over his face, and immolate him – sets up the central quandary almost too well. What the hell are we dealing with here? Who are these psychopaths who reside in this comfy little town of Potters Bluff? And, why is the lady who lit the match almost joyously -- completing the ungodly deed -- so unemotional yet pleasant while serving coffee in a local diner in the very next scene?

Steely-eyed Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) investigates further after more dead bodies turn up -- on the case as our official “unraveler”. Suspecting and questioning his wife’s involvement after finding a Witchcraft book in their home, he trails her to her classroom, where he witnesses an animated lecture on the principles and practices of black magic. It seems no one in the town is completely sane, and with no allies, but some supernatural proof in the form of particles of living-undead flesh scraped off of his front grill after a hit-and-run and word that the scene-stealing Dobbs (Albertson) was booted from the last town he worked in, Gillis confronts the big-band loving artiste-cum-mortician, and gets an answer he’s probably not looking for.

Lisa Blount returns the gaze.

Screenwriter (well, really, script doctor in this case) Dan O’Bannon’s careful to elaborate on the featurette accompanying disc two of Blue Underground’s release of DEAD & BURIED that he was very conscientious to not step on George Romero’s toes in terms of handling the revivified corpses, insisting he would never partake in blatant thievery because of the artistic aims of Romero’s work (jocularly adding that he wouldn’t care if he was paid to rip off more unabashedly capitalistic fare, like a Chuck Norris film). His approach must have worked, because I never once thought of the pasty-blue zombie cretins of Romero’s then-recent DAWN OF THE DEAD, what with the painstakingly maintained bodies that Dobbs labours over (every two weeks, he says in the film, which leads one to play devil’s advocate for a hypothetical sequel: what would happen should the elderly Albertson pass away, leaving a seaside town full of cheerful, decomposing half-living “things”).

In the doc, O’Bannon professes a genuine love for thrilling suspense sequences that don’t involve gratuitous gore, and one needs only to think back to the deserted house permeating with shadows in DEAD & BURIED, or the careless hitchhiker who grabs a ride from a rowdy resident of Potters Bluff to bear out how truthful this is (the eye-stabbing actions of the nurse notwithstanding, probably left over from the original draft by Jeff Millar and Alex Stern). There’s also a curious pessimistic side to everything: the situation goes from bad to worse, as Gillis feels alienated from his townspeople before the final zinger reveals he may already be in line with them. It’s a tragic denouement, one which is relished over with maniacal delight by Albertson, truly his last hurrah as he was to pass away shortly after ADRing his lines.

Sherman’s direction is workmanlike, as it was possibly messed with by Avco-Embassy (he speaks of a few tracking shots vetoed and broken-up by the higher-ups on his audio commentary), and the comedy that was apparently so prevalent in the script has been stripped to all but a very few instances. (But all that remains makes a loopy kind of sense if one were to think back over the last ninety minutes: the townspeople appear to be dopey and lethargic as the undead would perhaps behave, due to being pawns with limited brainpower, proffering bone-headed answers and reactions to the simplest requests or exchanges.)

The finale is highlighted by several projection screens showing some crucial black-and-white footage that clears up everyone's relation to one another in Potters Bluff; the immediacy of this hand-held footage gives off only glances as Albertson’s at his altar, but its startlingly effectual, much like the rest of DEAD & BURIED: where the unexpected meets the expected, and the dead have no choice but to be playthings for a maniac, for everyone in the town must go through the same rituals, and for Farentino, the end has already been written.

HOUSE OF no FRANKENSTEIN (Erle C. Kenton, 1944)

2008-10-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

In Universal’s 1944 all-star monster mash-up, Doctor Gustav Niemann (Boris Karloff) is one loony, escaped convict prone to colossal procrastination.

With hunchbacked accomplice in tow, played with abject desperation and reservation by J. Carrol Naish, Niemann promises both his unruly cohort and the thawed-out body of the Wolf Man (Lawrence Talbot in his human form, once again portrayed by Lon Chaney, Jr.) that he’ll be more than happy to operate and play God, switching out their brains and swapping bodies, curing the former of his hideousness and the latter with his small problem of turning into a bloodthirsty beast when the moon is full (the details of exactly how he plans on doing so are never actually dispersed). Niemann only asks that this gruesome twosome continue to do his bidding for him, escorting their (stolen) wagon that brazenly advertises the skeletal remains of Dracula (John Carradine) each evening, allowing Niemann to enact revenge on those that locked him away, while spending the rest of his time unlocking Dr. Frankenstein’s scientific key for providing life into the limp carcass of the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange).

One can only assume that Karloff’s calendar is close to, if not already, full -- as endless as his bag of excuses for both his hunchbacked co-escapee and his newfound lycanthropic pal.

While famous for the fact that no actual relatives of the Frankenstein clan turn up as characters (though Niemann’s positively obsessed by the family’s legendary exploits), the sheer volume of Universal Monsters on display is staggering, despite a cheat of an all-too-brief appearance by Dracula; quickly dispersed in favor of chugging along with its rollicking plot, the bloodsucker is given the short shrift in the way of an early demise, poked through the heart and left to desiccate after falling into a ravine before the half-hour mark.

What’s always struck me about HOUSE is its sensitive embodiment in its Igor characterization, here christened with the much more charitable name of Daniel. Much more than your standardized second-in-command goon, Naish is a wellspring of hurt and melancholia, specifically in his pining for Illonka (Elena Verdugo), the stray gypsy he saves from an abusive member of her former caravan. She accepts him for his physical shortcomings at first, but only until the more traditionally attractive (and recently defrosted) Larry Talbot joins their cause.

Karloff’s Karloff, professionally game and ominous with a fringe of shock-white hair fitting for his insane escapee; one can see him wince only briefly in his final bow-out, as he’s submerged in quicksand by the revived monster while torches carried by the ubiquitous mob burn brightly in the background, as they mill about the dilapidated remains of Casa de la Frankenstein.

BRONCO BULLFROG reviewed

2008-10-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

Ushering in the ‘Suedehead’ subculture in the UK shortly after Mods became out-of-date in the early 1970s, Bronco Bullfrog is the consummate depiction of that lifestyle, in a curious case of art influencing life. With strong working-class accents and dalliances into lives of crime, Bronco’s young men and women are stiff, noble souls attempting to carve out their own niche against oppressive parents and authoritative forces. They’re modern-day western outlaws with a better sense of style and carefully maintained haircuts.

Del Quant (Del Walker) is a 17-years-old welder’s apprentice and small-time criminal disillusioned with the way his life’s turned out so far. Amongst his mates is legendary figure Bronco Bullfrog (Sam Shepherd), a fugitive that lends a hand to Del when his chips are down. When Del’s dad wins a competition that includes a bicycle, a channel of freedom is opened up. He soon meets likeminded soul Irene (Anne Gooding), and the two are soon inseparable, much to the chagrin of Irene’s parents, which includes a dad currently behind bars. The two rob a railway car (those traces of outlaws once again), and run away together, as parental forces attempt to locate them.

Although familiar with film from being an apprentice editor on pictures made by Stanley Kubrick and John Schlesinger, first time features director Barney Platts-Mills was undisciplined in the way of dealing with actors and constructing a screenplay. It’s a small victory, then, that Platts-Mills was able to distill such naturalistic performances from a cabal of amateur actors; the lives of these East London youths seem to be preserved for all time up on the screen, with lyrical scenes adding up to make a sometimes dispiriting, always stirring existence – just like real life.

Cinematheque programmer Kier-La Janisse selected the film for her Big Smash! Music Scene series, out of admiration for Platts-Mills (it’s also one of her favourite unsung gems), but also due to its odd choice in soundtrack composer: Brit Rock group Audience:

“Winnipeg’s one of the only places where Audience actually has an audience”, says Janisse. “You can actually buy the soundtrack now, but there wasn’t enough material to make a full album, so the rest are just tracks from Audience’s debut.”

The film equivalent to the all-or-nothing music of The Jam, it’s no surprise that their leader, Paul Weller, is a vocal admirer of Bullfrog. In fact, their “I Got By In Time” describes the mindset of these idealist ruffians better than anyone: “We Were Young, We Were Full of Ideals, We Were Gonna Pull This Whole World”.

A better code of honour for the Suedehead, or more apt one for the youths of Bronco Bullfrog, I know not.

An NTSC DVD, along with other merchandise including a reprint of the 1970 poster (as pictured above), can be ordered from the Official Website of BRONCO BULLFROG's director, Barney Platts-Mills.

Quote of the Day - John Milius on Screenwriting

2008-10-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

"I consider it a degrading occupation, because everybody's writing a personal screenplay. It's, "Wow, my sister's writing a screenplay," or "Oh, so-and-so's writing a screenplay." Every actor is writing a screenplay. Everybody nowadays gets so much for them, you know, you hear about these bidding wars and stuff. It's out of control.

I was the hottest screenwriter in Hollywood when I was twenty-five years old. And I've been the hottest three or four times since. And every time in between there are always these years when "This guy is the hottest thing that's ever lived," and "He just sold a screenplay for five hundred thousand dollars," which is a pittance now. And of course the movie never gets made or it gets made into a piece of shit. The guy disappears into drug addiction. And every year there's one of these new wunderkinds. And I've watched so many of them come and go, but I"m still here.

I'm still at large. I'm still a dangerous man"

--as quoted in "Reel Conversations: Candid Interviews with Film's Foremost Directors and Critics" by George Hickenlooper (Citadel Press: 1991)

Hold the McChicken

2008-10-07T21:18:00.000-07:00

The above 1972 McDonald's ad defies every kind of logic. I found it placed in the front cover of some forgettable general housekeeping magazine earlier this summer at a garage sale. I couldn't not buy it.

I bet whoever the Canadian artist was thought he was really putting one over.

All Brave Blood Do Spill: Bob Dylan’s “Cross the Green Mountain”

2008-10-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me today that Bob Dylan’s song for the 2003 sequel to GETTYSBURG, GODS AND GENERALS (Ronald F. Maxwell), may simultaneously be a rare glimpse and a natural transition of what his film scoring would have sounded like had he steadily kept up with it after his blissful recordings for Sam Peckinpah’s PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID way back in 1972.

After his Oscar-winning number for Curtis Hanson’s WONDER BOYS, Dylan obviously became a little soundtrack-happy, providing songs for the coal mining picture NORTH COUNTRY, DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD, and the aforementioned GODS AND GENERALS. While these first two feel like album rejects, cast aside to be used as ineffectual exclusive tracks for even more lackluster films, “’Cross the Green Mountain” feels a bit more organic, as if he’d had a chance to live with the film for some time, its Civil War heroics obviously awakening some deep emotions within. It’s as if the lyrics interact with the characters on Dylan’s poetic playing field, providing the perfect aural accompaniment (here, during the closing credits) in much the same manner as it did for PAT GARRETT. His stuff’s too good not to call attention to itself – that’s for sure - but the carefully constructed and ingrained qualities of the songs are so in tune with the project that it doesn’t really matter. It has since become, to me at least, one of his major accomplishments of this closing decade (one which would see Dylan still reaching new plateaus by reopening old wounds via “Love and Theft” and “Modern Times”, two albums I vastly prefer to the majority of his work in the 90s).

Curiously, it’s the only film of the above-mentioned (save for WONDER BOYS) that he bothered to do a music video for (and in it, tell me you don’t get the vibe that that’s Alias reborn?):

Although placed as the last song on the GODS AND GENERALS soundtrack in ’03, it has thankfully been reassessed and deemed worthy enough of merit for inclusion on “The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs”, released in stores this week, but currently streaming -- for free -- on NPR.

Here’s an MP3:

On Jean Rollin's THE IRON ROSE + Three Other (non-Rollin) Titles

2008-08-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

THE IRON ROSE [La Rose de fer] (Rollin, 1973)

CHINESE TORTUE CHAMBER STORY (Bosco Lam, 1995)

DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE'S ROCK 'N' ROLL MUSICAL (Andre Champagne, 2003)

YOUR MOMMY KILLS ANIMALS! (Curt Johnson, 2007)

Trailers from Hell: John Landis on POINT BLANK (John Boorman, 1967)

2008-08-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

Director John Landis on Boorman's stylistic trendsetter, POINT BLANK, featuring the preeminent iconic performance from Lee Marvin.

The film Landis mentions as having shot in the same long corridors at LAX is, I believe, INTO THE NIGHT (1985), my personal favourite of his work. I've been writing an essay articulating just exactly why, but it's nowhere near ready. Every time I take another look at the picture(usually to introduce it to a friend), the essay expands more and more.

Jerry Lewis Trailer of the Day: THE BIG MOUTH

2008-08-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

2 x Lew Archer: HARPER (Jack Smight, 1966) / THE DROWNING POOL (Stuart Rosenberg, 1975)

2008-08-15T13:19:00.001-07:00

Ross MacDonald’s series of Lew Archer novels span almost three decades, from 1949 to 1976, but his wiseacre private eye wouldn’t make it to the screen with that surname.

Paul Newman, brought to the attention of the property by producer Elliot Kastner (who would later fire up the Raymond Chandler-Robert Mitchum rehashes of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY and THE BIG SLEEP in the seventies), legendarily decided, if for no other reason then because of his then-recent slew of H-titled successes ([THE] HUSTLER; HUD; HOMBRE), to rechristen him Harper. William Goldman, who had suggested MacDonald to Kastner in the first place, would have no qualms over the matter (as he would no doubt say, you must cater to the Star in such incidences), and he genially constructed an adaptation, translating MacDonald’s colorful prose and tale of Los Angeles corruptibility as feasibly as could be done in pre-CHINATOWN Private Eye-dom (for instance, Julie Harris’s Betty Fraley, who majors in drug addiction with a minor in S&M in the book, was noticeably toned down). The plot, like just about every other MacDonald-Archer book, has Harper investigating the disappearance of a man/woman (with the many combinations thereof providing variety: an inordinately rich businessman here, a runaway teenager in another, etc., etc.) The stupendous cast includes Lauren Bacall (in a cheeky in-joke, slyly modernizing for Newman her former husband’s own no-nonsense P.I.) is laid up in a wheelchair throughout, while Robert Wagner, Julie Harris, Shelley Winters, Janet Leigh, Strother Martin, Robert Webber, Harold Gould, and a belly-dancing, raven-haired knock-out Pamela Tiffin enliven a labyrinthine plot that, in one way or another, indicts just about everyone for doing something sinful in the city of Angels.

The often-celebrated introduction to Newman’s character, prized by Goldman on the commentary track and inside his “Adventures of the Screen Trade”, feels, in retrospect, to be too easy of a character identifier, one used since in countless forgettable sitcoms and direct-to-video fare, and I have a feeling it was already a cliche then (for the record, Newman, fresh out of filters for his coffee-maker, roots around in the trash-can for a used one, brewing it before the requisite grimace at the filthy taste; the thing is, Newman’s undeniable twinkle as a Star betrays the notion that Harper has been weathered and anchored down by experience and bad luck. (Goldman’s commentary, as heresy as it may be for me to say it, is a bit on the self
congratulatory side, with the writer making some absurd claims -- I really doubt, for instance, that Wagner’s tearful confession of recrimination was the first time that a Leading Man stayed to offer actorly assistance to a supporting player.

Ten years later, and Harper’s sequel, THE DROWNING POOL (co-written by Walter Hill when director Robert Mulligan was on board, with the terse, “muscular” retorts being his unmistakable contribution) is a good deal better. Lethargically directed by Newman go-to-guy Stuart Rosenberg, the film, the second book in the Archer series, has Harper in New Orleans (changed from the stale L.A. in the book) helping out an old flame (Joanne Woodward) from being black-mailed. The familiar period character faces and young ingénues are many (JAWS’ Murray Hamilton, Paul Koslo, Gail Strickland, Melanie Griffith), with the titular set-piece of a mental hospital flushed with water – Newman and Strickland stuck in the center - containing reverberations of the seventies-era disaster flick (let’s not forget, Newman made two: THE TOWERING INFERNO and the better-forgotten WHEN TIME RAN OUT). Newman’s brusque breakdown due to Woodward’s death and subsequent realization of her secretive lover (Anthony Franciosa) is also choice stuff to behold, the oblivious subtext of Newman forced to play a scene with his real-life wife’s body as a corpse providing the most genuinely painful scene of the picture.

