View image Inside Pearl's Parlor: Red, white and bluegrass. Kenny Fraiser (David Hayward) enters from behind the flag at center.
How can two critics see (or remember) the same movie, and have such contradictory interpretations of how it works and what it means? And what better case-in-point than Robert Altman's 1975 "Nashville" -- now being remembered in the wake of Altman's death last week, and seen through the prism of Emilio Estevez's recent release about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, "Bobby"?
View image Lady Pearl: "The only time I ever went hog wild, 'round the bend, was for the Kennedy boys. But they were different."
View image "... and the asshole got 556,577 votes."
Watching the movie, I kept thinking of "Nashville." And not just because Robert Altman's 1975 masterpiece remains the most politically and psychologically astute big-ensemble/where-America's-at movie ever made (it's got a presidential campaign and ends with a beloved public figure gunned down, too). There's a minor character in it, played by Barbara Baxley, who's a Kennedy-loving Yankee married to a country music star. In one boozy monologue, she expresses all that was both hopeful and delusional about what the dead Kennedys represented for progressive citizens. I've never forgotten that speech, while the more simplistic and diffuse "Bobby" is already starting to fade from memory.
Despite its reputation as an exuberant classic, "Nashville" knows zip and cares even less about country music or the city of Nashville (where it was shot) -- which doesn't prevent it from heaping scorn on both. It even ridicules a dowager who tearfully reminisces about John and Bobby Kennedy, and it shamelessly encourages viewers to share its contempt for the rubes. The relentless cynicism that Nashville brandishes as proof of its hipness ultimately gives way to glib, high-flown rhetoric in the climactic repeated shots of an American flag filling the screen while a nihilistic pseudocountry anthem, "It Don't Worry Me," builds to a crescendo, asserting the concert audience's unembarrassed cluelessness.
First, I want to point out the obvious: Bob Strauss is right even when he's wrong (I don't think Baxley's character is minor or a Yankee) and Jonathan Rosenbaum is wrong even when he's right (Altman admitted he wasn't interested in making a movie about the real Nashville or country music; after all, he let the actors write their own songs). Rosenbaum's preoccupation with his own perception of "hipness" (which he deems extremely uncool) appears to have obscured his view (or his memory) of what's happening on the screen in Altman's movie. As I said in a comment over at The House Next Door, using "Bobby" to bash "Nashville" makes as much sense as using "Neil Simon's California Suite" to bash "Short Cuts" -- or "The Towering Inferno" to belittle "Playtime." Yes, there are superficial similarities (as Bob points out), but in terms of ambition, complexity, vitality and sheer movieness, there's no comparison.
From the moment it was released, people lined up to exalt or disparage "Nashville" -- and that's understandable. (See the Village Voice reprint of a 1975 conversation between Molly Haskell and Andrew Sarris here. Southerner Haskell's opening statement contradicts Rosenbaum's almost point for point.) But I've always thought the "hipness" charge, as a critical gambit, was more of a projection on the part of the slinger than an appropriate slur against the movie itself. "Nashville" is too complex and multi-layered to be dismissed as an attempt to be "hip." Indeed, its most brutal portrayal is of Tom (Keith Carradine), the archetypal callow, blonde LA hipster-folkie poseur who scorns everyone he sees -- except Linnea (Lily Tomlin), who's got his number. Tom exudes misanthropic youthful arrogance from the get-go, sneering at Pfc. Glenn Kelly (Scott Glenn) at the airport with a trite "counter-cultural" put-down: "How ya doin, sarge? Ya kill anybody this week?" I hope Rosenbaum (a critic I very much like, by the way) doesn't honestly believe the movie -- or the audience -- is so insensible as to uncritically embrace Tom.
(At the Nashville 25th Reunion, Carradine talked about how uncomfortable he was playing such an asshole, and how Altman thought it was funny to keep pushing Carradine, making the character even more of a scumbag, amused that the nice kid from "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" and "Thieves Like Us" was going to have to act like a real prick this time around.)
To self-critical liberals like Altman, America is a progressive ideal we have yet to live up to, a potential we've striving to reach; to reactionaries, it's a fallen paradise, an illusory Eden into which we hope to retreat, even though it never actually existed. One looks forward, the other back to the future (a signature Reagan-era phenomenon), and these clashing American themes are announced in the ultra-patriotic Bicentennial anthem that begins the movie, sung by rhinestone-spangled Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson): "We must be doin' somethin' right to last 200 years!" And yet, just when you think you've got this overbearing little tyrant pegged, there's the chorus: "We're all a part of history/Why, Old Glory waves to show/How far we've come along till now/How far we've got to go." It's never quite as black-and-white -- make that red-or-blue -- as you expect. That Panavision flag that waves at the end of the film, the portentous ripple that blows across it (signifying "trouble in the USA" in the words of the ominous pre-Parthenon concert song: "Wonder what this year will bring") -- these are not trite images that can be reduced to snide rube-baiting.
"Nashville" is a joyous movie about a senseless (and, it seemed, endlessly repeating) tragedy. It's hard to pluck out the Kennedy threads in the movie because the myriad contextual references (to Dallas, Catholicism, race relations, feminism, the South and the Southern Strategy, the shadow of Nixon, politics as showbiz, showbiz as politics, both as marketing tools...) are so finely woven into the fabric of the film. That's essential to the greatness of "Nashville": Just about any theme or moment can be examined in isolation, but to pull at one strand is to discoverf how tightly it's intertwined with everything else in the picture.
First, let's recall that Joe McGinnis's eye-opening landmark book about presidential marketing, "The Selling of the President 1968," was published during Nixon's first term, and that "Nashville" was born out of Altman's devastation over Nixon's landslide victory four years later. The movie was made around the time of Nixon's downfall (there's one passing reference to Watergate, but no mention of his resignation or of President Ford), and targeted for release in the summer of 1975, on the cusp of the biggest marketing bonanza this country had ever seen: The American Bicentennial. A couple ironies to consider: People who saw the famous Nixon-Kennedy debate on television tended to feel Kennedy won, while those who listened on the radio leaned toward Nixon; and the presidential candidate in "Nashville" never appears onscreen.
So, here's a movie about the packaging of candidates and celebrities, and the maintenance of public images (as penetrating today as it was then), in which the American flag is flown for branding purposes -- from the opening TV commercial (an ad for the very movie we're about to see), to the emergence of presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker's starred-and-striped Walker-Talker-Sleeper van, to the final shots of the enormous American flag hanging from a replica of the Greek Parthenon (that hasn't lasted even 200 years!). Anyone who witnessed the boom in American flag displays after 9/11, and how quickly the phenomenon degenerated from sincere expressions of individual patriotism, grief and sympathy into cynical bullying and manipulation, ought to catch the nuances associated with the use of the red, white and blue here.
"Nashville" a portrait of a country naively wrapping itself in the flag and retreating into "It Don't Worry Me" apathy (or "stay the course" -- Nixon's Vietnam phrase) of the very stripe that got Nixon re-elected -- and Reagan and Shrub. But the patriotic symbols the movie parades before us are never as simplistic or superficial as they seem at first glance. Walker's platform (the Replacement Party) is chock-full of libertarian and reactionary platitudes, but it's not entirely b.s., either. Like so many things in the movie, it makes you laugh, and then you swallow hard. The laugh is for real, but it's only the starting point for a thoughtful consideration the movie, which aims to mix up emotional responses so that you may find yourself laughing and crying (or laughing and sighing) at the same time.
