View image "I put together the DVD cover and the poster originally. And then they took it and f--king bastardized it."
Academy Award-winning Irish songwriter Glen Hansard (the Academy urges us to identify Oscar-nabbers that way for the rest of their lives) speaks out about the lousy/cutesy DVD image manipulation on the cover of the US edition of "Once." (Previous Scanners discussion here.) He's waiting for the Criterion edition. From an interview at Pitchfork:
GH: Oh, man. They f--kin' killed it. You're right. They have us holding hands, which we never do in the film! Those legs aren't mine. Those legs are like three times longer than my legs. It's a completely new body. They literally just used my face. I'm wearing a hat in the original picture, so they Photoshopped my head. If you look at my head, my head looks totally weird, because whoever did the Photoshop job was sh-t. My head looks really weird, they took my hat off, and they gave me an entirely new body. It's completely bizarre.
And they made Mar [co-writer/performer Markéta Irglová] much taller than she really is. You can look at the original cover and then what they did to it and spot all the crappy differences. It's awful. It's a real shame. But at a certain level you've got to let this sh-t go. I designed the original poster and the cover of the DVD myself. Myself and John like to do things ourselves, and I do a bit of design for the Frames. I designed all the Frames album covers. So I put together the DVD cover and the poster originally. And then they took it and f--king bastardized it. Instead of walking down a street, they stuck us walking down a big guitar.
Pitchfork: Again, it's a different world. The music industry is sketchy enough as it is, but the movie industry is 100 times that.
GH: Yeah, it's just blatant. They don't give a f--k. They want you to look at the DVD cover and get everything from that. It's the opposite of what someone like Criterion would do. They create wonderful art. With a Criterion DVD, you just want to buy it for the box. They do it right. With the bigger-time DVDs... they could have done such a nicer job. But I'm just complaining from a design point of view.
In case you've forgotten: Hansard co-wrote the song "Falling Slowly" with his "Once" co-star Markéta Irglová, the two performed it on the Oscar broadcast, and the crowd response to their win was probably the most enthusiastic of the evening. So was Jon Stewart's.
This week film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, 65, retires from a 20-year stint at the Chicago Reader. In this interview, posted at The Reader's site, Rosenbaum looks back at his career (writing, editing, blogging) and ruminates on what he'd like to do next, which includes the freedom to not have to see movies he has no interest in seeing. People who are not film critics have no idea how precious that freedom can be. (Rosenbaum also has a few choice words for out-of-control commenters on The Reader's blog that make me grateful for the readers and commenters we have here.) You can see Part II here, in which he expounds on film as politics and vice-versa, Barak Obama, "Charlie Bartlett" and "There Will Be Blood," which he sees as "simpleminded" and less-than-"challenging."
JR's authoritative, confrontational (sometimes even doctrinaire) style has sometimes provoked me to take issue with him, but I'm always interested in what he has to say -- and will continue to be. May his "retirement" (not from writing, from The Reader) be an eminently productive one!
If Russ Meyer had made "The Other Boleyn Girl," Anne and Mary Boleyn would have yanked some hair, scratched some eyeballs, walloped each other in their respective kissers, and the movie would have been all the better for it. Just imagine: "Beneath the Valley of the Tudorvixens": Meee-oww!
As it is, "The Other Boleyn Girl" is a sullen genre picture, hardly as vivacious as Meyer's uncategorizable sexploitation films, and not as edifying, either. It's built on sturdy old generic conventions, as familiar as those in any slasher film or naughty-nurses potboiler.
UPDATED 03/03/08: The author of the original letter expands his thoughts:
We received this very fine letter to the editor yesterday at RogerEbert.com. It's from Nicholas Rizzo and it offers a deeply felt understanding of "No Country for Old Men" (and one I happen to share). The "Country" of the movie's title is America, and the West, but it's also age, and death:
I've just seen “No Country for Old Men”. And I'm wondering about something. I'm at a crossroads in my life. And for the first time I’m feeling left out. I'm 39, about to turn 40. I work as a physician, and my practice is in a transition due to forces beyond my control. After hours I coach a high school wrestling team and that has to go by the wayside as our head coach is finally stepping down and I've injured my neck. So my coaching days may be over. I'm divorced, have some gray hairs, and am essentially in between the young daters and the "available divorcees" in age -- kind of in a relationship limbo. Admittedly, I'm facing my own mortality on several fronts. And this movie hit home for me because of this. But after that hit, there was something more that I found, and I’ll cover that at the end of this writing.
Regarding your review, I agree with it entirely. It's an incredible film, and in all the aspects you mention. Except, you didn't mention the point of the film, at least as I see it. The first clue to it lies in its title, which is a double entendre. That is, "country" as in place to seek a safe place to be, and also "country" referring to the U.S.A. and our way of life. The latter relates obviously to our society's neglect of older generations, as the younger ones just pass us by. But that's another conversation.
This film is expertly crafted in three layers. The first layer is the literal one, where there is a cop chasing a killer chasing a victim. The real treasures of this film lie in its abundant symbolism and meanings – all on a secondary level. The third level may only be my invention, but I like it.
I think this movie is not about Moss or Chiguhr. But rather about Ed the Sheriff and his coming to terms with his retirement, especially as it functions as a herald of his mortality. Put another way, Ed is coming to terms that the “living” part of his life is over. His usefulness to society has ended. A man is often defined by his work, and his effectiveness in that work. How poignant were the descriptions of the dreams at the end of the film. Additionally, Ed retires because he's "outmatched". By who? Today's society’s killers? The Reaper? I think both here. And I think it relates back to the double meaning of the title.
In contrast, and told in parallel to Ed in the film, was Moss – he was representative of people trying to outrun their own mortality. Especially as illustrated by when Chiguhr said to Moss’ widow "he tried to save himself by using you." This is a key usage of "save himself".
The killer Anton Chighur was illustrative of the Grim Reaper. Guy wore all black, no one could stop him, and he carried a black weapon with a silver end to it not unlike a scythe. Not even the car crash at the end could kill him. He even had a 1960's haircut like he never aged. He was referred to as a ghost. His name was even ambiguous, sometimes pronounced like “sugar” (ah, sweet slumber) and at other times like “chigger” (an annoying bug you can’t seem to catch but is always there.) This ambiguity is key here, and is in stark contrast to the stark stereotypes attached to the Mexican drug runners in the film. (I sometimes wonder if our society views multi-racial people as the most beautiful because, if we cannot determine which racial group they belong to, no racial stereotypes are attached and then we see their beauty purely and unencumbered.)
I don't think this movie was so much about an ultimate evil so much as our ultimate ending. But rather about our ultimate aging, decline in usefulness whether true or not or simply relative to the youth of any generation. The ultimate finality of our time. Its categorical nature is represented by Chigurh’s "code of ethics" that can't be broken. A person asking “You don’t have to do this” is their bargaining with the finality of their own death... not with Chigurh. Indeed, bargaining is a well-described phase of the dying or loss process.
Chigurh is also representative of the Reaper in the most important of ways. To me, the most intriguing thing about the Reaper is that he walks among us. He doesn’t kill some of us, he doesn’t even look at some of us, and is only visible to those he’s about to take. So there are four types of interactions he has with people. The first is with those he’s about to take. Notable in the film is that those he’s there to kill with individual intent he kills with the rifle and silencer – his scythe, a device that exists only for the purpose of killing humans.
The second group of people he encounters consists of the ones that simply get in his way. Those people are no different than the deadbolt on a door obstructing his path… so he uses the cattle air gun to clear the way – not the rifle. Using the cattle air gun may even be a reference to people as no more than cattle, and Reaper is in fact an agricultural term.
The third group contains the ones he lets call the coin flip. These are people not in his way, are not on his “list” per se, but are peripherally related somehow to his goal/adventure. So why the coin? Obviously the coin represents the fates. But why does the Reaper need a coin? I think it’s because he’s the Reaper and nothing else. For example, he has rules he has to follow. They are referred to as his “code” in the movie, but I doubt they are rules he made up. Rather, they would be made up by God or gods, and he has to follow them. He fulfills his job’s duties, but I don’t think the Reaper created his job. In the film, he doesn’t need to kill the clerk at the store. He doesn’t need to kill Moss’ widow. So, because they are not on his hit list, and they are not in his way, it’s really not his job to determine if they get to live or die. As the Reaper, he just does the collecting once that determination is made. For me, the best part of this was when Chigurh brings out the coin for Moss’ widow, and she asks about it. He mentions that it’s a quarter. The first thing I noted was that he states that it got there the same way as he did. So, he’s not referring to the coin itself, but rather the flipping of the coin – the fate it represents, and that his code/rules are not his. The second thing I noted was a less common usage of the word “quarter” defined as “mercy, indulgence, or clemency especially when given to an enemy.” As an example of usage, the phrase “give no quarter” is similar to “show no mercy.” So a favorable coin flip is Fate (not Chigurh/Reaper) showing clemency or mercy.