Quote of the Day: Larry McMurtry on Hollywood's Comic Book Fad (foretold in 1987)

2008-08-08T12:39:00.001-07:00

"An industry that seems to have concluded that its best hope is to dramatize the comic-strip literature of an earlier and more vigorous era is one whose fevers have finally destroyed its nerve. With rare exceptions the pictures coming out of Hollywood today are the last resorts of the gutless."

--Larry McMurtry, foreward to "Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood" (Simon and Schuster, 1987).

Jerry Schatzberg Interview at Filmcatcher.com

2008-08-06T00:11:00.000-07:00

I've written about the PUZZLE OF A DOWNFALL CHILD/SCARECROW/STREET SMART auteur before, but I came across this multi-parted interview whilst shuffling around the Internet tonight. The director mostly discusses PUZZLE (the conducted interview was on occasion of a rare NYC screening), but there's a few other glimpses into his other pictures, namely working with Al Pacino on the remarkable SCARECROW (and its hypothetical sequel, as Schatzberg confesses he's been working on a screenplay).

The Most Ruthless Fist Fight in Film History?

2008-08-03T20:01:00.001-07:00

Quite possibly...

(and no, the following is not from John Carpenter's THEY LIVE.)

Barry Brown in BAD COMPANY (Robert Benton, 1972)

2008-08-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

Watched Robert Benton's masterful BAD COMPANY just last night on Turner Classic Movies for the very first time, and became even more captivated with the performer Barry Brown. My introduction to him came via Peter Bogdanovich's DAISY MILLER (with P.B. referring to him as "the only American actor you can believe ever read a book"), but here the material demands him to be much more jocular and not so constantly sullen. Still -- through all the surface playfulness -- a potent reminder of that pervasive sadness behind those eyes remains. I don't think there's a role of his, small or large, that doesn't contain it.

When I was having a hard time thinking of a perfect actor, past or present, to portray the hero in one of my screenplays just last month, I needed only to flash on Brown (it only helped matters that the hero was an exploitation film enthusiast and a former leading man)...and problem solved.

==================================================

UPDATED:

A very informative comment from Roberta has shined a light on two essential places on the web to learn more about this troubled, but supremely talented actor who left us much too soon:

--the Yahoo! Group entitled "Club Barry" (which counts his professor/author brother James as a member)

--and, http://www.barrybrown.info/ (which devotes a comprehensive section to Brown's writing for such publications as "Famous Monsters". Be sure to check out the Bruno VeSota interview!)

Niko Nikolaidis' LOSER TAKES ALL (2002)

2008-07-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

Greek filmmaker Nikos G. Nikolaidis shook off this mortal coil in the year 2007, a full five years and one film later than 2002’s LOSER TAKES ALL [O Harmenos ta pairnei ola], but you’d never know it by the way this second-last film feels, at times, like both a dialogue with death and a thematic summation of an off-kilter career that’s been mostly misunderstood (and largely unknown to anyone but cultists) because of its frank handling of sexual perversions and kinks (1993’s perhaps overrated SINGAPORE SLING being his most well-known effort). On the other hand, LOSER TAKES ALL is a low-key crime picture, timid in areas in which Nikolaidis usually doesn’t seem prudish, but fluent in the language and poetry of crime film forebears like Fuller and De Toth. The only comparison to a modern director I could make would be Abel Ferrara -- superficial grit and offbeat qualities that mask a deeper understanding of the ways in which the world turns for those vaguely vagabond and criminally-inclined members of its populace.

Coming to terms with his inevitable, impending death is our lower-dregs, David Goodis-esque anti-hero, simply referred to as The Man (rocker Giannis Angelakas, from the rock group Trypes, [unheard by me]); he’s a small time, hard-drinking ladies man who's perfectly content in carousing his way into oblivion before his friendship with a guitar-playing young man renews his sense of purpose and vigor. In a way, Little Boy (Simeon Nikolaidis, who I assume, but am not certain, is Nikolaidis’ own son) is the mirror-image of who The Man was that age (roughly late-twenties). The two meet at the apartment of one of The Man’s former lovers -- she’s allowing the down-on-his-luck Man to spend the night on the couch while she herself engages in a session of lovemaking with the younger version (later, The Man seduces Little Boy’s pretty young thing of a girlfriend). In the wee hours of the night before and the morning after, the two sides of this same persona bond over a simple melody, featuring a telling bit of fatally simplistic, but lyrical poetry (sung in English):

“Things are gonna change, I heard
But, by that time, I’m probably gonna be dead”

It’s eloquently sung and referred to throughout the entire picture, as the two men get progressively drunker, sleep around, and become mixed up with scams, prostitutes (the sex scenes feel perfuntory, somehow remaining rough on-the-surface yet innately tame, as if Nikolaidis is going through the motions of what’s come to be expected of him), and gangsters. The song – and those lyrics – are repeated time and time again, taking on the guises of both a cry for help and a comforting mantra, a dirge for their wasted, ravished lives.

It doesn’t end well for either man, but the final sequence and acceptance of The Man’s death is splendidly elegiac. He rests on some apartment steps after being chased away by the law, idly strumming along while singing the aforementioned, oft-repeated refrain. He’s alone, but soon sees the ghostly spirit of Little Boy across from him (with what appears to be a seedy underbelly-version of pearly gates screen-right), encouraging him to play along by plucking his own acoustic guitar just as he forgets the melody. The Man walks over to join him in the shot after several linking dissolves, as Nikolaidis makes it clear, even without directly referring to or showing the law enforcement closing in, that The Man has finally crossed over and has joined his pal in whatever peculiar version of the afterlife awaits them. The film fades out and the song abruptly ceases...

Simeon Nikolaidis - "Wonderful World"

Barroom Scene from LOSER TAKES ALL (love the party-favour bit player):

Camaraderie:

Scene from SEE YOU IN HELL, MY DARLING [Tha se do stin Kolasi, agapi mou] (1999), with gorgeous Greek-based actress Vicky Harris:

Demon with a Smith-Corona: DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH (Erik Nelson, 2008)

2008-07-28T23:36:00.001-07:00

A Film About Harlan Ellison --

author of:
..."The City on the Edge of Forever" ("Star Trek" teleplay)
..."Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand" ("The Outer Limits" teleplays)
..."Spider Kiss" (novel)
..."A Boy and His Dog" (short story)
..."Deathbird Stories" (short story collection)
..."Dangerous Visions" (s-f compilation, mastermind of)
..."Slippage" (short story collection)
..."The Glass Teat" (essential essays on the nature and debilitating effects of Television)
..."Watching" (film criticism)
...many, MANY others...

It’s been more than a week since I’ve seen the still distributor-less Harlan Ellison documentary DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH (2008), and even though it’ll be forever tied to a senseless, maddening offense for me (my car being broken into as I sat in the theater –- and if fate has a sense of irony, I’d hazard a guess that it happened during the sequence in which Ellison rants and apoplectically raves about how inane, meaningless acts of aggression make him so characteristically frustrated with mankind), I still haven’t shaken the more important impressions that these 90-something minutes spent in close quarters with one of SF’s (Speculative Fiction, that) most revered authors offers up.

The project was initiated, unknowingly, at age 24 by director Erik Nelson, a true-blue journeyman documentary producer best known as a key collaborator on Werner Herzog’s GRIZZLY MAN [2005]. Shooting a short segment for the Public Broadcasting Station, Nelson filmed Ellison in his cramped worked space in the early 1980s, pecking away at his Smith-Corona typewriter on a memorabilia-packed desk, cab driver’s hat adorning the top of his head as if to humbly refer to Ellison’s oft-mentioned aphorism that writing is a job like any other; hard work is hard work, no matter whether you’re digging ditches or mentally attempting to capture an eloquently, well-rounded phrase.

90% of the footage is from roughly twenty-five years later, with Nelson following the author around his city of Los Angeles (a transplant from Cleveland, Ohio) to essentially confirm the feisty Ellison persona we’ve come to know (and arguably love -- I know I do) from his myriad appearances on the college and talk show (a number of stops on “Tom Snyder”) circuits through the years. Surprisingly, the usual amount of bravado on display is non-existent in such sequences as the one in which Ellison plays the only footage of his deceased father (for more on his early life, read “One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty”, see the “New Twilight Zone” episode that adapted it, and THEN listen to Ellison’s commentary on the DVD) –- his hard-edged demeanor remains to protect the calloused persona built over the years, but his softie’s heart can be gleaned; it’s a startling sequence, one that’ll mean more to anyone who’s lost their father before they themselves could mature and relate to/ask about any of their patriarch’s own past history/sense of experience.

As is the norm, Celebrity Talking Heads are corralled together for fringe or name value (some hipster-youngster digging on Neil Gaiman, figuring that if Gaiman likes Ellison, surely he will too!), including the above-mentioned and, most inexplicably, an amusingly sedate Robin Williams. A series of open-ended questions asked by Williams serve to christen the film on a high note, clearing the air around certain rumors (whether Ellison harmed an overeager fan) while serving to only strengthen Ellison’s no-nonsense mystique by confirming others (like mailing a peculiar-smelling package to a publisher).

The less said the better about the background illustrations that serve to enhance Ellison’s dramatic readings of his own works; it’s an unsuccessful attempt, as Ellison’s wordplay conjures up so much more worthwhile imagery on its own than with the help of cheap, wishy-washy computer FX. Still, the unabashed attitude and rebellious rattle that carries forth in Ellison’s voice as he recites chunks of his own inimitable prose is worth the price of a [hopeful] DVD alone -- the more they’ve filmed and relegated to the Supplements, the better.

Andre de Toth at 1997 San Francisco Int'l Film Festival

2008-06-08T23:40:00.000-07:00

Pirates, Hammer Style

2008-06-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER (John Gilling, 1962)

Although it boasts Christopher Lee (doing an odd Franco-Romanian amalgamated accent) as La Roche, a black-clad, brooding pirate, 1962's PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER's genuine (if fading) star is actually Kerwin Matthews (THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD). He portrays an adulterer-turned-temporary-pirate accomplice who must use his strengths to escape from a penal colony and his smarts to counteract the double-dealing, roguish pirates once he gains access back to Huguenot territory.

Matthews is put through the paces early on, forced to watch his (married to somebody else) lady love (buxom beauty Marie Devereux – and in a Hammer Production, is there really ever any other kind?) devoured by hungry, flesh-eating piranha (a heavily trimmed sequence that gets by on bubbling, bloody red water instead of any real grue involving Devereux and her hefty chest).

Set to rot in a penal colony, Matthews escapes, takes refuge with pirates (including Hammer stock company player Oliver Reed, in a virtually silent role as -- what else -- the drunkard of the group), and then ventures back to his home territory with pirates in tow, providing a safe place for all to reside while they seek out elusive treasures.

Lee’s the force to be reckoned with, your eyes unable to look anyplace else when he’s on the screen. On the commentary, moderator/author Marcus Hearns (author of “The Hammer Story: The Authorised History of Hammer Films”) reads a concise passage describing Lee's initial appearance from screenwriter Jimmy Sangster’s script:

“A strange and fascinating creature, but the fascination is evil. At first glance, he might be called handsome, with his bone structure good. It’s the face of a man without a heart. He has wit and intelligence, and even a sense of humor -- but his heart is nothing. The way he moves is so elegant that we may forget he’s a cripple; his hand held close to his body and his hand an upturned craw.”

John Gilling, the British journeyman whose best-known work may be Hammer’s 1966 gothic production of THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES [also discussed on the commentary], offers up appetizing, panoramic vistas on an extremely miniscule budget (largely shot at Bray Studios). The so-called “Megascope” process looks splendid in this glistening new transfer, and it’s unquestionable that this hasn’t looked as good since its first run more than forty-five years ago.

Recently released by Columbia on a four-disc set entitled “Icons of Adventures” (with THE DEVIL-SHIP PIRATES [Don Sharp, 1964]; THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY [Terence Fisher, 1960]; and THE TERROR OF THE TONGS [Anthony Bushell, 1961]), the significant extras on BLOOD RIVER include commentary by the aforementioned Hearns, writer (and long-time Hammer employee) Sangster, and art director Don Migaye. Hearns navigates different avenues of discussion, jogging the memories of the elderly Sangster and Migaye (oftentimes the duo who worked on the picture confess to not knowing who in the hell Hearns is talking about, even as they appear onscreen; an adolescent Dennis Waterman, for instance), from cast histories to other Hammer projects. It’s a worthwhile listen.

A curious, non-horror Hammer entry -- landlocked from the start, a pirate film without a boat (a mandate handed down by Hammer heads) -- chock full of satisfying and stirring action, albeit not so much substance in the way of its somewhat abandoned revenge plot, PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER is nevertheless a rousing good time. It was followed by a loose prequel: 1964’s THE SECRET OF BLOOD ISLAND (written by Gilling, but directed by Quentin Lawrence). Gilling (and Hammer) favourite Michael Ripper was the only cast member to return, albeit in a different role.

*Note: Screencaps taken because the cover art for the “Icons of Adventure” set is bloody awful. Take a look!

[1934 - 2008]

2008-05-26T21:34:00.001-07:00

The 48 HRS. diary

2008-05-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

Save for maybe the dark, demented revenge drama JOHNNY HANDSOME (1989), the real highlight of director Walter Hill's eighties career may just be the blockbuster 48 HRS. (1982), the film that pretty much cemented the broader course his choice of films would take in that decade.

(Would he have been offered the regrettable umpteenth remake of BREWSTER'S MILLIONS without his work on this slam-bang, action-comedy that simultaneously fused Hill's late '70s aesthetic while introducing Eddie Murphy to filmgoers?).

Anyway, screenwriter/filmmaker Larry Gross has begun a fascinating weekly contemporaneously journal detailing his exploits with Hill and the film, with entry #1 detailing the beginning of an association between the two that would result in the 48 HRS. sequel, the cult favourite STREETS OF FIRE, and 1993's GERONIMO: AN AMERICAN LEGEND.

ULZANA'S RAID (Aldrich, 1972) European Cut / Burt Lancaster's edit - Extended/Alternate/Deleted Scenes

2008-05-03T23:16:00.000-07:00

Bless the user on youtube who took the time to upload these extended/alternate/deleted scenes of Robert Aldrich's most monumental work inside the western genre. They stem from a long, gone OOP UK VHS release.

Here, they're presented in chronological order of the film's events:

Jerry Schatzberg's STREET SMART (1987)

2008-04-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the sole bright spot (or, at least, the most representative of his earlier work) for director Jerry Schatzberg’s [THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK; SCARECROW; THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN] career in the eighties, STREET SMART begins with the novel premise of a New York journalist (Christopher Reeve) fabricating a magazine story only for it to bite him on the ass through its apparent validity in the details of an actual person. Unfortunately, the film dispenses with its well-earned bits of street-life profundities in a cop-out finale that conveniently relieves our main protagonist (Reeve) from any hasty wrongdoings. The villain (Morgan Freeman, in a chilling meat-and-potatoes kind of part that had me wishing he’d attack such roles more often) ends up face down in the street, taken out by one of his minions. It’s a move that smacks of studio interference, a tidy ribbon that suggests that Cannon Pictures couldn’t deal with their newly licensed Superman actor having to actually, you know, deal with the prickly situation that he himself has wrought.

The seedy underbelly of pimps and prostitutes as seen through the lens of Schatzberg is authentically rendered through all of the street poetry and surface crudity that those worlds suggest (filmed partly in Montreal, on St. Catherine’s St.). Schatzberg, a former photographer who shot the famed cover photo for Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde”, didn’t shoot the film himself (that honor goes to Adam Holender, who began his career with MIDNIGHT COWBOY before following it up with Scatzberg’s directorial debut, the little-seen, but mesmerizing PUZZLE OF A DOWNFALL CHILD), but one glance at Schatzberg's website and their unmistakable similarities in some of the “Reportage” shots reveals the director’s fascination with urban squalor and its denizens.

Reeve, as our window into the world, is the stock Schatzberg stand-in. At first, he allows his wife (Mimi Rogers) to enter the fray to help procure the genuine story of “A Day with a Pimp” that he’s pitched to his editor (he dismisses the idea when a volatile pimp (Rick Aviles) tries to turn her into a woman of the evening). A brief coffee with a genuine street walker (Kathy Baker, the other actor singled out for her performance besides Freeman when the picture was originally released), and Reeve settles in for an all-night bout with his ancient word processor to dish out a work of fiction that becomes a media sensation, not to mention scarily prescient and accurate for a trial-bound pimp, Fast Black (Freeman), and his attorney. Eventually, Reeve winds up on a news program, slyly filming rip-off businesses and corrupted officials in order to report their crooked activities.