Candidate Walker confronts the theme of audience/voter apathy at the very start, addressing Americans' claims that they're not interested or don't want to get mixed up in politics or that they can't do anything about it anyway: "Let me point out two things: Number one, all of us are deeply involved in politics whether we like it or not, and whether we know it or not. And number two: You can do something about it." Then comes the punch-line: "When it costs more to buy an automobile than it cost Columbus to make his first trip to America -- that's politics!"
"Nashville" depicts a South that is still a part of the Confederacy (anybody want to contest that perception?), and where civic and pride still trumps national identity ("This isn't Dallas -- it's Nashville!" proclaims Haven. "They can't do this to us here in Nashville!"). And so, when a poster of JFK appears on the wall of the Old Time Picking Parlor -- a bluegrass joint right next to Walker headquarters, it seems incongruous at first. Outside, young Walker campaign workers are plastering parked cars with flyers. Inside, some patrons wave Confederate flags, while Lady Pearl (Baxley), Haven's wife/manager and the owner of the place, welcomes guests.
There's a running gag in the movie about the hierarchy of celebrity -- which "star" is flattered and recognized and who is not -- and when Pearl announces "We've got some stars in the house tonight!" she begins by introducing Tommy Brown (former NFL running back Timothy Brown), a country singer based loosely on Charley Pride, who in 1967 had become the first black artist to play the Grand Ole Opry since 1925. As with any concert bill, the biggest names are saved for last, but Pearl never gets that far. When Tommy, who's seated with Haven, the shiniest star in the house, rises to acknowledge the applause, a drunken Wade (Robert Doqui, the only other black major character among the 24 "stars" in the picture) heckles him from the back of the room: "Tommy Brown's the whitest nigger in town!... He oughta drink some of that milk -- it fits his personality!" Haven abruptly announces that it's late and apologizes abjectly ("This is not typical of Lady Pearl's Parlor. It's not typical of Nashville, you understand, and I hope you'll tell the other ones") while Tommy is hustled out of the room as if by the Secret Service, followed by Wade's continued catcalls: "Hey, he's leavin' -- the Oreo Cookie is leavin'!"
Racial tension crackles through the movie, if only because the "stars" are so unaccustomed to a black man's presence among them, and so eager to show they are not "prejudiced," that they insist on mentioning his race (and/or his Mandingo "beauty" -- talk about jungle fever!) in every encounter. (This may also be their subtle, if subconscious, way of reminding him of his place as an honored guest, but not one of the "family.") A lot is going on here -- but this scene at the Pickin' Parlor, is more of a dig at liberal political correctness, not a poke at rubes. Even the Confederate flag-wavers don't appear to be rubes; they look more like clueless tourists.
Sure, we're inclined to put some stock in Wade's intoxicated characterization of Tommy -- or maybe he's having a delerious Mel Gibson/Michael Richards moment -- but we don't excuse his rudeness in the presence of a star. Two stars. And because he's a star, Tommy is a clear target for bigotry and charges of Uncle Tomism -- even while his status puts him in the old OJ category of Royalty Beyond Race. (This is the first public "assassination" in the picture -- and it directly involves the movie's eventual assassin.) Tommy is a black man who has become a star, but had to sacrifice part of his identity as a black American in the process. Whether he feels that way about himself we don't know; but we do know he feels it from some members of the audience. Tommy Brown is not a caricature, and it should go without saying that, even in this scene alone, the approach to racial themes in "Nashville" is more nuanced, sophisticated and raw than all the post-Rodney King rhetoric delivered in the Ambassador kitchen by Laurence Fishburne in "Bobby."
At the picnic at Haven's "Bergmanesque" country place, Pearl gives her first, brief speech about the Kennedys while straightening out a problem with Hal Phillip Walker's political operative, John Triplette (Michael Murphy). She plays the "bad cop," handling the situation politely but firmly, and thus allowing Haven to remain the untarnished star, charming and playful.
"Mr.... Triplette," she says in a let's-get-down-to-business tone. "Now, I'm real sorry ol' Delbert went and told you Haven would appear at the political rally. He knows better than that. Well, we never let Haven Hamilton take sides, politically."
Haven interjects: "You understand, we give contributions to everybody. And they are not puny contributions."
Pearl slips into a bit of a reverie: "Only time I ever went hog wild, 'round the bend, was for the Kennedy boys." Then she snaps back. "But they were different."
"Oh yes Ma'am, they were," Triplette says with evident sincerity.
"That's a fact," Pearl declares. End of subject. This isn't like anything Triplette, the smooth operator who considers everyone in Nashville a redneck, has yet encountered during his visit -- somebody with a history of political passion and conviction. That makes Pearl a formidable obstacle for him, but he appears mildly startled into respecting her in this moment, even as he's calculating his next move.
The final Kennedy-"dowager" scene takes place at a club featuring legendary fiddler Vassar Clements (yes, the real Vassar Clements), where Pearl is seated out of the limelight -- possibly sulking over Haven's decision to continue entertaining the notion of appearing at the Walker rally. She's at the back, stuck with Opal from the BBC (Geraldine Chaplin), while Haven, Triplette and Connie White (Karen Black), fresh from the Grand Ole Opry show, are talking business and politics. Early in the film, Triplette explains that the reason he's looking for country stars to appear at the Walker rally is because he understands people "down here" are suspicious of movie stars because they think they're "eccentric, crazy, Communists -- a lot of them are. So, when Sue the publicist (screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury) brings by Julie Christie for introductions (as she did earlier with Elliott Gould), it's no surprise that the country stars don't quite know who the movie star is, prompting one of Haven's great fawning non sequiturs: "I was talking about the Christy Minstrels just this morning and now we have Julie Christie here. So good to see you!" (One gets the impression Haven likes to space out with a joint occasionally -- not unlike Altman himself.)
In the rear of the room, Opal spots Pearl's Kennedy campaign button, which she at first mistakes for a Hal Phillip Walker one. With her typical simplistic overstatement, Opal exclaims: "How strange. I thought that everybody in the South didn't go for Kennedy." (I love the construction of that sentence.)
That all it takes to get the slightly tipsy Lady Pearl going: "That's John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Well, he took the whole south -- except for Tennessee, Florida, Kentucky... And there's a reason he didn't take Tennessee. But he got 481,453 votes... [starting to cry] and the asshole got 556,577 votes...."
"Now, the problem we got here is anti-Catholicism," Pearl continues, her tongue drunkenly tripping over that last term. "These dumbheads around here, they're all [choking back more tears] ... Baptists and whatever, I don't know. E-e-even to teach 'em to make change over the bar, you gotta crack their skulls. Let alone teach 'em to vote for the Catholic... just because he happens to be a better man."
Opal by now realizes she's hit a nerve, as Pearl spills her personal JFK assassination memories: "And all I remember the next few days were us just looking at that TV set and seeing it all on. Seeing that great big fat-bellied sheriff saying, 'Ruby, you sonofabitch.' And Oswald. And her... [lips trembling, voice cracking] in her little pink suit."
"And then comes Bobby," Pearl continues with great sentiment. "Oh, I worked for him. I worked here and I worked all over the country.... Oh, he was a beautiful man. He was not much like... uh, John, you know. He was more... puny-like. But all the time I was working for him I was just so scared. Inside, you know. Just scared."