The fourth group of people consists of those that are not on his list, are not in his way, and are not even tangential to his purpose… the ones he walks among but doesn’t touch. And this is referenced a few times. This relates back to my point about one of the most intriguing things about the Reaper is that he walks among but does so unseen. So in the instances of the accountant and the later on the kids who happen to see him but aren’t necessarily supposed to, the deciding factor is whether he was seen or not. The subtle point about the kids is that as they are minors who wouldn’t know any better, he specifically tells them “you didn’t see me” as a bit of parental command, whereas he asked the accountant as a knowing adult “did you see me?” Interestingly, Sheriff Ed falls into this group as he fails to see Chigurh in the motel room at the end of the film. And, while we initially see Chigurh in the Motel room, he seems to vanish and we as the audience fail to see him also. In an eerie way, the last shot of that scene( where our viewpoint is one looking out at Ed’s silhouette against the light from the door) was like Chigurh looking out at us from the screen, telling us he’s there but it’s not our turn yet.
So, why does this guy who represents the Reaper care about the money? Obviously, this guy has the wherewithal to steal or make any kind of money he wants. And why does he care about this money? I don’t think he really does, so much as he cares about what it represents. When people think of “millions” of dollars, winning the lottery for example, they think of life without worries… endless possibilities, etc. Another shot at life, if you will. So I think it represents the illusion of immortality we often chase. For example, people never win the lottery and think “I won, I’m going to die now” – they think the exact opposite along the lines “the world is my oyster”. And this is illustrated when Moss is in the Mexican hospital, calls Carson and gets Chigurh on the phone, and Chigurh states “you know how this is going to end”. He’s telling Moss that someday he has to die. Moss doesn’t accept it even at the expense of his wife. (This is the only contrast between Moss and Ed… Moss not only doesn’t accept his mortality but he denies it. Ed realizes it, struggles with it, and then accepts it.) Chigurh, knowing he’s not “human” and that no human can stop him from doing his job never shows any uncertainty or fear.
So I wonder if he’s not so much after the money per se, so much as he’s not allowing others to have it. He shows no worry or need for it, no materialism, etc. So not only does he escort people across the River Styx, he also guards it.
The Woody Harrelson character bears quick mention here. Here was a guy hired to “outwit death”. At the end, I think he knew he couldn’t, even though he tried to sell his skills as such. He was also trying to get the 2 million dollar ride to immortality. I think it was no coincidence that an actor who made his career playing a young comedic naive barkeep from the country was cast in this role.
Ed follows in his father’s footsteps, and then he realizes he’s blinked. He did get his job well, but it’s passed him by. These realizations sometimes occur over a cup of coffee, and sometimes in company – a reflection of thought… maybe the reflection in the TV is just that… reflecting.
This film is not a study of the ultimate evil, but rather the inevitability of our mortality, and as long as we delude ourselves into thinking 1. we are as useful as our prime, or 2. we can beat our mortality we view that mortality as something weevil when it’s not. It just is.
The most poignant thing for me of the film though, illustrating this point, I think, was that the Coen brothers. ended this film so well. First, the end came abruptly without warning. It just cut from Tommy Lee Jones speaking to blackness. The screen said "End Credits" and it stayed there for a long, long time. And then never showed any credits. If you think about the roots of those words... Credit comes from Credulous... i.e., believe. So, I think it lends itself to the conclusion "End Belief", and its message is "Believe in your End -- it's coming and there's nothing you can do about it. There's no country for you." It could have just as well said “Credit the End”.
More importantly done was the third layer of communicating this message. The first level was literal -- the Moss/Chigurh chase was illustration. The second level was the story of Sheriff Ed and his approaching retirement – that communicates it via empathy.
The third, and I think most creative level is via audience experience. Yes, the third level of meaning here is us -- this movie is experiential. It was this aspect that led me to look upon my own life and led to this writing. This layer is best illustrated by the above point about the audience not seeing Chigurh in the motel at the end is really Chigurh looking at the audience and not being seen, and by the effect the Coen brothers achieved in the theater logistically and its impact on the audience. Think about the following environment during the last few minutes of the film and the end credits: Tommy Lee Jones is abruptly taken away. The screen is black except for two single syllable words. The blackness of the screen contributes to the blackness of the entire theater. One of those words is “End”. It stays there for a long time – much longer than expected and you are just left sitting there in the blackness. The icing on the cake is hearing maracas shaking from left to right, starting in the rear surround speakers and then moving to the front and then stopping – as would Chigurh’s footsteps coming up behind you, getting louder and louder, and without seeing him. Missed this? Play the last ten minutes of the film in a darkened room, be sure the surround sound is on, and experience it again. What a perfect “Ending.”
So how does this relate to us as an audience now, after the film is over? Here’s how I see it. Tommy Lee Jones retires because he’s at retirement age (and that is not necessarily 65). Others in the film met their end. But we haven’t. Me, well, I blinked. The last ten years of my life seem like just a few moments. Granted, the past ten years working with the kids on this wrestling team, being there with my patients as they got ill, got better, lived and died, working as a professional entertainer in earlier years, etc., has been a wild ride. I feel incredibly fortunate to have lived as much as I have – probably more than most at my age.
Ed is realizing that we weren’t designed to function past our prime. In fact, most great achievements by society’s geniuses occurred when they were in their twenties. How often do we re-live our lives and reflect on the good times we had in our youth and early adulthood, and then just “accept” that those times are gone and just amble through our daily work? We often miss out on our dreams by getting caught up with life all the while forgetting to live. Or, our dreams really weren’t what we wanted, or if it was, it’s simply over now. So, to the degree that his life is over, Ed is a tragic character. But not as tragic as Moss because he never got it at all, and died missing out on his life never having really lived. Ed got it, but at the time of his retirement. He takes a moment (more than once in the film) to reflect over a cup of coffee. There’s lots of “reflection” symbolism in the film and I’ll leave that to other reviewers. But I’d like to add that “reflection” here be noted as a verb for us, and not just as something seen in a camera shot. I’d like to think that its these realizations that Ed came to, and is referenced by the last lines of the film when he states “Then I woke up.” First, that he’s 20 years older than his father ever was and realizes that he has another chance to do something “living”, albeit different from what he thought it would be and now in the context of retirement. Second, that he “can’t stop what’s coming” and accepts his mortality (even his being “outmatched” in his previous job capacity), and then can live actually connected to reality instead of pursuing a 2 million dollar suitcase that you’ll never get.
Giving up the myth that we could ever get a 2 million dollar suitcase of immortality allows to actually start living. As long we don’t, we are not living in the moment, we are out of touch with the “rhythm of life”, getting caught up in the “drone of life” and then we lose a decade in a blink – like I just did. Good art always gives us something – it makes us richer than we were before experiencing it. In the case of “No Country for Old Men”, we get an extremely well-crafted adventure, and the message of “don’t blink”.
So, there’s Moss, who denies, tries to cheat death and die trying, or Ed who ultimately accepts death as a part of life, “wakes up” and finally has a shot at “being a part of this world”, and we as the audience -- we get the message Ed got but are fortunate enough to “wake up” now instead of on the eve of our retirement. I’m taking a step back. I’m evaluating which dreams I’ve achieved, which ones are no longer dreams, and creating new ones. Putting it another way, “there is no country (haven) for those who try to outwit death” like Moss and Wells. And maybe more properly stated “this isn’t a great country (U.S.A.) for aged men.” But for us, if we accept our mortality now, if we know this life will end then we can savor every moment. If we can wake up now (and see if we are living trying to outrun death and then stop it), there’s no law that says we have to act old… at least until we’re really are. Don’t blink… Chigurh’s coming for ya’.
View image Joel and Ethan Coen flank Martin Scorsese. AP photo.
Oscar deadline story:
Everybody pretty much called it in advance, but nothing was certain until the very end. Joel and Ethan Coen's crowning achievement, "No Country For Old Men," toted some heavy Oscars Sunday night (for Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor), but the Academy spread the wealth.