Reeve and Freeman’s parasitic relationship comes to the fore for the entire middle act, a classical friendship trope that's contentedly configured here between a classy, up-and-coming journalist and a low-grade pimp, each giving glimpses into their respective universes. Danger lurks around the corner -- and I hasten to bring up the ignominious conclusion once again -- but the moments that stick with me are the scenes involving success hot on Reeve’s coattails, while Freeman plays around in the margins, satisfied with all of the attention he receives from the upper echelons at the magazine.

Schatzberg’s prime observations are sussed out in such moments, but my favorite scene may be the clever de-emphasis on the sound mix during a seduction scene between Baker and Reeve, as their unimportant, almost inane getting-to-know-you chatter falls in and out of earspace while Aretha Franklin intones on the soundtrack. In moments like those, I couldn’t care less about how the cards shake out in the end.

DEVIL FETUS [Mo tai] (Lau Hung Chuen, 1983) HONG KONG

2008-04-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

Shown as part of an ongoing weekly horror series at the Winnipeg Cinematheque, and preceded by the trailer for David Cronenberg’s seminal SCANNERS (comprised solely of the gore-laden, brain-busting centerpiece scene), Lau Hung Chuen’s debut film is a messy “see-what-sticks” concoction full of bright phantasmagorical Disney nights, black mass rituals, spotty kung-fu set pieces, and stop-motion trickery involving a possessed spirit parasitically hopping from body to body.

What I recall above all else is what’s not in the film, mainly the absence of any of kind of sickly birthing sequence featuring devil spawn (all we see is the expanding belly of a corpse). Instead, the story’s focus is on what happens when a jade vase/ancient sex toy winds up in the hands of a sexually frustrated woman via an unconventional swap meet. After rubbing it for salacious purposes, a scaly-skinned apparition appears to engage in a bout of lovemaking, impregnating the woman before her suitor enters to catch her en flagrante. It’s a hysterically eccentric sight to behold, and acts almost as if a cue to the viewer that any traditional narrative path has been averted.

Several years pass after the woman’s premature death, but once her consecrated resting place is disturbed, the unearthly spirit awakes to wreak havoc on the remnants of her extended family, namely her sister and her husband, and their two boys (shown in an early scene to be fascinated by their aunt’s potent artifact). What follows involves some quickly paced kung-fu fights between a grand wizard and the demonically possessed young man, an incestuous encounter initiated by said young man, a maggot-ridden birthday cake, and a kindly grandmother whose constant monotonous drum-beating may hold the key to defeating this demon-seed.

DEVIL FETUS is a curious relic to dig up a film print for, but a perfectly ludicrous example from the heyday of anything-goes Hong Kong filmmaking of the 1980s. The practical make-up effects and in-camera deceptions have no choice but to endear themselves to the spectator, reminding people of my generation of “Fangoria” back issues, when a spotlight on a particular special effects artist could coexist with a retrospective interview conducted with, say, director Phil Tucker (ROBOT MONSTER). I have no definitive proof that this film has never before been issued on home video in North America, but some quick ‘net research intimidates that it’s ever only been available on a low-quality VCD; if so, it speaks wonders to the notion that there are tons and tons of similarly minded genre gems the world over awaiting discovery, resurrection, and a prime Midnight Movies' timeslot.

A MOVIE ORGY in more ways than one...

2008-04-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

Through sheer good luck and the kind offering of a couch to crash on, I was able to make a pilgrimage to the recent Joe Dante festival at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, arriving just in time for the last night of the double-bill of THE SADIST and THE PRIVATE FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER (seated in front of me? John Landis!) and staying on for the transcendental showing of the almost never-seen THE MOVIE ORGY just this past Tuesday. (To put it into perspective, the last time this assemblage of 16mm film clips, trailers, television spots, game show absurdities, and other odd ephemera screened was -- before I was born!)

The rest of my trip was even better, with sights seen and heroes met, but for now, I feel indebted to point to my friend Dennis Cozzalio's ecstatic, glowing, mesmerizing review of said MOVIE ORGY. It may be the next best thing to having actually been there...

"The Total Film-Maker"

2008-03-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

I finally found a copy of this long out-of-print tome comprised of Lewis' sole foray in teaching filmmaking -- at USC, 1967 -- and felt the need to relate: this is simply the best filmmaking book I've ever read.

Every page contains a pearl of wisdom that resonates and rings true so thoroughly; my notebook would corroborate: it's completely full of his quotes. Any doofus out there who considers Lewis to be nothing but a cloying clown -- anybody that feels the need to bring up that now debunked cliche that only the French can love him -- need only to read this book to see a much more important dimension to his filmmaking. The Total Film-Maker, indeed.

Image(s) of the Day: Jerry Lewis in THREE ON A COUCH (1966)

2008-03-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

"Then the intangibles! What are they? How many? Can I teach the intangibles of film-making? Not really. Maybe the only answer is: How do you touch another man's soul? It might develop from that. Sit down and say, You're dealing with lovely human beings. Each one of them is an individual. Each one of them in his own right a lovely, important-to-someone human heing. Some will behave like turds, but you must try to understand why."

--Jerry Lewis, "The Total Film-Maker"

The Roots of Leone: THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES (Sergio Leone, 1961)

2008-03-08T09:06:00.000-08:00

Leone’s first solo directorial work (apart from assistant duties and second-unit chores) is a wishy-washy medley of the usual trotted-out peplum staples and must-haves, including the ubiquitous glistening beefcake, dark Roman beauties (Lea Massari, the missing girl in L’AVVENTURA and the incestuously-focused ma mère of Malle’s MURMUR OF THE HEART), and half-whispered political alliances with ensuing Coup d'états (over an erected behemoth harbor statue, also the picture’s most worthwhile set, with some critics [including tireless Leone scholar Christopher Frayling] equivocating it with the use of the Statue of Liberty in SABOTEUR and Mount Rushmore in NORTH BY NORTHWEST).

What makes this film feel so nakedly deficient and downright uninteresting is that there’s not an over-emphatic, operatic score by Leone’s former school chum/future vital collaborator Ennio Morricone (the chores are handled by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino here, who does an adequate, if forgettable, job). Rory Calhoun’s also a questionable lead to bolster the heroic strains of a Roman epic, what with his ‘50s greaser swagger, although his deep-set eyes align him with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and a host of others in the annals of Leone’s cinema that share similar remote, unremitting peepers. The ultra-“beeg” synonymous-with-Leone close-ups are nowhere to be seen, with the newly minted director favoring long shots to get the most bang out of his buck for the gold-colored sets and medium two-shots for the protracted dialogue scenes.

Still, a must-see for dogged completists, as it can actually be quite captivating once Calhoun enters the fray of a band of upstart rebels looking to overthrow the domineering, current in-command King; he somehow remains a fervent supporter of their cause while keeping his objective, outsider perspective (traits not out of place within Eastwood's Man With No Name).

Anthony Mann: BORDER INCIDENT (1949)

2008-03-04T12:28:00.001-08:00

The first in a series of posts on the films of Anthony Mann.

Reconfiguring and contextualizing their 1947 poverty row breakout hit T-MEN for the studios, Winnipeg, Manitoba born writer John C. Higgins, cinematographer John Alton, and director Anthony Mann teamed up with a noticeably larger budget for BORDER INCIDENT (1949), a semi-documentary police procedural with mirrored law enforcement protagonists dealing with the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico and into California, all sketched together with the use of a stentorian announcer filling us in on the broader, political incidentals up until now.

Opening with omniscient helicopter shots of canals and the Mexican-California border, Alton and Mann delight in the geometry of the rows and off-center patterns (a visual motif that will crop up – no pun intended – over the course of the film, most noticeably in the chiaroscuro-conducive slots of a mailroom seen over an hour later) and burgeoning landscape that would prove to be a precursor to the rugged terrain seen in the James Stewart westerns of Mann.

Deep in the throes of World War II, it seems the United States’ own migrant workers were in short supply, so the government initiated The Bracero Program on August 4, 1942, enabling poor Mexican laborers to cross the border for a short period, with the U.S. intent on sending them back through the aid of incentives in Mexican bank accounts rather than legally allowing them to become citizens. Of course, some scheming individuals discovered loopholes, figured ways to smuggle Mexicans inside the U.S. and paid them less than the government was prepared to. This practice oftentimes led to several murders of the migrant workers following the theft of whatever the greedy entrepeneurs could steal back.

BORDER INCIDENT is the tale of two law enforcement agents – Jack Bearnes (George Murphy, of William A. Wellman’s BATTLEGROUND) of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization department, and Pablo Rodriguez (a baby-faced Ricardo Montalban, fresh off a series of MGM musicals in what was his first dramatic performance) of the Mexican equivalent of the F.B.I. Their job is to infiltrate the shadowy organizations in order to find out just how these crooked entrepreneurs and dishonest farmers operate, Rodriguez posing as a disgraced Bracero not content on waiting any longer for the legal channels to allow him to enter the United States, and Bearnes as a common felon who has stolen more than four-hundred blank immigration slips (and thus, enticing the villains with something they desperately want and need). The tough-guy authority of Bearnes and Rodriguez’s subtle understanding of his people's plight make for a clash of engaging personalities, though a friendship is established by a brief throwaway line of another case the two worked on in Texas (and in a sly comment for a film that doesn’t have any smoldering females to speak of, both detectives are quick to agree on the attractiveness of a female caught up in that previous case; if this film can’t showcase any striking women, at least it can speak of beauties almost too gorgeous to be seen).

Rodriguez, almost immediately after going undercover, befriends a comparable migrant case in Juan Garcia (James Mitchell), a six-week veteran of the dehumanizing process of standing in line awaiting an affirmative answer from the people who decide on which “Braceros” are allowed access to the United States. Married with children, Juan Garcia has a lot more to lose should he be taken advantage of -- not to mention the added insult of his criminal superiors taking overpriced deductions for both food and shelter. Still, he decides to cross with Rodriguez anyway.

After tracking down some venal-minded citizens who are willing to set up their transport, Mann presents us with one of the cleverest scenes in the picture, as a woman dressed in the style of a palm reader inspects Rodriguez’s hands. In an all-too-quick assessment, she suspects that he is lying by the fact that no calluses appear on the skin of his supposedly migrant worker hands. Rodriguez gets the okay anyway, after quick conniving and some fierce deliberation by the powers-that-be, but such deceitful appearances and table-turnings aren't common in the film, and it makes for a unique bit of overturning a stereotype.

Rodriguez and Juan Garcia then make a precarious entrance into U.S. territory on the back of a flatbed truck, hidden underneath a layer of hay, and driven to the contemplation of their respective futures -- Rodriguez worrying about his case, and Juan Garcia, his family --brought on by the death of an elderly member of their burrowed-in crew.

Bearnes takes a wiseacre approach to his newfound identity, allowing the big daddy of the syndicate, Owen Parkson (Howard Da Silva), to make his presence, but to never let him have the upper hand; his playful snatching away of the dart gun from Parkson letting the latter know that Bearnes is not one to be openly obsequious, and he can more than stand his ground. Da Silva’s bulbous appearance does wonders for his living-off-the-land persona here, a man getting rich off the tragic exploitation of others. He has a number of minions answering to him, namely Zopilate (Arnold Moss) and Chuchillo (Alfonso Bedoya, his credit in the trailer reading “Remember Him From THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE?”), two slicksters who do all of the man’s dirty work.

Bearnes’ denouement is positively astonishing, especially when considering the time in which this was made: in another reverberation of T-MEN, Rodriguez is forced to confront the demise of his assigned partner as a tractor driven by Da Silva’s underlings virtually obliterate his body while he barks out for mercy. Mann builds the intensity here by depicting Bearnes crawling ever so closely to the frame, juxtaposed with high-angled shots of the rudders that will seal his fate. There is a baroque corrosiveness in this explicit death that almost foreshadows a similar white-nuclear heat seen in Robert Aldrich’s KISS ME DEADLY.

Alton and Mann capture the villains mostly in hard-lit close-ups, and the skillful compositions play around with focus, allowing for immediate foreground features (usually on the left side of the frame) to be contrasted with the thrown-into-sharp-relief background details. Most often we’ll see characters snaking around the corners of the left side of the frame as the villains jostle about frantically on the right, searching for either Rodriguez or Bearnes or whomever. There is also a doubling-up of gestures signaling an equanimity between nations, as seen in the still below of Rodriguez and Bearnes shaking the hands of their superiors and the final shot (before the dissolve) of the American and Mexican flags hanging in equal balance as Mexican agent Rodriguez is celebrated by his American compatriots. Alton has the well-earned reputation as the master of film noir lighting, and even if the film in question scarcely falls into film noir territory -- in character, location, or even plot -- Alton and Mann still mine the shadow-play for all its worth in this, their fifth of six collaborations. Mann’s choice of blocking here is to include as many people in the scene as possible, cramming everyone into tight medium shots for prolonged expository dialogue scenes.

Perhaps a trifle inconsequential in comparison to their Eagle-Lion films like T-MEN and especially RAW DEAL, BORDER INCIDENT still shows Mann getting accustomed to the luxuries of being under contract while accommodating some lesser stars in this MGM release. I’m not about to suggest that it’s simply a watered down big-studio indirect remake of T-MEN without the pugnacity or immediate kick of the original, because the mere handling of landscape here gave Mann a chance to get acclimatized to composing and dealing with the open-spaces that he’d soon be shooting with leading man James Stewart. Mann captures the determined focus inherent in two law enforcement men with no home lives and very little information -- other then the criminal cases that defines their being -- but there’s still a carefree attitude in the professionalism depicted than that in the heroes of Howard Hawks. Mann’s men, at least in his noirs and police procedurals, navigate the waters of their predicaments with a combination of defiant stability, a swagger in their step, and a tongue in their cheek.

Otto Preminger, 1971

2008-02-27T17:47:00.001-08:00

These are the Damned: RIVER'S EDGE (Tim Hunter, 1986)

2008-02-20T09:49:00.001-08:00

"I'm not being smart
Or trying to be cold on my part
And I'm not gonna wear my heart on my sleeve
But you know people get all emotional
And sometimes, man, they just dont act rational
They think they're just on TV"

--Lou Reed, "Street Hassle"

As far as films centering on abandoned, desiccated youth, RIVER’S EDGE is unique in its objective approach to its teenaged protagonists. There’s not a judgment or an edict passed down by director Tim Hunter, and he generally lets the situation of a murdered high school girl and the ensuing desertion of her fast-decomposing corpse play out amongst a conniving, gossipy, and deeply troubled riff-raff clique. As real life casts a pallor over the loosely based-on-a-true-story narrative, parents are either substance abusers (much like their kids) or can’t seem to find time away from work; they’re left in the margins, allowing for their disturbed offspring to gallivant around their coastal town, ambling for beer and free marijuana from the town loony/fugitive (Dennis Hopper).

In more than a few broad strokes, the film could be said to resemble David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET or “Twin Peaks” (or is it they that resemble RIVER’S EDGE?) for the way there’s an affected surrealistic rendering in one-off shots and off-kilter dialogue (and that’s not to mention the Hopper factor, who, in fact, I prefer here) -- there’s Hopper waltzing with a blonde-haired, blow-up doll; Hopper asking if there are any “Bud in Bottles” to the convenience store clerk (Taylor Negron) after his fellow murderer/fugitive double (Daniel Roebuck) has held up the place; Crispin Glover’s spastic performance as the leader in the clique, an avowed speed freak who unexpectedly takes it upon himself to shield the murderer from the cops, torments their shared friends (Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Josh Richman, Roxana Zal) in order to ensure they don't tattle to the cops in the interim before he Figures It All Out.

Reeves and Skye are the conscience of the film, steadily acclimatizing to a newfound relationship bounded by the uneasy connection found in their mutual disturbance in keeping the murder of a friend silent. It’s a problem with modern society, Hunter argues, but there’s not a finger pointed (all of the “society is rundown, ravaged, and disintegrating morally” arguments are otherwise scoffed at by the scene featuring a nerdish student addressing his radically progressive teacher, who dissects the social-political dimensions of a presumably close acquaintance’s death as if it’s an op-ed piece for “The New York Times”) and they’re not all bad apples, even if appearances are to the contrary.