So, is Pearl's outpouring simply a game of Ridicule-the-Dowager, as Rosenbaum characterizes it? Or, more ambivalently, as Strauss describes her monologue, an expression of "all that was both hopeful and delusional about what the dead Kennedys represented for progressive citizens"? There's so much truth (and oblique character revelation) in this rambling speech (broken into three sections and at least partially improvised by Baxley): the bitterness at people who aren't smart enough to vote the way you do (does that strike a chord with any blue- or red-staters today?); her still-vivid recollection of the exact number of votes cast in the 1960 election, fifteen years earlier; the poignant images of the fat-bellied sheriff and Jackie's "little pink suit" in the universally shared JFK TV-coverage memories; the tendency of people in barrooms to get sentimental over the lost ideals of their youth; the comically futile failure of language in her attempts to compare the stature of the two brothers (the deified elder is "John Fitzgerald Kennedy"; the younger is "Bobby" -- more "puny-like," on a more human-scale, but his death is just as heartbreaking); the acknowledgment of the worst (mostly unspoken) fears so many Americans harbored when RFK ran for president...
The next day, in a magnificent but brief montage of church services, we see Lady Pearl, looking bereft and maybe a bit hung over, at a solemn Catholic mass. Also present are Star (Bert Remsen), Wade, and the magnificently tuneless Sueleen Gay (the late Gwen Welles) in the choir. Pearl sits alone, with a doily on her head. Meanwhile, Haven, his business manager Delbert (Ned Beatty) and Del's deaf kids attend a muscular Protestant service of some kind (with Haven performing in the chorale), while Tommy and his family witness a baptism in a black gospel church where Del's wife Linnea the gospel singer (Lily Tomlin) is the only white person in the choir. Meanwhile, Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakeley) renders heartfelt hymns from a wheelchair at the hospital chapel (eyes closed, always retreating into her own private world when she sings), while Pfc. Glenn Kelly (Scott Glenn) and Mr. Green (Keenan Wynn) trade Barbara Jean anecdotes in awestruck whispers.
Most of these families don't pray together -- but "Nashville" suggests a kind of community and spiritual kinship among the characters at each service. We eavesdrop on characters in situations where they're in their element and where they're fish out of water. But now that we know Lady Pearl is Catholic (was she raised as one, or did she convert after one of the Kennedy assassinations?), the JFK poster at her Parlor fits into place, and the memory of it underscores her isolation as she sits by herself in the pew. (Lest we forget: A whole generation of Catholic households in the 1960s and '70s created virtual shrines to the American martyrs -- Jack and Bobby, sometimes with Dr. King -- in the living room or the parlor or the dining room.)
Perhaps Lady Pearl doesn't spend as much time on the screen as some of the other 23 main characters in "Nashville," but I've never forgotten her -- or felt contempt for her, either. As is the case with so many of my favorite moments in movies, she had me laughing and crying simultaneously. Bless her for it.
View image Establishing shot: The first image of Yasujiro Ozu's masterpiece, "Tokyo Story." Ozu tends to begin with a series of static shots (say, three to five) that set the location and mood.
David Bordwell (recently returned from Easter Island!), has a swell historical overview of first shots (and the Opening Shots Project) here. David notes that many classic films begin with fairly routine establishing shots and wonders:
Was there a moment when directors started to feel that they had to weight the first shot heavily, to treat it as a dense moment that the viewer should savor? The first shot of a film could be as vivid and bristling with implication as the first sentence of a novel. When might directors have begun to think along these lines?
He then surveys several of your (and my) Scanners favorites, and mentions a number of his own (from films by Harold Lloyd, Yasojiro Ozu, D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein and others):
Fairly far back in film history, directors seem to have realized that first shots should be freighted with implication. There probably isn’t only one moment when this strategy arises, but I’d suggest looking first at the period when synchronized sound comes in. Most films at the time were pretty static and theatrical in their reliance on dialogue, so a flashy opening shot or sequence could reassert “This is cinema.� The bravura tracking shot was a common way directors chose to draw the viewer into the film’s world, as at the start of "Threepenny Opera" or of "Scarface." Maybe this is a key moment in which filmmakers began to realize that the opening shot of a film should grab or puzzle the viewer and let us reflect a little on the fact that it’s doing so.
I haven't seen all the nominees ("The Dead Girl," "American Gun," "Wristcutters: A Love Story," etc.), but, as always, there are some most welcome nominations. (Links below go to my reviews, festival coverage -- or even Opening Shots.)
Paul Dano for "best supporting male" (that's the IFP's category) in "Little Miss Sunshine," which is also nominated for best feature, screenplay, directors -- and Alan Arkin, also nominated for supporting male. I love Arkin (it's all about "Little Murders," people!), but I thought Steve Carell and Dano stole the movie, with Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear close behind.
Robert Altman, best director for "A Prairie Home Companion."
Biggest disappointments: No documentary nominations for "51 Birch Street" or "The Bridge." The former may have been too deceptively simple and artless (in truth, it's a complex work of art) and the latter too cold and disturbing for many in the Indie tent-party crowd.
I'm still technically on break, but I'll be back to blogging (and editing) Wednesday.
Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
so I can sigh eternally
-- Kurt Cobain, "Pennyroyal Tea"
It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said that they were through with dealing
every time you gave them shelter
-- Leonard Cohen, opening lyrics for "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"
View image "Nashville" 25th reunion. Note gigantic Oscar at right; Altman got his own, regular-sized one six years later. (photo by Jim Emerson)
"However, the cortex, which is dwarfed in most species by other brain areas, makes up a whopping 80 percent of the human brain. Compared with other animals, our huge cortex also has many more regions specialized for particular functions, such as associating words with objects or forming relationships and reflecting on them. The cortex is what makes us human."
-- John J. Ratley, M.D., "A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain"
I'm not sure what, if anything, meaningfully connects these fragments to the passing of Robert Altman -- or his films, as alive now as they ever were -- but they were all things I encountered during a day spent thinking about Altman and, to my surprise, not wanting to speak out loud about him to anyone. I talked to my mother on the phone. She asked hesitantly, "Have you heard any news today?" "Yeah," I said, and changed the subject. What can I say that isn't trivial? (Rhetorical question, please.)
In this state of grief, nothing I'm writing or thinking about Altman is adequate, or even makes much sense, in large part because a whole moviegoing lifetime of engagement with his movies (beginning at age 15) has so profoundly shaped who I am and how I experience the world. Like hundreds, thousands (millions?) of cinephiles and cinephiliacs, I found life (and, paradoxically, shelter) in Robert Altman's movies. "Nashville" is my church, to which I return again and again for joy, insight, inspiration and sustenance. (I haven't written about it for years, but I also know that I'm almost never not writing about "Nashville.")
To this day, I am in some deep but irrational sense convinced that the characters in "Nashville" (even though I know they're played by 24 of my very favorite stars!) continue to exist outside the parameters of the movie itself. I've met and interviewed, for example, Ned Beatty, but there's Ned Beatty the actor and then there's Delbert Reese, who is someone else entirely. Delbert exists, imaginatively independent of the great actor (one of my all-time favorites) who inhabited him in "Nashville." (This is most unlike the other most-influential movie in my life, Roman Polanski's "Chinatown," made just the year before "Nashville," which is as "closed" a film as "Nashville" is "open." "Chinatown" ends so definitively that, "Two Jakes" aside, any life beyond the final frame is unthinkable.)