"We, uh... thank you very much," said Ethan, accepting the Best Screenplay Adaptation Oscar, and it was a terrific speech. Six words. Maybe five-and-a-half. Funny. Pithy. Whether it was intentional or the shorter Coen brother just went up on his lines, he demonstrated that screenwriting is not just about crafting dialog. If you set the scene properly, the words themselves don't have to be memorable, just the moment.
It was. And, because of the sense of drama created by the structure of the show, that scene felt like the tipping point for "No Country for Old Men." You didn't know where the evening's storyline was headed, but once it got there, as always, it felt as if it had been inevitable. Kind of like the ending of "No Country" itself....
Because I'm just really bad at it. I have no idea what these... people will do. I've never won an Oscar pool in my life. I try to enjoy the show, and I like analyzing the results, but I can't pretend to divine the Academy's will in advance. Who knows what they'll do? Well, maybe you do.
The TV broadcast starts in about two hours. So if you want to make your predictions -- or share your thoughts on the show while it's in progress -- please feel free to do so below. I'm going to be on deadline for the Chicago Sun-Times and RogerEbert.com, but I'll check in whenever I can, mostly during commercials, to update comments.
Water Music From Big Pink: Gwyneth's Oscar meltdown. Where is she now?
My perennially sage advice on what to do, and not to do, when you win your Oscar (if you lose, you're on your own) is generating a lot of mail at MSN Movies again. An excerpt:
2. Don't Assume That God Voted for You
No incarnation of the Creator of All Things is registered as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and nowhere on the Academy ballots is there a category for Best Vessel Through Whom God's Blessings Might Flow. (There remains some question, however, about whether Jesus Christ personally chooses the Grammy winners.) Winning an Oscar does not make you a special agent of God's will or the divine favorite over your fellow nominees -- or, for that matter, over the lepers in your category who must suffer the enduring shame of not even being nominated. (Didn't Jesus say that the un-nominated would inherit the earth?) Do not demean the concept of the Almighty by implying that either you, or the members of the Academy who voted for you, are somehow helping to implement God's Mysterious Plan so that you all can bring about the End Times. Even if it's true, don't. It's just bad form. [...]
5. Don't Overprepare (In Other Words: No Lists)
All persons entering the Kodak Theatre should be frisked for 8 1/2-x-11-inch sheets of paper. Nothing larger than a 3-x-5 card should be allowed into the auditorium.... At most, your index card should have three items on it. For example:
1. One-liner joke
2. Suck up to X (director, studio exec, casting agent, soon-to-be-ex-spouse -- choose ONE)
3. Thank Academy
At least when Maureen Stapleton (Best Supporting Actress, "Reds," 1981) proclaimed that she wanted to thank "everybody I ever met in my entire life," she had the decency to refrain from mentioning them by name....
Juno about the fuzzier Oscars? Presenting... The Muriels
View image In 3-D, you'd swear Muriel was nibbling your proboscis. By the way, that's not her real phone number.
Although you probably think they are a reference to the 1963 Alain Resnais film,¹ or Bette Davis's bald uncle, The Muriel Awards are in fact named after Paul Clark's guinea pig. The one named Muriel.
The 2007 Muriel Awards are chosen by an elite body of web-based life forms who are united in their love of movies. Among them is Dennis Cozzalio, whom I have been meaning to congratulate on his handsomely redesigned blog, the renowned and beloved Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. (Admire the new logo! Steal his Oscar predictions! Compare them to Roger Ebert's! Compare them to Ali Arikan's and his drawing of Daniel Plainview!)
Meanwhile, over at Silly Hats Only, Paul is handing out the Muriels to the deserving... Muriel recipients. (We're not supposed to say "winners," are we?) Acting as his own Price-Waterhouse and Jon Stewart combined, he began handing them out February 13 and will continue until February 29, at which point his presentation will actually be longer than the Academy Awards. (I think that's a Bruce Vilanch joke that Whoopi didn't use. Or maybe she did.)
Among the categories announced so far are 50th Anniversary Award for Best Film, 1957 ("The Seventh Seal"), 25th Anniversary Award for Best Film, 1982 ("Blade Runner"), 10th Anniversary Award for Best Film, 1997 ("Boogie Nights") -- and the Less-Than-First Anniversary Muriels for Best of 2007 go to...
... Best Cinematic Breakthrough, 2007 (director Ben Affleck), Best Body of Work, 2007 (Josh Brolin)... And the awards for Best DVD Release, Best Ensemble Performance, Best Score, Best Cinematography are all posted, too.
The acceptance speeches are short, smart, and to the point. From Kent Beeson's "thank you" to Josh Brolin:
"Right now, is there another actor who is better at simply doing? He's a remarkably unfussy performer, content to hold back on the emoting and let the actions, whether it be hiding a case full of money in a ventilation shaft or diagnosing a zombie bite, do the talking. It's the kind of style that could get lost in a loud, obvious kind of movie, and that's what nearly happens to him in Robert Rodriguez's half of "Grindhouse." "Planet Terror" is overstuffed with characters, and Rodriguez compensates by turning them into easily-identifiable cartoons -- except Brolin, who actively resists simplification. His vengeance-minded Dr. Block, thanks to Brolin's underplaying, comes off as morally damaged instead of the outright villain the story wants him to be. Yet, this is just doodling in the margins of a big-budget "B" film, and it didn't prepare anyone for his career-changing performance in "No Country For Old Men." As Llewelyn Moss, Brolin's gift for understatement finds a perfect match in the Coen Brothers' "less is more" style of cinema....
It's still early in the evening. It must be: They haven't even presented Best Supporting Actress yet...
View image Dina Martina shows you how to organize, glamorize, accessorize, extemporize and festivize for Oscar. (photo by David Belisle)
A year later, Dina Martina is back to remind you of how you can make this year's Oscar festivities the most memorable ones of the year!
- - CLIP-'N'-SAVE - -
It's all about the party, people. This year, once again, I have turned to one of my eldest and dearest friends in the biz that we call show, the sparkling professional veteran entertainer Dina Martina (freshly returned from a USO Tour of P-Town), for party tips, decorating pointers, fashion commands and recipe notions. The GLAAD Media Award-nominated celebrity for Best Person in an Off-Off-Broadway Show (because she is glad, for "Dina Martina: Sedentary Lady"), Dina Martina can always be relied upon to present the finest advice in your area. Ladies and Gentlemen, the act you've known for all these years: The Oscar expertise goes to... Ms. Dina Martina!
* * * Dina Martina: Your Haute Guide to Entertaining Oscar-Style! * * *
It is now a very short time before the 2007th 2008th annual Academy Awards telecast graces billions of tiny silver screens around the world, and I'm as antsy as a kid in a china shop. I've made quite a reputation for myself over the years as a hostess who throws parties, and I'd love to share with you some of the finer points of how to throw an Academy Awards party that will leave your guests talking all the way through the Barbara Walters Special. Ready? Here goes!
1) Plastic Surgery.
All the stars are doing it (heck, Kenny Rogers is doing it and doing it and doing it), so why not you? I say, treat your face like you’d treat the fabled Red Carpet – remove the unsightly wrinkles by pulling it nice and tight before your guests arrive. Below the neck, however, I’m going against the grain this year by foregoing the requisite liposuction. All the other girls can be underfed fish in big ponds, but not me; I’m getting a tummy augmentation! The only way to stand out in sea of skin and bones is to fight lank with lard, and if it means I’ll be noticed -- and remembered -- I’ll be proud to resemble the Hindenburg, surrounded by skeletal, radio tower-looking waifs. Goodbye size 2, hello sleep apnea!
View image Dina Martina, America's Sedentary Lady of Technicolor, Alive! In Performance.
2) Host your own "Red Carpet" segment on the front lawn.
Surprised? Excited? Confused? Well, my friend, studies reveal that the red carpet segment is everyone's fave part of the show anyway, and since I began including this Oscar staple in my party plan, attendance has steadily increased each year by an average of .8%! It makes your guests feel truly glamorous, and your PHQ (Party Host Quotient) just goes bonkers! But before you freak out over just how to successfully pull off this crucial portion of your gala, let me first plant a few seeds in your cranny regarding what I refer to as "RCNs," or Red Carpet Necessities:
View image Dina Martina's double-sided picture disc single of "The President's Day Song"/"The Ballad of St. Patrick" with a bullet. It's never too late, or too early, to play for your guests at Oscar time. In fact, it's just right.