The pea to the paroxysmal Glover's pod is the younger Joshua John Miller, brother to Reeves in the film, but more of a cosmic kin to the former; his exaggerated gait, his unhurried line delivery, and his babyish features make his precociousness into a petty life of crime worth considering if he’s beyond redemption or not (the film’s not telling: after Reeves diffuses an internal combustion inside Miller by wrestling a revolver away from him, Hunter doesn’t feature him in any close-shots and he doesn’t say another line of dialogue, his group shots – as part of the crowd – almost make it seem as if he’s now silently assimilated with everybody else by this unheralded tragedy).

Hunter cleverly inverts certain tropes of classical Hollywood (particularly Nicholas Ray’s seminal REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE), subtly replacing the underlying motive and gestures of its youth; this is not an accidental death caused by a “chicken run”, but an honest-to-goodness homicide that deserves to be brought to the cops as soon as possible. There is no moral quandary presented here, just a couple of teens weaned off of action films and '70s cop shows who misinterpret the situation as one (Glover's character makes comparisons of hiding the murderer to being like an episode of "Starsky and Hutch" and, earlier on, that he "feels like Chuck Norris"). There's an empowerment issue at work here, and as long as the killing is not reported, these kids get to play make-believe.

The music, by Wim Wenders’ regular composer Jürgen Knieper, is bombastic and large, insularly Germanic, stuffy, but gives the film an important counterpoint or counterweight to the metal (mostly Slayer, a pitch-perfect reference) listened to by almost everybody else.

Dennis Hopper (complete with Indian Motorcycle rusted placard on the wall) plays a shadow of his former EASY RIDER, a cousin of the confused stance put forth by the disadvantaged in the film, but as he considers the murder that has caused the abuzz, his ultimate verdict is that his is more genuine because of “the love” held for the woman he killed, an odd, disquieting thing to say, but a truthful, useful key to the stunted emotionality present at any given moment in the teenagers of RIVER’S EDGE.

(1932 - 2008)

2008-02-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

David Chase and "The Rockford Files" (Season 5, Episodes 9 & 10: "Black Mirror")

2008-02-05T23:32:00.000-08:00

For me, one of the most heartbreaking episodes in all of television’s history is also one of the most unsung.

“Love is the Word”, Season 6, Episode 6 of the perennial private investigator program “The Rockford Files” was written by the sole mind behind “The Sopranos”, David Chase, and directed by one of that show’s greatest assets, John Patterson (he helmed every season closer up until his death of prostate cancer in 2005, “The Sopranos” sixth season finale being dedicated to his memory). It’s a story of the proclamation of a love delayed, as Jim Rockford (James Garner) visits his on-again, off-again psychologist girlfriend Megan Dougherty (Kathryn Harrold, of MODERN ROMANCE) only to discover that his complicated feelings towards her have gone undisclosed for too long, and it’s too late -- she’s set to marry another lover in the near future. He takes her out to a Barbara Mandrell concert, and the performance of one of her renditions stings him to the heart, bitterly. There is little to say on the drive home, and once Rockford’s back to his ramshackle trailer, Garner delivers in a prolonged, meditative sequence that wonderfully exhibits a pained sense of his rugged masculinity, of regret and longing, of kowtowing to the cinematic-archaic code of honor that states a man can’t reveal his true feelings, a code that probably has never existed in the first place. Garner’s so terrific in this episode - hell, in these first ten minutes (before the rote mystery plot kicks in) - that it reminds the viewer of what a privilege it is to see such a big-screen talent on the small screen.

So, as Season Six isn’t yet available on DVD, I retreated back last night to Season Five, almost magically selecting a “Rockford Files” at random, and figuring that the two-parter (read: 90 minutes) “Black Mirror” might be intriguing, I put it on. Credits rolled, and both Kathryn Harrold’s and David Chase’s names came up. It turns out, to my delight, that “Black Mirror” is the precursor to “Love is the Word” – the beginnings of a relationship told within the narrative of a standard private investigator tale that involves a madman terrorizing his blind psychologist.

It all starts out on a luminous Californian beach near Rockford’s home. Rockford literally stumbles onto a sunbathing Dougherty by the missing of a football catch thrown by his venerable pal Angel (Stuart Margolin). She refuses Rockford’s dinner invitations, but the two soon cross paths when one of Dougherty’s psychoanalytical patients begins stalking her, making threatening phone calls late at night (I could swear that former “Rockford Files” guest star Strother Martin was the culprit, by the throaty swagger in the voice of the first call; perhaps he was making an unbilled voice cameo?). Dougherty contacts Rockford after this sudden need of his peculiarly protective, investigative services, and the two are soon in the middle of an affair. She is fiercely combative of his suggestions that he read her patient confidentiality files in order to dig up a clue, but there is soon a break in the case when the bodyguard Rockford hires is assaulted, and an observer in the medical building spotted the assailant as he escaped.

The fact that Dougherty is blind is but an afterthought, only servicing to make her predicament that much more frightening in a WAIT UNTIL DARK fashion. Confusion is stirred at first, as Rockford doesn’t realize she’s without sight on the beach, causing for a jocularly played self-loathing scene where Garner questions whether it was his looks that made her decline his company for dinner. Harrold’s likewise adept in both parts of “Black Mirror”, suggesting a rigid independence and conquering of her so-called disability that can, at times, give way to an equally as strong self-conscious nagging, but only to parties she’s decided are trustworthy (in a frank scene, and the only one in which the origins of her impaired vision is broached, she explains to Jim a former fondness for letting go by driving fast in an open convertible; Jim relents, and borrows a convertible for this purpose). She speaks of the notion that this activity is freeing for her, as for blind people “walls” are the world, that running into one means you must back up and find your way all over again; driving fast means “there are no walls”.

Character actor Leo Gordon plays the bodyguard that Rockford entrusts with the safety of Dougherty, and his numbskull dialogue wouldn’t seem so out of place in the mouth of Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico) from “The Sopranos”, as his double-breasted suit sums up his relentless but turgid energy and ‘40s gentlemanly appearance to a tee; “I bet I know what kind of music you like”, Gordon intones to Dougherty, after informing her that he’s terrified of revealing too much of his true character to even a psychologist off-duty -- “Stevie Wonder?”

After some lethargic attempts at fooling us with red herrings, the true identify of the psychopathic patient is revealed to be Danny Green/Jackie Tetuska (John Pleshette), a conflicted double personality between that of a shut-in loner and a contract killer well known in the underground circuits and amongst Rockford’s friends. A meeting is arranged through Rockford’s police cohort, Lieutenant Becker (Joe Santos, another staple of “The Sopranos), and Dougherty is placed with the man and his hitherto secret identity; Tetuska, the hit man portion of the split personality, is sincere in his statements that he doesn’t recall Dougherty. But some quick thinking on her part jogs his memories to background childhood details otherwise private; afterwards, he catches up to her, but is thwarted by Rockford.

Another aspect of “The Rockford Files” that I’ve always loved is the sense of Rockford’s backwoods network of Los Angeles denizens and close-knit, shady acquaintances. In one pithy, amusing scene, Rockford enlists the aid of a handwriting expert he knew in prison (the offender has left some scribbles on a matchbook inside Dougherty’s apartment). Informing Jim of the death of a mutual friend, Rockford begins to cheerily speak of the well doings of other inmates the two men both knew – before the handwriting expert interjects that those men have since died, too.

Director Arnold Laven (SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE with Dan Duryea and Walter Matthau; THE RACK with Paul Newman; and, perhaps most importantly, one proponent of the Levy-Gardner-Laven production company that spawned “The Rifleman” on television, and WHITE LIGHTNING and GATOR on the big screen) didn’t direct another “Rockford Files”, but he displays a flare for blue-mood lighting in the silent sequences that occur in the medical building as the troubled individual makes pointed attacks on Dougherty’s life. There’s almost an Italian giallo flourish in the generous splashes of bright color, making for an unrecognizable style from any other episode of the series that I’ve seen.

Chase, Garner, and Harrold would reunite one more time with this dynamic in Chase’s follow-up to “Love is the Word”, the tele-movie “Punishment and Crime” (1996). I haven't seen it, but as it’s apparently a reworking of the Fyodor Dostooyevsky novel that’s reversed in the title, I’m sure it’s of further interest and I look forward to catching up to it once Universal gets to releasing the made-for-TV films.

To Live and Die in Las Vegas: William Friedkin and "CSI" (Season 8, Episode 9: "Cockroaches")

2008-02-04T10:18:00.001-08:00

It all starts with a slam-bang, high-octane pursuit, kinetically captured by Friedkin’s impulsive ferocity in a manner that doesn’t allow viewers to catch their collective breaths. I’m not a fan of “CSI”, so I couldn’t tell you if car chases are a staple of the series, but I’ll make the claim anyway that they seldom could have achieved the forward-probing intensity of the one present here. It never ceases to amaze me what they can now show on network television, as the close of the chase (before the opening credits) are that of a CGI-rendered body being bloodily splayed open on the scorching, hard asphalt. (It should be noted that this chase is entirely independent of the proper narrative, serving only to produce a corpse for the investigation.) So, in totality, it’s probably the most blatantly Friedkin touch in the entire episode, but this doesn’t denigrate it: it could easily stand alongside the celebrated ones in THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) and TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. (1985), and to a lesser extent, the automobile pursuits in JADE (1995) and his tele-film JAILBREAKERS (1994). At this point, they are the director’s specialty (especially when he tackles action) and the audience expects to be treated to a new interpretation whenever he’s behind the camera.

Surprisingly, as this is a reunion of sorts for the star and director of TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., William Petersen (as Grissom) is virtually given nothing to do but to gravely issue stern glances at Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan), the episode’s real focus. As in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., Petersen is the older mentor, a character we feel we can never pin down or thoroughly judge. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not a cheat or warped in the same ways the character Richard Chance was, but there’s a degree to which Grissom takes on the status of a big brother with shoes too large to fill. John Pankow occupied that little-brother position in L.A., just as Dourdan represents that here.

A glitzy Las Vegas strip club, run by old-school mob lord Lou Gedda (a latter-day Charles Laughton-esque John Capodice), orchestrates a swindle of overcharging certain high profile patrons the wrong price for champagne after their nights of drunken debauchery with the club’s strippers. When they refuse to pay, it results in a pile-up of broken bones, sliced-up genitalia, and dead bodies. The only witness is a questionable rundown bum (played by an appropriately tattered Dennis Christopher, of BREAKING AWAY [Peter Yates, 1979] and FADE TO BLACK [Vernon Zimmerman, 1980]); I don’t want to stress his importance, but one of the key characteristics of programs like these is the familiar faces of yesteryear’s cinema that turn up from time to time; Christopher’s little more than a red herring, someone who pretends to know more than he does, but his presence is welcome anyway.

Crime Scene Investigator Brown -- who seemingly has had a problem with either drinking or drugs in the show’s history judging by a scene where he hesitates entering the seedy place -- prowls the club as just such a customer, hoping that the crooked powers-that-be may attempt some rough stuff on him. Of course, as Petersen’s Grissom describes, they’re much smarter than that, and they instead eventually take vengeance on Brown in a much more disturbing, earth-shattering way.

Drinking heavily and reveling with one of the attractive dancers (played by Rebecca Budig), Brown finds himself playing into their hand, enabling the underbelly of the unseen forces just enough rope to hang him with. When Brown questions why she works for such an organization, the dancer sticks up for her employees, stating that it’s mobsters like Gedda that built Vegas to be what it was in the first place. Self-deluded as she may be, she’s right, but it’s tough to ascertain if she’s completely aware of her pawn-like status in this private game between Brown and the mob when it’s exposed in a rigidly fatalistic reveal in the final seconds. Friedkin encapsulates this connection between Brown and the dancer by housing their evening spent together in an immaculately white “dream-room” of sorts, where words are reverberated back and a stack of condoms may temporarily take on the visage of a dagger. Friedkin also experiments with flash-frames once again, but instead of CRUISING’s hardcore gay porn inserts, they are inserts inside a sedate scene of a murder-to-be, or a murder-that-has-been.

As in much of Friedkin’s work, there are more questions asked in the end then there are answers, and he certainly knows how to stick the inquisitive dagger deep into the viewer, twisting his almost-consistently constant pessimistic worldview into a series of malleable thoughts and impressions. Tenuous connections that didn’t seem plausible or possible take on considerable meaning once all is said and done, and sinister implications or associations crop up. There’s a rousing finish here that prides itself in feeling fragmentary, and even though there’s supposedly a typical follow-up denouement to the case at the start of the next “CSI”, I doubt I’ll ever watch it. Friedkin challenges the program, and adapts it to suit his own sensibilities, and not the other way around, forcing the other creators, writers, and directors of the subsequent season to play catch-up.

An Act of Humanity from a Supposed Cynic: A Scene from Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT (1960)

2008-01-30T14:06:00.000-08:00

If there was a moment in all of THE APARTMENT (1960) that economically expresses the innate character of the lovelorn, corporate-climber C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), it would be this one:

Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) greets Baxter in the downstairs lobby of their monolith building. She notices the addition of his name at the top of the list of the corporate offices (this taking place after Baxter has seen Kubelik at her worst, following her spontaneously-planned, pill-popping suicide attempt at the titular apartment; she assumes that he’s been promoted due to his helping his boss/her married paramour (Fred MacMurray) out of this messy situation; and she’s right).

There’s knowingness in their gestures to one another, and a resignation on the part of MacLaine as she figures he’s assimilated with the depicted businessman credo of cheating on your wife (after Baxter points to an attractive bimbo waiting in the corridors). In the scene, we’re actually aligned with Kubelik, something fairly rare in the film when Lemmon’s on-screen; we’re insinuating and deducing this, too. He’s finally sold out.

But, no, once Kubelik’s on her way, the camera pans left and we’re left to witness – off into the distance – Lemmon’s two-step past the “hot date”, as she’s swept off by another white collar.

(Other viewers may point to the earlier scene where Baxter frenetically changes channels in front of his tinfoil-ripped t.v. dinner before defiantly turning it off, signaling his morose displeasure at the mundane luxuries that accompany his loneliness in the few remaining conscious hours that make up the time away from his humdrum drone workplace. But this feels rote and commonplace, and as cynical as it may seem on the surface, the added charm of the late-night movie gag (“we proudly present…Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and…Lionel Barrymore in…GRAND HOTEL!, but first…”) takes something away from the focus on Baxter’s glum demeanor.)

My Review of Lucio Fulci's THE PSYCHIC (1977)

2008-01-23T18:15:00.000-08:00

is up at "Film Fanaddict". Even though I've seen the long out-of-print VHS more than once, I'd consider this viewing to be my first, if only for Severin's thankful inclusion of excised material and my own better comprehension of Fulci's multifaceted, if uneven, directorial career.

Great Cameos in Film History: Stacy Keach in THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN (John Huston)

2008-01-22T00:40:00.001-08:00

The Curse of THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (Gunter V. Fritsch, Robert Wise, 1944)

2008-01-17T09:31:00.001-08:00

“The MAIN and CREDIT TITLES are SUPERIMPOSED on a series of line drawings of elves, small forest creatures, tree limbs, and other grotesqueries drawn in the delicate, fanciful, and yet frightening style of Arthur Rackham, The DISSOLVES from one card to another are accomplished by a gust of wind blowing autumnal leaves past the title as the card begins its dissolve. The drawing on the last card shows an oddly shaped tree trunk.”

And so begins the RKO production of THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, with a title sequence conjuring up the fairytale illustrations of artist Arthur Rackham with nary a mention of the sinister feline creature seen in the original DeWitt Bodeen-Jacques Tourneur creation to help set the mood for what’s about to transpire. Through this studio-imposed title -- a title that was to lure unsuspecting paying customers into thinking they’d be seeing a direct sequel -- RKO was, perhaps, shooting themselves in the foot; their wily trick wouldn’t remain undiscovered for long, and the film’s eventual legion of admirers would have to contend with decades of making a qualifying statement about this mislabeling, and how the film’s virtues and poetic qualities are vastly different -- but just as valid -- as the Tourneur original. It was a grave disservice to producer Val Lewton (who preferred the titles AMY AND HER FRIEND or THE UNSEEN PLAYMATE, from the Robert Louis Stevenson poem quoted in the film’s dialogue), but in today’s context, RKO’s insistence on retitling takes on a different, elegiac meaning for what these B-movie programmers came to represent: the smuggling in of far more intellectual conceits or ideas than their guise would otherwise suggest. It’s a blessing and a curse, but I’ve come to believe that the unfavorable title is a test for prospective viewers to leave their preconceptions about “these types of films” at the door. Within its opening minutes, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE demands to be taken seriously, and if you were to ask any child psychologist, it is.