Right now I just want to share another fantastic memory: In 2000, I heard there was going to be a 25th anniversary reunion screening of "Nashville" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. I'd moved back to Seattle by this time, but I bought tickets the moment they became available (for five bucks apiece) and went to LA for the event: My favorite movie, in a pristine print, in one of the finest movie theaters in the world, with most of those 24 favorite stars in attendance. It was... transplendent (as a Shelley Duvall character once said). I'll post an update with IDs later, but for now, see if you can identify the people onstage (taken with a now-primitive, but still beloved, Canon Digital Elph)
Haven Hamilton Henry Gibson Lady Pearl Barbara Baxley Bud Hamilton David Peel Barbara Jean Ronee Blakley Barnett Allen Garfield Delbert Reese Ned Beatty Linnea Reese Lily Tomlin Connie White Karen Black Tommy Brown Timothy Brown John Triplette Michael Murphy Sueleen Gay Gwen Welles Wade Robert Doqui Mr. Green Keenan Wynn L.A. Joan Shelley Duvall Pfc. Glenn Kelly Scott Glenn Tom Frank Keith Carradine Bill Allen Nicholls Mary Cristina Raines Norman David Arkin Opal Geraldine Chaplin Albuquerqe Barbara Harris Star Bert Remsen Kenny Frasier David Hayward Tricycle Man Jeff Goldblum Frog Richard Baskin Trout Merle Kilgore Himself Elliott Gould Herself Julie Christie
"Nashville" 25th Reunion Photo IDs:
Top picture: Charles Champlin (film critic emeritus, Los Angeles Times, and bit player with Burt Reynolds in "The Player"), Robert Altman, screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury (seated, peaking out from behind Altman), Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakeley, Keith Carradine, Robert Doqui.
Bottom picture: Keith Carradine, Robert Doqui, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Baskin, David Hayward, Michael Murphy, Dave Peel, Cristina Raines, woman from the Academy putting a mic on Allen Nicholls.
By this time (2000), Keenan Wynn, Gwenn Welles, Barbara Baxley, David Arkin and Bert Remsen were deceased.
Unable to attend; Lily Tomlin, Barbara Harris, Geraldine Chaplin, Scott Glenn, Timothy Brown, Shelley Duvall.
View image The Dangerous Woman pays a final visit -- with a smile. From the ending of "A Prairie Home Companion" (2006).
I'm off this week, but I needed to personally acknowledge the death of Robert Altman, the first great director I ever met, and the filmmaker whose work (particularly "Nashville," "3 Women," "The Long Goodbye" "California Split" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" -- all of which were originally released, and encountered by me, when I was in my ultra-impressionable teens), most inspired my love of movies and my determination to devote my life to them. I first met Altman in person when I was 18 or 19, in the living-room-like lobby of the Harvard Exit Theatre in Seattle at the world premiere of "3 Women" (or, possibly, Alan Rudolph's "Welcome to L.A."). He was standing by the grand piano, by himself, and I, shaking and sweating, forced myself to go over and talk to him. He spoke back. I couldn't believe it: To me, it a "Sherlock, Jr." moment, as if I'd somehow passed through the screen and was interacting with someone on the other side. Over the next 20 years or so, I would interview him a number of times in a professional capacity, and I relished these sharp, thoughtful, intelligent, funny conversations. I don't remember much of anything about that first chat, though, except that my end of the exchange would not be described by any of the adjectives in the previous sentence. But it had a huge impact on me.
Two anecdotes: 1) Shortly before the release of "The Player," when I was working in Los Angeles, I went to interview Altman -- I think it was at the Beverly Hills Hotel, or maybe the Chateau Marmont, I'm not sure. When I arrived, Altman was on the phone with Fine Line, cussing them out about the advertising budget. I was talking to the publicist about my trip to Europe, from which I'd just returned, and saying how I found it exhilarating and liberating to be in a strange city, and to be out in public, and not understand the conversations that are taking place all around you.
The instant Altman got off the phone he practically leapt to the other side of the room: "I heard what you were saying about being in Europe and that's exactly the way I've felt! I lived in Paris for years and never learned French. You realize there's just so much extraneous bullshit you don't have to listen to if you don't know the language!"
This from the man who pioneered the multi-track Lions Gate Sound System, and whose movies are known for their almost contrapuntal background dialog (wrangled, in some of the '70s films, by assistant director Rudolph), finely tuned babble that picks up on little bits of character from the edges of the frame (or even beyond it) and makes a scene come to life as an immersive experience.
2) Years later, at a then-rare screening of "Nashville" I attended at the Walter Reade Theater in New York (yes, by the mid-to-late-1990s it was virtually impossible to find a showable 35mm print of "Nashville," one of the greatest films of all time), actor Scott Glenn (who played Pfc. Glenn Kelly) told a story about how the actors were individually miked and, in crowd scenes, often didn't even know if they were within the scope of Paul Lohman's wide-screen Panavision frame.
"How will I know if I'm on camera?" Glenn recalled someone asking.
"You won't," Altman said. "Just do something interesting and you might end up in the picture."
UPDATE: 11/22/06:A.O. Scott has the finest Altman obit I've seen in the MSM, using the ending of "California Split" as a way of discussing Altman's career:
Mr. Altman thrived on the shapelessness and confusion of experience, and he came closer than any other American filmmaker to replicating it without allowing his films to succumb to chaos. His movies buzz with the dangerous thrill of collaboration — the circling cameras, the improvising actors, the jumping, swirling sound design — even as they seem to arise from a great loneliness, a natural state that reasserts itself once the picture is over. A makeshift tribe gathers to produce a film, or to watch one, and then disperses when the shared experience has run its course. Everyone is gone, and the only antidote to this letdown is another film....
But if ["A Prairie Home Companion"] was a last gathering of the troupe, after which the lights dim forever, and the audience disperses, it was also just another movie in a career like no other, and when it was over — in the ending I like to imagine — American cinema’s greatest gambler shrugged his shoulders and walked away.
Slate says it has a copy here. One page, easy to read in a couple minutes, and pretty darned comprehensive. Including: "This is the entire agreement between the Participant and the Producer or anyone else in relation to the Film, and the Participant acknowledges that in entering into it, the Participant is not relying on any promises or statements made by anyone else about the nature of the Film or the identity of any other Participants or persons involved in the Film."
View image Catherine O'Hara, the funniest person on the planet, with John Michael Higgins, who's no slouch himself.
Please note that, in the list of Categories in the column at right, there is one topic that still has no entires. That is "Oscars." Because, really, after last year what's even left to joke about? And it's only November.
Nevertheless, I have a couple of Chicago Sun-Times/RogerEbert.com reviews this week, and one of them is of Christopher Guest's "For Your Consideration":
Hey, I heard Catherine O'Hara is so splendid in Christopher Guest's latest ensemble comedy, "For Your Consideration," she's a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination.
It's true -- she is that good. And she's long overdue. (I would already have given her an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, a Peabody, a Nobel and a People's Global Golden Choice Award for her performances as Lola Heatherton and Dusty Towne in the 1982 SCTV "Network 90" Christmas special alone.)
Perhaps the two biggest problems with "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus" are the last two words of the title. This through-the-looking-glass "Beauty and the Beast" fable has little to do with Diane Arbus, the famous photographer, or with her work, which is not seen in the film. As a Lewis Carroll title card explains, this "is not a historical biography" but instead "reaches beyond reality to express what might have been Arbus' inner experience on her extraordinary path" to becoming an artist. Sure. All that's missing is a sense of who Arbus was, and how the fictional journey depicted in the film is reflected in (or, rather, distilled from) her art.
Why the Hell It's Funny Or Not, Part 2 or Possibly 3
View image Here is Borat ridiculing people who are not in on the joke so that you can feel socially superior, according to Christopher Hitchens and David Brooks.
British crank Christopher Hitchens has been writing about Borat's Kazakhstan for years, only he calls it "Iraq." Still, it's an imaginary place in Hitchens' brain, like Kazakhstan in Borat's or Nicole Kidman in David Thomson's.