* The Red Carpet: What’s a red carpet segment without the carpet? A sidewalk segment; no glamour there, folks. Every detail of your red carpet must be absolutely perfect, and no scrimping will do, because what you're investing in is the most glamorous welcome mat in the world! This year I’m bucking the usual trend of the no-pile red carpet; I searched high and low for the longest, thickest, most luxurious red shag that money can buy (a 3- to 5-inch pile is preferable to hide candy wrappers, nutshells and cigarette butts). A lush pile will also prove to be your best friend when ladies snag a heel and “bite it”; they'll have something soft on which to land and therefore be less likely to pursue litigation. Be sure to have a hot, wet rag close-by to rub out any make-up smears in case of facial impact. Final word: RED. Don’t try to fight the establishment too much by going with another color or – GASP! – an off-white berber. What’s a Red Carpet segment without the red? A carpet segment. You might as well call it a carpet remnant. No thank you.
* Klieg lights: They're not just for Hollywood premieres anymore! Expensive, you say? Maybe so, but well worth every thousand dollars! Don't make the same mistake I made a few years ago by attempting to achieve the same effect on the cheap: While setting up my very first red carpet walkway, I parked my car up on the curb in a perpendicular fashion, with my headlights beaming toward the crimson promenade. I now insist on renting klieg lights for two reasons: First, automobile headlights just don't make the grade for adequate lighting, and secondly, the back 12 feet of my 22-foot-long Country Squire station wagon was taken off by a passing bus. Make sure to rent three klieg lights— two for the parking strip out front and one for the living room, so the glamour doesn't stop at the front door.
* Fashion Commentary: Don't bother with greeting your guests and commenting on their attire as they stride up the Great Red Way, as you'll be too busy attending to details inside! Before your first guests arrive, simply set up a spare TV and VCR on the front lawn, pop in a video loop of The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story, and let the Rivers gals do the rest! I find that fashion commentary is best left to the experts, anyway. You should, of course, take an occasional peek through the blinds to catch the noteworthy juxtaposition of your glamorous guests arriving against the boldly dramatic backdrop of Joan and Melissa, emoting their way through all of Beverly's Hills. Gets the neighbors' attention, too!
3) Production Numbers.
It is now the responsibility of party hosts around the globe to take the ball that used to be in Debbie Allen's court and RUN WITH IT! Choreograph your own elaborate dance numbers inspired by this year’s nominees and perform them for your guests during commercial breaks. Imagine your guests’ surprise and delight when you break into your high-steppin' routine based on "United 93" -- HIGH OCTANE! I’m very excited about my “Notes on a Scandal” tap-dance, which culminates with the Chinese splits (unfortunately, the Chinese splits part won’t be executed by me; I’m farming that one out to my neighbor’s 9-year-old gay son).
4) Party Games.
Commercial break time is also ripe for Oscar-themed party games, and this one’s my new fave: At the start of each commercial break, my party guests will all dash around the house, madly searching for any object to free-associate with at least one of the nominees in a specific category (I will inform them of said category at the top of the break). Before the Oscars come back on, each guest must present his/her object in front of the TV. and let everyone guess which nominee that object represents. Here’s a possible assemblage of common household objects from last year's selectants, if the chosen category was, say, Sound Editing:
- Figs of Our Fathers
- Fags of Our Fathers (with cigarettes, and ONLY if you’re in England)
- Leathers From Iwo Jima
- Letters From Aunt Jemima
- Blood Diamond Smokehouse Almonds
- Pilates of the Caribbean
- Pirates of the Carabiner
- Apocalyp-toenail clippers
- Apoopalypto (I’m hoping this one doesn’t happen)
View image Any time, including late February, is a festive time with Dina.
5) Food & Drink.
In my days of yore, my Oscar shindigs featured take-out fried chicken, but my best friend Doreen told me that her best friend once sent out for chicken, and for about five minutes was thrilled at the huge size of the pieces until she realized that it wasn’t poultry at all she was eating, but whole Norwegian rats (coated with 11 delicious herbs & spices, of course). I tend to doubt Doreen's story, but if I wanted her to attend my soiree without screaming to everyone not to “eat the rats,” I had to let the chicken go. As a result, I've broadened my culinary horizons and become more creative with my menu planning. This year, I'm featuring a sumptuous selection of foods inspired by and named for some of my favorite celebrities, past and present:
Starter:
Three-Bean Salad Mineo
Main Course:
Rump Roast Victoria Principal w/crumbly cracker crust from the Keebler Hollow Tree
Dessert:
Oatmeal Greta Scacchis
The Keebler crust will keep the roast moist, but you also want it to be firm and supple, so apply Principle Secret Eye Cream sparingly on the rump (roast), using light, upward sweeps. I understand that for some reason, some of you may not have the Victoria Principal Skin Care line, in which case that thing Susan Lucci uses on her face will do, but the name must then be changed to Carne con Lucci.
The Oatmeal Scacchi cookies are replacing last year's Little Debbie Allen Snack Cakes. Such a shame really, but they just didn't go over very well. Here are some other dishes named for those who have dedicated their lives to entertaining us:
View image Dina Martina, a jewel amongst gems, a ruby amongst the Emerald City, but not a blood diamond. (photo by Victoria Renard)
Savories:
- Kevin Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato Sandwiches
- Anita Ekburgers w/Red Button Mushrooms
- Anna Maria Alberghetti & Meatballs
- Martin Scorsesame Chicken Salad
- Eddie Murfilet Mignon
- Peggy Casserole
- Tallulah Bank Head Cheese w/Dawn French Bread
- Sandi Patti Melts
- Mr. Magoulash (for the children)
Lo-cal:
- Kate Winslettuce, Tomato & Cottage Cheese Plate
Desserts:
- Apple Bobby Brown Betty
- Irene Carameled Apples
- Dutch Babyfaces w/John Cougar Melonballs
- Barbara Hershey's Kisses
- Cyd Charisse's Pieces
For the more discriminating palate, an example of an Oscar party menu with the same theme but in a slightly higher price bracket might be:
Soup:
- Maury Povichyssoise
Starter:
- Antonio Banderasparagus Spears w/Xaviera Hollandaise Sauce & Peter Boyled Eggs
Main Course:
- Cajun Karen Blackened Chicken
Dessert:
- Cherries Jubilee Strasberg
And there you have it — an Oscar lover's guide to haute entertaining! Follow these few simple guidelines, and Sunday, February 25th, will see you firmly ensconced as the premiere Academy Awards Party host/hostess of (your town), U.S.A. (Canada is slightly higher).
Dina Martina's Tried-and-True Oscarrific Recipe Blog-h'ors-d'oeuvres!
Dina sez: Taste and rate. Four stars! (photo by David Belisle)
- - CLIP-'N'-SAVE - -
Once again, it's that very annual Dina time of year, when it wouldn't be Oscar Time without Dina Martina and it wouldn't be Taco Time, either!
ANNOUNCING: The very first second Oscar Recipe Blog-h'ors-d'oeuvre (pronounced like "blog-a-thon," only more like "blog-or-derve"), hosted by Scanners and Our Lady of Perpetual Mojo, the World's Foremost Hostess-in-Absentia, Dina Martina! This Sunday, more than a billion people around the globe will be serving one or more of Dina's Governess's Ball's Recipe's... (below). And that means you. (For more Dina Martina Oscar Entertaining Party Hints, see above.) They are easy to make, easy to serve, easy to eat, easy to enjoy, and fully digestible. (And bloggorhea is rarely a problem, except in rare cases.) After it's all over and you have your Faye Dunaway moment, please return here to give us a report of how tickled you and your guests were to consume Dina's salacious gustatory delights! Or share your own family secrets! And, recipes. Did you embellish? Did you improvise? Did you remember ice cubes and condiments? Let us know: Now thru Monday, February 26, 2007 25, 2008!
* * * Dina Martina's all-new 2007 2008 Oscar Party Blog-h'ors-d'oevres * * *
* * Serving Suggestions & Requirements * *
3 lbs. Ground beef
1 can pitted black olives
1 can green olives
1 clove garlic
1 + tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
oregano (to taste)
1 can Snack Mate cheese in a can
In large mixing bowl, combine ground beef, minced garlic clove, Worcestershire sauce and oregano (to taste). Drain olive cans, and remove pimento from green olives. Gently fill each olive, green and black, with Snack Mate cheese in a can. Form ground beef around each olive. Place each newly formed MEATY-O-RITE (as you may now call them) on a cookie sheet. Pre-heat oven to BROIL. Place cookie sheet full of eager young MEATY-O-RITES in oven to broil for 8-16 minutes, or until dark golden brown. ENJOY. (After removing from oven.) Spruce up with frill picks, if desired. (Before enjoying, yet after removing from oven.) Thank you.