Ann Carter, as Amy Reed, the spawn of CAT PEOPLE’s coupling of Kent Smith and Jane Randolph, has the right kind of earnest credulousness to portray the introverted child at the centre of the film. Attuned to a different sort of wavelength than her immediate classmates, Amy’s sullen dreaminess speaks to those in the audience who played outfield in little league but had a far more concentrated gaze on a flitting butterfly in their immediate vicinity than any kind of potential right-field hit. A cause for concern for her parents, but not her armchair psychologist teacher (semi-John Ford regular Eve March), Amy is looked at as a stern disappointment by both Smith and Randolph (exempt is her Jamaican butler, played by calypso singer Sir Lancelot, who actually spends the most time with Amy through the course of the film). Our initial incident occurs when Amy sincerely believes that her birthday party invitations have been mailed through a knot in the family’s backyard tree (an actual episode from Val Lewton’s boyhood, as revealed in the recent TCM doc by Kent Jones, THE MAN IN THE SHADOWS), her gathering remains unattended and her parents just don’t understand. Soon after, the ethereal presence of Kent Smith’s first wife, the “Cat Person” of the original, Irena Reed (Simone Simon), begins to appear to Amy as a much-needed invisible friend. The two dance and play, and maybe it’s not unreasonable to hazard a guess that Irena may turn out to be a malevolent spirit, out to take revenge on the daughter of the union that resulted in her demise, but from Simon’s first frames into her appearance, I could tell that this was not to be: her gallic nonchalance and charismatic persona seems at peace in the otherworld. And those few attempts by Amy’s parents to speak of Simon’s ill-temperament from the original are not particularly needed, and they feel shoehorned in by Lewton simply to appease the studio heads and to keep those wise audience members content with the knowledge that at least the filmmakers are trying to work in a reference to the earlier film.

If ghastly, old-fashioned horror is what Lewton needed to provide, he could do no better than adding the town eccentric, Mrs. Julia Farren (Julia Dean), a forgetful elderly lady (with a daughter she believes is an impostor) that Amy visits from time to time, even after she gets the scare of a lifetime by Farren’s retelling of the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. Dean’s full-flushed face and booming voice solely occupy this, her first sequence, as she appears in medium shot barreling down the center of the frame and causing Amy (along with her butler) to scramble out of Farren’s dilapidated, extravagant home. It is this added drama with the Farren daughter/mother that culminates the close of THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE: as a horrendous rainstorm beats down outside, Amy sneaks out of her bedroom to play with Irena, while her parents, downstairs with Amy’s teacher, receiving a lesson in better understanding the “Inner World of Childhood”, soon learn of their child’s disappearance and amble out to find her. After some hysterics with the deranged daughter of this town eccentric, the final scene is of a heartfelt reunion for father and daughter, as Kent Smith sincerely encourages Amy’s belief, and ensures her that he can see Irena, too (the audience is aware of the fact that he can’t, but this small step towards respecting his daughter’s reserved instincts and fantastical inclinations is Lewton’s idea of a happy reconciliation). Irena has served her purpose, and Lewton, DeWitt Bodeen, and directors Gunther V. Fritsch and first-timer Robert Wise never confirm one way or the other that she is either the otherworldly, benevolent specter or the inner workings of Amy’s imagination, starved for human contact, the imagining a friend with the looks of her father’s deceased first wife combined with a fairytale rendering from a storybook.

It is this committed ambiguousness in Val Lewton that keeps one coming back for more, from the shadowy unseen horrors in CAT PEOPLE to the precision in not tipping the scales with Irena in this name-only sequel. Lewton is that rare breed of auteur producer, stamping his strapping personality over every frame while assimilating into the background, never arguing for his credit but insisting on what goes where. This is a magical, timeless, literate series of genre films with a sense of unparalleled poetry speaking out from the sinuous darkness.

AMY
Daddy?

OLIVER
Yes, darling.

AMY
Tell me tha real truth. You can see my
friend, can't you?

Oliver doesn't even look out into the garden. He leans down
and brushes a kiss on Amy's forehead.

OLIVER
Yes, darling, I can see her.

Amy turns, smiles at him, and hugs him closely.

THE END

==============================================================

Some websites containing information on the making of THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE:

The Val Lewton Screenplay Collection (an unbelievable resource).

The Val Lewton B-Unit (which includes Manny Farber's review of the film).

AFI Tribute to Robert Wise (with a page on THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE).

And last, but certainly not least, here's Michael Guillén of "The Evening Class" and his extraordinarily organized Val Lewton Blogathon. You'll also find Guillén's interviews with both child actress Ann Carter(-Newton) here and Val E. Lewton here.

Larry Gross on ZODIAC (David Fincher, 2007)

2008-01-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be back later this week with my thoughts on the recently released ZODIAC: Director's Cut, but first, I thought it would be useful to point out a favourite review of the film. It's written by screenwriter Larry Gross for Movie City News, and it's located here.

Gross' take is an incisive, exploratory look into the very formal properties that make up the Fincher film, and his thoughts on how it's an autocritique of the earlier SE7EN (a film I actually dislike) make it simply some of the best writing on film in the year 2007 (critic Bill Krohn makes a similar statement in his review for "Cahiers du Cinema", but unfortunately, there's no easy hyperlink, though I heartily recommend purchasing the May 2007 "online" version at the website if you're more than curious).

Billy Idol - "Dancing With Myself" (d: Tobe Hooper)

2008-01-14T12:33:00.000-08:00

Still my favourite (unofficial) version of "I Am Legend".

The Byrds' "Truck Stop Girl" (1970)

2008-01-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

I've been obsessively listening to this second track off of the first side of the second LP of The Byrds' notoriously titled "(Untitled)" album (for more info on the notoriety, click here) this week. At first listen, I thought the rather nasally-inflected vocals were handled by usual lead singer/founding father Roger McGuinn -- but that fountain of information, Wikipedia, proves me wrong: it's actually Clarence White, the guitar-playing child prodigy and former one-third of a band of Bluegrass brothers known as The Kentucky Colonels.

White, a member of that ever-shifting Byrds roster in later years, first temporarily joined as a session player on their "Younger Than Yesterday" album (1966), but he wouldn't come into his own or join as a full member until the [legendary singer/songwriter] Gram Parsons era, his guitar-plucking presence most notably felt on the country-twinged "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" album in 1968.

This song, written by Lowell George and Bill Payne of Little Feat, was recorded in 1970. The lyrics are simplistic and tell an uncomplicated narrative of a love spurned, but, I think, it's a well-deserving example of how The Byrds transcended their 12-string Rickenbacher folk-rock roots for a more mellowing, all-encompassing country-flavoured style in the late '60s and early '70s (as much as I like their earlier career-making Dylan covers, it's this period -- with such albums as "The Notorious Byrd Brothers" (1968) and "Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde" (1969) -- that I couldn't possibly part with).

It's also particularly haunting to hear White sing the last set of lyrics, as he would be killed in an automobile accident a scant three years later; he was 29.

=============================================================
Here's an Mp3, followed by the lyrics:

His tail lights flickering as he pulled up to the truck-stop
The same old crowd was hanging out again tonight
He said, "fill up my tank while I go check my load."
"It feels like it's shifting all around."

He was the kind of man, do all he could
Above all he had integrity
But he was so young and on a ten city run
In love with a truck stop girl

As he went inside he was merrily greeted
By the girl with whom he was in love
She held out a glass and said, "Have another."
"This is the last time we can meet."

With her hair piled up high and a look in her eye
That would turn any good man's blood to wine
All his eyes could see, all his eyes could see
Was the stares from all those around him

He ran out to the lot and climbed into his rig
And drove off without tightening down
It was a terrible thing to see what remained
Of the rig that poor Danny was in

He was young and on a ten city run
In love with a truck stop girl

Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films (1957)

2008-01-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

I'm nearing the close of "Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films" (1957) by Eric Rohmer & Claude Chabrol. While covering and offering illuminating commentary over Hitch's Brit period (broken up by studio: The First Gainsborough Films [1923-1927]; British International [1927-1932]; Gaumont-British [1934-1937]; and Gainsborough-Mayflower [1937-1939]), these Nouvelle Vague critics and directors really excel and move from this obligatory coverage when contemplating the myriad ways Hitchcock's American period can be read and interpreted. Through including such intriguing concepts as their groundbreaking Catholic readings (later refuted by Robin Wood), Rohmer and Chabrol would set the bar high for scholars who would choose to write about and take on this esteemed, essential auteur.

Here's a brief two-paragraph excerpt from my favourite chapter so far -- "Figure and Number: STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951)":

“Hitchcock’s art, thrown into particularly sharp relief by this film [STRANGERS ON A TRAIN], is to make us participate – by means of the fascination exercised over each of us by a figure that is almost geometrically refined – in the vertigo of the characters; and beyond this vertigo we discover the essence of the moral ideas. The current that goes from the symbol to the idea always passes through the condenser of emotion. It is never a theoretic or a conventional connection. The emotion is a means and not an end in itself, as for example it is in the horror plays of the Grand Guignol. This emotion is on the other side of the form, but on this side of the idea. Because of this, it sometimes leaves us with both a bitter taste in our mouths and the sense of Unity which is the Unity of the world itself.

In the midst of chaos, the Unity is always discernible and provides a source of light that plays some of its most beautiful rays over the somber facets of Evil. Nature traverses this film from end to end – the everyday nature of festive evenings and sunny afternoons, but also nature with a capital N, or more exactly cosmos, a world spinning amidst other spinning worlds. Each gesture, each thought, each material or moral being, is the depository of a secret capable of explaining everything: and this light dispenses as much fear as comfort. The same principle on which the foundation of the world is based is simultaneously the principle that can preside at its destruction. We ask ourselves, as do the protagonists of SHADOW OF A DOUBT in the film’s closing moments, if the world doesn’t at times go mad. This idea, expressed in that film by words, is presented here in a concrete, irrefutable fashion. We are literally caught up in the maelstrom of universal gravitation. Edgar Allan Poe, the author of Eureka, has not been invoked in vain.”

More Than Hollywood Dreams: An Interview with Henry Jaglom

2008-01-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

Conducted last year, but only portions [on the film GOING SHOPPING] have been previously published.
============================================================

AG: This film [GOING SHOPPING, 2005] is the third in a loose trilogy, which includes EATING [1990] and BABYFEVER [1994]. Was this your plan from the start?

HJ: It was. It’s not a trilogy as planned, what’s planned is to do a series of films -- this happens to be the third, and I hope there’ll be more -- examining specific aspects of women’s lives in a way that I feel conventional films –- theatrical and commercial from Hollywood -- have neglected to focus on.

AG: Did you have a shooting script? You have a reputation for working loose with actors.

HJ: That’s a myth about me, really. I work loosely with the actors, but I had a 122 page script. Working loosely entails encouraging actors to use, sometimes, their own language, or to go off into a different direction once they’ve accomplished what I need them to do in the scene. And then I can frequently use what they’ve given me in the final edit. They come up with surprises for themselves and for each other, and I love that. But there’s very much a guided script that has to be followed in order to make the whole thing work.

AG: For continuity purposes?

HJ: Yeah, and to have the dialogue that I want to make happen. The myth that has been attached to me is that I just let actors go, but that would be really difficult. But I certainly am actor-friendly and love them [for being able] to tap into their own lives and their own language to sort of meet them in a reality of what I’m getting at, what I’m looking for. And in a film like this – [GOING SHOPPING], have you seen it?

AG: Yes.

HJ: Whatever they say to the camera about the issue in the film, and this applies to the others in the series –- EATING and BABYFEVER, too -– where there is a device of them talking to the camera, that is not scripted. That is entirely those women and their true relationship to the theme of the film. And in this case, it’s shopping.

AG: The use of fragmentary interviews?

HJ: Yes, that’s them. Those are the people’s real thoughts. I just then, in the editing room, try to rhythmically place them in and give a fair representation of them and find a way, and have them emerge in and out of the narrative story without interrupting it. For me, it gives the possibility of a larger scale. When I’m doing a film about something I’m interested in – a theme, rather than a particular character, the theme becomes the more important thing. I feel if you create a tapestry out of these women talking about their own feelings throughout the film, you can create a much broader canvas in which there’s not just the usual two or three or four or five characters, but so many more views on the subject that you hopefully get a sense of women’s lives in respect to that particular subject.

AG: They compliment one another?

HJ: Yeah, and that’s the job of editing. It took me a year and a half to edit the film, because it’s interweaving these two very different things: a straightforward narrative that unfolds, and the counterpoint of the people talking to the camera about the issue of the film.

AG: As far as the editing is involved, have you gone through a lot of different rough cuts?

HJ: Yes, constantly. I’m showing them to audiences and then, through inviting audiences, I listen to what they have to say. It’s a process, you know, a year and a half or sometimes two years. For me, it’s trying to compose music, to have the right balance, and it’s a complicated process. The shooting is actually the easiest part, trying to get it all down on film. And then I have at least 25, or 30, cuts of the film that I’ve shot. And I’ve got to narrow it down, and decide on which pieces work, and how to reconstruct them [so] that they’ll tell the story and give the emotion that I want.

AG: How long did you shoot for?

HJ: Three weeks.

AG: Going back to your earlier films now, would you say that your use of Orson Welles in SOMEONE TO LOVE [1987] was the first time you attempted this fragmentary use of real interviews?

HJ: That’s the first movie I tried it in, actually. And it was really because of the issue of loneliness in that film that Orson was watching, because we had Orson play this character that was watching everything going on. That’s when he said to me that if I can accomplish this -- if I could try to make it seamless -- he felt that it was possible for me to accomplish something that had not been quite done before. It’s a fascinating thing trying to make it seamless, that’s the big job. Trying not to get the audience taken out of the narrative by hearing these interviews, but to still have the interviews have an impact that compliments your emotions from the narrative.

AG: What happens when you have disparate styles of acting, perhaps from two acting schools, with the way you work?

HJ: That’s a problem. It’s a great question, and you know, I haven’t been asked that question in all of the interviews I’ve ever done (laughs). That’s a first class question, and there’s no real answer. And this is all I can say about it: usually that doesn’t happen, because I’m in the casting, and I try to find people who work from their emotions, their openness in a certain kind of way. I come from the actor’s studio and my training with Lee Strasberg in the Actor’s Studio was all about the moment to moment reality. There are actors who have a different sense of training, and those actors I usually don’t work with very well. There have been cases -– I don’t know if you’ve seen a film I made called FESTIVAL IN CANNES

AG: I have.

HJ: Well, in that one, Maximilian Schell, of course, comes from a very different school of acting. But we worked beautifully together. He felt very liberated. He felt liberated because it was the first chance to be himself. Jack Nicholson in my first film, A SAFE PLACE [1971], he’s said to this day he’s never been as much himself, the true jack Nicholson, as in any film because what I do is try to get the fullness of their character up on screen rather than have them play some separate character from themselves. But Jack’s work comes from a sort of similar creative background, whereas Maximilian Schell comes from a completely different one. Or, Vanessa Redgrave, for instance. It’s a wonderful process if you can get people to open up areas, especially when they are really skilled, really talented actors who have always worked one way – off of a script, off of a literary narrative, more from the outside, and to get them drop some of that protection, and use the spontaneity of what they’re feeling and what their impulses are in a different kind of way. I mean, something wonderful happens if the actors are willing to do it.

AG: And it seems they certainly flock to you, even if the paychecks are not substantial.

HJ: The paychecks are not what they usually get, for sure. I don’t know if they flock to me. There are some who, I’m sure, wouldn’t do it, but I think the way I work is what actors want mostly. This is what they want mostly. They want the chance to go back to what excited them originally when they wanted to become actors in the first place. A lot of that is what happens in my films, they get to take risks, big leaps of imagination, they know -- I think they know -- that if they fall on their face, I’m not gonna use that piece of film, you know, in the editing. But it gives them the chance to kind of fly, and frequently, their films and careers have been locked into safe projects, things which the public wants, or they know how to do, and this gives them a chance to go back to why the wanted to be creative and film actors in the first place, even if it’s not very financially remunerable. So, some of the stars that I’ve used have been the most open, the most excited, to be used this way.

AG: What are you working on now?

