Sunset Gun

Black Malden Moan: Baby Doll

With the great, titan of acting and frequent genius Karl Malden passing (at 97 years of age god bless him), I'm posting one of my favorite Malden movies and performances -- Baby Doll. Though there's many brilliant Malden performances to choose from, this one will leave you fuzzy and buzzy. And I think we all need some of that right now.

"There isn't much of you, but what there is is choice. Delectable, I might say... You're fine-fibered. Soft and smooth…You make me think of cotton. No! No fabric or cloth, not even satin or silk cloth, and no kind of fiber, not even cotton fiber has the absolute delicacy of your skin.”

So says a predatory Eli Wallach to an aroused and “hysterical” Caroll Baker in one of the most notoriously erotic mainstream films ever produced at that time. The movie was Baby Doll, director Elia Kazan’s tragic-comic follow up to his already steamy masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire, his controversial On the Waterfront and his poignantly powerful East of Eden. Used to a certain amount of censorship and hullabaloo (especially for Streetcar), Kazan was most likely, not prepared for the maelstrom of controversy when Baby Doll, a sultry Southern gothic he intended as a “sleeper” was released in 1956.

Denounced by the Legion of Decency and deemed “Just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited" by Time Magazine, Baby Doll, though not as “dirty” through time (at least in the common, modern comedy manner -- our current accessibility to salacious cinema isn't dirty in the right way...) still remains as sexually charged, perversely interesting and psychologically complex as it did then. It’s also incredibly funny, superbly acted and weirdly beautiful. Though somewhat, inexplicably forgotten through time (it finally got a DVD release a few years ago), Baby Doll is one of Kazan’s greatest accomplishments -- a masterpiece that stands on equal footing with Streetcar and Waterfront.

Written by that genius of Southern turbulence, Tennessee Williams (Baby Doll was his first original screenplay -- adapted from parts of two earlier one-act plays), the film gave Carroll Baker her first starring role with an entrance that, in terms of cult cinema, is about as sexually iconic as Marilyn Monroe’s upswept dress in The Seven Year Itch. Gorgeous, blonde 19-year old child bride Baby Doll (Baker) lies in an infant’s crib, sucking her thumb while her middle aged husband Archie Lee (a wonderfully frustrated Karl Malden|) leers at her through a peephole.

But why must he leer at his own wife? As we soon learn, Baby Doll is a virgin -- she married Archie for what she thought would be a cushy life of prosperity and Southern comfort. But at this point Archie’s lost his cotton gin to a Syndicate Plantation and is so in debt that his furniture (or, as she drawls "fornichore" which is how what every woman should call a sofa) has been removed from the house. An exasperated, angry Baby Doll threatens to leave Archie while he desperately waits out the day -- the eve of her birthday --  for their especially provocative “agreement:” that when she turns 20, he can finally sleep with his wife.

But things take a turn when lumbering, impetuous Archie loses his temper and burns down the Syndicate Plantation and Cotton Gin, managed by the cocky Sicilian Silva Vacarro (Wallach). Seeking revenge, Vacarro finds the one thing that’ll make Archie murderously angry -- Archie’s wife. And not just his wife but, perhaps (not to be revealed here) his wife’s maidenhood as well. That is, if you could call the sassy, sexually curious tease Baby Doll a “maiden.” She’s certainly not-as-infantile-as-she-looks -- and she will reveal herself to be smart--making her all the more sexy.

The cat and mouse games and tricks played by Baby Doll and Vacarro result in the picture's gleefully demented, yet supremely hot seduction sequence on a porch swing that some viewers thought was downright pornographic. What were his hands doing? (I know) Why is she swooning that much? (We all know) This hyper eroticism is heightened by the film’s lovely counterpoint of a blonde, summer dress-wearing Baby Doll to the darkly dapper, swarthy Italian who picks floating cotton off her dress and holds a riding crop, no less. And to further amp things up, after some antics in the shell of a house, Wallach will be seen riding Baker’s hobby horse to the rock tune of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” The beautifully seamy shot of his shadowy rocking suggests a whole helluva lot more is going on here. Yes, lots of s-e-x. Good, bad, dirty southern s-e-x.  

But there’s more to the film than just overheated sensuality. Starkly but stunningly shot in black and white, the picture showcases a sad, crumbling South which is perfectly encapsulated via Malden’s distressed and ultimately crazed performance as a cotton farmer being taken over by big business. You feel for poor Malden, as dumb as he is, and the intelligent actor nails sleazy, desperate, sad, cruel and touching all at once. Malden could be a powerful passive aggressive (check A Streetcar Named Desire, in which his "nice" guy ends up being one of the most despicable characters in the picture), and a powerful, noble aggressive aggressive (like his tough priest in On the Waterfront). Here he's just a lost soul who strikes out, but like his relationship with Baby Doll, his fire will ultimately be extinguished. No (for lack of a better word) orgasmic pleasure will come from this. He can't keep anything. Not his gin, not his wife, and not the old Southern way. He can't even be a proper southern gentleman without becoming a leering pervert (after all, in a time when he could have taken her by force without much condemnation, he is honoring her wish to remain a virgin). So as loud-mouth and as stupid as he seems hollering "Baby Doll!" at the top of his lungs, you can see that Williams, Kazan and Malden understand this is a man who has lost all dignity -- and though frequently funny, this is just plain sad.

And really, everyone here, save for his stray plantation hands whom he sneaks shots of hooch with, are sad. And, in their own way, creeps. But they're all-too-human creeps and earn sympathy for each of their dire situations. Baby Doll as the unhappy, clever though unschooled wife, Archie as the out-moded Southerner and Vacarro as the despised outsider. No one is inherently good, but none of are purely evil either. They are corrupted, vindictive, mean and in the case of Baker -- achingly sexy on top.

I would, in fact, go so far as to say that Baker’s Baby Doll is one of the sexiest film performances in screen history. With that alone shouldn’t the film earn greater respect through time? It did somewhat in its DVD release (in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams’ box set which also includes that other underrated depiction of frustrated sexuality and a sizzling Lolita Sue Lyon -- The Night of the Iguana) with an accompanying short documentary. Chronicling the film’s scandal (happily all three spectacular leads are alive to discuss the movie -- god bless you Karl Malden for even making it thatfar) and appreciating the picture’s placement within Kazan’s esteemed canon of work, it’s a nice addition. But I wanted more. I always want more with Baby Doll. More movie, more respect, more thumb-sucking and ice cold glasses of lemonade. 

As Baby Doll express at the end of the film, “we got nothin' to do but wait for tomorrow and see if we're remembered or forgotten.” Thankfully and respectfully (maybe ironically so) Baby Doll is indeed remembered. Really, how could it have ever been forgotten?

The Exterminating Angel

What is Michael Bay trying to say? We know he’s an entertainer, first and foremost (or so he thinks). So if one asked him directly, he’d more than likely answer (I’m thinking arms akimbo): "I’m just here to blow your minds with these amazing transforming robots created by Hasbro, OK?" Of course. Whether through his not-so-exciting, yet oddly watchable misfire of Pearl Harbor or the weirdly invigorating carnage and surprising cleverness of Bad Boys II, the man is the Ethel Merman of action movies -- the hostess with the mostest (and biggest budget) on the ball. And with Transformers 2 he’s definitely in Ethel territory -- he wants to please everyone (Ernest Borgnine, you can step aside).

But again, what the hell is this man trying to say? And furthermore, what is his aesthetic? While watching the second installment of Transformers (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) my mind reflected on this for a good, long while (the picture is 2 hours and 24 minutes after all). While staring at a multitude of muddy looking robots flying by (or smashing about) in strangely (one would say poorly) crafted action sequences, or John Turturro revealing his rear-end in a g-string, or Shia LaBeouf running around Egypt yelling nonsense like “Bumble-bee!” or his continual hyperactive stream of “no, no, no, no, no!” (technically, I’m not sure if he said “no” that many times in a row, but with LaBeouf, it always feels that way), my eyes scanned the enormous IMAX frame,  searching for…meaning, for the Bay way.

And after settling into the second hour of the movie, dismayed I had over another hour ahead of me, it started to come to me: Michael Bay is a surrealist. He may not know he is, he may not like that I’m calling him one, but the money sucking action filmmaker extraordinaire would do well by Bunuel or Jodorowksy or Gilliam or hell, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (which is absurdist surrealism at its finest, especially the ingenious movie, and the characters would have featured brilliantly in this picture -- better than Bay’s “jive talking” bots). If the filmmaker had some chutzpah, if he truly tapped into the melting pocket watch corner of his brain, if he understood his full dream weaving potential (because I do believe Michael Bay can “get me through the night”), the next Transformers would be titled Un Chien Andalou LaBeouf.

The story? OK…well…there’s a prologue set in 17,000 B.C. (which is truly bizarre, and strangely gorgeous) and then we’re thrust into U.S. Army world, via Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson), whose elite squad (called NEST) use real live people and Autobots to smoke out Decepticons. If you understand the Transformers universe, you’ll know what the hell I’m talking about. If not, no matter. After aqua imprisonment at the bottom of the ocean, the bad transformers seek to free their leader, Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), and then something about shards of a cube (called “the Spark”).

Enter Shia, or rather the ridiculously named Sam Witwicky (is he a character from Dickens?) who is trying to simply attend college like every normal kid but just can’t shake these damn deceptions. In this case, one comes in the form of a sexed up freshman girl (freshmen girls are deceptions…oh…that’s saying something). After Sam goes off on some nutty Rain Man prophesying created by the Spark (Rainn Wilson shows up as a college professor un-amused by Sam’s tic-like compulsion to save the world) he’s eventually pushed out of school and into Egypt where much scrambling around occurs. Yes, there’s a story, there’s a mythology, there’s even an ending, but you can decipher that for yourself. That, and just how Megan Fox’s white pants never, ever get dirty. OK, they get dirty, but manage to magically clean themselves.

But then why should they stay dirty? In the Bay universe, time and space are suspended, action is indecipherable and sense isn’t important. Sensory overload is, albeit occasionally beautifully shot sensory overload, and again, surrealistic sequences of elegance that I noticed in the corners of the frame (almost as if Bay had sprayed acid in the theater -- something Gaspar Noe would heartily approve of). There’s a scene very near the end, in particular, in which Sam stands in some alternate universe talking to the robots that could have hatched from one of Hunter S. Thompson’s drug benders. But is that the point Michael Bay? If so, you’re on to something. And I want more of it.

But will he ever give it to me?  The Wachowski’s did with their amazingly underrated and misunderstood Speed Racer, Ang Lee did with his gorgeously over the top, ridiculously maligned masterpiece Hulk, Mel Gibson did with his compelling, gloriously insane bit of the old ultra violence, The Passion of the Christ  --  better pictures, and ones many could not understand or get behind because, well (and I’m speculating here) they were actual works of art. Bay has artistry (or hires others to), and he has more power than the aforementioned directors so he could get away with murder (as he did, almost quite literally with the great Bad Boys II). I just wish he would have pushed it further with Transformers. Throw in a tiger emerging from a fish, give us an Elephant Celebes, make Meatwad the hero. Please -- you have the sensibility.

If, in the next Transformers he replaces Megan Fox midway through the movie with Jessica Alba (a la Bunuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire) I will have faith in him. As for now, I’m just waiting for his newest treachery of images.  And if you dig Magritte, you’ll know I mean that as a potential compliment.

Psycho Sexual Schubert: The Piano Teacher

After listening to Schubert all morning...

In Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, the taciturn piano teacher cites Schubert and Schumann as her two favorite composers. Both German, both “Romantics” both tortured in art and life -- the composers are apt choices for this cinematic creature. Schubert, the bigger genius, outward bohemian and poet, was Schumann’s greatest admirer. Schumann cried over Schubert’s death at 31 and later went insane, dying in an asylum at 46. Schumann said he could not talk about Schubert unless he spoke “to the trees and the stars.”

Schubert worship runs through Haneke’s picture as teacher Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) instructs in Schubert’s dynamics from “scream to whisper, not loud to soft.” Such is her disposition, and, like Schumann, she, the outwardly ordered woman is inwardly screaming -- one step away from the nuthouse herself, where as we learn in passing, her father is suffering through the rest of his life.

But that’s only one aspect to Haneke’s intensely complex study of a woman living on the precipice. As with all of Haneke’s philosophical “horror” pictures from Benny's Video to the brilliant, terrifying Funny Games (and the underrated, powerfully horrifying re-make) to Code Unknown, there’s a consistent theme of claustrophobia, voyerism and perversion -- perversion of not only the characters, but also of audiences wishing to lap it up and beg for more (master). But Haneke (and this is where many cannot stand the director) wants you to think while salivating and, in his own cleverly cinematic way, punishes you for doing so (it's no wonder Haneke was -- as he states on the DVD -- profoundly influenced by Pier Pasolini’s Salò). He likes to rattle your brain and moral center, making you ruminate long and hard on what you’ve just witnessed. With The Piano Teacher, it might be when our fine character lies in a bathtub and...I'll get to that moment later. The Piano Teacher, as squirm inducing as it can become, may be the director's most powerfully unsettling, erotic and at times, comic film.