Dina's Starburst Stacks
Ingredients:
2 lg. packages Kraft singles
2 lg. Packages premium bologna
1 lg. Package chicken boullion cubes
1 box rounded toothpicks
1 ordinary soda pop bottle cap
1 skinny nail
1 hammer
Pre-heat oven to BROIL. Using soda pop bottle cap as a cookie cutter, cut out as many starburst shapes as you can from each slice of Kraft singles and each slice of premium bologna. With hammer and skinny nail, make small holes in chicken boullion cubes. Now, using toothpicks, make starburst stacks by poking them through alternating starburst shapes of premium bologna. Kraft single, premium bologna, Kraft single, premium bologna, Kraft single, etc., leaving enough room at top of toothpick for chicken boullion cube and one last starburst cut-out of Kraft single over it. Place D.M. Starburst Stacks enthusiastically on cookie sheet and broil for 2-3 minutes or until top starburst shape of Kraft single melts over boullion cube. Refrigerate for 2 hours. Serve. Celebrate.
In medium saucepan, prepare Lime Jell-O. Remove from heat and stir in fresh frozen corn. Let mixture cool for a few minutes and stir again. The object is to stir corn niblets periodically, just enough to get them to remain visibly suspended in Lime Jell-O, much like confetti in the festive air, freshly jettisoned from a gay party-goer's palm. When Jell-O is thick enough to achieve this effect, pour mixture into clear glass tumblers. Refrigerate overnight. Garnish with LITTLE SMOKIES Cocktail Sausages. Note the way yellow corn niblets compliment lime Jell-O. Serve.
Dina's Chunky Oscar Dip
Ingredients:
1 lg. Container large curd cottage cheese
Serve. For those of you who are lactate intolerant, substitute non-dairy creamer and mix with water until lumpy (chunky). Enjoy.
A few things we can learn from the experimental horror-comedy "The Signal":
1. Do not live in a place called "Terminus." There's no future in it.
2. If your cable goes out, don't stare at the mesmerizing static, just turn off the TV.
3. Do not put on headphones and listen to music while strolling down the corridor in your apartment building if it's strewn with freshly slaughtered corpses, especially if madmen with garden shears are also present.
4. It doesn't hurt to wear a tinfoil hat sometimes.
That first one is a given. The second one you should already know from life experience and from movies like "Videodrome" and the Japanese horror film "Ringu" ("The Ring"). The third one you should know from every zombie or slasher movie ever made, and besides it's common sense. And the fourth, well, that's just a bonus tip that could come in handy someday.
Written and directed in three segments, or "transmissions," by David Bruckner, Jacob Genry and Dan Bush, respectively, "The Signal" originated as an experiment called "Exquisite Corpse," in which a story is passed along from one filmmaker to another, each taking it in new directions before handing it off to the next. The result is a movie that explores the common ground between visceral horror and sketch comedy, and finds plenty of it. Both forms share a zest for the outlandish in logic and execution, which is probably why the frightening and the laughable bleed together so readily.
Kathleen Murphy and I try to drill down to the bottom of Daniel Day-Lewis's portrayal of Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's "There will Be Blood" in a "Point/Counterpoint" exchange at MSN Movies. For me, it was almost like a therapy session, forcing me to confront my deep ambivalence about Day-Lewis as an actor and my admiration-disappointment response to Anderson's film. (Overall, I don't feel strongly enough in either direction to characterize it as a "love-hate" relationship. I have reservations, but there's no question it's a "must-see.")
Kathleen's reading of the film is just magnificent. I don't share it, but I that doesn't prevent me from loving and appreciating it, and she makes her case most eloquently. Here's a sample of our back-and-forth:
Kathleen Murphy: Like the dissonant sounds and music that thrum through so many scenes in the movie, Plainview operates against the grain of mundane, familiar humanity -- and Day-Lewis plays him like fingernails on a chalkboard. A quintessentially American confidence artist, Plainview's a dynamo that runs hotter and faster than any flesh-and-blood metabolism. Day-Lewis isn't acting a human being at all, but a force, a power, ultimately a blight that haunts America still.
In "TWBB," Day-Lewis starts out as a driller worm, a black faceless thing in a dark hole. His very first communication is "No!", barely a discernible word buried in the awful, inhuman groans emitted after his bone-shattering fall into the mine. In fact, Plainview is pure negation, anti-life -- despite his sales spiel about the symbiosis of capitalism and civilization.
The faceless, subterranean thing rises, triumphantly brandishing a hand painted black with oil, an echo of those red hands left as signatures by primitive man on cave walls. Even as his drilling machines become more sophisticated, Plainview learns to fast-talk, to bend the herd to his will. Day-Lewis grows this snake in the American Eden into a suave demon in human flesh, conning sheep, "seeing the worst in people and not needing to see past that to get what I want." He makes the earth itself bleed black blood, and cuts every umbilical cord to human feeling. [...]
In my reply, I suggest that the movie and Day-Lewis are shooting fish in a barrel:
Let me say I admire large parcels of Paul Thomas Anderson's film, and isolated moments in Day-Lewis' portrayal of Plainview, yet I don't think either taps very deeply into the well of mystery, resonance and American archetype. While Day-Lewis and Plainview get bigger and drunker and crazier as it goes along, the movie constricts thematically and narrows to a terminal point, pinning Plainview to its canvas like an insect specimen: Here is a moral tale of one greedy and misanthropic bastard, a moral gnat played with grand flapping flourishes by a big actor. Amidst the film's true believers, I feel a bit like Plainview after witnessing Eli Sunday's (Paul Dano) arthritic exorcism in the Church of the Third Revelation: "That was one goddamn helluva show." I don't share the revelation, either, yet I can't help but acknowledge the showmanship. [...]
one example from "TWBB" that illustrates how I think it and Day-Lewis go wrong. The movie's (black) heart is the speech Plainview gives to his presumed long-lost brother Henry, about how little use he has for people and how much he hates them. It's a breakthrough moment for Plainview, as he allows Henry into his confidence and his business: "I can't keep doing this on my own ... with these ... people." And then he laughs, dryly and too loud. It's too, too much: first the contemptuously pregnant pause, then the overemphasis on his disgust with the word "people," and finally that gilding-the-lily laugh. All Day-Lewis leaves out is the dastardly Snidely Whiplash twirl of his mustache.
Day-Lewis shoves me right out of the movie. The emotional void, the disgust, the bitterness -- they're all qualities Plainview also exhibits, but he's a better salesman. If Plainview is trying to bond with his brother over whiskey and misanthropy, or to test Henry to see if he shares Daniel's all-consuming envy and entitlement ("If it's in me, it's in you"), the oilman and the actor are overselling it egregiously. And that's the fatal miscalculation of this film and this performance: Day-Lewis isn't content to play this character; he stands apart from Plainview, judging him and telling us how we should feel about him, every step of the way. Plainview himself sucks the air out of any room he inhabits (even when he's outdoors), but I feel like Day-Lewis goes him one further, strutting and fretting to upstage his own character.
I believe it was Gordon Gecko who proclaimed: "Ham is good!"
The "Wall Street" supervillain (superhero?) was not advocating violation of any dietary laws, of course, but simply stating a fact: Sometimes Big Acting can be quite enjoyable. Other times, of course, it can be cringe-worthy, irritating, risible, embarrassing. Only you can decide which is which. For you.
Take for example the story of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest" -- she of "No wire hangers!" and "Eat your meat!" (both precursors of "I drink your milkshake!"). Pre-release publicity reports claimed that Dunaway was giving a serious dramatic performance. But from the very first screenings it was painfully (yet fasciatingly) clear that somebody was going off her rocker -- but which actress was it: Crawford or Dunaway?
Performances pitched at the balcony, or the moon, always take the risk of falling somewhere between "tour-de-force" and "trying way too hard," virtuosity and showboating. And opinions may very about where they come down. (See "A Journey to the End of Taste," below.) You may wince at the Method nakedness displayed by Marlon Brando or James Dean in some of their most intense emotional moments ("You're tearing me apart!"). Or you may rejoice at even the most outré dramatic and/or comedic efforts of Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Bette Davis, Jack Nicholson, Klaus Kinski, Will Ferrell, Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Kevin Spacey, Whoopi Goldberg, Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Nicolas Cage, Ben Stiller, Tyler Perry, Owen Wilson, Gene Wilder... while others find them excruciating, overwrought or unintentionally campy.