HJ: I have two films, one coming out in the spring, which is called HOLLYWOOD DREAMS [2006], and it’s about a girl who moves from Iowa to Hollywood to look for fame. She’s obsessed with fame. And it’s really about that kid from every town in this country, or in the world actually, who feels different, somehow not quite, you know, not quite normal or who they’re supposed to be socially, who feels they don’t fit in someway, who has this dream about obsession, about fame, and they head to New York, or Hollywood, with the intention of becoming famous, and that’s what’s in their mind for whatever psychological reason -- lack of being seen in life, lack of parental guidance -- that they find their way all over the place to NY and Hollywood in search of this dream. And this initially has very little to do with art and has more to do with this tremendous need for attention. And that’s what this film is about, that driving need. It follows a young woman from Iowa who comes here to achieve that dream. It has to do with wanting fame. Not about this particular fad at the moment (Reality Shows), but wanting to be famous, needing to be seen on that big screen, needing people to talk about you. Needing to read about yourself in the paper, or see your photo in the newspaper.

I’ve found an extraordinary young actress named Tanna Frederick who embodies this part. She’s actually from Iowa, and she’s given a great performance. In addition, there are a lot of great parts for other actors as well: Karen Black, and she’s wonderful. David Proval from “The Sopranos”.

[I interject about Proval being in Martin Scorsese’s MEAN STREETS [1973], mixing him up with Richard Romanus, who has previously worked with Jaglom and also appeared in MEAN STREETS.]

HJ: I’ve never worked with Proval before, no. Richard Romanus, yes, and he was in MEAN STREETS. Did you see “The Sopranos”? He [Proval] played Richie Aprile, the most vicious killer in the world and he gets killed by the sister, but I’m using him in a very different way. It’s set in Hollywood, and he’s a gay Hollywood producer -- it’s a complicated thing, but I’m using him. I have wonderful actors in different roles, showing up to support this performance from Tanna.

AG: And you’re also using Justin Kirk, from “Weeds”?

HJ: Oh, wow, you know who he is. He’s from “Weeds”, but he’s more renowned for his role in Mike Nichols’ adaptation of ANGELS IN AMERICA. And he was extraordinary in that, and tremendous in this, too, I think. And that’s coming out in the spring. And on my editing table, there’s the movie IRENE IN TIME, which is about the relationship between fathers and daughters and how that affects girls for the rest of their lives in their choice of men.

AG: Is this [HOLLYWOOD DREAMS] the first time you’ve professionally worked with [longtime friend] Seymour Cassel?

HJ: Yes, but we’ve known each other forever. He was the first actor that I knew when I was in college, and he invited me to the very first screening that ever was held of John Cassavetes’ SHADOWS, and I’ll never forget that. It was a midnight screening in Manhattan, and it changed my life. Cassavetes' film showed me that you didn’t have to make films the Hollywood way; he shot it with no money on the streets of New York with real actors and mixed with real people. Goldoni, the young girl, is appearing in IRENE IN TIME, and she’s not been in that much since then. I grew up on that film, and it was an important thing for me. And Seymour was an important part, showing me around, as he was a working actor and I was just this kid that was so excited. Anouk Aimée is another actress like that –- when I saw A MAN AND A WOMAN [Claude Lelouch, 1966], I was just so floored with her, but it never occurred to me that twenty-five years later I’d have the opportunity to work with her in a movie. It’s extraordinary.

HJ: Orson Welles was in my first movie [A SAFE PLACE, 1971]. I wanted him to play this magician. I thought it was impossible, just “how am I gonna get Orson Welles in a movie when I haven’t made one before” type-of-thing. So I called up my friend, who was actually Peter Bogdanovich, who I’d been friends with since teenage years. He was programming a theater in Manhattan called the New Yorker with great old Hollywood movies. And I was obsessed with new movies coming out of Europe, the Fellini’s, the Bergman’s, the Godard’s, and he was believing that the great movies were the old ones made by Ford and Howard Hawks, and we’d always argue about this. And I knew he knew Orson Welles because he’d interviewed him, before Peter got the opportunity to direct.

AG: Back when he was a critic?

HJ: Yes, when he was a critic, but he was a smart critic because he got to meet all these people by interviewing them, you know. So I called him up, and asked him. He said Orson would never do a film for a first time director, but I convinced him to introduce us and flew to New York, and I met this gigantic man in his hotel room with these great flowing purple pajamas. He said, “What are you doing here?”, and I said, “I want to persuade you about being in my first movie”. He said “Where’s the script?” I said, “Well, I don’t have a script yet, because if you’re not in it, I can’t do it. There’s a perfect character for you to play”. He just says, “I’m not interested”, and I just kind of brought up CITIZEN KANE [1941] and how it was his first film – and “Why won’t you do mine?” And that sort of stopped him in his tracks. He said, “I’ll sit down here but I won’t listen”. And he folded his arms as I started selling him, persuading him to play a magician. As I knew he loved magic, I created this character of the magician. In the end, it worked. We became friends, and for the last ten to twelve years of his life, we had lunch every week. And finally, I got to show the world this really sweet supportive man, instead of the ogre thought by many, in SOMEONE TO LOVE [1987, Welles’ last film as an actor]. In fact, I just discovered Orson is on youtube, which is really weird, but it seems like something he’d like.

I am in the OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which has been long lost, but according to Peter, it’s finally coming out. The rights have been figured out, and Orson’s ladyfriend, Oja Kodar, who produced it and is in it, is putting it together with Peter.

AG: And she [Oja Kodar] appeared in your SOMEONE TO LOVE [1987]. Getting seduced by Monte Hellman.

HJ: Well, Monte tries, but she eventually goes after me. I love to use directors -- Milos Forman is in NEW YEAR’S DAY [1989], for instance –- because there’s something about seeing them in front of the camera that I love.

AG: What’s your best Orson Welles story?

HJ: The best thing he said to me was during lunch one time. I was complaining about a movie -- I don’t even remember which one -- about how I wanted to make them my way and I didn’t have the money outside of the studio system and I didn’t have enough time. There was a general lack of time, money, but a tremendous pressure. And he said to me, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations”. I was taken aback, and he repeated it and explained. If you don’t have limitations, you don’t produce art. If you don’t have limitations, you just throw money at a project. “You just become Spielberg” were his exact words. If you don’t have the money and you don’t have the time, you see these limitations but you’re forced to produce art by finding creative, artistic solutions to your problems, rather than just an economic one. And it’s been the most important lesson of my life. Every time I’m mad in the middle of a film, wishing I made that deal with this studio that came to me two weeks earlier, or whatever it is, I think of that, remember Orson saying that, and I think long and hard about what the creative solution is. Orson continuously made creative alleyways all of his life..

AG: I have to ask about your involvement in one of your early films as an actor -– PSYCH-OUT [Richard Rush, 1968].

HJ: Originally I was just an actor, and I starred in “Gidget” – which was awful -- on television. And I was pursuing a career of acting, even though I always wanted to be a director, but really, how do you become a director? So, I found my way in as an actor. And Jack Nicholson was my friend. We used to go to all of these foreign movies together, and I knew Jack very well, and we were hanging out almost every evening in those days. So, anyway, he was starring in this movie and relayed that there was this part for me. He recommended me to the director [Rush], and I got the part. It was just a fun experience.

[A discussion begins about my very favorite of Jaglom’s films -– the very brave and uncompromising ALWAYS [1985]. I mention how Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson can be glimpsed in the opening wedding party, which comes from footage of Jaglom’s actual wedding to ex-wife Patrice Townsend.]

HJ: Oh my god, I worked so hard for audiences not to see that, that I cut it out of the frame. How did you see that? That is amazing. I initially took it out because I didn’t want the audience to be distracted. There were four or five big movie stars that were at my wedding, and I didn’t want, you know, Michael Douglas and Candice Bergen to be at the corner of the frame, or else audiences would say, “oh look!” I’m very impressed that you saw that.

AG: Personally, I thought it was a nice touch, rooting it firmly in its Hollywood locale, a place not known for its long-lasting marriages.

HJ: Yes, exactly, and if it were today, I would have left more in, and I wouldn’t have minded that. But during that time, I was in my Purist’s Phase -- it should just be an everyman’s party, not a Hollywood function.

AG: About SITTING DUCKS [1980], was that kind of your version of a “Road To” movie?

HJ: It is a “Road To” movie -- I made two art movies that nobody wanted to see, A SAFE PLACE [1973] and TRACKS [1976] -– and I thought they were both quite good, and I was really disappointed I couldn’t find an audience for them, so I thought screw it, what do they want, a silly road to movie, a comedy, with a happy ending where they steal the money? And I had a lot of fun doing that, and I put my brother in it –- that’s my brother who stars in it [Michael Emil], along with the guy with the moustache [Zack Norman] that raised the money for me, because nobody would give me any money at that point in my career.

AG: Both of which first appeared in TRACKS [1976], on the train?

HJ: Yes, they both first appeared in TRACKS because they were the only other people on the train. At one point when I was shooting with [Dennis] Hopper, they were on the train, my brother because he was doing the bookkeeping and Zack because he was the financier, so I put them in for a funny little bit. But they were really great, so I wrote SITTING DUCKS for them. I also wanted to make it at that time because I was tired of fighting audiences. And it became quite a big success.

AG: Obviously, it’s very different from anything else you’ve ever made!

HJ: Completely different, completely different (laughs) but it was fun. It’s not what I want to do, but I had fun.

AG: A SAFE PLACE [1971] [suggested reading: Jeremy Richey's look at the film, located here]

HJ: That’s the only film of mine that does not exist on DVD or VHS because Columbia will never ever pay the music rights. I had these great old songs, and it’s not worth it to them, because it’s such a poetic and abstract film that it’ll never do well commercially. I made it for Columbia, who was horrified, and I had these big stars with Jack Nicholson.

AG: How technical did you bother to get on your first film, A SAFE PLACE [1971]?

HJ: What they did was assign me the cinematographer from a big commercial success right before that [Dick Kratina, LOVE STORY, d: Arthur Hiller, 1970]. And so it was a very conventional Hollywood crew, but I wanted to start shooting in a very unusual way, and they kept telling me it wouldn’t cut, it wouldn’t cut, it wouldn’t cut and I couldn’t do that, couldn’t do this, and couldn’t do that. So I complained to Orson, my actor, that they’re always telling me that it won’t cut or won’t fit -– what should I do? He said whenever they [the studios, the crew] tell you it won’t cut, or won’t fit, and you wanna try something that’s not on the page and they’re not understanding, tell them that it’s a dream sequence. I asked him why, but he just said to tell them. So after lunch I do this, and they’re saying, “you can’t do this, can’t do that, and it won’t cut”. So I just say, “but it’s a dream sequence!”. Well, everybody just lighted up – “Oh, well if it’s a dream sequence, what if I get up on my back over here, and shoot it up from here.” They were so cooperative for the rest of the movie, so again I asked Orson – “what is this, and why does this work.” And he told me, “You know, most people think life is logical, but the only thing in life that’s not are dreams, so that’s the only thing that’s not logical to them. So if you let them think it’s a dream sequence, it frees them up from their conventions of their logic, and lets them get creative.” That’s another great piece of advice Orson gave me.

AG: Finally, what would you want to impart to someone if they were to watch every one of your films back to back. What kind of sense of yourself would you like people to have?

HJ: I just want everybody to feel OK about being who they are. I just hate closets of any kind. Everybody should just come out of every closet. There was a 1970s album called “We’re All Bozos on this Bus” by the Firesign Theatre. That’s my credo -- we’re all bozos on this bus, and so we’re all on the same journey. There’s pain, loneliness, sadness, and difficult problems. Women are treated in a certain way, and aren’t given a certain understanding. But, in the end, we need to keep this perspective in mind.

Recent Viewings: THE CHOIRBOYS; SUPERMAN III; VENUS

2007-12-27T11:16:00.000-08:00

THE CHOIRBOYS (Robert Aldrich, 1977) USA

A strange, offensive, excoriating portrait of the L.A. police department at large; makes buffoons out of novelist Joseph Wambaugh’s tortured protagonists, previously celebrated in the equally as-impressive THE NEW CENTURIONS (but for different reasons). The episodic narrative perhaps takes some getting used to, as my viewing companions couldn’t really get into the rhyme or rhythms of leaving one set of characters for extended periods of time. I think it’s brilliant.

==============================================================

SUPERMAN III (Richard Lester, 1983) UK

Lester pokes holes in the mythology of a hero he helped to establish with SUPERMAN II. Not content to make a conventional superhero movie, Lester starts the proceedings with an extended gag-filled accident overload in the streets of Metropolis, foretelling the similar scenes later in the film when Superman comes into contact with a tampered bit of Kryptonite, and is rendered otherwise useless to all myopic, self-destructive humans (and who begin to argue with one another because of raging oil prices.) The closing battle with the “supercomputer” is negligible, and so is the casting of Richard Pryor, but the duality of man fight (inside a junkyard!) between Clark Kent and his Super Alter ego is a keeper; at first, it’s the scruffy incarnation of Superman lashing out as his clumsy, benevolent self, but it erupts into a free-for-all with decency emerging on top.

There’s a sly reference to A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (and HELP!) byway of a rocking early Beatles song at the high school reunion. Extras on the Special Edition DVD include 19 minutes of extended scenes and useless comedy bits involving Pryor, and an hour-long making-of with far too few glimpses of Lester calling the shots.

==============================================================

VENUS (Roger Michell, 2006) UK

Michell’s use of a ragged Peter O’Toole here is not unlike the Mark Romanek-directed video for Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”, for both projects rely on seasoned wrinkles and the past cultural iconography of each subject – while curiously shaking away any embarrassing episodes in their respective careers in order for it to seem that O’Toole only did Shakespeare and Cash only produced murder ballads (as for O’Toole, here I’m speaking of his campaign for last year’s Best Actor, which rightly or wrongly beckoned viewers and voters to realize the esteem they should hold for the British thespian; this arguably culminated [thankfully] in the reissue of BECKET.) It’s a rewriting and a whitewashing of history so that my generation can easily enjoy decades old idols, making them more palatable and therefore emblematic of some lofty simpleminded conceit.

Michell shoots most of the film as conventionally as possible, but will grow self-conscious halfway through a dialog scene and end up on an oblique or awkward angle. He’s striving for a rough-hewn approximation of Mike Leigh realism, and he achieves it mostly by the presence of O’Toole, who is seemingly always in the throes of aged agony and because he essentially is the respectable, decaying actor he’s portraying.

Early on, O’Toole brings the brash young niece (Jodie Whittaker) of his best friend (Leslie Phillips) home from a night of drinking, and crashes into the porch area of the homestead; Michell then time-cuts to O’Toole in a hospital bed, family at his side, while everyone cries out at his just-expired body – but somebody yells cut, and we realize we’ve been had, and that VENUS will have very little interior wisdom, save for the saving grace of O’Toole's tired frame, wiry grey hair, booming Shakespearean voice, and admirable overabundance of talent. It’s miracle enough that he’s still with us.

Armond White Interview by Steven Boone

2007-12-19T19:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Matt Zoller Seitz (and company) and his House Next Door's blogfeed, I was alerted to an interview with New York Press critic Armond White, conducted by Steven Boone for the blog Big Media Vandalism. It's an acidic read, and will surely make you upset should you not be aware of White's views beforehand; still, Boone more than holds his own, doesn't back down, and the three parts end up being absolutely fascinating. It's not to be missed for the questions it raises in regards to digital filmmaking, Wes Anderson, Spike Lee, Sidney Lumet, Wendell B. Harris, and some priceless comments about the vapid, easily reproducible style of Ridley Scott.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

James Ellroy Takes Over TCM

2007-11-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

Tonight on Turner Classic Movies, crime novelist James Ellroy has his turn opposite Robert Osbourne as part of the month’s ongoing series of revolving-chair guest programmers. His four selections prove to be a hearty mix of interesting curios and indelible masterpieces, some of which I’ve seen and can endorse, and some of which will be new to me.

First up is Irvin Kershner’s STAKEOUT ON DOPE STREET (1958), which I have not seen, but since it’s a veritable ROCK ALL NIGHT (Corman, 1958) reunion for co-stars Jonathan Haze and Abby Dalton, I can’t pass it up; Irving Lerner’s MURDER BY CONTRACT (1958) follows next, and again, I’ve not seen it, but the last two – Don Siegel’s THE LINEUP (1958) and Richard Fleischer’s ARMORED CAR ROBBERY (1950) - are both exceptional and definitely not to be missed, especially if you’re an enthusiast of either director.