The movie has the 40-ish Erika still living with her unpleasant mother (Annie Giradot) in a relationship so antagonistic, unhealthy and, for lack of a better word, close that the two still share a bed (and you’ll see what that’s like through the course of the film). Erika is a distinguished professor at a prestigious Viennese school who’s worshipped but feared as she harshly criticizes students: “A wrong note in Beethoven is better than a bad interpretation.”

But she’s a loner with some pretty intriguing outlets for her sexuality. Trolling sex shops, sitting in the booths to smell the refuse left by horny patrons, she’s more than just a repressed female seeking release -- she’s a sadist as well. And there’s something proud about her thrills that, amid the beautiful classical piano music, works some convoluted ideas about the human condition. Gorgeous depravity or rather...is anything truly exalting unless you’ve witnessed the sullied? The disgusting? The sexually deviant? She's something you rarely see in cinema --- a beautiful female creep. And that (for men possibly more than women...but possibly not) is simultaneously erotic and especially scary.

When a curious, handsome young student, Walter (Benoit Magimel), becomes interested in her musically and sexually, he falls hard for the seemingly placid teacher. He changes a public performance of a Schoenberg piece to Schubert just for her (and that is quite a difference -- modern discordance to Romanticism), and she begins to test his limits of sexuality, specifically in a masterful sequence in the conservatory’s bathroom where a bizarre, painful dance of erotic control commences.

Few films really dissect "odd"/neurotic female desire on film (Polanski's Repulsion, so far, for me is the greatest study of this. Hitchcock's Vertigo and Marnie and Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves ranks high as well), and The Piano Teacher goes right (as Edward Albee's Martha would say) to the meat of things. This may be the only film I can think of where the female protagonist is something of a lurker, a sadist/masochist (in one scene she places broken glass in a student’s coat pocket; in another she cuts her vagina in the bathtub -- tough to watch but weirdly mesmerizing) and yet, she is oddly sympathetic. We feel for her. Some may even like her (I did).

In one of film’s bravest performances, Huppert creates a character of such intrigue and bottomless depth that we can’t possibly crack her. Though something of a female "pervert" (whatever that means) she remains reserved -- acting through pinched, near non-expressions that explode into manias, she's never obvious, never entirely fathomable, never strained or trying too hard to be transgressive. Somehow, the actress feels naturally perverse, at times frightening. And though a lover of Romantic music, she is anything but romanticized. Subversive, meditative and poetic, The Piano Teacher, thanks largely to Huppert, is a daring work of sexually strange, unmitigated genius. Like truly feeling music, which comes from precise craftmanship and then spins you into mysterious, emotional and exalted places, so can the workings of love and all the other, stuff. Sex, desire, neurosis and romance are often quite specific and yet deeply enigmatic sensations. For that, the movie, though disturbing remains unsettling erotic and yet unusually romantic. To the trees and the stars and the beds and to the...sex shops.  

David Carradine: 1936-2009

David Carradine has passed away. When I heard the news, and how it might have possibly happened, I was incredibly, almost weirdly sad. Carradine could be a handful (and his recent appearance at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica after a Bound for Glory screening proves as much). But he could also be a superior actor -- in Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha (co-starring one of his famous partners, Barbara Hershey whom he had a child with, named Free), and then that bloody, drunken cameo in Scorsese's Mean Streets (he's shot by brother Robert), Walter Hill’s The Long Riders (alongside brother's Keith and Robert), the legendary Kung Fu, Paul Bartel’s Death Race 2000 (I love that movie), Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg (a great, intense performance), Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (his speech about Superman was especially memorable and more heartfelt and soulful -- moreso than probably written), and Hal Ashby’s wonderful, lyrical Bound for Glory, in which he played Woody Guthrie to many viewer’s surprise.

Through the passage of time, and especially with all the scandal, many forget the more sensitive side to Carradine. Yes he was Kwai Chang Caine and Bill and maybe even kind of a "weird-o" whatever that means (and god bless the real weird ones, not the pseudo eccentrics). He was a man who walked his own path (which makes him nothing strange, only more exceptional). He was also something of a hippie (for a time) and his own man, a one of a kind -- probably for good and for bad. After all, as Tammy Wynette sang “he’s just a man.”

Hailing from an acting family, he was born right here in Hollywood, California, the son of Ardanelle Abigail and famous American actor John Carradine, “the voice” (a favorite of John Ford). He was also the half-brother to Bruce, Keith (who is the most famous, acclaimed brother -- “I’m Easy” -- so great) , Christopher and Robert Carradine.  His dad was something of a hell-raiser, he witnessed quite a lot, I’m sure, and Hollywood families are often problematic units to grow up in. But then, a lot of families are.

With all of these salacious stories scuttling out like fiending cockroaches -- classless ex wives declaring Carradine kinky (yeah...so?). He rode his horse clad only in a Speedo (what’s wrong with that?). He used to tie himself to calm down (big deal…) etc. and so on; Carradine is getting more press than when he walked among us. And then there’s the lame jokes (please no more Bill has been killed jabs) and the alleged sexual nature of his death, which will be Hollywood Babylon material for years on end. People are always curious by sexual deaths because, I believe, they wonder these things in themselves, and then after that moment of self reflecting fright, some (not all) start throwing stones. As such, Carradine is not being treated most honorably and I think even Beatrix Kiddo would be pissed off by this. I only wish she could walk into that ex wife’s house with all that beautiful fury and start some serious hand-to-hand combat in the kitchen -- a heavy duty, pots and pans, Kaboom style tangle. But that’s the movies. 

And yet, Carradine, whose career spanned so many years and directors and genres and quality, was the movies. The actor who struggled as a B-lister (I hate saying that -- I hate using letter grades, but this is how Hollywood viewed him) -- a man who made some bad and great exploitation pictures, as well as some genuine masterpieces and some memorable television along the way, got his Hollywood ending. His big screen, mysterious, exploitation/art-house finale -- an ending Abel Ferrara or Joseph Sarno or Gaspar Noe might have directed. Which isn’t bad company, cinematically speaking.

And which leads me to…so what? So he might have been a little freaky. So he might have been playing a dangerous game (the death remains tragic -- for his family, his loved ones, anyone not expecting such a quick exit for a man who appeared pretty damn healthy at 72 -- no matter how many chemicals he's surely consumed).  But...who the hell are we to judge? David Carradine was a talent, a personality, an icon all his own (and in an almost inscrutable way), and a force of nature. Tell all the stories you want ladies, laugh at his alleged curious ways of getting off you hypocritical finger-wagging moralists, break him down and park him in the darkest corner, but nothing will take away what he could bring to the screen. To borrow from a Woody Guthrie song, he may have been going down a dusty old road but he “ain't gonna be treated this way” -- not by me. Rest in noble, crazy and enigmatic peace David Carradine.

More Than The Silver Witch Of Us All: Happy Birthday Marilyn Monroe

Had she lived long enough to see the day, June 1 marks the birthday of cinema’s ultimate fractured sex goddess.

On this day, Marilyn Monroe would have been 83-years-old.

And despite all those coffee mugs emblazoned with her image, countless MM impersonators in their fluttery white dresses and so many sexy starlets naming her as an influence (Madonna, Mariah, Christina and most recently Lindsay) she remains fascinating.

It’s not just that she died tragically and in mysterious circumstances though, that has certainly added to her legend. It’s not just for her famous husbands and her Happy-Birthday-Mr. President dalliances with the Kennedy's (something I've always found incredibly sad -- what else was going on there?). And it’s not just for her iconic beauty and glamour.

No, there’s something more to Marilyn that makes her continually interesting. It's all her now legendary tragic contradictions -- her messy, mixed-up life, her massive consumption of pills and champagne, her continual and final mental instability juxtaposed with her peaches and cream gorgeousness, her absolute command of the big screen (in spite of her problems with lines) and her ultimate, natural talent. It’s her ability, after all these decades, to still pop off the screen with such undeniable “It” that we almost take her for granted. Of course Marilyn Monroe is one of the most famous women in the world, who doesn’t know how wonderful she is?

But then, watch her again perform “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with effortless charisma and cleverness, observe her studied, but certainly real and potent melancholy in The Misfits (and every scene with Montgomery Clift - her beautiful brother in brilliance, and never-ending ennui), enjoy the Freudian fantasy -- the erotic fun she’s having in The Seven Year Itch, think about all that sexed up sadness from Some Like It Hot (and yes, she makes you actually think about it: "I'm through with love, I'll never love again..." at that moment, she really means it). Further, view her va-va-voom bad girl in Niagara, her tragic, heartbreaking instability in Don't Bother to Knock, her jeans-wearing authenticity in Clash By Night, and revel in her garish vulnerability and sweetness (and my God those beautiful close-ups) in Bus Stop -- she is just. So. Wonderful.

I had a thing for MM ever since I was a little girl (we were born on the same day). I even composed a slightly scandalous speech in the 7th Grade proclaiming the movie star was murdered (I think she ended her own life now, by accident or on purpose. As I go through life in general, and see how mentally sick this town can be, I better understand why she felt so alone). But even without young conspiracy theories, most little girls love MM in some way, especially those obsessed with movies. My love would would re-ignite later in life after I watched nearly all her films by high school and moved on to other celluloid icons. Rita Hayworth, Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Veronica Lake, Tuesday Weld, Brigitte Bardot, Lana Turner, Hedy Lamarr, Louise Brooks, Gene Tierney -- the list could go on and on and on -- I’d work through all of their movies before watching Marilyn yet again. But I always came back to her. Like re-reading a great novel or play, you understand her better with age.

And though people love to discuss Marilyn Monroe the underrated actress (which is true -- she was a great comedienne), rarely do they argue about MM the underrated singer. As proven in Some Like it Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, River of No Return, Bus Stop (oh lord...her sexy, warbled, scared, ripped fishnet version of "That Old Black Magic"...so brilliant) and the less classic Let's Make Love (where her rendition of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" is one of the best versions of that song ever recorded), the woman had distinct pipes.

Marilyn could sing. And she could sing with great soul, humor and character, with an unmistakable voice no other singer possessed. Isn't that the sign of an original artist? I think so.

Again, I realized later in life that I favored Marilyn both early in her career, when she was so fresh and un-mannered in films like All About Eve, Don't Bother to Knock and one of my favorite MM performances, Clash By Night (Marilyn slopping around in jeans eating that candy bar! So natural, so her.)

I adore her work during her so-called decline, like her odd glamour-puss beatnik performance from Let's Make Love, her sad eyed, superb method style in The Misfits and the absolutely mesmerizing bits and pieces I’ve seen of her in the ill-fated Something's Got To Give. She looked so stunning, so fit, who would think she was to die mere months later?

I also became even more fascinated by her later photo sessions; especially Bert Stern’s final sitting. MM is less made up, wearing simple clothes (if you ever look at the Christie's book on her auction, you'll notice how basic her personal style was) and you notice her skin aging, her fascinating flaws -- you can even see her appendectomy scar. But there is something so fantastically real, morbid almost, about these pictures. She looks a little modern (I always think of Debbie Harry or what Edie Sedgwick might have aged into when I look at these), very drunk and wonderfully rough around the edges -- less the big eyed-blonde and more the world weary movie star.

As Norman Mailer wrote of her in his perceptive ode Marilyn (so much better than Gloria Steinem's victim-oriented  tome -- Mailer understood Monroe's sometimes complicitness, thereby making her no dummy) she was, “a female spurt of wit and sensitive energy who could hang like a sloth for days in a muddy-mooded coma; a child girl, yet an actress to loose a riot by dropping her glove at a premiere; a fountain of charm and a dreary bore…she was certainly more than the silver witch of us all.”

Yes. Lying on that mattress on the floor in that modest little house at the end of her life, so many women (and men too) can understand and/or relate to her sadness -- and so many can see what demons led to her demise...and yet, she remains mysterious.

And though she may be ultra ubiquitous she also remains important. Sexy, breathy, objectified, so-called dumb blonde? Someone's got to show them how to do it. And perhaps even more important, someone's got to reveal so much joy and pain yet remain so very specifically enigmatic. The cracked fantasy.

Someone has to be the real movie star.

Happy Birthday Marilyn. You really were something else

One Mean Little Gal: The Bad Seed

This year's Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs honors the most brilliant, baneful brats of them all, Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed. The picture shows today, followed by a discussion with Miss McCormack, who most recently played Pat Nixon in Frost/Nixon. She's got a lot of intriguing things to say about her evil little cutie Rhoda, along with numerous other things -- like working with Orson Welles on the ill-fated Don Quixote -- and more. Since she's one of my all time favorite movie villains, I'm running my Bad Seed worship, yet again.   

The baby blonde. That symbol of purity, beauty and goodness. In 1950’s America who wouldn’t want to have a lovely, flaxen haired child to adore and spoil? Everyone, of course. But by 1956, two important films emerged -- showing the underbelly of these perfect specimens. The more esteemed, and notorious (it was condemned by the Legion of Decency) was Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll, in which the gorgeous child bride Carroll Baker destroys Karl Malden’s masculinity whilst sleeping in a crib and sucking her thumb (never mind she’s 19 going on 20). While other relevant issues pervade Kazan’s masterful take on Tennessee Williams, the lingering image is of Ms. Baker in that crib…an iconic vision of arrested sexuality.