The bigger the performance, the bigger the risks. Or maybe not. Just look over the history of Oscar nominations for acting.
In Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," Jack Nicholson plays a guy who, as one wag said about Daniel Plainview in "There Will Be Blood," starts off insane and goes even more insane. The End. But this raises the question: Isn't "too much" precisely the point in some movies? One of my favorite scary-funny moments in all of cinema is when Jack Torrance puts his hands over his face in alcoholic anguish and desperation, then drops them and, startlingly, gazes straight into the camera at an off-screen bartender: "Hi Lloyd. Little slow tonight, isn't it? Hah-hahahahahahahahaha!" (Let's not forget Shelly Duvall's famously frazzled and hysterical performance, either.)
Just because an actor is "big" doesn't mean he or she can't be subtle, too. Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" plays a raging conquistador in search of El Dorado, but he's not just a big slice of Deutsch jamon. He finds authentic madness and makes it terrifying....
Then there's comedy. I find George C. Scott's broad clowning as General Buck Turgidson in Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" laugh-out-loud hilarious. Likewise Sterling Hayden as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper and Slim Pickens as Major T.J. "King" Kong. Alan Arkin can rant and sputter (in "Little Murders" and "Catch-22") and crack me up. But Jim Carrey (exception: "Eternal Sunshine..."), Jerry Lewis (exception: "The Nutty Professor," because Buddy Love balances out Julius Kelp) and Mickey Rooney ("Breakfast at Tiffany's" -- ouch) usually make me want to put a pillow over my head. Or theirs. I was never a fan of Milton Berle or Sid Caesar, either. But Jonathan Winters knocks me out.
I think Meryl Streep (an actress I thought was too calculating early in her career) knows how to do "big comedy" expertly, as in "Death Becomes Her" or "The Devil Wears Prada." And yet I wanted to hide under the table watching Annette Bening (an actress whose sense of proportion I've always admired) in "American Beauty." Some sketch-comedian friends of mine reported similar reactions: We felt bad for her, and we blamed the director, Sam Mendes. And then there's Theresa Russell's career-threatening star turn in "Whore," which reportedly was the performance director Ken Russell (no relation) pushed her to deliver, but not the one she wanted to give.
I could go on and on. Here's what I want to ask you: What are some of your favorite "over-the-top" performances -- drama, comedy, both, neither -- and what makes them work for you? What performances, characters or movies are just too excruciating for you to stand? Can you think of a fingernails-on-a-blackboard performance is that makes you seriously uncomfortable and that you admire?
View image Their hearts will go on, even if they're all wet.
Who says there's no accounting for taste?¹ Maybe there is. New Yorker music critic and Alex Ross (whose brilliant book "The Rest is Noise" I wrote about last month) mentioned another book on his blog and now I've gotta get ahold of it (as Barak Obama maybe sorta allegedly did).²
From a review by Sam Anderson in New York Magazine:
Wilson’s real obsession here is not Céline but the thorny philosophical problem on which her reputation has been impaled: the nature of taste itself. What motivates aesthetic judgment? Is our love or hatred of “My Heart Will Go On” the result of a universal, disinterested instinct for beauty-assessment, as Kant would argue? Or is it something less exalted? Wilson tends to side with the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that taste is never disinterested: It’s a form of social currency, or “cultural capital,” that we use to stockpile prestige. Hating Céline is therefore not just an aesthetic choice, but an ethical one, a way to elevate yourself above her fans—who, according to market research, tend to be disproportionately poor adult women living in flyover states and shopping at big-box stores. (As Wilson puts it, “It’s hard to imagine an audience that could confer less cool on a musician.”)
I don't know that I've ever heard a Celine Dion song besides the "Titanic" one (he said, attempting to stockpile some cultural capital) and I must admit: My first thought when I decided to check out the book was that I couldn't buy it, or even be seen leafing through it, at a local bookstore because I'd be appalled if anyone saw me. Even someone I didn't know. In the next moment I was even more ashamed that I'd felt that fear of shame. Taste'll do that.
... [W]hen Wilson talks about Let’s Talk About Love, he’s really talking about the way we relate to each other as human beings. Readers of the dizzyingly dweeby intellectualizing that often makes Wilson’s blog an exhausting pleasure to read will not be surprised that, for him, a discussion of the love theme from Titanic must encompass an examination of Quebecois culture, the history of parlour entertainment as it relates to the immigrant experience, the philosophies of Hume and Kant... [...]
Wilson’s reading of philosophy, social theory and his own conscience pretty conclusively demonstrates that the revulsion Dion inspires in the cultural elite is a function of class. We like what we like because of our social circle and education and cultural and economic prospects, and we dislike most intensely that which we perceive to be beneath our station.
In other words, what we call "taste" has a lot to do with shame, and is intertwined with issues of age, class, race, etc., that we tend to label conveniently as separate concerns. (See my piece on "Black humor: Stepin Fetchit to Richard Pryor to Tyler Perry.")
Wilson has plenty of points of disagreement with Bourdieu (and so do I), but he notes that "even if Bourdieu was only fifty percent right -- if taste is only half a sub-conscious mechanism by which we fight for power and status, mainly by condemning people we consider 'beneath' us -- that would be twice as complicit in class discrimination as most of us would like to think our aesthetics are."
My own book might be the [33 1/3] series' dodgiest pretender, as it claims on its cover to be about a Celine Dion album, and then goes on for about 9 of its 12 chapters without saying more than a few words about that album, going on instead about taste and globalization and sentimentality and schmaltz and TV shows about teenage girls. My book is a lab experiment in disguise, in which I was the rat, being exposed to various test conditions or stimuli that might help me understand how millions of people could be fans of Celine Dion while I and nearly everybody I'd ever met couldn't stand her. [...]
It was a weird experience to spend months on end thinking about Celine Dion, but much of the time I wasn't thinking about Dion so much as about the chemical components, the relationships and accidents and outside forces, that go into liking or disliking music in the first place. The book was kind of a far-flung exercise in suspension of judgment, about putting off a thumbs-up or thumbs-down for awhile, and one of the advantages of doing that is that in the interim, you might end up somewhere else than where you bargained for. [...]
And isn't that what frequently happens with our cultural interests — that the most significant thing about them, often, is how they mutate into other interests? You start out getting interested in blues through the White Stripes, say, and then a year later you find that what's really sending you is early African-American fiddle records, and within months you're reading books on the history of the minstrel show, realizing uncomfortably that half the campfire songs you ever knew (the half that weren't written by Woody Guthrie) started out being sung by white men with black cork smeared across their faces.
Well, yes it is, and we can all trace our own similar meandering pathways through movies, music, art, science, history. It reminds me of... researching and writing and publishing a blog, where a (self-)examination of one preoccupation leads to another and another and another. What you end up doing is challenging yourself endlessly, pushing yourself to get to the root of how you think you understand something, to go where you find yourself feeling most reluctant to go, and to articulate what you find out -- which often amounts to more questions and challenges.
Wilson mentions "sentimental art and the 20th-century preoccupation with dividing culture into 'highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow'" -- which brings us back to "taste." How do we develop it? Scientific studies indicate that many children don't like green vegetables because their body chemistry is different from adults and broccoli really tastes bad to them. But their palates develop with time, and they may grow to love the stuff. Might our "taste" in art and entertainment develop similarly? What about when we find ourselves diverging with our peers -- or respected authorities -- on movies or music? Maybe we like something they dismiss as "lowbrow" or "middlebrow" -- or we don't buy something "highbrow" they hold in esteem (hmmm, what examples come to mind?): How do we explain those opinions in term of "cultural capital"? Do we derive a sense of superiority from being contrarian or perverse? From crowing about something others find disreputable or even beneath consideration -- or proudly pointing out the Emperor's New Clothes when it seems everyone around us is blind?³
I can't help it, I'm going, once again, to invite comments by quoting from one of my favorite songs (by Ralph Freed and Burton Lane, 1941) -- memorably recorded by Frank Sinatra on "Songs for Swingin' Lovers":
I like New York in June
How about you?
I like a gershwin tune, how about you?
I love a fireside when a storm is due.
How about you?