The Siegel is set in the auteur’s favoured locale of San Francisco, and is notable because it marks the first time he would shoot in these locations. The landmarks are captured in intense black-and-white strokes that add a sense of icy composure, making for a series of images that have since become inextricably intertwined with the way I think of the city. Unforgettable also is the largely silent psychotic hit man Eli Wallach portrays, not to mention his arguably homoerotic relationship with his attentive superior, played by a dapper Robert Keith. Wallach’s abrupt ruthlessness in this film knows no equal.

The Fleischer film, made as a programmer during his tenure at RKO, is less than 70 minutes and can be said to be in the same editorializing style as THE LINEUP. I haven’t seen it in a number of years, but this taut study of a robbery gone wrong was one of the first indications that there was more than meets the eye in the films of Richard Fleischer – I can’t wait to take another look. (TCM follows it up with another Fleischer: 1949’s FOLLOW ME QUIETLY).

Adding to the evening’s rich entertainment will be Ellroy’s observations on the works before and after the airings and it’s these nightly guest intros that have become something of an addiction for me, even when said guests are less than distinguished – Rose McGowan, for instance, who unfortunately didn’t have the chutzpah to choose BARBARELLA!

Not surprisingly, Gore Vidal’s been the best so far, engaging in a discussion about the merits of Laurence Olivier’s Shakespeare pictures after his choice of 1935’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM (Dieterle, Reinhardt) -- he dissed the Olivier's for being so stuffy, but TCM still aired HAMLET after Vidal’s picks anyway, enabling the home viewer to make up their own minds while Vidal’s arguments were still fresh on their brains.

The films start at 7pm CST.

Auteurs and Television Commercials #1: Claude Chabrol and "Winston Cigarettes" (between 1978-1980)

2007-11-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

Image (and Film) of the Day: BRIGITTE AND BRIGITTE (Luc Moullet, 1966)

2007-11-06T14:52:00.000-08:00

Some typically sparse set decoration for director Luc Moullet, combined with a wicked Claude Chabrol cameo; in this brief jump-cut, he portrays a perverted uncle who can't keep his hands to himself.

Slasher Waves: EYES OF A STRANGER (Ken Wiederhorn, 1981)

2007-11-05T00:38:00.000-08:00

Wiederhorn's previous horror excursion, SHOCK WAVES, plays on a t.v. in this early scene from EYES OF A STRANGER.

“There is, for example, no apparent reason why a filmmaker of some intelligence and awareness should not make a teenie-kill movie that, while following the general patterns of the genre, analyzes sexual guilt and opposes it: it would chiefly require characters who are not totally mindless, for whom both filmmaker and spectator could feel some respect.”

--Robin Wood, “Beauty Bests the Beast”, “American Film”, September 1983 [Reprinted as “Returning the Look: Eyes of a Stranger” in “American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film”, editor: Gregory A. Waller, University of Illinois Press: 1987]

“Ultimately my attitude was that if we were going to do this, we were going to do this right, no holding back. Even though there was less blood than you see in many other pictures, I wanted the deaths to be truly horrifying; I didn’t want movie deaths, where people sit around and get off easy because what they’re seeing is gross without really being horrific.”

--director Ken Wiederhorn, as told to Maitland McDonagh, “Filmmaking on the Fringe” [Citadel Press: 1995]

Consistently decried as being nothing more than a mere retread of REAR WINDOW, or HALLOWEEN, or DRESSED TO KILL, or (take your pick), EYES OF A STRANGER is a much more potent mix, content on reutilizing and reinterpreting the conventions of the genre to make pointed critiques of the slasher cycle of films (or, as Wood breaks them down, into the “violence-against-women” and “teenie-kill” subsets) that proved to be ubiquitous at the time.

Almost immediately off the bat, Wiederhorn identifies the killer as a middle-aged, unattractive, bespectacled schlub and this results in two related things occurring: the cathartic responders in the audience now have to rethink where they’re coming from, not being able to “get off” on the violent killings, for surely they can’t relate to such a pathetic figure (Wood goes into detail with this in his essay, correlating it with the non-use of subjective shots of the killer); and secondly, and much more abstractly, there’s now no mystery involved to get caught up in – the more sedate members of the audience, on some level, must confront the reasons as to why they’re wanting to watch a murderer hack up attractive ladies, as the simplistic reasoning as of “to see who did it” is snatched away.

Of course, the who is replaced by the how, as television news reporter Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes) (calling to mind THE HOWLING’s Dee Wallace-Stone’s profession in that film) becomes embroiled in a series of vicious murders that are plaguing Miami and taking the lives of strong, independently-minded females (and some of their unlucky boyfriends). The killer’s (John DiSanti, of Wiederhorn’s previous film, KING FRAT) modus operandi seems to consist of terrorizing his victims mercilessly through a series of phone calls, before slaughtering them -- all in the very same evening.

Jane’s core group consists of Tracy (a debuting Jennifer Jason Leigh), her deaf, dumb and blind sister who became that way as a result of a childhood rape that took place under Jane’s unwatchful eye; and David (Peter DuPre), her belligerent lawyer boyfriend, a man who doesn’t get all that worked up when Jane confesses that she may know who the culprit is. As is reiterated ad nauseam in numerous slasher films (and the essays that discuss them), women’s rigidly defined roles in society are questioned and attempted to be reinforced time and time again, through passive means (her boyfriend’s constant pleas to placate his needs, and to move in with him) and through much more troublesome and deadly channels (the killer who plagues any autonomous female).

Jane quite literally turns the tables on this psychopath later on by using the fact that he doesn’t know who she is to her advantage; in a ballsy scene that’s the spiritual cousin to that rousing rah-rah finale in Quentin Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF, Jane telephones the man to ask him to turn himself in to the police, stomping on the man’s heretofore confidence in the knowledge that his actions have been unseen and anonymous up until this point. It’s a worthwhile scene that almost needs to be there to make up for the rather indulgent sadistic attitude towards women that’s previously been set up until this point.

Wiederhorn plunders through any possibly related suspense film in the interest of exploring the standards of the genre, but also to dissect what goes into creating a successful suspense sequence (he expresses this as his only interest in directing the film in his interview with McDonagh), and he concludes with a WAIT UNTIL DARK (Terence Young, 1967) reworking that pits Tracy against the film’s tormentor (as Jane watches helplessly from the killer’s high-rise apartment and into her own). The shock of a similar attack to the one in her youth proves to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for the introverted Tracy, as she begins to make the transition to seeing and hearing again as this madman lies atop of her, ripping her shirt in half; reaching for her sister’s gun, Tracy shoots the killer in the stomach, and begins a slow stride to the bathroom, rubbing the man’s blood as if it could be the remains of her maidenhead. It’s a confusing, but charged connotation that Wiederhorn isn’t afraid to make in the face of all of this generic material.

And speaking of generic material, it’s at this moment that the killer must resurface for that all-important final attempt/attack, but it’s perfunctory and rote and not at all as interesting as what came before, save for that last shot that decidedly and triumphantly rests on the psychopath’s face, as a solitary bullet wound trickles out with crimson.

===============================================

Written as part of Final Girl’s Film Club.

Horror Anthology #3: DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (Freddie Francis, 1965)

2007-10-29T22:58:00.001-07:00

The inaugural entry in Amicus Productions’ not quite ten year run of pleasantly engaging, visually arresting, and oft-imitated brand of devious anthology horror (counting the other Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky co-production TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS, but discounting 1980’s THE MONSTER CLUB, solely produced by one-half of Amicus -- Subotsky -- but still appearing under the banner anyway), DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS remains the colourful yardstick by which these later releases (TORTURE GARDEN, 1967; THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, 1970; ASYLUM, 1972; TALES FROM THE CRYPT, 1972; VAULT OF HORROR, 1973; FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, 1973; and TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS, 1974) are commonly measured against. And with the notable exception of the EC Comics-derived TALES FROM THE CRYPT (also directed by Freddie Francis), none would prove to be as satisfactorily stunning as this original rendering of placing five randomly plucked strangers in closed quarters before a menacing entity, who gradually speaks of the inevitable, horrid fates awaiting our (sometimes morally compromised) protagonists, told in flash-forward (or should that be flashback?) form.

Should our unlucky five ever arrive at their intended destinations (DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS) -- or escape the immaculately lily-white room and malfunctioning elevator (VAULT OF HORROR), or make it out of the remote dank cave located somewhere in England (TALES FROM THE CRYPT) -- the ghastly destinies generously elaborated on by our Cryptkeeper (Ralph Richardson in CRYPT) -- or impish Dr. Diabolo (Burgess Meredith in TORTURE GARDEN), or sinister Dr. Sandor Schreck (Peter Cushing in HOUSE OF HORRORS) -- surely will come to pass, wreaking havoc on the initially skeptical upper middle class characters represented by the various rosters of international stars. But of course, that last minute twist of the knife in each film reveals that any possible evasion of these unpleasant futures is but a charade – the envelopes containing their fates have already been sealed and preconceived, everyone’s on their pathway to eternal damnation, and the past ninety minutes have been but a mere detour on the way to the fiery pits of hell.

The wraparound is as simplistic and unassuming as it gets. Five commuters board a rickety train cabin (obviously a set) and await their respective long journeys ahead. Architect Jim Dawson (Neil McCallum) is heading for the west coast of Scotland, to the cozy estate where he once grew up, while jazz trumpeter Biff Bailey (Roy Castle) is making his way to the West Indies for a paid gig; on their way back to England, for either business or family, are Bill Rogers (UK disc jockey Alan Freeman), snobbish art critic Franklyn Marsh (Christopher Lee) and devoted husband Bob Carroll (a baby-faced Donald Sutherland). A sixth gentleman with feral facial hair joins the party at the last minute, a man who will only later introduce himself as Sandor Schreck (a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-of-him Peter Cushing). A clumsy move on the behalf of Schreck (but upon reflection, obviously predetermined in light of the revelation of his dark secret identity) results in the spilling of a deck of tarot cards; curiously amused, all five allow (with the fussy Lee being the most determined not to) Schreck to shuffle and deal, and thus begins the telling of their futures as it’s foretold by the seemingly random display of cards.

The cramped compartment here really allows director Freddie Francis to include all six central cast members in just about every shot, and it’s this stuffy atmosphere that permeates and gestates in these linking segments, a claustrophobia that only gains in intensity on the faces of the doomed protagonists as they learn the gruesome details of just how they’re damned (and in addition, the corollary of exactly why they’re here), with the added benefit of seeing a devilishly reserved Cushing registering and silently delighting in their troubles.

“Werewolf” kicks things off with the aforementioned Jim Dawson (McCallum) arriving at the residence where he was raised. A family has since moved in, but they’re accommodating his stay, as he’s there to ply his trade and knock down a wall in order to open up the living room. After a series of mysterious murders, Dawson discovers a coffin in the basement and immediately suspects a werewolf, enough so to melt down an ancestral heirloom (a silver cross) into bullets. Setting up shop in this cobweb-infested crypt, Dawson awaits nightfall, only to have his attention placed elsewhere as the ethereal presence emerges once again into the night. Racing up the stairs, he’s accosted by the new matriarch who brings Dawson up to speed on the resurrection and familiar curse that has now been lifted, thanks to his entrance into the dwelling.

Despite some early foggy exteriors that could be classified as clichéd and in the tradition of gothic horrors, Francis keeps the proceedings realistic up to a point, with the otherworldly aspects played close to his chest before letting loose alongside the malicious intent of the matriarch – as she begins her spiel, Francis delivers bright splashes of greens and oranges that serve as highlights on the elderly actress’ mesmerizing pair of eyes.

As we will see, Francis keeps this stylistic pattern of sedate and serene compositions, followed by a swirling and vibrant array of multicolored gels to signify oncoming threats, throughout the film, with the exclusion of the second story, “Creeping Vine”, which is set during daytime and thus bright and sunny. And this works as a thematic context also, as Freeman does battle with this indestructible vegetation (with the help of Bernard Lee, or “M” from the James Bond series), daylight should be a dreadfully frightful factor as it provides nutrition and growth for this strangling shrubbery (but like most second momentum-killing anthology episodes, there’s a devoid of shocks, making for the weakest tale in a group that’s otherwise resolutely strong).

It could be said that “Voodoo” is producer and screenwriter Milton Subotsky’s attempt at broad humour, akin to the “Golfing Story” segment of the treasured model of anthology horror, DEAD OF NIGHT (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer, 1945), but I think the breezy attitude can be attributed to its choice of lead actor, the real life jazz musician Roy Castle. Castle’s jovial devil-may-care delivery is the very definition of a carefree non-actor having a great deal of fun in a light dramatic role; his nature lends itself well to its tale of an avaricious jazz trumpeter meddling around with voodoo (and a demon named Dambala) in the West Indies, adopting some catchy riffs and adding them to his repertoire – to his eventual detriment.

I’m convinced that the startling widescreen composition and accompanying clever obfuscation of a letter in a nearby prop (see above) is not an accident, and shows the sense of humour that Francis must have in his directorial undertakings. Other than an amusing lead performance, “Voodoo” is but a palate cleanser, gearing the spectator up for two much more memorable tales (not to mention it’s guilty of being a slightly derivative riff itself -- just witness the “Thriller” Season One episode “Papa Benjamin” from 1961, starring John Ireland and directed by Ted Post, and based on the short story by Cornell Woolrich).

“Disembodied Hand” pits two Hammer regulars at odds with one another: the shrewd art critic (Christopher Lee) vs. the sensitive, but amused artist (a cheery Michael Gough). Within this clever battle of wits is an absolute horror story that’ll make anyone who has ever made a living passing critical judgments cringe, for on a primordial level, broken down, it’s the essential tool of the artist (Gough’s chopped-up hand) that becomes fixated on destroying the eyesight of his plucky detractor (Lee’s prized eyeballs). It remains a menacing episode, probably one of my absolute favourites from any of the Amicus entries, and it gets by without a lot of the expository fat that becomes important, yet needless, in telling such succinct stories. Lee’s swift statements about the artwork of (what he doesn’t yet know to be) a chimpanzee are but one of the many witty diversions it effortlessly includes in addition to the central revenge.

The definitively titled “Vampire” is an early showcase for Donald Sutherland, who portrays a fresh-faced doctor in a new town with a bloodsucker for a wife (his first tip-off? He cuts his finger and she lovingly, even maternally, licks the wound). Supporting his unconventional belief is the resident medical practitioner who, despite his scuffle with a vampire bat, has a peculiar ulterior motive for doing so. The denouement is but a cruel, macabre punch line to an otherwise pithy segment, reminiscent of some of those last-minute “episodes” of “Night Gallery” (I’m thinking of Victor Buono’s brief pun-happy jaunt in “A Midnight Visit to the Neighborhood Blood Bank”).

Some reports have stated that Francis (who passed away only this year) seemed a bit apprehensive about and dismissive of his directorial outings, foregoing his significant forays in genre filmmaking for his work as a camera operator (THE TALES OF HOFFMANN) and cinematographer (THE INNOCENTS, THE ELEPHANT MAN, GLORY), and it’s probably for this that his peer, Terence Fisher (who once penned an article entitled “Horror is my Business”, as laconically embracing as John Ford’s “I Make Westerns” line), will forever be more endearing in the hearts of genre enthusiasts everywhere. Still, it’s us spectators in the dark that’ll have the final say, and it’s for this reason that I can’t help but reflect on Cushing’s closing bit of dialogue as Sandor Schreck whenever I’m watching an old-school British horror effort of the period and I’m not sure who signed the picture; for more often than not, the vivacious widescreen compositions seem to be shouting out that immortal question (which is used to confirm Cushing’s role as the specter of death), signaling the inimitable hand of Freddie Francis - “Have You Not Guessed?”

=====================================================

DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS related media:

Edgar Wright’s commentary can be turned on/off over the trailer, housed at “Trailers from Hell”:

Horror Anthology #2: CREEPSHOW 2 (Michael Gornick, 1987)

2007-10-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

Sharing much more in common with Laurel Entertainment’s then-ongoing “Tales from the Darkside” syndicated series than the innovative original, CREEPSHOW II, the follow-up to George A. Romero and Stephen King’s ode to the EC Comics of the 1950s, is a streamlined production with a trio of unnerving tales in place of the first film’s more generous five. Made on the cheap at New World Pictures, Romero punted off the directorial reins to his former cinematographer, Michael Gornick, who dims down the heightened phantasmagoria/comic book lighting compositions from the first film (the commentary track reveals that it was more due to budgetary constraints than any kind of stylistic overhaul on the director’s part). King receives story credit, while Romero adapts the tales into workable screenplay form (the most altered being “The Raft”, originally published in “Twilight Zone Magazine”, and later collected in “Skeleton Crew”, as Romero adds a last-minute, trailer-moment jolt that’s nowhere to be found in the King short story).