I do not read Hitchens much at all anymore because he's stuck in 2002 and can't get out. But Hitchens has a perspective on "Borat" that's worth mentioning. First, he quotes a dim-witted passage from a review in "London's leftist weekly," the New Statesman, in which the writer professes that "it's shocking to witness the tacit acceptance with which Borat's ghoulish requests are greeted. Trying to find the ideal car for mowing down gypsies, or seeking the best gun for killing Jews, he encounters only compliance among America's salespeople."
To which Hitchens replies:
Oh, come on. Among the "cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan" is the discovery that Americans are almost pedantic in their hospitality and politesse. At a formal dinner in Birmingham, Ala., the guests discuss Borat while he's out of the room—filling a bag with ordure in order to bring it back to the table, as it happens—and agree what a nice young American he might make. And this is after he has called one guest a retard and grossly insulted the wife of another (and remember, it's "Americana" that is "crass"). The tony hostess even takes him and his bag of s__t upstairs and demonstrates the uses not just of the water closet but also of the toilet paper. The arrival of a mountainous black hooker does admittedly put an end to the evening, but if a swarthy stranger had pulled any of the foregoing at a liberal dinner party in England, I wouldn't give much for his chances....
Is it too literal-minded to point out what any viewer of the movie can see for himself—that the crowd at the rodeo stops cheering quite fast when it realizes that something is amiss; that the car salesman is extremely patient about everything from demands for p___y magnets to confessions of bankruptcy; and that the man in the gun shop won't sell the Kazakh a weapon? This is "compliance"? I have to say, I didn't like the look of the elderly couple running the Confederate-memorabilia store, but considering that Borat smashes hundreds of dollars worth of their stock, they bear up pretty well—icily correct even when declining to be paid with locks of pubic hair. The only people who are flat-out rude and patronizing to our curious foreigner are the stone-faced liberal Amazons of the Veteran Feminists of America—surely natural readers of the New Statesman.
I'll stop there for now. Hitchens' point is that "Borat" is something of a comedy of manners, and that what many are seeing as "shocking compliance" is simply politeness and an aversion to confrontation (particularly when there's a camera staring at you). On this isolated point, I think Hitchens is generally correct and the heinous, America-hating leftist is generally wrong. But I wonder if Hitchens (or the other guy) can see that one accurate observation does not make all others invalid. Hitchens' mistake -- a fallacy he indulges endlessly in his writing -- is in thinking the one thing he deigns to mention is all that's going on.
As for the bull-in-a-china-shop -- er, Borat-in-an-antique-shop -- scene, if you don't understand what's going on here, you've never seen a motion picture comedy. Perhaps the greatest example is the Mr. Muckle scene in W.C. Fields' 1934 "It's A Gift," where Fields does his best to keep a cantankerous old blind man from bumping around and destroying everything in his shop. Is this a joke at the expense of old blind people? I think not. Is it a joke at the expense of the innocent, milquetoast shop-owner, who is trying to be polite? I doubt it. The joke is about a catastrophe waiting to happen... and then happening. It's about expectations, anticipation, timing, and an impotent struggle to keep the worst from occurring while making sure it does.
It's not as gut-busting, or as protracted, as the now-famous wrestling scene, but as A.O. Scott wrote of that instant classic: "This had nothing to do with Kazakhstan or America or 'cultural learnings' of any kind. This was, the display of skin notwithstanding, one of the oldest jokes in the book: a tall, skinny man and a short, fat man fighting. A no-brainer. The dumbest kind of dumb show. And, therefore, a brief — actually, an almost unbearably long — reminder of a glorious tradition." That's right. Much of my affection for "Borat" is rooted in cinephilia -- my love for classic American screen comedy: Fields, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Bros., Preston Sturges... (Sacha Baron Cohen's countryman, Charles Chaplin, is also an influence -- but I'm not such a fan.)
I've said it before, but Borat is an agent of chaos in the anarchic spirit of the Marx Bros. He combines Groucho's insults with Chico's goofy foreign accent -- not literally -- and Harpo's lust-driven physicality. Only the villains get really angry with the Marxes; everybody else, even the romantic leads in the earlier, funnier Paramout films, just gets mildly flustered and then tries to move on as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. If you don't recognize that movie-comedy convention, then perhaps you won't recognize what's going on in Borat, either.
Like the insufferably patronizing, binary-minded David Brooks, for example, who writes about "Borat" in the New York Times today, calling the character a snob and a bully -- part of "the rise of culture-war comedians [like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher] whose jokes heap scorn on the sorts of people guaranteed not to be in the audience." Brooks begins:
And so we enter the era of mass condescension. Thanks to the creativity of our cultural entrepreneurs, we enter a time when we can gather in large groups and look down at our mental, social and spiritual inferiors.
To Brooks, the "genius" of Cohen's Borat is
ycophantic reverence for his audience, his refusal to challenge the sacred cows of the educated bourgeoisie. During the movie, Borat ridicules Pentecostals, gun owners, car dealers, hicks, humorless feminists, the Southern gentry, Southern frat boys, and rodeo cowboys. A safer list it is impossible to imagine.
Cohen understands that when you are telling socially insecure audiences they are superior to their fellow citizens there is no need to be subtle. He also understands that any hint of actually questioning the cultural suppositions of his ticket-buyers — say by ridiculing the pretensions of somebody at a Starbucks or a Whole Foods Market — would fatally mar the self-congratulatory aura of the enterprise.
I agree Brooks's list is a "safe one" (that's why I pointed out Borat's "good liberal" treatment of blacks and gays), but he sure hasn't been exposed to much comedy. The anti-PC ridicule of pretentious Starbucks-quaffing, Whole Foods-shopping yuppies has been a modern comedy staple for years, from the espresso-ordering scene in Steve Martin's 1991 "L.A. Story" to Austin Powers (Dr. Evil's headquarters was at Starbucks) to Christopher Guest movies (especially "Best in Show") to The Onion to "Fraisier," "Will and Grace," "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," "The Office," "South Park" ... Where has Brooks been? (Answer: Making up fake opposing categories to stick people in. Brooks is the author of "Bobos in Paradise" -- as in "Bourgeois Bohemians." You know, Starbucks customers.)
Upper-class pretensions have always been a target for comedy -- but I suppose Brooks hasn't seen Keaton's "The Navigator" or the Marx Bros.' "Animal Crackers" or "A Night at the Opera." (Brooks evidently didn't see the scene with Hitchens "stone-faced liberal Amazons of the Veteran Feminists of America," either.) Indeed, Borat makes a point of poking fun at keeping-up-with-the-Jonses social-status ambitions when complaining about his rival next-door neighbor in Kazakhstan, and bragging about his triumph in acquiring glass windows and iPods: "Great success." These are among the very few times in the movie where you laugh at Borat and with him at the same time.
Both Hitchens and Brooks appear to have thought "Borat" was funny, but don't feel comfortable with that feeling. Laughing appears to have been a sin that requires some sort of confession. I have a feeling they would say the same things about Christopher Guest or Coen Bros. movies -- that they are about mocking, ridiculing, tearing down the characters so that the audience can feel superior. It does not seem to have occurred to either of them that it might be possible to laugh at -- even mock -- someone, while still feeling sympathy or even empathy. And that such feelings, as opposed to sheer derision, make the comedy even funnier. Did they not cringe with, and for, the dinner guests, or the car salesman, or the feminists, or the ettiquette coach (who, unflustered, held her own admirably no matter how hard Borat tried to make her break)? I suppose that lack of empathy is their loss, but it's not the movie's fault.