But just as viewers took a gander at Baby Doll, they had another blonde to contend with -- a much younger, smarter and deadlier one -- The Bad Seed. Pretty 10-year-old Patty McCormack playing an 8- year-old in pig tails and pinafore skirts as Rhoda Penmark, a curtsying, cutie-pie brat who’ll manipulate, terrorize and kill anyone who gets in her way. Both actresses’ were deservedly Oscar nominated for their performances but it's Mervyn LeRoy’s picture, though much loved by cultists, that remains highly underrated.

Part of the problem may lie in the transfer from play to film. LeRoy rightfully transported nearly all of the actors from the successful stage play (most likely to the annoyance of Warner Brothers who probably desired a bigger star for Rhoda’s mother) but was forced to change the ending. In the play, an unstoppable Rhoda continues her evil while after her killings, she chillingly plays her continual practice piece, "Claire de Lune" on the piano. Perfect. In the picture however, she is socked with a lightning bolt. O.K, also perfect. But, (and I'm not endorsing the harm of children here, even evil children), Warner Brothers made LeRoy further punish Rhoda, or in this case Patty, by having cast members spank little McCormack --assuring the audience this was all a bunch of fun. You know, burning, drowning, murdering kids with tap shoes -- fun!

And yet, in an early bit of camp -- The Bad Seed is fun. Gleefully, unapologetically and relevantly fun. In its own way, the end changes just make the picture even more inadvertently subversive. How we love to hate little Rhoda. And for some of us (myself included), how we love to love her…she’s just too damn full of vicious personality. I even go so far as to nearly (I say nearly) champion her actions and wish she would invoke more harm (film wise) before her inevitable demise.

But enough of my sick adoration and to the movie itself. Living with her mother Christine (an understandably neurotic Nancy Kelly) and mostly absent father (William Hopper -- Hedda Hopper's son) Rhoda's life is one of privilege and attention. When kissing her father goodbye he asks “What would you give me for a basket of kisses?” Rhoda coos back: “A basket of hugs!” Landlady and supposed expert in psychology, Monica Breedlove (Evelyn Varden) dotes on Rhoda, applauding her out-moded manners and showering her with presents -- one being rhinestone movie star glasses that Rhoda, of course, loves. As she prattles on about Freud and abnormal psychology, the rather ridiculous Breedlove cannot see the freakish behavior in front of her. She's blinded by all that bright, beauteous blonde.

But Leroy (a scene stealing Henry Jones), the disturbed, somewhat perverse handyman disrespected by the household can see right through Rhoda (you even get a sense he's got a thing for her), leading to some of the picture's most inspired moments. Man does Leroy dig into snotty Rhoda after a fateful class outing leaves one child dead; not coincidentally, the class-mate who won the penmanship medal over the all perfecting Rhoda (“Everyone knew I wrote the best hand!” she hollers in sour grapes dramatics). The little boy is drowned and Rhoda returns home as if nothing happened. "Why should I feel bad? It was Claude Daigle got drowned, not me" she insists. And then she goes roller skating. Meanwhile, her mother becomes increasingly rattled and the boy's mother (an inspired, heartbreaking Eileen Heckart).

Though some have a tough time with The Bad Seed’s talkier sequences (especially when Rhoda’s not around), to me they are an intriguing look into ideas that would later be seriously considered, scientific even. They also point out how psychology can’t explain everything (hence, a bad seed) as the one woman (Breedlove) who brags of her knowledge, fails to sense anything wrong with a child who is, at the very least, self obsessed to the point of vapid narcissism. Never mind she’s a murderer.

And, the golden moments come, again, between Leroy and Rhoda who argue like two prison inmates waiting for lockdown. Though Rhoda finds him revolting, he’s the only adult who can actually frighten the child with his taunts of “stick blood hounds” or the dreaded electric chair, a fate he swears she'll meet. “They don’t send little girls to the electric chair!” Rhoda protests. “Oh they don’t?” He answers. “The got a blue one for little boys and a pink one for little gals!”

Though films like The Omen or The Good Son have tried, nothing compares to The Bad Seed -- and no child actor has out-seeded McCormack. Calm and cool, she can also rip into fits of rage that are both terrifying and hilarious. Perfectly balancing a disarmingly adult demeanor with the tantrums of a little girl, her performance is even more impressive in that it’s the blueprint. Where did McCormack learn this wonderful balance of over-theatrical camp with an icy, realistic serenity? And before John Waters became obsessed with her?

A classic and first of its kind, the then shocking Bad Seed holds up, albeit with a tad more camp, but with just as much psychotic gusto (I'm not sure what to think about the talked about re-make). Revel in McCormack’s Rhoda, a character even the obnoxiously talented Dakota Fanning couldn’t play. Agree with Leroy who spits out: “I thought I saw some mean little gals in my time, but you're the meanest!” And, what the hell, worship little Rhoda -- the itty bitty ultimate queen bitch goddess.

Patty's 1956 single on Dot Records "Bubble Gum."

Obscure Objects Of Desire: The Virgin Suicides

In real life, memories don’t follow the patterns of a typical movie. Recollections are not played out in fully developed narrative timeframes, perfectly balanced and structured strands of thought, or tangible, easily understood events. Memories can be visited but never wholly embraced. They can be strong and unforgettable, but bit by bit, they lose their edges, making them, for many, even more melancholic.  The more they elude us, the less simplistic they become -- never just happy or sad, but mysterious and bittersweet, replete with or bereft of emotion for reasons often beyond comprehension.

Sofia Coppola's poetic, tragic and mysterious The Virgin Suicides (released nearly ten years ago and, which emerged to me today, a memory itself while thinking of my siblings), captures the ambiguity of such hazy recollections with tender, albeit horrifying ennui.

Adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, Coppola's picture doesn't tell a story; instead, it leaves a swoony, foggy impression, a darkly beautiful intangibility filled with almost torturously elusive feeling. Set in Michigan in the early '70s, the film is marked immediately with the pall of death and the dangling unknown of why it happened. The five teenage Lisbon sisters -- all blonde and beautiful -- kill themselves, and a group of smitten teenage boys struggle to understand why. The suicides are a defining period in these boys' lives, but even as they narrate the film, they have never gotten their heads around the loss. In an unusual narrative and cinematic point of view, the boys wistfully re-create the girls' lives through a swiped diary, bits of bric-a-brac memorabilia and remembrances of voyeurism, idealism and fleeting carnality. Never really understanding these girls as living, breathing flesh, their communication acts much like modern ways of "connecting" -- through the computer, through online social networking, through pictures, through texts. Just as now, interacting with the real person as opposed to an idealized representation is usually much messier, much more real and much scarier.

Which connects to the death of 13-year-old sister Cecilia (Hanna Hall). The suicide places sisters Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook) and Therese (Leslie Hayman) into a mourning period marked not by obvious wailing drama, but by a peculiar inwardness that only sisters can understand. When one feels alienated by their parents, the bonding of siblings is frequently strong -- so intense that secret languages and, in the case with my sisters, coded words and private hand signals, are created to invent one's own world. These are the people who understand you. But blood bonds can be frightfully concentrated, and in the worst cases, veer into madness. 

So when a psychiatrist tells the grieving parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods) that the girls need more social contact, they allow the sexually curious Lux (with sisters and their assigned dates in tow) to attend a homecoming dance with heartthrob Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). After an innocent, oddly heartbreaking transgression occurs, the strict Roman Catholic family (led mostly by Mom) cloisters the girls in the house, taking them out of school and depriving them of all social contact. Of course, this can't come without consequences. The girls will grow ever closer, ever secretive, and ever destructive.

But Coppola doesn't place those consequences within a moral straitjacket -- no one is demonized, and no one is entirely understood. Many criticized the picture for its lack of fully developed characters, but that is exactly the point. Who are these girls? These girls are memories, these girls are tragic beauties put on pedestals. These girls are characters one writes books about, but one never truly knows. And the not knowing is part of the tragedy (does anyone really want to know them? Or do they want to keep them? Or stare at them? Or, after a night of passion, leave them waking up alone and cold in a football field?). And then these are girls, who committed, really, in the plain light of day, an ugly act that turned their young, lilting beauty and promise of a full life into rotting corpses. Death. The urn your heartbroken, morbidly curious stepsister opens after a game of Scrabble.

The Virgin Suicides is shot with a gauzy, haloed beauty that is obsessive but never perverse (and the haunting music by Air is especially poignant and otherworldly). The point is to capture an adolescence lost, both to the sisters and to the boys themselves. Coppola's intelligence, sensitivity and ethereal style avoids obvious irony and easy interpretation, which can be maddening -- but then suicide is maddening, both for those who achieve the act and those who suffer the aftermath. Coppola's vision of this uptight suburbia is made both erotic and exotic by these fairy-tale Rapunzels who live there -- troubled, creative and intriguing girls trapped in the unfathomable and misty glaze of worship and memories.

The Unbearable Lightness of Seeing: Insomnia

I've been suffering from terrible insomnia. In dishonor of my frequent affliction, I've turned off the Roy Acuff (note to self: Roy Acuff is haunting brilliance but he does not make me go to sleep...my mind wanders to birds and night trains and murder). So in went Erik Skjoldbjaerg's "Insomnia," the original and better picture (Christopher Nolan re-made it with Al Pacino and Robin Williams). Not only does the movie put me in touch with my depressive Swedish roots, but it reminds me why I revere Stellan Skarsgård. I'm re-posting my original take...fresh words coming soon.

Film noir is characterized by certain essential ingredients: the duality of a man's tormented soul; expressionistic black-and-white lighting; dusty rays of sunlight barely peeking through thick venetian blinds in a private detective's office; Barbara Stanwyck; Humphrey Bogart; Raymond Chandler. For hardcore purists, noirish films such as John M. Stahl's Technicolor melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, Raoul Walsh's western Pursued and Alexander MacKendrick's gloriously talky, Clifford Odets-scripted Sweet Smell of Success do not fit into the formula. The settings aren't right; the stylistics are off. But that's just nit-picking academic/nerd soulessness.

And so, despite the stylistic and thematic tenets that unify the genre, it need not conform to its literal meaning of "black film." As in the aforementioned films, black can be Gene Tierney's heart, black can be a Spanish-American-War veteran, black can be a wicked gossip columnist. Nowhere is this so provocatively demonstrated than in Swedish director Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia, a picture that proves that light can obscure as much as it reveals.

After a jarring opening sequence -- the artistically lyrical murder of a young woman -- Insomnia begins with deceptive simplicity. Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård), a Swedish detective, and his partner, Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal), are brought to Norway to investigate the slaying. Stumping local authorities, the proficient killer has left little clues -- he even shampooed the girl's hair after her death (kinky clean). Hence the need for Jonas, who, though caught in "intimate conversation" with a witness in his last case, is considered the best homicide detective in the field.

Using the victim's backpack as a lure, Jonas entices the murderer to the shed where he committed the crime. An easy trap, but not too easy. The criminal sees his pursuers and flees. During a confusing chase through a thick Norwegian fog, Jonas shoots a figure he presumes to be the wanted man. Unfortunately, it's his partner, who dies before his very eyes. To avoid getting busted for his blunder, Jonas covers up the crime, then must make a disturbing pact with the person who knows the truth: the killer himself.

What happens next pushes the film into the territory of a noir thriller wrapped inside a morality tale wrapped inside a character study of a man plagued by neurotic and sociopathic decay. Rather than simply rely on the standard methods of a crime story (which Nolan did to a certain degree with his re-make), Insomnia indulges the viewer with scenes inside Jonas's disturbed, haunted head. An insomniac, Jonas constantly battles with the useless shades covering the window of his hotel room. He cannot stand the light. Stuck in the throes of a blinding Arctic summer, Jonas becomes more and more agitated and, without his partner around to keep him in check, outright despicable. He tampers with and plants evidence and displays a selfish and altogether conflicted personality.

Yet because of his ambiguity, I cannot hate him. He's far too human. Despite his icy exterior, he's filled with a feverish lust (insomnia can bring on odd rushes of sexual longing at the strangest moments). Such lust emerges in two situations where he mistakes innocent flirtation for something much more significant than it really is. On the way to a crime scene, a teenage witness allows him to stick his hand between her legs, but the moment, not surprisingly hot and forbidden and exciting for a moment, rapidly sours. Of course. And then, while willingly receiving a pass from a pretty hotel receptionist, Jonas takes things too far by roughly biting at her breasts and her body -- she runs away terrified. He blows that one too. Yearning for more, only to be repelled, he is left a broken-down, dirty old man. A creep. And yet, we feel sorry for him. I certainly do.