[2] According to author Wilson on his blog Zoilus:
This was too weird and funny not to share: I was informed this weekend by a dubiously reliable source, that my book was leafed through briefly on the campaign bus last week by Barack Obama, who made some joke to the effect that it sounded like I felt about Celine the same way he feels about Hillary. It was the Celine/Hillary connection that prompted him to pick it up in the first place, after a campaign volunteer (the guy who told me the story) left it lying around on the bus.
[3] Notice how I mixed up "I," "one," "we," "us"? I'm unsubtly trying to get you to identify with me.
When young filmmakers gather to shoot cinema-verite video documentaries, watch out: Something really bad is going to happen. In “The Blair Witch Project,” it was ... well, we don’t really know what it was, but it sure freaked out Heather.
In “Cloverfield,” it was something large with an antipathy toward Manhattan landmarks. And in George A. Romero’s “Diary of the Dead,” as you have probably gathered by now, it is the meat-eating undead. These movies give the shaky-cam a reason to get shaky — but the kids try not to miss a shot.
“Diary” is ostensibly edited by Debra (Michelle Morgan) from hand-held footage shot on the run by her film-student boyfriend Jason (Joshua Close) and some of their friends, who’ve been collaborating on Jason’s horror-movie student project, overseen by their alcoholic film professor Maxwell (Scott Wentworth), who’s just about the only person over 30 in the entire film, except for an old Amish guy who swings a mean scythe.
Writer-director Romero may be 68, but “Diary” is targeted at the Young of Intestines, a generation for whom zombie movies and Web video are facts of everyday life, as natural as eating flesh. [...]
But while horror provides the marketing hook, Romero’s movies are even more entertaining for their zesty sociopolitical satire...
View image A world traveler for whom geography means nothing.
My review of "Jumpers," the new movie from director Doug Liman ("Swingers," "Go," "The Bourne Supremacy," "Mr. & Mrs. Smith"), is at RogerEbert.com. Here's an excerpt:
In a world gone horribly wrong, where actions have no consequences, where all of humanity has become unaccountably oblivious to blatant violations of the time-space continuum, where rules exist not to be broken but to be disregarded, where continuity is irrelevant... anything is possible!
There you have the premise for Doug Liman's "Jumper: The Prequel," a movie so silly you may find yourself giggling helplessly even as you wish you could magically transport yourself almost anywhere else in the world but where you are, in front of the screen showing it.
And here's an interesting take on the movie from an entirely different angle by James Hannaham at Salon, who wonders what kind of signals "Jumper" sends to the rest of the world about Americans:
In a twisted fashion, when films like "Jumper" go abroad, the outside world often responds in a counterintuitive way -- and sometimes this can be devastating. I am not the first critic to suggest that the disaster films of the '90s helped to inspire the terrorist plots of the early 21st century....
While the film industry means to provide a cheap thrill to a few boys in Nebraska, it also shows the rest of the globe how mainstream American kids conceive of themselves, what they desire and aspire to, and especially what they fear. It's no small thing to reveal the psychology of your nation. [...]
Though dazzled by its ultra-modern wizardry and the high gloss of its production values, one can also feel the globalist double standard roiling underneath the adolescent-kid fantasy plot. "Jumper" tells us that Americans fantasize about getting rich by stealing and going everywhere they want without restrictions; that they are materialistic, disrespect foreign antiquities, and remain blind to their own and to world history, not to mention current conflicts (the jumpers spend a moment in Chechnya -- you bet they're not off to Iraq); and that they perhaps feel only mildly guilty about any of that. OK -- who wants to wait here for the world's response to that message?
Black humor: Stepin Fetchit to Richard Pryor to Tyler Perry (Part II)
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, 1902 -1985
"We need to examine the history of blacks in film to appreciate their deep roots.... Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, the top comedy stars of the 80s, have a strange, subversive ancestor in Stepin Fetchit, America's first black millionaire actor."
-- Richard Corliss, Time, "The 25 Most Important Films on Race"
The day Clarence Thomas was nominated by George H.W. Bush for the Supreme Court, I was interviewing 23-year-old writer-director John Singleton about his upcoming movie "Boyz N the Hood" (1991). Singleton was sitting in front of a hotel-room TV tuned to CNN and the first words out of his mouth were: "He's the biggest Uncle Tom."
That memory came back again recently as I was reading Harvard Law Professor and Supreme Court bar member Randall Kennedy's book, "Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal." [1] Kennedy writes:
Sometimes "Uncle Tom" is used interchangeably with "sellout." In a Washington Post profile of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, two journalists write that "Uncle Tom is among the most searing insults a black American can hurl at a member of his own race." They describe "Uncle Tom" as a "synonym for sellout, someone subservient to whites at the expense of his own people."
How to Act Black: "Black Acting School" from "Hollywood Shuffle" (see clip below).
This usage is ironic. The original Uncle Tom -- Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom -- was a character who chose death at the hand of his notorious owner, Simon Legree, rather than reveal the whereabouts of runaway slaves. Still there are those who use "Uncle Tom" to refer to any black whose actions, in their view, retard African-American advancement. Others are more discriminating. For many of them, the label "sellout" is more damning than "Uncle Tom" or kindred epithets -- "Aunt Thomasina," "Oreo," "snowflake," "handkerchief head," "white man's Negro," "Stepin Fetchit"....
View image The late Richard Pryor, All-African-American. Negative criticism of Pryor is usually limited to his acceptance of inferior material.
Of course, all those terms aren't synonymous, either. The name of Stepin Fetchit is nearly as well-known, and almost synonymous with "Uncle Tom" -- and that, too, may be somewhat ironic. Fetchit (born Lincoln Perry, 1902-1985) was a tremendously popular movie star with black and white audiences. But his act, on stage and screen, was also vilified for perpetuating a stereotype of African-American men as lazy, shuffling, bowing and scraping buffoon. (Other stereotypes of black men as pimps, gangstas, rapists, con artists, drug pushers/addicts, violent criminals, woman-abusers would come from elsewhere, and long outlive him.) He was admired and in many ways emulated by Muhammad Ali, with whom he converted to the Nation of Islam, and he was honored with an NAACP Image Award in 1976.
But how many people today have actually seen him in a movie?
Richard Corliss cites one of Fetchit's best films, John Ford's "Judge Priest" (1934) with Will Rogers, in his list of "The 25 Most Important Films on Race":
... Fetchit (born Lincoln Perry) was an embarrassment to many blacks, both then and especially later in the dawning of the civil rights movement. The lazy befuddlement of his characters seemed to represent the most contemptuous caricature of the race.
I don't deny that. And I'm not rationalizing the racial gaucheries of his movies by saying, well, that was a long time ago. But anyone looking at Fetchit's performances today has to notice their subversive, anarchic, movie-altering force. His drawn-out drawl and living-dead pace instantly stopped any scene in its tracks, brought the pace to a halt and monopolized the screen. When Fetchit was on, you watched him, because his acting style was unique. The rest of the players were striving for movie naturalism, and he, with a turtle's intensity, was doing Kabuki.
Less than three years ago, two biographies of Stepin Fetchit appeared -- the first book-length studies of this Hollywood pioneer ever published: Mel Watkins' "Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry" and Champ Clark's "Shuffling to Ignominy: The Tragedy of Stepin Fetchit." In a New York Times review of both volumes ("How a Black Entertainer's Shuffle Actually Blazed a Trail"), John Strausbaugh wrote:
Perry went to his grave bitterly insisting that he deserved better, that he was more a trailblazer than a race traitor, and both Mr. Watkins and Mr. Clark agree.... "It could easily be argued," [Watkins] writes, "that the comic image Lincoln Perry projected was not nearly as harmful, deleterious and degrading as the images projected by many of today's black comedians, rap artists and even television sitcom stars."
View image "Madea's Family Reunion" (2002) -- also on Corliss's list.
Mr. Clark persuasively contends that Perry's Stepin Fetchit was a sly trickster, following a centuries-old subversive tradition whereby blacks played the fool to fool whites. He notes how often Stepin Fetchit, by pretending to be too lazy and addled to understand the simplest directions, avoids doing the white characters' work, all the while muttering subtle sarcasms in a drawl that was indecipherable to whites but clear and hilarious to black audiences.
African-American "political correctness" has long cut in several directions, and the fundamental questions have always been the same: "What is 'blackness,' and what are the permissible ways of expressing racial, generational, educational, socio-economic differences in American society?" We're probing and inquiring as deeply as ever. Here we are in 2008, Barak Obama (son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother) is running for President of the United States, and some people are wondering if he can't win because he's part African, or because he's "not black enough" -- because he's Harvard-educated, wealthy, "only half black" (most people don't use the terms "mulatto," "quadroon" or "octoroon" to measure proportions of ancestral blood anymore), or even because his father was from East Africa rather than from West Africa, where most American slaves came from.