Brooks continues:
Cohen also knows how to rig an unfair fight, and to then ring maximum humiliation and humor out of each situation. The core of his movie is that he and his audience know he is playing a role, and this gives him, and them, power over the less sophisticated stooges who don’t. The world becomes divided between the club of those who are in on the joke, and the excluded rubes who aren’t. The more tolerant the simpletons try to be toward Borat, the more he drags them into the realm of anti-Semitism and vileness. The more hospitable they try to be, the dumber they appear for not understanding the situation.
I've already explained above why this (incredibly condescending) interpretation of "Borat" misses the mark. Is Borat's humor really based on ridicule of rubes who are "not in on the joke," or making audiences feel they are socially superior to the people on the screen? What's so terribly funny about that -- and why does Brooks assume that's the only "joke" to "get"?
Hitchens and Brooks agree, it's all another manifestation of the rudeness and crudeness of Young People Today.
Hitchens: "As far as one can tell, most youth culture is as inarticulate and illiterate and mannerless as Sacha Baron Cohen made it out to be [on "Da Ali G Show"]..."
Brooks: "There’s also that distinct style of young person’s snobbery. Young people haven’t accomplished much yet so they can only elevate themselves by endlessly celebrating their own superior sensibilities."
Yeah, surely that must explain why "Borat" is funny not.
View image A shot from Steven Soderbergh's "The Good German."
David Bordwell has a capacious post (with 23 illustrative images) beautifully assaying the Hollywood custom of coverage -- basically, the industry practice of "covering" a scene by shooting it from plenty of angles, from master to close-up, so there are lots of options in the editing room. He's following up, and expanding upon, Dave Kehr's New York Times article on Steven Soderbergh's decision to shoot his film "The Good German" as if it were a Michael Curtiz studio production in the late 1940s. (Bordwell discusses lenses and lighting in a previous post.)
In Kehr's illuminating article, actor Tobey Maguire says "what was fascinating to me is how [Soderbergh] was cutting the movie in his head. There’s really no fat on the film. He really didn’t do ‘coverage.’ He only shot the parts of the scene he was going to use, and if he wasn’t going to use it, he didn’t shoot it."
But the description of traditional coverage in the article -- involving shooting with multiple cameras -- isn't the classical Hollywood method, which would be to re-shoot at least parts of the scene again and again from different angles, usually involving extensive re-lighting (and even slightly different blocking) for each new lens and camera position. It's part of what makes actors go stir crazy waiting in their trailers/dressing rooms between set-ups.
Don't miss Bordwell's elaboration on the subject, with quotes from his own interviews with filmmakers and a fascinating analysis of a strange and awkward passage from George Stevens' "Giant." This is another example of why the Bordwell-Thompson blog (launched only months ago) is such a welcome addition to the cinematic blogosphere!
The Sunday New York Times Magazine devoted itself to comedy this weekend -- and you know how funny the New York Times Magazine can be. Actually, there's a very good article by A.O. Scott on the art of the pratfall in which he explains why some of the greatest modern comedy (from "Little Miss Sunshine" to "Borat") is of the well-executed physical variety. (Not to be confused with what Chris Farley used to call, with an undertone of dismay, "Fat Guy Falls Down" -- a desperate stunt that may elicit knee-jerk laughs, even if it's not inherently funny.)
As part of its comedic survey, the Times Mag asked some 22 comedians, well-known and not-, to name five of their favorite "Desert Island Comedies" on DVD. I don't like any of the lists much (while agreeing wholeheartedly with a few individual choices) -- but I salute David Cross (somebody I've long thought is really funny) for the humor inherent in choosing "Homer and Eddie" and "Rent."
To paraphrase an old David Steinberg routine: There are those who say... (that's the end of my paraphrase) that to analyze comedy is anti-comedic. I could not disagree more strongly. I say if you don't understand why you're laughing, when you're laughing, then you don't appreciate the comedy and you may as well not be laughing at all, since any old reaction is probably comparably appropriate for you. You could be crying or sneezing and it's probably the same thing. But let's put that aside for the moment and concentrate on some lists of very personal, very funny movies.
I suppose I could choose the great movies that have made me laugh the most -- the first that come to mind, such as: a Keaton ("Sherlock, Jr." or "Steamboat Bill, Jr."), a Fields ("It's A Gift" or "The Bank Dick"), a Marx Bros. ("Animal Crackers" or "Duck Soup"), a Sturges ("The Lady Eve" or "Miracle of Morgan's Creek"), and, let's say, a classic comedy (preferably starring Cary Grant or Barbara Stanwyck or Jean Arthur, and written and/or directed by Ernst Lubitsch or Howard Hawks or Billy Wilder or Mitchell Leisen, like "Trouble in Paradise" or "Heaven Can Wait" (1943) or "Bringing Up Baby" or "His Girl Friday" or "The Major and the Minor" or "Some Like It Hot" or "Easy Living" or "Ball of Fire"...). But those are all 50-75 years old, and I haven't even mentioned my modern-era favorites, like Luis Bunuel ("The Exterrminating Angel," "Simon of the Desert," "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," "The Phantom of Liberty"), Monty Python ("Life of Brian" -- greatest comedy of the last half-century), Christopher Guest & ensemble ("Spinal Tap," "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show") or the Coen Bros. ("Barton Fink," "The Big Lebowski"). So, I thought I'd just offer up a few relatively obscure, underappreciated or, at least, off-the-beaten-path comedies that I think are hysterically funny and invite you contribute some of your own:
"I Was Born, But..." (Yasujiro Ozu, 1932) I know it's an acknowledged masterpiece by one of the greatest directors in movie history, but how many of you have actually seen it? Two boys, big belly laughs. Some of this material was re-worked in "Ohayo" ("Good Morning") in 1959.
"The President's Analyst" (Theodore J. Flicker, 1967) I love this movie -- the perfect paranoid Cold War 1960s espionage satire companion to "Dr. Strangelove" and James Bond, with James Coburn in the title role. Who is writer/directorTheodore J. Ficker, anyway? Well, according to IMDb, he directed episodes of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E., "The Andy Griffith Show," "I Dream of Jeannie," "Night Gallery" and "Barney Miller."
"Taking Off" (Milos Forman, 1971) You couldn't find a better time capsule for 1971 -- which Forman has captured with his characteristically uncanny ease and naturalness. Buck Henry "stars" as a father whose daughter has run away to some sort of "hippie" musical audition -- probably in the Village. The whole thing feels spontaneous and improvised -- but it was written by Forman, Jean-Claude Carrierer ("The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," "The Phantom of Liberty," "Birth"), John Guare ("Atlantic City," "Six Degrees of Separation") and Jon Klein. One of the late, great Vincent Schiavelli's finest moments: teaching a group of uptight, wealthy parents with missing kids how to smoke pot. Early cameos by Kathy Bates, Carly Simon and Jessica Harper, among others. (Long unavailable, this recently showed up on the Sundance Channel, which I hope means it will soon be released on DVD.)
"How to Get Ahead in Advertising"(Bruce Robinson, 1989) Robinson's equally brilliant and demented "Withnail & I" is the official masterpiece (and object of obsessive cult veneration in the UK), but this is Richard E. Grant's finest hour. He's a London advertising executive so sick with self-loathing that he grows a foul-mouthed boil on his neck. How's that for a premise?