Much of this lies in Skarsgård's complexity. Repressed and unctuous yet oddly handsome and sickly swaggering, he gives a performance so compelling that one could easily picture him as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Skjoldbjaerg did right in casting Skarsgård, for the director's vision of a man being suffocated by light would not have worked with a predictably "disturbing" actor. Skjoldbjaerg also did right by not making his neo-noir a typically pedestrian display of expressionistic shadowing to reveal the dualities of a man's soul (how many times have we heard that?). He instead creates a world of pale yellows that envelop his character like a humiliating urine-stained sheet a terrible mother would shame her son with. A sickly, stifling and embarrassing world that darkness can't obscure.

Hungry Heart: Toback on Tyson

Mike Tyson has made me almost shockingly emotional. More than once. From discussing all the love he has to give, and how he can’t receive it, to his genuine nostalgia for his former trainers, to all the women he mistreated, to the pigeons he’s been raising since childhood and loves (a la Brando’s On the Waterfront Terry Malloy), the man’s troubles hit me to the core. And you can say I’m being conned or manipulated or white-washed by director James Toback (who clearly loves his friend) -- say what you want. I don’t care. Tyson moved me. Just like Gary Gilmore moved me in The Executioner’s Song or Perry Smith moved me in In Cold Blood, two other works in which the writers (Norman Mailer and Truman Capote -- who also were in love with their subjects) took on troubled, talented men turned criminals with a raw yet lyrical sensitivity and a deeper awareness of how, both the world and the man, can misdirect their power and passion to crush themselves -- no matter how much potential they’ve got.  With Mike Tyson, add the collective racism (by liberals and non-liberals alike) that view him as some sort of primal animal, and you’ve got multiple issues to contend with -- personally and politically. 

Heady, poignant, scary, humanist, controversial, heartbreaking, and maddening -- Tyson pushes potent buttons. The famed “outsider” director  who made, among other pictures, his masterpiece, Fingers, The Pick Up Artist and the terrifically underrated Black and White (which featured a stellar, scary turn by Mike Tyson in a brilliant scene with Robert Downey Jr. ) turned his camera on his friend of many years, former heavyweight champ, fallen icon Tyson and the result is hypnotic. Shot entirely from Tyson’s perspective, the style will unnerve those who have serious problems with the former boxer. But many (I hope) will see a person in pain, and a person who’s never resolved his pain. Which in our current culture of constant, empty apologies and quick fix therapy sessions, or the Barbara Walters tour of redemption, Tyson’s emotional honesty is deeply refreshing. Yes, he’s still fucked up.  And yes, he’s the first to admit it. For 90 minutes we watch Tyson's face, world weary and at times, teary-eyed, discuss his life, from the heavyweight championship he won at 20, to his the trainers, to his wives, to his loves, to his pigeons, to his rape charge, to his stint in prison and then some.

No matter how you feel about Mike Tyson, the man is a fascinating American figure. A tragic American figure. And clearly, Toback agrees.  As I talked with Toback, our discussion went to many places (our mutual love of Thomas Hardy and Dostoyevsky and our frequent siding with the supposed “bad guy”), so I’m parceling out some key moments, proving, once again, that James Toback is a man who is never at a loss for words, ideas, or demons  -- demons he embraces like a familiar friend. And God (or Satan) bless him for it.

Thomas Hardy as related to Mike Tyson...

Re-occurrences are not unlikely in fact, they are inevitable and you put them in movies and people say, “Oh get the fuck out of here” that’s too convient. And then you say, read some Hardy and live a little and you’ll not only see it’s not convenient, it’s inevitable, these things that you feel fit too neatly are constantly occurring. One of them happened to Tyson. When he got out of prison, I was thinking, I’m going to use him now in this next movie Black and White…and I was just visiting my mother and I’m walking down 72nd Street to Columbus Avenue…thinking whether Mike has his old cell phone number which I’m sure he hasn’t so I can call him about the movie and as I’m thinking this, there’s a knock on the window of the City Grill Restaurant  and there’s Mike sitting there with a friend and I come into the restaurant and I say, "You are not going to believe this. I was just thinking about getting your number and calling you to ask you to be in… Black and White" and he says, "You’re not gonna believe this(and he says to his friend) ‘Who was I just talking about?’" The guy says 'James Toback' and he says (points) "this is James Toback." So that was a truly Hardy-esque moment. I love Hardy.
 

Favorite Thomas Hardy?

Jude the Obscure by far…

Of course. The darkest one of all…

Yes, of course.

And, favorite Dostoyevsky?

My favorite is The Possessed. Stavrogin's confession  -- one of the greatest chapters in the history of world literature. And I love The Brothers Karamazov and I love Notes from Underground, which I used with Jimmy Caan in The Gambler: “I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man, and I think my liver is diseased.” Once you’re a devotee of Dostoyevsky, you feel a kind of allegiance to his spirit. I literally feel that my life could not have been what it became without him, he was the only writer, I’m not so insane that I literally think it’s true, [but he’s the only writer] who ever addressed me directly and personally. I actually felt he wrote this to communicate it with me. He is speaking directly to me. And I will someday answer.  I regard my movies as a response to him. Not an argument. But an extension and a feeling that I am somehow carrying out his inspiration.

This was a very Dostoyevskian line: Mike Tyson saying “My insanity is my only sanity.”

That’s right. That is exactly what happened with me when I flipped out on LSD when I was 19 and a sophomore at Harvard. I lost my sanity for eight days. And that was my sanity. Those voices, that madness. And you can know it’s insane and at the same time say that’s all there is, everything else is just an illusion. And of course it’s tough to fit in the social universe with that attitude and that psychology. But what can you do, if that’s what you believe? Fortunately I gave up that belief…but I knew that I’d never get over it. I knew that if I ever became an artist that it would become the subject of my work so that even if I’m doing a movie about Mike Tyson, I’m really doing a movie about how madness lurks under the primary layer of consciousness and is ready to erupt at any time. And how the behavior of people who are living in some kind of close juxtaposition to madness  is always going to be potentially disruptive, subversive and radical because one is not subject to the normal restrictions and limitations that a quote un quote ‘sane person’ who has never been quote un quote ‘insane’ has had to deal with.

The rape charge and critics as lemmings...

First of all there’d be no reason on earth for him to spend 15 years lying to me about it… He’s always told me, not told me, it’s far too impassioned to use a verb like “told,” -- he has always insisted that it is a horrifying example of railroading and that he under no stretch of the word could possibly be thought of as having raped her…In fact, he said if 500 people were watching he said there isn’t one who could legitimately say that’s what happened. But when you put in the fact, as you’re just talking about, people don’t see anything but the outside information surrounding context and that’s what they believe.  Because it’s easier to do that. It’s easier to go through life always believing what the herd mentality leads you to believe because you’re always on safe ground. As long as I say what I am supposed to say, no one can nail me, because I’m just saying what everybody else is saying or everybody in my group is saying.  It’s like opinions of movies. There are film reviewers who are incapable of having an opinion till they have polled the group they are part of and make sure they are not going to be off base. It’s embarrassing to a point of being ugly and creepy.  The idea of that I would ever have an opinion because I thought I was supposed to have it is so nauseating to me that I would rather slit my throat.  You’ve packed it in as a human being… I cannot say what I think because I’m afraid of what people I want to be a part of might not like me and will be upset that I said it or think there’s something wrong with me? Fuck them and their ancestors.

The rape charge was always suspicious to me -- and what does convicted really mean anyway?

You start to look at it and say, this is fucking ridiculous. What do you mean, convicted as if it were a word we should be in awe of and the case is closed, discussion is over. Oh my god! It means he did it! No, it doesn’t. It means it was he was convicted. The reason I have this fresh in my mind is because many people ask me about it. Convicted rapist. Convicted, convicted. This is why Wittgenstein was my favorite philosopher because he was the first one when I read him when I was 15 who started making me think about language as a suspect. That language can be used to conceal, to deceive to mislead even uncousiously as much as it can be used to reveal. And that often, we use language as a tool of preventing meaning from coming through not as a way of creating meaning or truth.

Yes, writers say a lot and mean nothing, even when they’re being supposedly “out there” -- it’s often always just enough to please their group. 

Yes. I think this kind of group thinking, class thinking, is the bane of any kind of honest approach to life and I am always so antagonistic towards it wherever I see it, that I’d rather defend someone who is guilty then convict somebody who is whether he is innocent or not, the conviction is based on this kind of group thinking…where we all know this. Everybody knows that. Who’s everybody? Well, I and my friends.  It's always going back to the basics. This is why Dostoyevsky was the greatest novelist who ever lived, because he assumed nothing. He started with the notion, (well that’s not true he assumed the Russian Orthodox Church was perfect, but if you put aside that insanity) everything else he did started with a fresh perspective of human personality and the dynamic of human behavior and love and sex and madness and money. Nothing was assumed. Everything was original. 

Tyson felt like a tragic Greek figure

That’s the first thing he said [when] the movie ended. He said:  “It’s like a Greek Tragedy the only problem is I’m the subject.” And then he saw it for the third time, he came up to me and said:  “You know people always said they were scared of me and I always thought ‘what are they talking about? Why are they scared of me?’ and he said tonight I was watching the movie and I thought,’ I’m scared of that guy.’” One of the reasons Mike Tyson is a great “fictional” character, a great leading man in the movie that is about Mike Tyson where he’s playing himself is precisely that he’s a character who really only tells the truth, he gets through to you as who he is. There is no evasive misleading stuff…

That Holyfield fight and the ear…

You end up saying he should have had a third ear to bite. Because Holyfield is clearly intentionally head-butting him to the eye…Holyfield is a dirty fighter…and Mike snaps. And he goes crazy. And, as he says, I don’t regret having bitten him, I regret that I lost my discipline because that’s the one thing a fighter needs is his discipline, and I lost it. So I lost my faith in boxing and I lost my faith in myself. That was a real turning point for him, not because he bit his ear, or ears, but because he lost his sense of control. He went insane in the ring…you’re watching a person whose gone insane and that’s one of the wildest and weirdest moments in film history to me. He went back home drank some wine smoked some pot and fell asleep. You have this image of a billion people arguing and talking about this crazy event that happened and he’s sitting there alone.

And...one of the most moving moments of the picture, the famous: "I'll fuck you till you love me..." Yes, I really do get chills. Here's a clip of Toback discussing that moment with me:

Drive, She Said: Awesome Auto Insanity

The newest issue of Garage Magazine is out with my column, Drive, She Said reveling in the wonders of mental breakdowns in, yes, automobiles (or as Two-Lane James Taylor would say, auto-MO-beels). Thanks to my photographer, the great Estevan Oriol for his especially bad-ass picture through the windshield of my Torino and of course, Brian Bounds, Dan Stoner and Jesse James. Make sure to buy a copy at your local newsstand or at any 7-11 or Borders.

Here's a sample...

Ever lost your mind in a car? Like really lost your head, a la The Bad and the Beautiful Lana Turner sobbing hysterically? Or a crazed, fashion-Diana Ross-death-obsessed Anthony Perkins in Mahogany? Or, love of my life, Warren Oates' bloody brilliant nervous breakdown in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (in addition to, as I have discussed innumerable times, Two-Lane Blacktop)?  

I have. Which turned me towards (of course) movies. Since driving can feel so cinematic in real life, it's no surprise that the invented world of movies often express, explicate and exalt motor-psycho moments so perfectly. Here's just one example, one of my favorite sports pictures, one of Burt Reynolds greatest and a perfect, gritty Robert Aldrich movie  -- The Longest Yard.

Robert Aldrich’s The Longest Yard contains one of cinema’s greatest opening sequences of supreme speed demon self destruction. Here’s how it goes: Washed up pro football player Paul "Wrecking" Crewe (Burt Reynolds) who was banished from the sport for point shaving, staggers out of bed with a woman who's clearly (and very loudly) keeping him. As Crewe reaches for a drink, she storms out of the bedroom hollering at him for being a loser, how she paid for his new teeth -- essentially emasculating ol’ Burt (lady, don't do that). In a move that would never, ever happen in a film today, Crewe shoves her, and he shoves her hard, with the rage and bitterness of a man who's ego has been bruised one too many times. And then...he jumps into her fancy Citroen/Maserati SM.

Oh, this is so great. Speeding down the street, with drink in hand and Lynyrd Skynyrd tune blaring (no less -- anyone with a soul knows you can't drive slowly to Skynrd) and cops are in pursuit, Burt peels it. But does he care? Nope. So much so, that when he finally stops the madness, he doesn’t turn himself in; he simply kicks the car into a watery grave. But that's just the half of it. Waltzing into a bar for more drinks -- he then casually insults the dispatched officers (to the delight of both the bartender and the cop escaping his barbs) and finally, slugs the fuzz. A wonderfully hilarious, transgressive scene with Reynolds at the top of his dangerous cinematic charms, all this happens before the opening credits come to an end. God, the '70s could be so fucking great.

Please pick up the magazine to read my entire ode to auto-insanity. For now, here's Burt blazing.

Bloody Beautiful Ballard: Crash

With the passing of the great J.G. Ballard, I'm returning to my favorite adaptation of his work, David Cronenberg's auto-erotic Crash.

"Crash is an autobiographical novel in the sense that it is about my inner life, my imaginative life. It is true to that interior life, not the life I have actually lived."