Nearly everybody who has seen the film seems to only recall “The Raft” with any clarity, probably in part to its involving the perennial 80s favourite of pot-smoking, promiscuous young adults looking for a good time (and this time, vs. an amorphous, deadly “oil rig”), but “The Hitchhiker” (with obligatory Stephen King cameo as a backwoods trucker) is arguably just as memorable and remains a potent little shocker (it's also director Gornick’s favourite).

This tale features Lois Chiles (Dr. Holly Goodhead of MOONRAKER infamy, filling in as a last minute replacement for Barbara Eden, who had to leave the production in order to be with her ailing mother) as a well-to-do businesswoman racing home to her husband from the willing arms of her $100 a night gigolo. Sleekly sliding into her Mercedes, she begins to jam it home in a hurry, but gets preoccupied in a prolonged hit-and-run with a hitchhiking black man in a yellow raincoat -- and his progressively mangled, undead body that haunts her every subsequent step of the way home. But don’t let the simplistic casting fool you, as this combat between posh upper-class Chiles and her tormenting working class zombie (Tom Wright) really has nothing to say in the interest of racial politics save for the most innocuous, on-the-surface sort. Still, it’s a prolonged chiller that goes a long way to express how the psyche can work in overtime to deal with and justify blunt traumas, and how immediate and fatal accidents pierce through and plague the morality of even the blackest of hearts.

The less said about “Old Chief Wood’nhead” the better, especially when considering the laughable lines given to the long, silky haired Holt McCallany (“This hair’ll get me paid and laid!”); McCallany portrays one of three small-town hoodlums paving their way to Hollywood by robbing an old-fashioned mom and pop general store (run by George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour, in her final screen appearance). The practical make-up FX (by Howard Berger, Greg Nicotero, and Ed French) of the rampaging, revenging Wooden Indian are solid and intimidating, and the only elements that prevent the film from drowning after the initial staid set-up that goes on and on to indicate how Kennedy and Lamour are pillars to this blustery Arizona community.

The framework that ties it all together is an all-too-brief appearance by Tom Savini as The Creep, followed by some economical animation of a bullied blonde-haired boy who extracts comeuppance through the classified ads in the fictional “Creepshow” comic. Gornick’s preliminary framework, which was shot down during pre-production, promised much, much more: stock footage and audio clips of the senate hearings between EC Comics publisher/co-editor Bill Gaines, contrasted alongside those of Dr. Fredric Wertham, the unreasonable and puritanical oppressing mind behind “Seduction of the Innocent”, the book that attempted to point out the devious underpinnings and thematic content inherent in just about any comic book. All that remains is a quote, buried in the closing credits:

Horror Anthology #1: BLOOD BATH (Joel M. Reed, 1976)

2007-10-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

The Devil's Spawn confronts his human father in BLOOD BATH's out-of-left-field finale (with P.J. Soles in out-of-focus background).

Joel M. Reed, the arguably depraved director of the infamous BLOODSUCKING FREAKS (original title: THE INCREDIBLE TORTURE SHOW), made this PG-rated, Amicus inspired portmanteau on a $1.98 budget a year before that despicable gore fest turned up to disgust audiences on 42nd street . The dapper Harve Presnell (THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN, Daddy Warbucks in “Annie” on Broadway, FARGO), in an indubitable career low, plays Peter Brown, a horror director specializing in the same sort of cheap dreck that BLOOD BATH, on first glance, purports itself to be. After a prolonged “we were only making a movie!” false scare, Brown assures all of his producers and his cast that he doesn’t believe in the occult, and that he’s been making these kinds of films simply to line his pockets, opening the gates for the other dinner party guests to trudge out their past dealings with the the otherworld in order to dispute his stance.

With the first tale relying on pure bad luck, the second being a ghost story (with a horrible racist connotation that I don’t even want to mention, in the hopes that it was simply a mistake on the part of the filmmakers), the third a take-off on “The Monkey’s Paw” (thus continuing the unbroken rule that every anthology must contain a variation of the W.W. Jacobs short story), and the fourth being a hodgepodge of sci-fi/kung fu, it’s safe to say that BLOOD BATH doesn’t make a lick of sense, and doesn’t gel or come together in any real way. Another hampering on the proceedings can be found in the poor art direction (courtesy of Ron Sullivan, aka: hardcore porn director Henri Pachard), as each story (and the wraparounds) were filmed on redressed sets in the same corner of a Manhattan loft (slyly obscured through the non-use of any kind of long or establishing shot), with often the same props being recycled (a bookshelf being the biggest repeat offender). Reed’s direction is oftentimes incompetent – ill-timed edits and awkward, spacey close-ups abound.

Jerry Lacy (Bogie in PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM) receives his first wish -- to be in the Napoleonic Wars (?!)

What makes these 70’s and early 80’s exploitation films particularly interesting (at least for me) can be the usual reliance on non-permit, chintzy and saturated red NYC location footage (mostly of 42nd street, natch), but being that BLOOD BATH consists of mainly interiors, there’s none of that juicy footage to be found here (save for a final minute POV night shot of a roving goat-boy in search of prey – he eventually breaks into an apartment to find P.J. Soles, in her screen debut). Jerry Lacy (Bogie in both play and film versions of PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM), Walter Hill favourite Sonny Landham (THE WARRIORS, 48 HRS.), Doris Roberts (“Everybody Loves Raymond”), and Stanley Brock (NICKELODEON) are the other familiar faces.

The Subversive Cinema DVD release contains a 45-minute extra entitled “Taking a Blood Bath: Making 70’s Indies in New York”, with director Reed, art director Sullivan, principal Lacy, and bit part player Landham cutting across a wide swath of topics, but one problem: it’s annoyingly edited, jumping from one player to another, oftentimes in the middle of a story.

Dad, Can I Borrow the Car? (1970)

2007-10-06T11:34:00.000-07:00

More proof that youtube has just about any short film or music video available to you with just a couple of clicks of your fingertips, here's DAD, CAN I BORROW THE CAR? (Ward Kimball, 1970), a short educational -- almost avant-garde -- Disney work narrated by Kurt Russell (back when he seemed be involved with just about every one of their productions).

Charles B. Griffith (1930 - 2007)

2007-10-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

Charles B. Griffith in 1968.

Watching the supplementary features on the new “Supercharged Edition” of the Roger Corman-produced EAT MY DUST last week, I was somewhat surprised that writer/director Charles B. Griffith hadn’t been interviewed. After all, he made an appearance on Buena Vista Home Video’s DEATH RACE 2000 special edition DVD a couple of years back, and he had a lesser hand in the way that film eventually turned out (in that his best ideas in the script department never made it before cameras). Had he been rewritten out of his place in obscurant film history so badly that the producers handling such featurettes didn’t bother to contact the man calling the shots on this New World Pictures production on the day-to-day basis? Well, today, I’m hoping that it wasn’t due to a long-term illness, as I’ve found out on my daily visit to Tim Lucas’ Video Watchblog that Charles B. Griffith -- the caustic voice behind the greatest of Roger Corman films, both as director AND producer -– has passed away.

I was nineteen when my path crossed with Mr. Griffith. On a whim (perhaps after seeing and marveling at ROCK ALL NIGHT for the umpteenth time), I sent an e-mail to the webmaster of Griffith’s barebones website, expressing my enthusiasm for the screenwriter’s work and my interest in interviewing him some day; the webmaster wrote back to inform me that he passed along the message, and… I thought that would be it. Fortunately, I was pleasantly mistaken as Griffith sent an easygoing reply the next day thanking me for the kind comments and agreeing to as long an interview as I wish -– enclosing his telephone number at the end of the message.

Now somewhat faint, as I never had the opportunity to interview anybody before but was confident enough in my abilities and in my knowledge of film history to pursue the field, I researched what would best record a conversation through the telephone and constructed a number of questions on three, single-spaced pages. To be perfectly honest, I took inspiration from two sources: Tom Weaver’s countless invaluable and informative books interviewing the B-Movie stars and creative talent of yesteryear, as well as David Sheff’s 1980 “Playboy” interview with John Lennon, in which the author brought up every single Beatles song and asked the genesis and development of each. I figured I would do the same, with produced and unproduced screenplays alike, stray second unit directing work, films in which Griffith served as sole director, and even random, strange unclassifiable ideas that never materialized into full-blown scripts or novels (the form Griffith gravitated towards as his screenplays increasingly became too long and convoluted to develop as film properties). At the back of my head though (since I’d already written a number of scripts) was the fact that here was a chance to have the equivalency of a Master’s Class on the nature of screenwriting by a writer that I greatly admired.

The results of the interview (be kind, it was my first!) are here:

I wanted to concentrate on the films that have been given the short shrift in the few previously published interviews with Griffith in the past, but to not leave out these established classics (such THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS or A BUCKET OF BLOOD). I tried to touch upon such drive-in highlights as ROCK ALL NIGHT and TEENAGE DOLL, but even the Cannon-produced DR. HECKYL AND MR. HYPE, which remained a film Griffith was extremely proud of and never tired of talking about. His passion and commitment to that project was palpable even twenty-some years after it had been made, and even though my individual evaluations may hold it in lesser regards to his other work, I still find it a wonderfully inventive, gag-fueled film miscast with Oliver Reed (Griffith wanted Dick Van Dyke) in the central role.

Given the fact that it hasn’t really received a proper home video release, Griffith was puzzled at how I’d seen the film in the first place considering I wasn’t even alive when the film was shown in theaters. I told him I had a less-than-legal grey market copy, and after hearing the excitement in his voice about his desire to see it again, I agreed to send him a copy (he told me that he diligently checked the TV guides in the hopes of it turning up, but that it had not since the ‘80s).

The bitterness in Griffith that Lucas hints at in his vibrantly written remembrance could be detected, but strangely, and not surprisingly, was often quickly followed up by remorse; after letting a few nasty things slip about Corman (and others), and his suspicions that certain unproduced works had been ripped off whole sale, Griffith asked if I could please not use these allegations in the published form as he didn’t particularly mean any of it (and I didn’t use any of this).

After our close to three-hour interview (the second part mostly involving the craft of screenwriting, which is something I’ve held off on trying to get published for some reason), I hesitantly uttered that I hoped we could stay in touch, and Griffith delightfully agreed. I sent him a tape of DR. HECKYL AND MR. HYPE and he wrote back some scattered and random thoughts about his viewing. He also mentioned that I should be reimbursed for this effort –- even offering to send me an original prop from one of the many films he’s written or worked on (“though”, he said, “most of the good ones are already gone”). As much as the film enthusiast in me would have loved such a gift (or even to know WHICH film the item would have been from), I just couldn’t accept it – he was a hero of mine and this was a film he no doubt made with a lot of sweat and hard work, and the least I could do was to run off a copy for him.

Around this time, Griffith was planning to visit some friends in Australia, and to take in a viewing of a brief run of the musical stage version of THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. I guess I e-mailed him a question (concerning what, I can’t remember) when he had literally just missed his flight due to a misplaced passport. After briefly answering my query, Griffith followed up with a two-page diatribe about his aggravations in “tearing up the house looking for this passport”. I wish I could post it all here, but it contains some personal information that I would feel iffy about broadcasting in such a public manner, so I’ll have to keep it hidden -– still, I’m not exaggerating (well, not by much) when I say it had it had the originality, insightfulness and ferocious wit of some of his stories at its center. Still, through it all, Griffith remained bemused and amused by it all.

At the close of this message (one of our last exchanges), Griffith related that:

“and now you have cleared my brains and given me a new mood to write the two comedy jobs I have working!
Thanks again,
Chuck”

That –- for one brief moment -- I helped him get something off of his chest in order to start work on two new CHARLES B. GRIFFITH creations will remain my favourite memory of my brief time quasi-knowing him at this distance.

To invoke and reinterpret Quentin Tarantino’s dedication at the front page of the screenplay to DEATH PROOF:

Your work has always –- and forever will -– “Rock All Night”, daddy-o.

My Favourite Scene of: DEATH PROOF (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)

2007-09-28T01:09:00.000-07:00

Besides Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell)’s tender recitation of Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” to Arlene (or “Butterfly”, played by Vanessa Ferlito) on the porch of the after hours Austin bar, there’s one other moment (or glimpse into what’s ticking behind that pompadour) in the first half of Quentin Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF that humanizes our unremorseful vehicular murderer, showing him to be an antiquated member of society, aging at a rapid clip with Hollywood seemingly having no use for him or his stunts anymore. It’s a personal favourite, and I’d like to share how it was originally written by Tarantino, as I think it contains one howler of a line (you’ll know it when you see it) that didn’t make either the GRINDHOUSE or Extended cuts of the film; further, when taken out of context from the film’s soon-to-be onslaught of blood-splattered car carnage, it could actually be considered somewhat touching for the respect it gives to this washed-up stuntman and his ratchet of now long forgotten television credits -- that is, of course, before Pam (Rose McGowan), the lovely young lady[ies in the film] kick in and do irreparable damage to his ego by not knowing what the hell he's talking about.

Dennis Cozzalio [at his blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule] had this to say about the scene upon the initial release of GRINDHOUSE in April:

“A character who goes by the name of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) sits at a bar regaling a group of indulgent young cuties with tales of his past work, throwing out names like “Bob Urich” and Vega$ and, gulp, The Virginian. The young women nod vacantly, but appreciatively, as Mike continues to spin his tales, until he stops for a moment and then asks, “Do you even recognize the names of these shows?” The women, caught, have to admit that they don’t, and Mike is consigned, by all but an unfortunate one of them, to the special zone of irrelevancy occupied by the arcane pop culture of an older generation. In this moment, it’s hard not to see Tarantino himself, as Stephanie Zacharek observed in her review of Grindhouse, as a similar kind of generational proselytizer—Stuntman Quentin—carrying a vast wealth of knowledge of movie history around in that gigantic cranium, preaching the gospel of cinematic and pop culture minutiae and obscure talents to a younger generation that may not so readily relate to his historically minded artist/entertainer’s perspective.”

And, from the pen of Tarantino:

BACK IN THE BAR

Pam's bullshitting with Warren, Stuntman Mike rejoins them.

PAM
(referring to Warren)
You got some voucher here. I asked him what movies you worked on, no fucking clue.

WARREN
Well technically, I don't know he's ever done anything for sure. He shows me a old episode of "High Chaparral", a guy falls off a horse, he says it's him... okay...could be.

STUNTMAN MIKE
Do you know the show "The Virginian"?

Pam shakes her head no.

STUNTMAN MIKE

There was a actor on that show, Gary Clarke, I kinda looked like him a bit. Obviously before I cut -
(referring to the scar on his face)
- myself shaving.

PAM
I like it.

STUNTMAN MIKE
Well damn if you ain't so sweet you make sugar taste just like salt. Well anyway, I did alot of Virginians doubling for Gary Clarke, then that show turned into "The Men of Shilo" and they brought Lee Majors on, and I doubled him.

STUNTMAN MIKE
Then from that point on, I mostly specialized in car stunts. I worked almost the whole third season of "Vegas". I was Robert Urich's driving double. Bob did another show, "Gavilan", he brought me on to that one. Till...
(he focuses on Pam)
Do you know any of these shows or people I'm talkin' about?

She apologetically shakes her head "no".

PAM

Sorry.

Warren approaches.

WARREN
I hate to tell you this, Mike, but dropping Gary Clarke's name don't get Gary Clarke pussy no more.

Stuntman Mike and Pam laugh.

STUNTMAN MIKE
No I suppose it don't.

PAM
So how exactly does one become a stuntman?

STUNTMAN MIKE
Well in Hollywood anybody fool enough to throw themselves down a flight of stairs, can usually find somebody to pay ya' fer it. But really, I got into the business the way most people get in the stunt business.

PAM
And how's that?

STUNTMAN MIKE
My brother got me in it.

PAM
Who's your brother?

STUNTMAN MIKE

Stuntman Bob.

PAM
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.

Stuntman Mike notices Arlene and Shanna walk out to the porch.

STUNTMAN MIKE
I tell ya' Pam, I think it's gettin' to be about that. But why don't I order you one more boot, and I'll go out on the porch and have one more smoke.

PAM
Sounds good to me.

He smiles and slides off the barstool.

STUNTMAN MIKE
Hey Warren, I think my little hippy friend here's thirsty.