Coldblooded" (Wallace Wolodarsky, 1995) In some ways, this is a precursor to "Dexter." Jason Priestly is magnificently deadpan as an empty young man who is recruited to become a hit man -- and turns out to be mighty good at it. Co-starring Peter Riegert, Robert Loggia (getting ready for "Lost Highway"), and Jay Kogen -- who, along with writer/director Wolodarsky, wrote some of the classic early episodes of "The Simpsons."
"Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy" (Kelly Makin, 1996) Critics were mostly bewildered or repulsed, but this movie gets funnier every time I see it (and I've seen it at least a dozen times). It plays GREAT on the video screen -- better, I think, than any of the TV shows. A drug company speeds a new anti-depressant to the market, only to find that the insanely popular Gleemonex has a troublesome side effect: It puts people into comas of happiness. Each of the "Kids" has at least a handful of indescribably (but not inexplicably) funny moments. Including: "Cat on my head! Cat on my head!"; "I'm an elephant rider!"; "Tasty"; "How pleasing!"; and "Just... a guy." Should be seen alongside the great documentary, "The Corporation."
I cheated. That's six. But, OK, I've left out hundreds of great titles. Your turn. And the more obscure/underappreciated the better, please.
P.S. Anybody else remember the rest of the sentence from that David Steinberg bit?
Anyway, so as I told Rob in e-mail, I wanted to respond here with some screen grabs of one of my favorite long takes, and then you over to his place to contribute your own favorites and participate in the discussions. (The problem being, I don't know how to post screen shots in Comments fields -- or if it's even possible -- and this is one you just gotta see, although too few have.)
The movie is Jerzy Skolimowski's "Moonlighting" (1982), a dark (and dank) comedy about a group of Polish construction workers, led by Nowak (Jeremy Irons), who travel London to do a little off-the-books remodeling at their boss's flat. Political unrest in Poland makes Nowak's job as foreman all the more tricky; he withholds information from them, and tries to pretend everything is normal, while carrying an ever-increasing load of fear, guilt and moral responsibility. Ten years later, the Soviet system had collapsed, and you get an eerie sense of why from this movie.
The shot (from a stationary camera; no dollying) begins with Nowak riding his bike toward us, then turning around and riding away. No reason is given for the reversal (the pivotal moment is a pause, almost in close-up), but we know certain decisions are weighing heavily on Nowak's mind. He heads down the road, and we see a man walking a black dog on the sidewalk. The man and dog begin to cross the street and, just as Nowak is about to disappear around a corner in the distance... a cat jumps into the frame, arching its back at the dog. Man and (reluctant) dog cross to the right; the cat freezes, then continues, bristling, in the opposite direction, left. The cat pauses on the sidewalk, looking at a retaining wall. Just then, Nowak reappears at the end of the street, riding back toward the camera again. The cat jumps. End of shot.
This shot captures the restless, tortuous tensions at work in Nowak's mind -- and in one moment expresses why I love Polish cinema so very deeply. It's all in the details, the composition, the timing. The absurdity. Moments like this have taught me how to apprehend the world; or, at least, reinforced my existing view -- watching Polanski or Kieslowski or Zanussi or Skolimowski has been like coming home, or finding my long-lost twin.
All the time I catch glimpses of weird little things as I'm walking down the street, or through my windshield or in my rear-view mirror when I'm driving, that make me smile or laugh or do a double-take or give me a little chill. And I think: I've got to put that in a movie. (Of course, I promptly forget most of these things, but they enhance my enjoyment of life immensely.)
So, either you find this shot funny or you don't. I gasped with delight the first time I saw it and chuckled for the next few minutes. Maybe you find it simply odd (which it is!) or a little eerie (ditto) or just mundane (instead of inspired). But to me, it's the essence of movies. Movies!
Salon has a work-in-progress round-up of the stories behind various staged and/or improvised scenes in "Borat." (See Comments discussion below.) Here's one I was particularly curious about:
David Corcoran, the most outspoken of the three [University of South Carolina Chi Psi frat boys], spoke with FHM about the experience. "This guy said they were filming a Kazakh reporter who wanted to hang out with frat guys," Corcoran said. "They met 10 of us and I guess chose the three who wouldn't recognize Borat." The producers paid for the three men to drink at a bar, and then had them get in the RV and "pick Borat up ... as if he was hitchhiking." Once in the RV, he says, Borat showed them naked pictures of his sister and confessed to beating women.
Two of the guys -- identified in court filings only as John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 -- are now suing 20th Century Fox and One America Productions, the production company behind the film. The suit claims all three were told at the time that the film wouldn't show in the U.S. and their identities would be kept secret. They're seeking unspecified damages for "humiliation, mental anguish, and emotional and physical distress, loss of reputation, goodwill and standing in the community."
Can these guys sue themselves? Will they call Mel Gibson as a character witness?
Another exercise in Godardian film criticism (making a movie as a critical response to another movie): This one's simple and straightforward (existing footage; new soundtrack), but it makes its points unimprovably. I don't mean to pick on "Bobby" (which opens November 23), but after the work-in-progress press screening in Toronto I compared it to an Irwin Allen disaster movie:
It's "Earthquake" with the RFK assassination as the disaster. It's "Airport." It's "The Towering Inferno." A whole bunch of familiar actors play "colorful" characters swarming around the hotel, and their day will culminate in the death of a Kennedy.... Why turn this traumatic national event into a Hollywood soap opera? The performances are fine for this kind of glitzy manufactured melodrama ("Where Were YOU When They Shot RFK?"), and on that level it's swell, trashy fun. It's just that the whole concept is inappropriate.
Last week, I said the movie turns the Ambassador Hotel into "Neil Simon's California Suite with Assassination." But the filmmaker/critic whose work is embedded above has an equally valid take -- and impeccable comic timing.
(Tip: David Poland, who rescued the clip after it was pulled off of YouTube.)
Welcome back to the Opening Shots Project -- which has been on a bit of an unscheduled hiatus simply because I've had too much else going on. To get us back into the swing of things, I present the introduction to the great 1956 rock 'n' roll musical musical comedy, "The Girl Can't Help It," directed (unmistakably) by former Looney Tunes animator Frank Tashlin.
Our tuxedoed host (and co-star) Tom Ewell -- coming off a pairing with another pneumatic blonde, Marilyn Monroe, in the previous year's "The Seven Year Itch" -- introduces the film with the proper gravitas. No, this is not the spokesman for Mr. Carl Laemmle, warning us that we may be horrified or even shocked by the specter of "Frankenstein." Mr. Ewell, instead, plays our genial -- if a bit formal -- emcee: "Ladies and gentlemen, the motion picture you are about to see is a story of music." The set -- with musical instruments tastefully floating around the soundstage -- looks like it could be from a live-action black-and-white version of "Fantasia."
Ewell modestly explains his role in the story and proclaims: "This motion picture was photographed in the grandeur of CinemaScope, and... gorgeous, lifelike color by DeLuxe." It takes a little effort, but he manages to push the frame into the proper aspect ratio and add color to the emulsion.
[Discreet cut to medium shot here.]
In short order, the music Little Richard bursts from a jukebox -- "not the music of long ago, but the music that expresses the culture, the refinement and the polite grace of the present day" -- drowning out out Mr. Ewell completely. The montage that follows, of colorfully lit couples tearing up the soundstage floor will be evoked in the credits for David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" years later.
But for now, it's Jayne Mansfield who explodes onto the screen in the grandeur of CinemaScope and in gorgeous, lifelike color by DeLuxe -- or rather, garish, lurid color by DeLuxe, and we wouldn't want it any other way. Then it's one politely graceful act after another: not only Ms. Mansfield and Little Richard, but Fats Domino, Abbey Lincoln, The Platters, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, The Treniers, and Julie London, Julie London, Julie London and Julie London. She can't help it.