--J.G. Ballard

A survived car accident can be one of the most exciting, disturbing and hallucinatory events in a person's life, and not simply because of life endangerment and pain. Time is sped up, then suspended; physical and mental sensations are heightened, blurring reality. Life feels strangely, in the moment but dazzlingly surreal. And yet, a car accident is such a common occurrence that when we drive by one we frequently do so with a titillated, detached interest.

Inside cars, those speeding microcosmic shelters, we see distinct personalities -- aggressive, meek, and distracted -- the potential of which Godard envisioned in his maddeningly extraordinary car wreck loop Week End. To enter these personal realms, we act in mildly subversive ways -- honking at a trucker, making an enraged cutoff, flirting on the freeway. Arranging this entry erotically so as to combine man with machine with sex is less familiar. But perversions often rear up in mundane environments, especially ones surrounded by seat belts, door locks and steel.

David Cronenberg, the auteur known for turning "safe" environments (apartment complexes, hospitals, the gynecologist) into terrifying, erotic and reality shaking locales, penetrated the world of the automobile and stretches its "normalcy" tenfold. Adapted from J.G. Ballard's brilliant novel, Crash is a rare picture with unconventional plotting. Cronenberg constructs the exposition, action and conclusion (as well as its subtext) through sex scenes, scenes that open and flower -- or, depending on your viewpoint; grow increasingly perverse -- throughout the film's rather short running time.

James Spader plays TV-commercial producer James Ballard, who is introduced to the auto-erotic world of the peculiar scientist Vaughan (Elias Koteas) by Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) a woman he meets via a near-fatal car accident, and with whom he first experiences the automobile's turn on potential. James, his wife Catherine (the strikingly icy Deborah Kara Unger) and Remington join Vaughan and his subculture of dazed crash survivors, including Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette), a walking Helmut Newton-esque fetish doll of scars, leg braces and support suits (she is, in her own way, a glorious vision). They swap partners not only to satisfy their craving for dangerous, pulse-quickening sex, but also for an exploration of what J.G. Ballard calls "psyhic fulfillment."

From its opening shot -- Catherine laying her breast on the cold wing of an airplane -- Crash immediately expresses its alignment of technology and the human body, a physical relationship that occurs daily, though we don't often notice it. Vaughan leads James and Catherine to a sexual awakening with their mechanical connections, infusing their human relationship with the charge its lost through deadened senses and alienation. There are negative ramifications to these people's sometimes repulsive acts, but there is also a broadened knowledge of the world around them and the creation of a strange beauty through their meticulously visual orchestrations.

Like the conventional contact between two cars, the movie's sex is rarely face-to-face, revealing the couple's disconnections, but also the idea that they're stretching toward something. As the picture unfolds, James' desire builds into perversion yet somehow also becomes more personal: After Catherine's rough coupling with Vaughan in a car wash (the scene's commingling of cleaning fluids, sperm, car seats and human skin is the movie's best visualization of J.G. Ballard's language), James kisses her bruises with a tenderness previously unexpressed. At this moment, when we see that the couple is truly in love, we grapple with both the benefit of their experience and its implications; questions that we cannot immediately answer bubble to the surface.

There were obvious questions that came to me: Is Crash a cautionary tale about people so numbed by the modern world that they must seek excitement in dangerous measures? Is it commenting on our dissatisfied consumer society? Is it simply a turn-on? I think the answers are yes and no. Though the novel's relentless descriptions of bodily fluids and organs coalescing with twisted steel ("his semen emptying across the luminescent dials that registered forever the last temperature and fuel levels of the engine") are rendered less graphic by Cronenberg, J.G. Ballard's vision of the "liberation of human and machine libido" remains potently intact. In both novel and film form, Crash takes a non-moral and non-celebratory approach to its subject matter, creating an alternative perception of the physical world that is as beautiful as its is horrific. And that amalgamation is, unlike many movies and true to Cronenberg, disturbingly, unnervingly sexy -- enough to make you check yourself. Or at least check yourself in the rear-view mirror.

Staunch Characters: Grey Gardens

One of my favorite documentaries of all time is now a feature film: Grey Gardens, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore (airing April 18 on HBO). I've been worried, but intrigued by this concept, but if it fails, there's of course, always the original.  Nothing compares to the real deal Beales. With that, remember to watch the documentary that started it all.

Originally released in 1975, Grey Gardens is an extraordinary, still-relevant and influential work of cinéma vérité by documentary auteurs Albert and David Maysles. The brothers worked together in the documentary genre--or "direct cinema," as they preferred to call it--from 1957 until David's death in 1987; their previous films include Salesman (1969), the heartbreaking precursor to Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, and Gimme Shelter (1970), the Rolling Stones' dark antidote (if antidote is the correct word) to Woodstock. Though controversial for their earlier work (a man is stabbed to death by a Hells Angel in Gimme Shelter), they received their most damning criticism for Grey Gardens. Accused of both voyeurism and tabloid-style exploitation of aging women, the brothers pushed the limits of vérité to a bizarre yet recognizably human level. By revealing the intimate power struggle between an artistic mother and her flamboyant daughter, the filmmakers created an unflinching portrait of disturbing power, heightened by the viewer's flinching recognition: Almost everyone has a family, and almost no one's is functional.

But there is an odd, old world beauty in this dysfunction, something that attracts viewers like myself time and time again. I've lost count as to how many times I've watched this film since acquiring a screener years back and every-time I turn it on, I'm riveted by women who have now become like documentary friends. In spite of and honestly, because of their problems, I love them. And If you're a fan, it's nearly impossible to not love these very non-grey subjects, Edith and Edie Beale, daughters of American aristocracy, aunt and cousin to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and exotic birds of a paradise lost--two real-life Daisy Buchanan's gone Baby Jane Hudson.

The movie loosely tells the tale of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little Edie" (who died in 2002), a pair of misfits who lived for decades at Grey Gardens in East Hampton, Long Island. Beginning with newspaper headlines screaming about the estate's unsanitary condition and its condemnation by the Suffolk County Health Department (The New York Post stated that the two were "living in a garbage-ridden, filthy 28-room house with 8 cats, fleas, cobwebs and no running water"), the movie indulges the viewer with the offbeat and spellbinding lives of mother and daughter Beale.

At the helm is Little Edie, who, in her independent, alluring, chatty and creative way, leads the filmmakers through the disordered, spoiled and tangled corridors of their house and minds. Dressed in an assortment of daring ensembles ranging from a bathing suit worn with fishnet stockings and white high heels to towels, curtains and tablecloths (usually topped by an heirloom brooch), Edie is never without a turban and a dramatic gesture, look or utterance. Once a ravishing beauty--truly she was, like a blue-blood Marilyn Monroe--with a sharp wit, Edie mysteriously left a promising career as a dancer, model and actress to live with her aging mother. Despite her insistence that she is "losing her figure," she is still attractive, regardless of the camera's unflattering angles.

The same holds true for Big Edie, who in her youth looked much like Uma Thurman. The sister of "Black Jack" Bouvier (Jackie's father) and former wife of Wall Street lawyer Phelan Beale, Big Edie was the black sheep. Once at Grey Gardens, she was free to pursue the pastimes that brought her great joy and a bohemian reputation: singing, playing the piano and hanging out with her artistic, mostly male friends. Less eager to be filmed than her dramatic daughter, she is all at once a shrew, a formidable intellect and an artist who appears enraptured when she sings in a trembly 79-year-old voice.

Both women's distinct personalities fill the picture with a sublime mixture of looniness, camp and genuine intelligence. These women may hermit themselves in their estate, resting on dirty twin beds while listening to Norman Vincent Peale's radio exaltations of  "positive thinking," but they are in their own Miss Havisham way -- independent--even if relying on one another so much. Though the Maysles refrain from using standard techniques of documentary narration, the mother-and-daughter interaction itself illustrates the Beales' simultaneously tumultuous and stagnant life. The two women live in aristocratic squalor, eating liver pâté, ice cream and crackers; singing, dancing and bickering in their bedroom; and feeding Wonder Bread and Cat Chow to the raccoons living in their attic. And they are frequently witty--enough so that much of their banter would do Tennessee Williams proud.

Big Edie, having lived alone for 30 years, considers herself an independent spirit: "I had my cake, loved it, masticated it, chewed it and had everything I wanted." When Little Edie accuses her mother of being anti-Catholic, Big Edie exclaims: "What the hell, I worship the Catholic church!" And when a cat is spied crouching next to a beautiful old painting of Big Edie, she says amused: "Oh look, the cat's going to the bathroom on my portrait...I'm glad someone's doing something he wanted to do."As hilarious as much of the women's rapport is, it is also tinged by a bitter, sometimes wistful pain. "I missed out on everything," moans Little Edie. "I was stuck here." Laughing, her mother says, "You're never gonna get out of here."

Though their connection is certainly entertaining, it also a potent, poignant example of  a love-hate relationship built on fear, ferociousness and a shared desire to really, remove themselves from the harsh world. And who can blame them? The Maysles brothers capture their bond expertly, and the viewer cannot turn away. Like many great dramas, it's a magnification of of our own strained bonds, it speaks to those of us who have chosen a less traditional path in life and it's strangely comforting--these gals may be old but they're certainly not over. And they're anything but boring.

Is the film cruel or simply truthful? Both the Maysles and the Beales thought the latter, and both "staunch characters" staunchly defended the film. Those who leave this film thinking of the Beales as mere freaks are missing Grey Gardens' major questions: What is healthy? What is wealth and breeding? What is normal? What kind of life should you lead? And is there a type of beauty in veering off course? At the end of Grey Gardens one may echo Little Edie misquoting Robert Frost: "Two roads converged in yellow wood. Pondering one, I took the other... Isn't that beautiful?"

I love Edie so...

God's Lonely (Funny) Man: Observe and Report

In 1980, Robert Kolker published his influential work of film criticism, A Cinema of Loneliness, a longstanding bible for film students who were fascinated by the grittiness and artistry of '70s cinema and by the subsequent changes that happened to the pictures some of us really grew up with: the blockbusters and comedies of the '80s.

I remember staring at the front cover of my red paperback edition. It featured Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle, head downcast, his confused, rage-filled, ticking time-bomb character tightly wound with hands stuffed in pockets, his precise, military fit frame braving the dirty, sleazy, mean streets of New York. He was frightening, but oddly appealing. This was alienation. This was isolation. This was "God's lonely man." But for younger viewers, this was a distant memory. Not only in the movies, but also in the real world. Though this may sound like a strange question (and not a query one should summon): Where had all the Travis Bickles gone?

Quick answer? The shopping mall.

And if you get behind director writer Jody Hill's subversive, hilarious, weirdly poignant and almost horrifyingly timely Observe and Report, you'll see Travis, not only as a power-hungry security guard in the form of a schlubbier Seth Rogen, but also as a regular Joe consumer. He might be traversing the food court or staring at the ice skaters in the center rink or wondering if he can afford a flat-screen TV while making his mortgage payment, but he's there, facing down all of that cheaply made fast food, recycled air and overpriced merchandise. He's killing time and, to become even more of a downer here, he's killing his soul. Yes, he's killing his soul at...Cinnabon. It's funny and yet it's not. It's also, so far, the best movie of the year.

Such is the power of Observe and Report, a movie that tips its hat to movies like Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, but remains an animal all its own. Hill's study of a delusional, deranged head of mall security could only exist now. And, as funny as it is, it's going to get to people who are feeling faceless, disenfranchised and empty. With all of cinema's syrupy bromances, mean, shock humor comedies, and Judd Apatow life lessons to either catch an easy, gross-out laugh or lift one's spirit, emboldening one to finally grow up, Observe and Report reveals how complicated this really is.

But again, I repeat, Observe and Report is a comedy. I think...

Seth Rogen, in his greatest, most daring performance to date, plays Ronnie Barnhardt, an overbearing and delusional head of security at Forest Ridge Mall. He's all bluster, a true toughie and occasional racist (occasional?), but also a bully who's not-so-secretly lonely and most definitely fucked up. Like many a misfit, he still lives at home, in this case with his sweet but severely alcoholic mother (Celia Weston), a woman who hilariously passes out on the floor only to be, in a moment of almost shocking tenderness, blanketed by her loving, burly son. Harboring an obvious crush on the mall hottie, a blond, bosomy makeup-counter sales clerk (Anna Faris), he patrols the grounds like a mini-fascist, with all of the other guards under his well-respected command. But they seem to be the only people who respect him.

Enter the perfect perpetrator, a flasher who shows his goods to screaming ladies in the parking lot and, in a braver, more disgustingly hilarious move, directly inside the mall. Ronnie is obsessed with catching this guy, and understandably so (in real life, flashers aren't as funny and innocent as they seem and are usually one step away from serious sexual predator), but to the point of ridiculous outrage. After the mall is robbed, a real police officer comes on the scene: the craggily handsome, hard-boiled Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), who would like to be anywhere but that mall, especially with Ronnie hovering. He's dragged into the flasher situation, and, thereby, in Ronnie's eyes, oversteps his jurisdiction. This is his case, and no way is Harrison going to take the glory, no matter how little Harrison actually cares.