View image Poster for Douglas Sirk's version of "Imitation of Life" (1959).
Movies by and about African-Americans have dealt with issues of intraracial division for a long time, whether it's the melodrama of the "tragic mulatto," caught between two worlds but able to "pass," as "Pinky" (Elia Kazan, 1949) or "Imitation of Life" (1934, and again in 1959), or "keepin' it real" comedies that both indulge and make fun of the prevailing racial stereotypes of their time. Tyler Perry (no relation to Lincoln that I know of) has become enormously successful playing, and writing (screen-)plays for, a large black woman named Madea ("Diary of a Mad Black Woman," "Madea's Family Reunion") who is beloved, sometimes nostalgically, by some as a traditional family figure, and derided by others as a racial and sexual caricature. Similar criticisms have been made of Eddie Murphy's portrayal of Rasputia in "Norbit" -- a movie that grossed more than $95 million at the domestic box office, and which black critic Armond White cited as one of 2007's best movies: "Murphy responds to post-Dave Chappelle self-insult comedy with a better, more experienced sense of self-awareness (that is, self respect)."
Perhaps the most apt way to describe the public humor of black Americans prior to the mid-1930's is to say that it was nearly always masked. Not only in the literal sense of grotesque, corked on blackface facades in the minstrel shows that took the United States by storm in the early 1800's, but also figuratively and psychologically. [...]
Many of the strutting, prancing steps performed by slaves and greeted with such hearty laughter from whites were intended as satiric commentary on the highfalutin' airs, pretensions and gullibility of their masters. [...]
As black [slaves] learned to communicate verbally in a type of Pidgin English the pattern was strengthened.... At the same time, because of their oddity and incomprehensibility for most whites, these rhetorical devices were considered amusing. They too became part of early black humor, even as they abetted the stereotype of the illiterate, fun-loving black in white America. [...]
Watkins appreciates the complexity of many forms of African-American humor including the use of dialect and vernacular [2], insult comedy ("the dozens"), call and response, attitude and nuance that stretches from Stepin Fetchit, to Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor, to Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle.
WARNING: R-rated Acting Language in above clip!
The "Black Acting School" sketch from Robert Townsend's 1987 "Hollywood Shuffle" (see Odienator's "Black History Mumf appreciation, "There's Always Work at the Post Office") is a prime example of of humor that cuts several ways at once. It mocks the history of African-American movie stereotypes from shufflin' slaves (Townsend does a Stepin Fetchit impression) to jivin' street thugs (and connects them in the process), and features white teachers instructing black and white actors how to "act black." The commercial spokesman is Robert Taylor, a Black Actor who doesn't present himself as African or American: He speaks in an upper-crust British accent. (In the words of Master Thespian: "That's acting!") Odienator writes: "Like 'Sweet Sweetback' and 'She's Gotta Have It," 'Hollywood Shuffle' is a meta-hustle -- a movie about one's hustling made by the director's hustling."
While "Hollywood Shuffle" has its share of funny punch lines (it's sketch comedy, after all), it's also a good example of a comedy that derives its humor from attitudes more than jokes. One of the funniest and most-quoted lines -- "I ain't be got no weapon!," delivered by a black actor in the blaxploitation picture "Jivetime Jimmy's Revenge -- isn't a witticism. It's a grammatical errror. What makes it funny is Townsend's overtaxed delivery in the context of shooting this "black" movie so inauthentic and improbable that the makers can't even get the stereotypes right. (All language has rules, and as far as I know, "got be" conforms to no existing form of grammar. Kelefa Sanneh in the New York Times aptly called it "Dada Ebonics.")
Watkins touches on this In a piece called "Writing in Black and White." He interviews several 1970s television writers to explore:
... the conflict between black humor and the formalized comedy approach that dominates most television writing. Bob Peete, a black writer who worked on "The Bill Cosby Show" and was story editor for "Good Times" for several years, expressed it this way: "There is a real difference between black humor and white humor. The chief distinction is that black humor is more attitudinal; it's not what one says, but how one says it.
View image Redd Foxx: "Blue" comedian and star of the sitcom "Sanford and Son."
An example is, say, if Redd Foxx is on camera and someone knocks on the door. Redd might say, 'Come in,' and the audience would crack up. Now 'come in' is obviously not a joke. The attitude he imparts to the line gets the laugh. Richard Pryor does the same thing; he doesn't tell jokes. White humor is structured to a straight-line, punch-line format. And television has become a medium of one-liners. One of the problems for a lot of black writers -- at least in the scripts I read while working with 'Good Times' -- was that they could not effectively write one-liners. They could write lines that, in their heads, they could imagine the performer delivering with a certain attitude. But on paper it doesn't translate, especially to somebody white who is expecting the one-liners. They simply don't see the humor. Then the white producer will say, 'Well, this guy isn't funny. He can't write.' What they're talking about is that the black writer is not writing what they are used to reading. It's not their conception of humor." [2]
In the same piece, Matt Robinson, a black writer, producer and script consultant ("Sanford and Son," "The Waltons," "Eight is Enough," "The Cosby Show") gives this example:
Black humor, to me, is that stage show type humor that flowed from specific character types and situations that were familiar to other blacks -- almost exclusively so. It wasn't dependent on rapid-fire joke telling. Pigmeat Markham, for instance, did that bit that dealt with a woman who comes into the courtroom and accuses a man of 'messin' with her digits.' Now it was never explained what digits were, but the moment she mentioned it Pigmeat became outraged and yelled, 'He was!' The audience went crazy. Not because it was funny in the setup- setup- punch line manner, but because of Pigmeat's attitude. I mean, nobody even knew what digits were, that could've meant anything: money, the numbers or policy game; it even had sexual overtones. Still, it was hilarious."
What's "funny" is deeply personal, but it's also innately cultural and political. Comedies like "Hollywood Shuffle," "She's Gotta Have It," "School Daze" (with its conflicts between light- and dark-skinned college students, and, in a memorable musical number, "Straight vs. Nappy" hair), "Madea's Family Reunion" and "Norbit" have been criticized as offensive and politically incorrect by some and greeted as hilarious by others. Questions of comedic taste aside, is it possible any of them will ever become politically unwatchable, as Fetchit's movies are now (his scenes have even been excised from some television prints), to the point where they simply can't -- or won't, or shouldn't -- be seen any longer?
More in Part III, Black Drama: Paul Robeson to Sidney Poitier to Denzel Washington
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[1] Kennedy actually attempts a (partially successful) defense of Clarence Thomas, the most convincing portion of which (for me) is not about whether Thomas is a "sellout," but why his arguments don't pass Constitutional muster: "Instead of denouncing Thomas's objection to affirmative action on grounds of racial disloyalty, personal ingratitude, or hypocrisy, proponents of affirmative action should explain how, on legal and moral grounds, he is wrong."
This may be my favorite strip so far in Peet Gelderblom's comic "Directorama," which is being serialized at The House Next Door. In case you haven't been following it, and you should (see Webcomics Nation for the whole series), it's described as a weekly chronicle of "the afterlife of a pantheon of legendary directors.
Their mission: To inspire the film-makers carrying the torch back on Earth." After hearing today that Japanese director Kon Ichikawa ("Fires on the Plain," "The Burmese Harp," "An Actor's Revenge") had died today at age 92, I imagined him standing just outside these frames...
Of the few Japanese directors who command an international reputation, Kon Ichikawa remains perhaps the least known and the least well understood.... While Ichikawa's work lacks the obvious integrity of Ozu's, Mizoguchi's or Kurosawa's, its outward variety belies an overall unity, revealed as one probes (in Tom Milne's phrase) “beneath the skin.”
In fact, Ichikawa worked under somewhat different conditions from the other acknowledged masters of Japanese cinema. The commercial pressures he faced appear to have been rather stronger: it is on record that several projects (including one of his most famous, "An Actor's Revenge") were imposed on him by the studio in revenge for the failure of his more personal works to make a profit. Yet he managed, at the same time, to stamp his personality on diverse material. An obvious comparison is with Howard Hawks, whose comedies, which focus on the battle of the sexes, are often described as the thematic obverse of his action films, about camaraderie in an almost exclusively male world. Ichikawa, similarly, divided his films into “light” and “dark”, a division which has some justice –- though my own preferred categories would be “ironic” and “sentimental”.