To Lane, Sacha Baron Cohen is a guy who "adopts fictional personae and then marches briskly into the real world with a mission to embarrass its inhabitants." That may be "Punk'd" (or "Candid Camera") but that's the least of what's going on in "Borat," which presents these improvisations in a fictional narrative context that give them meaning (and, consequently, humor). To White, "Borat" is "anti-American propaganda," that "primarily consists of genital humor, scatological humor and jokes about deformity and mental retardation" -- while any praise of the film is "a bit seditious" and amounts to "evil criticism." OK, that movie doesn't sound funny to me, either. But that movie is nine shots of Armond White with just a splash of Borat Sagdiyev.
Lane is baffled by "Borat." White goes off on a comically crude and incoherent rant against Madonna, Andy Kaufman, Neil LaBute, Madonna (again), 9/11, George W. Bush, Michael Moore, Emir Kusturica, the "angry Left’s vicious temerity" and the "self-loathing" of "Borat’s ass-kissing film critics." Yes, in White's six-paragraph review he spews more bilious imagery -- "pits," "sewer gas," "flatulent," "odious," "evil," "stench," "Ethnic-Cleansing" -- than the feature film he's accusing of low blows. (And for some people, inexplicably, everything will always be about Madonna.)
[Mild joke-spoilers ahead.]
Both Lane and White insist that the "real people" Borat encounters are uniformly the "victims" of his humor. And yet, we probably ought to remember that all of them would have had to sign releases, or contracts, to appear in the film. (One guy who runs away from Borat on the streets of Manhattan has his face digitally blotted out in the TV spots, probably because his release did not cover the use of his likeness in advertising.) I don't know to what extent each of these scenes was staged and which involved actors. But (he said "but"!) "Borat" pretty much requires that you ask yourself who is the butt of the joke (if there is one -- a joke or a butt) in each case. Is the driving instructor a "victim" (or a target) in the same sense as the drunken frat boys? Are the kids who run from the bear treated the same as the etiquette coach? Is Alan Keyes in on the joke to the same extent as Pamela Anderson -- and is it the same joke? If you don't ask yourself these kinds of questions while watching "Borat," a movie that provokes you again and again to examine your reaction to what you're seeing and ask why you think it's funny (or not funny), then you may as well be watching "Punk'd" or Martin Short's Jiminy Glick -- because you won't understand the difference.
White doesn't. He writes:
In Borat’s interview scenes, the “Candid Camera� gimmick recalls old confrontational hoodwinks, like the one Martin Short perfected by playing showbiz sycophant Jiminy Glick. But Short’s Glick was brilliantly ballsy; he went after celebrities—the real sacrosanct power in contemporary culture. Borat picks on a trio of middle-aged feminists trying to hold on to dignity. The joke is on their age and politeness. “Do you know the word ‘demeaning’?� one of them asks. Borat answers “No�—the same negation he directs toward an etiquette club’s dinner party, a gang of ghetto rap boys, Pamela Anderson fans, any group that might be perceived as voting conservative.
First, White is correct when he asserts that Jiminy Glick is not really much like Borat when you think about it, if you think about it, even though he makes that assertion after he's made the comparison. Glick is one big, self-congratulatory "Access Hollywood" inside-showbiz gag, where all the guest interviewees are fully aware that they are sitting opposite Martin Short. Is there an easier target -- or a more pervasive one -- than the inanity of celeb chatter? If White honestly thinks celebrities are "the real sacrosanct power in contemporary culture," or that Jiminy Glick does more to undermine it than to simply reinforce it, then I hate to say it but he needs to watch more TV and check out more check-stand tabloid papers and magazines to get a little perspective on the place of celebs in contemporary culture.
Second, White assumes that the interview with "a trio of middle-aged feminists" is a joke "on their age and politeness." Really? He doesn't notice that the women (who occasionally look like they're about to laugh) maintain their dignity and politely humor Borat, while he does his best to shock them by saying the most cretinous things imaginable? Imagine if these women had taken the bait and thrown a screaming fit. I submit that would not have made for a funny scene, just an ugly one. Borat's oversized, inappropriate jibes are in the anarchic spirit of Groucho Marx insulting Margaret Dumont (although his lines aren't nearly as clever, because he's not playing a clever character). Both White and Lane get Borat's comedic precedents all wrong. (Are Chico and Harpo evil, too?)
In his second paragraph, White writes: "As Borat Sagdiyev, Cohen pretends to document the habits of fly-over America; his red state debauch ultimately pandering to Liberals’ worst instincts." He lumps together the "trio of middle-aged feminists" with "an etiquette club’s dinner party, a gang of ghetto rap boys, Pamela Anderson fans, any group that might be perceived as voting conservative." What makes White assume all these "groups" he's describing might be perceived as voting conservative? Middle-aged feminists and Pamela Anderson fans? Southern aristocrats in a mansion on or near Secession Blvd. and "ghetto rap boys"? Does he honestly think the film has the same attitude toward them all? (White thinks the movie too afraid to poke fun at "N.Y./L.A. media-centers" and exploits cultural confusion to divisive ends; I think Borat's a social-liberal populist disguised behind a giant moustache, who shrewdly identifies with blacks and gays because he doesn't want to risk causing truly divisive offense. )
There is none so provincial as a patronizing New Yorker who's spent too long in his solipsistic media-center bubble. White claims "Talladega Nights" was "derisive about the Midwest’s auto-racing subculture" (but at least he thought it was funny, though he doesn't mention it co-starring Sacha Baron Cohen); Lane writes, "This defense of Borat as an unwitting scourge of the reactionary—unearthing Midwestern beliefs no less parochial than those he left behind in Kazakhstan—is sound as far as it goes." No acknowledgment that, after a brief Kazakhstan introduction, the whole second section of the movie takes place in New York City, and the last act in Los Angeles and Orange County. Borat's route goes from New York through Washington, D.C., then into the South, and through Texas and the Southwest on the way to the Pacific coast. But to these guys, anything west of Jersey is "The Midwest." Borat's not that insulting.
Lane is bewildered:
What does Baron Cohen’s cousin, an expert in autism, make of all the retard jokes? And what game is Baron Cohen playing, exactly, when he shows mock footage of an annual Kazakh ceremony known as “the Running of the Jew,� in which children kick a giant egg to bits, to stop “the Jew chick� from being hatched?
Well, I don't know the answer to the first question, but I'd rather know what Lane makes of them. In one scene a "humor coach" explains exactly why jokes about "retardation" are not considered funny in America, because mental illness causes a lot of pain to a lot of people. Borat is clueless: "Even if it's a very funny retardation?" Is that joke really at the expense of the mentally ill -- or the humor coach? Later, Borat misunderstands a Southern gentleman who says he's "retired." To Lane, these are just "retard jokes."
As for the "Running of the Jew": What part of this requires explanation? The visuals alone -- the preposterous magnitude of the exaggerations -- are what's so hilarious. The notion that the culture perpetuates these caricatures of such mythic proportions, and indoctrinates children into participating in them (even though none of them, especially Borat, have ever actually encountered a real Jew) is what makes it satire. That this isn't immediately apparent to an adult writing for a "sophisticated" publication like The New Yorker is something I find troubling. And I don't think the fault is with the movie.
Then again, perhaps Lane and White should not be expected to understand what's going on in "Borat." After all, White proclaims: "Borat is not