Through the presence of Harrison we learn what Ronnie really aspires to be: a cop. And his attempts to become one are both amusing and pathetic. With shades of serial killer intensity (how many serial killers want to be security guards or cops?), Ronnie goes through training with an almost admirable determination and handles a particularly dangerous situation involving violent drug offenders (which features a terrific cameo by Hill muse Danny McBride) with hysterically violent efficiency. The scene is weirdly inspiring -- and you realize how much you’re rooting for this demented man. And, he really could be a cop. Only he's nuts. This is his greatest tragedy, which, in Hill's transgressive, intelligent hands, is surprisingly crushing. How we grow to like this character is the picture's clever trick, and thanks to Rogen's potent performance and Hill's powerful dose of pitch black humor dusted with glimmers of humanity, we really do care. No matter how his date with Faris ends up (I won't reveal that here).

However, there are those who will hate this movie. Hate it. But, good. People are really talking/arguing/dissecting Hill’s picture – it’s clearly affecting people.

While driving past the movie’s posters and spying Rogen's now ubiquitous mug hogging the frame, I can't help but think of what the more unsuspecting viewer (not movie critic) who stumbles into this studio comedy will think. Without reading a review or even watching a preview (which reveals some of the picture's darkness, though not much), if such a viewer believes he or she is getting another generic Paul Blart: Mall Cop or an Apatow-infused Rogen charmer, they're in for quite a shock. There's no family friendly moment, there's no obvious redemption leading to a healing psychological breakthrough, there's no supportive friend like...Paul Rudd (some of us wish we had a Paul Rudd in our life). Instead there's Michael Pena offering brotherly love by aiming at innocent bystanders and shooting up smack in the bathroom. I can't remember the last time I saw heroin in a mainstream comedy (if ever), and I never realized I needed to see it until now. It's freakishly funny while strangely realistic and familiar. Amidst laughing, I felt an odd relief from this sick moment. I mean, if there's ever a place where one needs to self-medicate, it's at the soul-sucking mall. (I wonder what Robert Kolker would have to say about that).

Which makes this movie all the more shocking than, say, (and I admire the following examples) that junkie epic Trainspotting, and a lot more subversive than anything Michael Haneke hatches up. Because Observe and Report isn't playing at your local art house. No, it's playing right in the belly of the beast: at the mall.

Read my interview with Jody Hill here.

Happy Birthday To A Singing Warren Beatty

In honor of Warren Beatty's Birthday (he turns 72 today) I'm revisiting (yet again) my adoration of both Ishtar and Bulworth...

According to an older edition of Robin Morgan's The Book of Film Biographies, actor Warren Beatty is "more famous for his espousal of liberal causes and his affairs with actresses from Joan Collins to Madonna -- despite his achievements." How unfortunate. But we know he's so much more than this reductive, stale statement.

This Hollywood legend has gone from pretty-boy method actor in Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass to Arthur Penn's complex, intriguing Mickey One, to producer and star of the seminal anti-establishment picture Bonnie and Clyde. He created and starred in films like The Only Game in Town, a fascinating George Steven's gambling picture opposite a blousy but still beautiful Liz Taylor; The Parallax View, a superb paranoid political thriller; Shampoo, a dark satire in which he plays the only straight hairdresser in California; Robert Altman's masterful McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Heaven Can Wait, a sweet romantic comedy that, consistent with '70s cinema, manged to feel depressing. He also directed and starred in Reds, the critically acclaimed saga of John Reed and worked a violent, seductive Bugsy Siegel in Barry Levinson's smart Bugsy.

For anyone who knows a few things about film history or read Peter Biskind's gossipy Easy Riders Raging Bulls or really, has any cine-telligence, you should understand Beatty's contribution to cinema is significant. But how about his contribution to comedy?

Just as I revere Beatty for his work with Kazan, Arthur Penn, Robert Altman and Hal Ashby, I believe the lothario looker to be one of the most underrated comic actors in the business. In his knack for it, the man is near brilliant. Where did he prove this best? Oddly, in two that place him in a musical mode -- Elaine May's Ishtar, one of the most misunderstood and under-watched great comedies of all time and Bulworth, a film that's almost a masterpiece.

I've witnessed countless people make the sour face when I bring up both films only to learn they have usually never even seen Ishtar or simply discount Bulworth as a silly mistake. How wrong they are. Some don't even know the genius Elaine May (who directed and co-starred in the sublime A New Leaf with Walter Matthau and directed both Mikey and Nicky and The Heartbreak Kid) even directed Ishtar. The mind reels. But due to the press attacking the over-budget supposed turkey; it was maligned beyond the level of Gigli. This was The Heaven's Gate of comedy. Not funny.

So if you haven't (and if you say you have and haven't then shame on you!), watch Ishtar -- and laugh and feel its strange poignancy. Especially the hilarious first half hour. Beatty's handsome, shrewd dark side, seen in films such as Lilith, is nearly obscured by a perfectly timed, soft-spoken dumbbell act. Playing the supposedly less attractive friend to "The Hawk" Dustin Hoffman (also hilarious) his half of a struggling songwriting act is so funny and oddly poignant that the moment he opens his mouth to talk, or simply, breath through it, he's comical. Driving an ice cream truck while proudly coming up with the jingle: "Hot fudge love cherry ripple kisses. Lip smacking, back slapping perfectly delicious," we see a guy who's obsessed with his "skill" no matter how much he stinks (and honestly, he's not so bad at times). He strains to think, he stumbles over words (his attempt to pronounce "schmuck" is timed with perfection) and he tries so hard -- especially when he belts out: "Telling the truth can be dangerous business, honest and popular don't go hand in hand. If you admit you can play the accordion, they'll never hire you in a rock and roll band!" (Yes, yes, I have all these songs memorized. I have nearly worn out my beloved VHS copy --  why isn't this movie on DVD?! ).

He is humorous, in a way no other actor could have been in this big, sad-sack of a hack musician, while being absolutely heartbreaking. There's a moment on a rooftop ledge between the two men (the film's greatest scene, in fact) that makes you realize how powerful Beatty's talent can be. It's not just his soft, lost, lovely eyes, it's his vulnerability -- and how we are charmed, warmed and agonized by it that moves us. Saving his suicidal friend is saving himself too -- and watching his confused eyes piecing this together is oddly wrenching. When he says, with such deep conviction: "It takes a lot of nerve to have nothing at your age, don't you understand that? Most guys'd be ashamed, but you've got the guts to just say 'to hell with it'. You say that you'd rather have nothing than settle for less, understand?" Funny yes, but darkly true. I fall in love with him every time I watch that scene.

Beatty must have given more credence to truth, particularly within Ishtar's lyrics than originally imagined. Telling the truth is dangerous business, and Beatty proves it in Bulworth, a political satire that offers an intriguing look at Beatty's sharp cynicism. Written, directed and produced by Beatty, Bulworth tells the story of a U.S. senator from California who becomes insanely depressed during his bid for re-election. Sick to death of his political rhetoric ("we stand at the doorstep of a new millennium"), Bulworth (Beatty) has a nervous breakdown and plots self-assassination. Then he meets Nina (Halle Berry), sheds his old, crooked ways and starts anew by, shockingly, telling the truth. But he's still got a problem: a man is trying to kill him.

Once we see where Bulworth is going, the picture branches into two stories, that, the more I watch, the more I find compatible. One is a biting comedy that lampoons white liberal dishonesty. In this story we have a man who, during a speech in a church packed with black supporters, says it is obvious the Democratic Party doesn't care about African Americans. He asserts that they will never amount to anything if they don't put down their "chicken wings and malt liquor" and if they continue to support a "former running back who stabbed his wife." In defense of his candor he shrugs, "Hey, I'm just calling a spade a spade." But there is also a screwball love story that puts whitey in the hood. Here, he hangs with a group of under-age drug dealers, smokes weed, does coke and gets drunk at a black nightclub where he dances crazy style with Nina (an incredibly sexy moment). Wearing baggy shorts, basketball shoes, a gold chain and a ski cap, Bulworth continues his campaign by rapping on national television--and gains popularity. It is inevitable that Bulworth's rushed, insane honesty (accompanied by Cypress Hill's "Insane in the Membrane") will lead to his downfall. And Bulworth falls hard. Beatty is hilarious showing his new black consciousness, and though his comedic talent could have been bolstered even more by a sharper political wit, the film moved into brave territory that unlike other un-PC lampoons, rarely plays simplistic or merely for shock value.

Part of what makes Bulworth so fascinating and daring is that Beatty is presenting blacks in a disadvantaged, urban milieu, but he isn't pandering to them as victims. He finds humor and relevance in the complex tension between the races. And, on the comic end, Beatty also perfects his "why are you looking at me?" stare. His comedic talent lies in his Dorian Gray ability to reflect through deflecting: We won't see how horrible the world is when we look into Beatty's deceptively childish eyes, and even if we do, we won't care, because they are such nice eyes. The ugliness of his actions in Bonnie and Clyde, the selfishness of his hairdresser in Shampoo, the violence of his psychologist in Lilith and his hacky songwriting abilities in Ishtar are all effectively made pretty, and Beatty is smart enough to know this. As Hoffman says in all seriousness to Beatty in Ishtar: "Shit man, when you're on you're on." He's on.

The Teachings Of Don Juan, As Bardot...

In 1973, notorious French director and provocateur Roger Vadim said "The Don Juan of our day is a woman -- Brigitte Bardot in real life." Vadim was addressing his past muse (indeed one of the very reasons he became famous) as the ultimate feminist of the last 20 years -- and he was right!

Vadim made Bardot a woman/child in the explosive sex brilliance ...and God Created Woman (1956), and 16 years later he made her a woman/man in Don Juan (or if Don Juan were a woman). Was he successful? Yes -- but really only because Bardot, the woman and star, was the true auteur of the picture. And Vadim allowed this -- smart man that he was. She was Don Juan, or rather, Warren Beatty at that point of her life -- preferring flings to marriage, sunning in Saint Tropez, allowing her second husband custody of their child (unthinkable!) and letting herself age (how dare she!). You see some of that age in a movie shot with unremarkable, almost soft-core sensibilities, though boasting some terrific 70s sets and BB nude -- and older BB is ever-sexy, ever-powerful, ever-Bardot.

Following her character Jeanne on a series of sexual conquests as she relays them to her cousin/priest (lucky priest); she coolly discusses her dalliances, first with Pierre (Maurice Ronet), a married, influential government man. When she gleefully watches a photographer snap his picture at a drunken student orgy, his personal and professional life is ruined. Next is the humiliation of the boorish  Prevost (Robert Hossein), married to the young, vulnerable Clara (Jane Birkin-- yes! Two Serge girls together!). She ensnares him through Clara, enticing the girl to bed, setting it up so Prevost discovers such a dreamy scenario, only to reject his gluttonous desire to join them. Take that, punk! I'm with Jane, thank you very much (I would be too).

A woman whom Simone de Beauvoir claimed could tempt a saint, it's not surprising that Bardot, with the assistance of her ex husband Vadim, the pimp-like svengali he's unfairly purported to be by some (I bless the lord for him -- no Vadim, perhaps no BB and no Barbarella for that matter) make Don Juan such an intriguing look at female power and one's desire to be a man. And yes, there are women who would like to be a man, at least a few days a week -- this writer being one of them. A summation of just how feminist (in the better sense of the word) Bardot really was, the film is interesting when viewed as her bawdy last gasp before cinematic retirement. She's still lovely, still forceful and still Bardot, through and through -- and one convincing Don Juan at that. She really did come a long way, baby.

Some critics complained that Bardot appeared bored and uninspired, and amidst Vadim's somewhat flat landscape, she is a little sullen, but pouty annoyance is one of her strong points. She remains gorgeous and charismatic and cunning in her conclusion to Bardotlatry. As Vadim noted, "It was probably her last chance to keep making movies because she'd grown too old to continue playing Brigitte Bardot. But she understood that too. That's why she stopped making movies." She did. And she let herself age without surgery. And now everyone thinks she's nutty. And some even recoil at her face, even though it was that very lifestyle men so desired -- bikini on the beach, ciggies, wine, sex and song, that lined it so. Again, this is a feminist  -- not whiny Naomi Wolf and her boring "Beauty Myth," or all those sensitive men who lust on and on about Helen Mirren (who is hot, don’t get me wrong) but to the point where they simply want women to pat them on the back for digging an older gal. Mirren’s easy. Tell me you want some Judi Dench action and I’ll give you credit. And like Ms. Dench (though never a raving beauty and one whose career flourishes) in that bathtub scene during her genius performance in Notes on a Scandal, BB says, fuck you, this is me. She may be harder to view these days, but she handles it.

I’d just love to see her all smoker’s cough smiling a la Keith Richards, enjoying her age and wisdom and past beauty. Bikers gracefully grow old  -- or rather into calmer versions of craggy, kicking and screaming spitfires, and as controversial as she is, so should BB. With that in mind, I wonder what a BB, Keith reprise of the great Bardot biker ode “Harley Davidson” would be like? For now, let us take in the original (written by Gainsbourg for her off-the-charts fantastic TV special). Watching this again, and fueled with BB inspiration, if I could be a man, and Don Juan in particular, I would burn villages to know this woman on that bike. And really, I don’t need to be a man. For BB, I’d commit these sins myself.

Erotic Rotting Rabbit: Repulsion

"I hate doing this to a beautiful woman."
--Roman Polanski cameraman Gil Taylor

Roman Polanski knows women because he understands men. He knows both sexes because he understands the games both genders play, either consciously or instinctively. He understands the perversions formed from such relations and translates them into visions that are erotic, disturbing, humorous and, most important, allegorical in their potency. One should not (as so many did with his misunderstood Bitter Moon) take Polanski's films literally, for they are often heightened versions of what occurs naturally in our world: desire, perversion, repulsion.

Film writer Molly Haskell said that at the core of Polanski's work is the "image of the anesthetized woman, the beautiful, inarticulate, and possibly even murderous somnambulate." Her observation is astute, but it's followed by the tired criticism that in all of Polanski's films, including Repulsion, "the titillations of torture are stronger than the bonds of empathy." Of course. Polanski's removed morality is exactly why he is often brilliant: He is so empathetic to his characters that, like a trauma victim floating above the pain, he is personally impersonal. He insightfully scrutinizes what is so frightening about being human, yet he doesn't feel the need to be resolute or sentimental about his cognizance. He is also, consciously or subconsciously, aware of the darkness he explores, especially in his female characters, who could be seen as extensions of himself. 1965's Repulsion proves as much.

Starring ice goddess Catherine Deneuve, Repulsion is one of the most frightening studies of madness ever filmed. Deneuve plays Carol, a nervous young manicurist who shares an apartment with her sexually active sister (Yvonne Furneaux). At first Carol goes about her days in the salon, where she quietly tends to bossy old ladies' fleshy cuticles; walking outside, where she unsuccessfully avoids the leering glances and advances of men; and languishing about the apartment, where, with disgust, she listens to the noises of her sister's lovemaking and silently despises the men who visit. She exhibits a pathological shyness and repression that slowly spiral into madness after her sister leaves on holiday. Carol's dementia creates perplexing hallucinations: sexual acts with a greasy man whom she simultaneously loathes and lusts after; greedy hands poking through walls and kneading her soft flesh; and the moving and cracking of walls. Left alone, she is able to act out what she is so afraid of: the dark sludge of desire.

The obscure, slippery and decayed complexities of such desire are conveyed brilliantly in Repulsion. The diseased atmosphere of Carol's womb is meticulously created with Polanski's use of camera angles, sound effects and images of clutter. Though music is used effectively, Polanski relies more on amplifying the sounds of everyday life -- the ticking of a clock, the voices of nuns playing catch in the convent garden, the dripping of a faucet -- to convey the acute awareness Carol acquires in response to her fear. Polanski also dresses the film with pertinent details that further exemplify both Carol's madness and the aching passage of time: Potatoes sprout in the kitchen, meat (rabbit meat, no less) rots on a plate and eventually collects flies, various debris of blood, food and liquids form naturally around Carol. The film's inventive use of black-and-white film, wide-angle lenses and close-ups creates an unsparing vision of sickness, and Deneuve's performance is effectively mysterious. The viewer, however, is able to empathize with Carol, which is how she lures us into her web in the first place. As Polanski cameraman Gil Taylor muttered during filming, "I hate doing this to a beautiful woman."

And yet, one loves doing this to a beautiful woman, especially one like Deneuve. Deneuve's loveliness makes Carol's madness more palatable (her unfortunate suitor thinks she is odd, but he can't help but "love" this gorgeous woman), but eventually it becomes horrifying. Carol is not simply a Hitchcockian aberration of what lies beneath the "perfect woman," she is the reflection of what lies beneath repressed desire -- in men and women. Polanski has a knack for casting women who are nervously exciting (Faye Dunaway in Chinatown is a blinking, twitching mess), and therefore dangerous to desire. He makes one insecure about longing for them.

And Deneuve is certainly nerve-racking. She is so physically flawless that she often seems half human: An anemic girl, she can barely lift up her arm, yet at the same time she is highly sensual, an ample, heavily breathing woman with more than a glint of carnality in her dreamily vacant eyes. Deneuve makes one feel the confusion of a corrupted child: She is an arrested adolescent who, like an anorexic, cannot face her womanliness without visions of perverse opulence and violence. Carol is the personification of sexual mystery -- she is what lurks beneath the orgasms of pleasure and pain. What Polanski finds intriguing and revolting is perceptively female, making Repulsion a woman's picture more than women may want to know, or care to face.

Barbara Payton: I Am Not Ashamed

I like screwed up women. Apologies. To many a friend's annoyance, I have sympathy for all those young Hollywood starlets and their myriad  "problems" clogging the gossip pages -- no matter how shallow and stupid they can be. And though women/girls like Britney, Paris and my beloved Lindsay and Sienna may sometimes court their internet tabloid appeal, and in some ways, deviate from the path of my hero Camille Paglia, and her revolutionary, pro-sex stance of the 1990's (don't ever apologize girls!), I'm sick of a square public and their finger wagging, scarlet letter-like judgment.  At the same time, I wish these girls would watch out for themselves. I wish for them a mentor, and perhaps, when things get really rough (as with Lindsay), a Scared Straight scenario in which an older starlet, a gal who really lived hard, to take one of these young ladies aside and just shake them. Shake them good. And who would I like to push Lindsay against a wall, sit her ass down and tell her what's what? Barbara Payton.

Sadly, Ms. Payton is no longer with us, but through her gripping 1963 memoir (most likely all ghost written, but who cares? I love those lurid half truths like Hedy Lamar's Ecstasy and Me) aptly titled I Am Not Ashamed, she lives on. I've written about Payton in the past but I always return to her when I think of our new crop of starlets, celebutants and pop tarts and their cushy lives compared to Ms. Payton's (it could be a hell of a lot worse girls!). And then simply staring out of my window -- pondering Hollywood Blvd. and the zombies who walk among us. Some beautiful, some hideous, some benign, some dangerous and some...Barbara. She, like many new celebrities, made a lot of mistakes -- a lot. But instead of rambling inane excuses, she laid it down in all her gory, runny makeup glory. No sex tape needed. And though I've heard much of what is written in I Am Not Ashamed is apocryphal, I'm also sure just as much is true -- and that so much more is left out! 

When it comes to train wrecks, few hold a candle to the beautiful, later ravaged, Payton. A gorgeous blonde who starred alongside James Cagney in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbyeand Lloyd Bridges in the impressive noir Trapped, her real life was not only stranger, but more dramatic and certainly seamier than any fiction she starred in.

Chronicled in I Am Not Ashamed (which has to be THE greatest star bio title EVER), Payton tells of a life so tumultuous, you can't believe she got out of it alive. Well, in actuality, she didn't. Affairs with actors to producers to shrinks to pimps; violent, troubled marriages to Tom Neal (star of the seminal, masterfully sleazy noir Detour who later served time for offing his third wife) and Franchot Tone (whom Neal memorably brawled with), shoplifting, prostitution (she was arrested in a bar on Sunset Boulevard -- so perfect) and loads of drinking -- the gal did it all.

In blunt prose that reveals a con-artist's take on Hollywood (this lady knew a wolf), Payton is all at once, funny, wise, vain, humble, pathetic and very, very educational. Even if some of this story is fabricated -- no matter -- the journey remains powerful. And though a star in the late '40s and '50s, her insights remain fresh today. Her book should be required reading for all aspiring actress' placing their dreams in this dirty, lonely town. Really, any actress halfway to the top should absorb these pages. Dig her introduction:

"I went out with every big male star in town. They wanted my body and I needed their names for success. There was my picture on the front pages of every paper in the country... Today I live in a rat infested apartment with not a bean to my name and I drink too much Rose wine. I don't like what the scale tells me. The little money I do accumulate to pay the rent comes from old residuals, poetry and favors to men. I love the Negro race and will accept money only from Negroes. Does it all sound depressing to you? Queasy? Well, I'm not ashamed."

Even after the book was published, Payton remained a handful -- knifed by a trick, drinking ever-heavily and finally, tragically dying at the tender age of 39 of heart and liver failure. A sad way to go for such a stunning star, who participated in, but was nevertheless swallowed up by that sometimes monster called Hollywood. Again, it's tragic but at times Payton angers me for chucking it (it's a tough business, but why did she throw it away so early? Did she have to sleaze up every situation?) but when I read: "Well, I could do all sorts of things, and to do them right, and it might look like they would lead to fame and fortune but... down, down, I skidded with nothing to hold onto." I return to empathy. In short, this town can suck. With this, you'll leave the read respecting her brassy, noir-like take on this seamy city. And if you've lived here long enough, you might possibly relate.

To my delight, Payton's hard-boiled tome was finally re-released a few years ago after languishing out of print. And though sometimes sparse, and questionably honest, with Payton omitting enough stories and explanations to frustrate, it's a brave page turner. It's no surprise the book was an inspiration to actress Jessica Lange while she prepared for her role in the re-make of The Postman Always Rings Twice. And as much as I'd love young celebrities to actually read, say, Sexual Personae, leading to their new-found study of Emily Dickinson, Edmund Spenser, Euripides and the critical canon of Harold Bloom, I'm thinking that's not gonna happen. So why not scare some of them straight with a blast of Barbara? Hmm...again, how can I send Lindsay a copy?

Note: For a more detailed and accurate look at Payton, check out John O' Dowd's biography "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story." 

Check out my picture and video page, Pretty Poison. And check out Barbara. Is this gorilla a representation of Tom Neal?

We Could Be Heroes

Walking out of Watchmen two weeks ago, I felt awestruck, overwhelmed, moved and filled with a sort of bleary-eyed, swoony amazement. This isn't your typical graphic novel adaptation; it's a movie that skillfully approaches the level of high art, a movie filled with ideas: political, cultural, emotional, and even a bit sentimental as we watch our history wash over us in a hard-core yet frequently beautiful dreamscape populated by flawed superheroes we grow to care about. And we do care about them, even the scumbags -- sometimes the scumbags more so (I always love the scumbags).

The picture creates this rare amalgamation of graphic novel adaptation, paranoid '70s thriller, and uncompromising film noir. This is a picture Alan J. Pakula, Sam Peckinpah and Edgar G. Ulmer would get behind. And a picture that Watchmen creator Alan Moore (who refuses to see the movie or any of his adaptations) should get behind. Here, as any Watchmen fan knows, the concept of superhero is not a simple one.

But the movie goes beyond Christopher Nolan's flawed, socially maladjusted Batman. Batman isn't raping Carla Gugino or killing women pregnant with his children (like the gleefully insane, macho degenerate, newest crush, Comedian), or falling in love with his rapist, or staring down a deranged dwarf in prison and breaking a thug's fingers (like my new neo-noir hero, Rorschach), or running off to Mars for contemplation. Not that Batman should be doing such things; he's an entirely different kind of superhero. But I felt challenged by the spandexed, masked, and fedora-wearing saints and sinners of Watchmen, just as I felt challenged by the infectiously inspiring chaos of the Joker of The Dark Knight. Life is dark, life is a mess -- how can one make any sense of it all? With existential dread and a strange sort of glee, the Watchmen understand this.

The idea that director Zack Snyder could get all of these ideas across and present such subversive misdeeds in nearly two hours and 40 minutes seems amazing in itself (not to mention his playlist: Hendrix, Dylan, and two -- count them, two -- Leonard Cohen songs, all music he chose himself -- and a brilliant, funny and weirdly poignant opening credit sequence). But based on the popularity of 300 (a movie I fervently defend as a work of blood-splattered art -- watch my violent exaltation here), the now third-time director was allowed his vision. And thank God, or the devil, or whichever idol you choose to worship. All of you who hated 300 and now love Watchmen should appreciate those Spartans a little more. We'd probably never have seen such a rebellious vision had it not been for that group of half-clothed, hollering warriors.

And somehow Snyder knows that we need to watch and feel such things; we need to yell, we need to feel angry, we need to live vicariously through warriors, flawed or otherwise. In our current state of the world, many of us are like Howard Beale on Network: as mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. If we can't scream it from the rooftops, or, in my case, tell all those assholes that I don't shine no fucking shoes no more (with "Atlantis" swelling behind me), we can live it through the grim musings of Rorschach. Snyder is tapping into both personal frustration and our country's collective consciousness of helplessness and anger with entertainment and innovation, and there's something revolutionary yet strangely lovely about that. As Bowie sang, and we all sometimes wish, "We could be heroes, just for one day." Defective, messed up, degenerate heroes, but heroes nonetheless.

Read more of my Watchmen mania at Hollywood Hitlist.

And please take a look at my picture and video page, Pretty Poison.

And...play it again. For you Mr. Snyder:

Three Obsessions: White Light, White Heat

For some reason I am obsessed with white. I guess my life is messy and I want it to sparkle. Or I'm sick to death of earth tones. Or I yearn for a white Dodge Challenger or another white Datsun 240 Z. Or I want an Andy Warhol wig. Or one of Robin Zander's pantsuits. Or one of Nico's. Or that fantastic Tony Montana suit which I'm certain would fit me. I'd love to walk around spitting: "Say goodnight to the bad guy" with that slinky, ominous Giorgio Moroder soundtrack following me wherever I go. I'd feel love for sure.

(But please, before all this absence of color talk, check out whatever else I'm thinking at Pretty Poison which isn't all white but could be very soon.)

As for now, three white obsessions...

1. White Dog (1982)

I saw this movie a few years ago at the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theater and it never left me. Directed by one of my favorite filmmakers, pulp philosopher Samuel Fuller, White Dog (adapted from a Romain Gary story, that was apparently true and involved a dog he owned with wife Jean Seberg) the picture is a tough, complicated, political and incredibly poignant blast of brilliance. The story is immediately involving – an adopted German shepherd that seems like a wonderful dog is tragically uncovered as something terrifying by its new owner (Kristy McNichol) when she discovers the poor thing has been trained to attack only black people. Rather than destroy the animal, she hires a wonderful, tough Paul Winfield and the always solid Burl Ives to de-program him. The picture was famously suppressed in America, but finally came out in a terrific Criterion edition late last year, which I reviewed last year for Entertainment Weekly. This charged, soulful movie is a must see. But don’t let it turn you off from white dogs. Unless that dog is French and named Baxter.

2. Jean Harlow in Bombshell (1933)

Oh how I love Jean Harlow. Her charming elocution challenged voice, her humor, her body, her femininity yet, down to earth, one-of-the-boys demeanor and her ability to wear…white. And that hair--- that sometimes white blonde. Before Marilyn, this  tough-talking but entirely sweet “Girl from Missouri” was the original platinum blonde -- and more importantly the original bombshell. What other actress has two films, Platinum Blonde and Bombshell named especially for them? Bombshell, directed by Victor Fleming, is a sensational bit of Hollywood satire with a game Harlow cheerfully making fun of her swaggering, sexy persona and the nutty people surrounding her orbit. And who can forget co-star Franchot Tone’s smitten declaration: “Your hair is like a field of silver daisies. I'd like to run barefoot  through your hair!” It doesn’t get any more white-blonde-tastic than this.

3. Wearing White

I find it fitting that white is my favorite color.  For one, it’s not actually a color, which means my favorite color is blue. But it is the shade of crayons, it is the paint on my walls and it is the fabric of my favorite jeans, dress, shirt and coat. For two, it’s a challenge to wear, a punishing color that reveals every dust-up of dirt that crossed your path, every stain of lipstick on your collar and every drop of blood that you dug out of your nerve addled cuticles.  It’s the ultimate unattainable, a color that makes you want to be clean and sane but makes you feel filthy and crazy. Forget black being the menacing color – true freaks wear white. Alex and his Droogs of A Clockwork Orange, the sociopaths of Funny Games, sailors, Colonel Sanders. But like Lana Turner’s ivory clad femme fatale of The Postman Always Rings Twice, they do wear it well. I recently wore all white out with a friend who held my arm as we crossed the street and all I could think was, it looks like he’s escorting an escaped madwoman from the Snake Pit to lunch. Or consorting with the milkman, which is a lot nicer. I love wearing white because for about two hours in the day, I have conjured my inner clean freak  -- a Joan Crawford dying to emerge, something I wish, mess that I am, would see the light of day more often. After those two hours of whiteness, I’m usually left angry, staring at the eyeliner smudge on my shirt, and glowering to myself: “I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at the dirt!” Nevertheless, here I am, happy and free and locked in my apartment wearing the “color” of self obsession -- white. So it’s fitting I show it. I think those jeans got dirty about two minutes after this video was taken.

Who's Afraid of Angelina Jolie?

Angelina Jolie is on the Best Actress nomination roll for this year's Oscars and has shown tremendous grace regarding the honor: "[It is] a privilege beyond any expectation. Working with Clint Eastwood [on Changeling] was a reward in itself that will last me a lifetime. It has been an exceptional year for acting, and I am honored to be in the company of these talented actors whose performances all deserve this recognition."

I'm sure she meant it regarding Clint, but all that jazz about the other actresses? Come now, Angie. I would roll my eyes, but I like you too much. Though your philanthropy, growing brood of children, and star relationship with another one of this year's Oscar nominees, Brad Pitt (for his impressive work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has made you so larger than life, many viewers unfortunately have a hard time separating your movie star/female Bono image from your on-screen performances, you will always be my loony Lisa. Not so with others -- and that's unfortunate, since Jolie has the range, the charisma and the, at times, weird gorgeousness that makes her so compelling. Even in Wanted, in which she skulks around all assassin sexy (not everyone can do that!) -- so I ask seriously: why not a nomination for that movie? It was one of last year's best action pictures? (I know, I ask for too much.)

But in spite of her new-found status as a pouty-lipped sex bomb Mother Theresa, I spy the old Angelina lurking underneath (again, see Wanted) and I like it. Particularly in moments like when Anne Hathaway won the forgettable Critics Choice Award for Rachel Getting Married, and gushed onstage with her goody-goody-gosh-golly-gee-how-did-I-get-here act. Jolie stared her down with as much condescending wickedness as Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. I know many of you were turned off by her smirk, but I swelled with full-on, "Hell yes! Hail to the bad girl!" pride.

It also occurred to me later that Hathaway's self-absorbed, drug-addicted, younger-sister character in Rachel Getting Married (for which she is also nominated for an Oscar this year) was such a perfect Jolie role, it's a shame she didn't take Anne's place. Jolie is such an expert at chewing up the scenery like a hungry lioness -- think of her small part in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, in which the very sight of her wry smile, androgynous sexuality and eye patch caused star Gwyneth Paltrow to almost vanish into thin air -- that to have seen her tripping around that wedding, crashing into trees, tearing into her mother, sexing it up in the basement, and hollering at the musicians to shut the hell up would have been a thing of rage-fueled, self-consumed beauty. And that toast. Think of how uncomfortable and yet, strangely turned on the wedding party would have been by this girl who spouts about re-hab (it's all about her!) but might possibly burn the house down if you don't fucking listen!

Sure, the balance would have been offset because we'd either openly (or secretly -- but the secret ones are suckers) side with her the whole time. We (I, anyway) would have cheered for Jolie adding more cruel dimension to her character. For instance, you know she would have taken all of those plates during that dishwasher loading moment and smashed them to pieces out of protest for the sheer dorky squareness of that competition. With La Jolie, the performance would have been more interesting and dazzling. Go ahead, Rachel fans, scream at me all you want, but I stand by Jolie being the ultimate wedding crasher.

Not that Jolie's work in Changeling isn't stellar -- it is. She's grown up. And she deserves her nomination. But I miss her earlier work, the crazy-movie-star deliciousness of the "take one fucking step closer and I'll jam this in my aorta" role of Lisa in Girl, Interrupted.Jolie won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2000 for that career-defining performance, striding onstage all gorgeous Vampira weirdo, proclaiming her love for her brother and then quite nearly mashing on him, making the ceremony interesting again, for once. And, on top of that, the win was completely deserved. As the female Randle P. McMurphy of the girly cuckoo's nest, Jolie's lanky troublemaker/sex pot ruled the roost in an institution filled with anorexics, compulsive liars and sensitive types like little Winona Ryder's Susanna Kaysen. Blasting through the movie with the kind of feral intensity and wit of a Nicholson or De Niro, Jolie single-handedly stole the movie from both star Ryder and the film's director, James Mangold, earning, again, every inch of that Best Supporting Actress statue. A movie star was born.

And a movie star she remains, albeit one who causes people a surprising amount of extra uneasiness. She suffers from her own version of the Madonna-whore complex, a sort of St. Angelina/man-eating home wrecker syndrome. So many want to relate to their screen idols, and she makes it damn near impossible. But I love her for it. Though totally modern with her tattooed, ex-blood-vial-wearing, and current save-the-children stance, she manages to be decidedly old school Hollywood. A knife loving Ava Gardner or a bi-sexual Liz Taylor of our time. Now all she needs is that great Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf role and her inner bad girl will have matured and bettered and grown meaner with age. I want an older Lisa-turned-Martha declaring to George: "I swear if you existed I'd divorce you." And then, why not? Throw in one of her greatest lines from Girl, Interrupted: "Some advice, OK? Just don't point your fucking finger at crazy people!" Exactly. Who's Afraid of Angelina Jolie? Many, I think. And thank goodness. Or badness. Whichever alpha omega realm you'd care to see Jolie embody.  

tweaked and extended from my MSN column Hollywood Hitlist.

Check out more at Pretty Poison: Letters from L.A.

It's Always Trouble: Harold and Maude

This one is for that stupid thing called Valentine's Day: one of my favorite movies about love, Harold and Maude.

Some films become such a cult phenomenon that, through time, increased popularity and critical appreciation, you wonder if they should be categorized as bona fide cult films anymore. If they, for instance, make AFI's top 100 greatest comedies, ranked in between My Man Godfrey and Manhattan, do they lose their (pardon the term) quirky appeal? When it comes to Hal Ashby's charming, funny, poignant, death-obsessed-yet-life-affirming Harold and Maude, the answer is no, gloriously no. The cult still stands.

The next time the picture plays your local revival house, go see for yourself. The beloved movie still draws its own special audience, not an obvious one, not one dressed in costumes or yelling lines back at the screen, but a crowd of fans carrying a personal association with the picture. I once watched the movie in Portland, Ore., sitting next to a guy who cried his eyes out and cheered when Harold breaks the fourth wall (perhaps one of the most satisfying camera addressing moments in all of cinema). When the picture was over, I saw the broken up fella climb into his car -- a dog-catching truck. Though I'll see it solo, many bring friends, dates, neighbors, whomever, partially to watch a unique movie, partially to show a side of oneself, and partially to test a friend or potential boyfriend/girlfriend (in my case anyway). It's hard not to think that if someone close to you doesn't like Harold and Maude, then they might not like you.

But a lot of people didn't appreciate the movie when it was first released. Viewers were weirded out, many critics didn't like it, and the studio was, no doubt, frightful of a May-December romance involving not just an older woman but an old older woman. And then there are those modern audiences that find it all so corny, hippie dippy hokum about flowers and peace and living life to the fullest. I never understand this. Since Ashby is such a sincere filmmaker, I can't read one false sentiment in one frame of this movie (and, honestly, when I think of Ashby's untimely death -- why not try to live life to its fullest?). Also, so many of the picture's moving moments aren't what is said, but what is filmed: Harold drinking an Orange Crush in a car wash, Harold waiting nervously in an emergency room, Maude with that yellow umbrella, Harold sticking his head out of the converted hearse window and letting the wind run through his hair. Ashby sees the beauty in the young, awkward and quiet, and the old, affirmative and loud, and it is, again, just so beautiful.

I first took in my shyer Holden Caulfield-esque boyfriend Bud Cort as Harold, a wealthy, death-fixated 20-year-old who haunts funerals, on VHS as a girl. I watched it so many times that I didn’t bother to return the video (sorry American Family Video).  Having once poured a gruesome amount of ketchup all over myself, and laid out on the living room floor for an hour, “dead,” while my mother stepped over me to grab the vacuum cleaner, I could relate (I was five). I also pulled the Christmas tree on myself one year, after making my mother an alleged toy boat out of tampons and a paper towel roll (I was six; cut me some slack; and the presents were tossed -- I was upset). So, when Harold converts his nifty little sports car into a hearse and taxes his droll mother (Vivian Pickles) with such fantastic, elaborately staged fake suicide attempts, I was supremely impressed.

And I adored Ruth Gordon as Maude, the 79-year-old free spirit who, like an elder screwball heroine, drives any car she sees, saves sick trees and, most importantly, believes in living. I firmly believe in trying out your supposed opposite not only because (as they say) "opposites attract," but because you never know if you've actually found your twin. Harold and Maude have something in common (a death fixation), but it's deeper, more complicated. When they venture past funerals and both revel in life, their differences complement one another and, in a unique way, mirror each other. The time is now, especially when one will soon end up cold, dead on a slab. So, fall in love. Fall in love hard and fall in love fast and fall in love with the wrong person. If they love you back, it's always worth it. Down with the consternation of society!

And that could have been that, a picture created merely to shake viewers up with a coupling one never sees in pictures, much less in real life. But that soulful humanist Ashby (who on certain days, weeks, months, is one of my favorite filmmakers with his other perfect movies like The Landlord, The Last Detail, Coming Home, Shampoo and Being There) showed that he had more on his mind by crafting a small masterpiece that blends black comedy with genuine  emotion without feeling cloying. And it's all so wonderfully acted, exquisitely filmed, brilliantly framed and edited (Wes Anderson had to have studied this movie) and beautifully scored (with now classic songs written and performed by Cat Stevens), that, no matter how many times I see it, I cannot resist. Yes it's about dying, but it's one of the sweetest, most life-affirming movies you'll ever see about death. And if you're alone on Valentine's Day, it might play even better.

Below is one of cinema's most beautiful drives. If you haven't seen the movie, don't watch, but surely you know the end...