Sunset Gun

Rage, Roman and Repulsion

Upon hearing the news of Roman Polanski's arrest Sunday, and after arguing, discussing and thinking about the horribly mishandled case, especially by the late Judge Laurence Rittenband, and of course, the wrongful actions of Polanski towards young Samantha Geimer in 1977, I posted my take on Polanski's brilliant Repulsion at the Huffington Post. From Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, Tess, Death and the Maiden, Bitter Moon and other pictures, I've always contended that Polanski has depicted women with complication, humanity, ugliness and most important, empathy. Polanski is an artist, an acute observer of life's darkness and absurdities on the level of Dostoevsky or Nietzsche. I write this not to defend statutory rape, I write this to study the visions of a troubled, talented human being, a human being who has gone through real horror himself and a human being who also happens to be one of the greatest filmmakers alive.

But before discussing Repulsion, I wrote this, very briefly at the Huffington Post: "I'm not going to go into my Roman Polanski defense. I've been doing this all morning, nearly ranting and raving over my views on the matter, and have grown frustrated and depressed. But in short, I'm not happy about his arrest. So, I would rather discuss one of his greatest pictures, a brilliant portrait of female sadness, alienation, sexual neurosis turned to psychosis. A movie all women should watch -- his masterpiece Repulsion."

This caused a flurry of outraged comments. Though many readers appreciated my essay, many slammed me for what they thought read as a defense of Polanski through his movies, Repulsion in particular. The Washington City Paper's blogger The Sexist wrote: "Congratulations, the Huffington Post’s Kim Morgan:You win the prize of penning the most disgusting defense of Polanski I’ve read to date!"

Well if I get a prize, I'll hand a gold statue to The Post News blogger who wrote a bizarre, creepy take on my piece: "Kim Morgan claims she’s setting aside her arguments for the right to rape children, and instead does some film criticism of Repulsion in an effort to suggest that Polanski can’t be a rapist, because he understands women , and their dark desires -- hint, hint, his 13-year-old victim was asking for it when she cried and said no and begged to go home.  Polanski knows women better than they know themselves, she says.  He knows, apparently, that 13-year-olds are dying to be raped, even if they continue to say no after the fact by pressing charges... Morgan’s insinuation that rape is some secret desire of women everywhere, and especially of junior high school girls."

I'm not sure how to respond to this this Andrea Dworkin-style foaming of the mouth, other than, I'm happy that she actually dug into my piece this deeply and at least saw some of the dual desires of women. Or, rather, what she views what I see. Even if she erroneously believes I'm saying Polanski can't be a rapist, because he understands women. And even if she thinks I'm a sick fuck. 

And here from, Wet Asphalt: "Frankly, this argument is the most blatant example of starfucking to be found and that Repulsion is in fact a piece of shit has no more bearing on the argument than does the fact that Chinatown is a masterpiece. The ONLY reason a 'film and culture' writer like Kim Morgan would be 'ranting and raving' at all about anything related to this case is because Roman Polanski is a famous person and Kim Morgan is a starfucker."  Yeah. I've got no response to that one.

Though I understand the sensitivity and complexity of the matter, I find some of the hysteria bordering on insane. The emails I've received range from polite disagreement to articulatete salvos, to bizarre wishes that I should be or had been raped for my current defense of Polanski. Since I was 13 many years ago, and a woman myself, it's interesting to me that defenders of rape don't stop to think that perhaps, I might actually know a thing or two about such matters.

My stance has been that I believe the case should have moved along as originally settled by all parties, and not turned into the witch hunt it has become. Even, Roger Gunson, the Assistant DA who led the original prosecution, has expressed his problems with Judge Rittenband's conduct and stated that "under those circumstances" he wasn't surprised that Polanski fled. And I think that, for the sake of Samantha Geimer, this should have been laid to rest decades ago.

I'm re-running my piece on Repulsion, a movie I have deep, personal feelings for, again (I've written about it many times here) and not to defend the man's original actions, but to explicate his art and empathetic depiction of women. Here, again, Repulsion.

Erotic Rotting Rabit:

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, Repulsionis 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 lovesdoing 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.

You Have 30 Seconds To Leave The Theater: I Stand Alone

I haved missed Gaspar Noé.

The French enfant terrible who helmed one of the greatest pictures of the 1990’s, I Stand Alone, and who, with Irreversible, placed Monica Bellucci in a situation that angered even those OK with Susan George’s episode in Straw Dogs, had been absent from the screen far too long. Yes, he made a short for the sexually explicit Destricted project, and yes there are the condom commercials from years back, but Mr. Noé needed another full length feature under his (whipping) belt. To say I'm greatly anticipating his newest, Enter the Void would be an understatement.

The director, heavily influenced by '70s cinema, William Castle shock-a-tude, pornography, Godard, Céline, Nietzsche and (as I have argued, whether he knows this or not), even Thomas Hardy, was the great Gallic hope for a new generation of savage filmmaking. Unlike some current filmmakers who traffic in mere shock, or art house directors striking a transgressive pose, Noé is a genuine artist, but unpretentious -- a man who loves nothing more than upsetting his audience (or, in the case of Irreversible, making some faint), while injecting his screaming compositions with substantive thought, intelligence and philosophy.

So hearing that Noé will be releasing a new Noé vision got me excited, and in the mood to re-visit his debut blast of brilliance, over ten years later, 1998’s I Stand Alone.  This is the movie that caused a daily critic to walk out during the screening I attended, this is the movie that bonded me with my sister (long story), and this is the film that I told a colleague to see on a date. That advice didn’t work out so well.

When first reviewing the blisteringly brilliant picture, I quoted an anecdote by director Paul Schrader. Schrader said:

“I had an interesting lunch recently with a French director named Gaspar Noé who wanted to do a film with me, something with violence and pornography and all that. And I said to him, 'I don't think anyone's shockable anymore.'"

Now I admire, sometimes revere Paul Schrader, and I would probably agree with him at that moment, but with I Stand Alone (and the latter Irreversible) he was positively wrong.  For Noé had not only made one of the most shocking pictures in decades, but also one of the most stylistically impressive, emotionally challenging, thematically intimidating, astoundingly touching and, in its own warped way, weirdly funny. I Stand Alone, or Seul Contre Tous (Alone Against All) is a hair grabber that drags you around the muck and pushes your face into its world so far that -- and this is rare with such hard cinema -- you’ll experience moments of such bizarre, hideous beauty that you’re left significantly moved. It attacks one's senses with such transgressive power that by its end, one feels flustered, simultaneously full and empty. I Stand Alone rattles in your brain long after the movie's disquieting end. 

As I mentioned before, with nods to Céline, Dostoevsky, Schrader, Godard and even William Castle, I Stand Alone chronicles, as the film's titles claim, the "tragedy of a jobless butcher struggling to survive in the bowels of his nation." As the picture opens, the nameless butcher's entire life is inventively, humorously revealed via a slideshow. It describes how a French World War II orphan became a butcher, and is sent to prison after stabbing a guy he thought raped his daughter. The movie jettisons us to 1980 and into the head of said butcher (embodied magnificently by Philippe Nahon), who, now released from prison, is living an emasculated life with his pregnant girlfriend and her obtrusive mother in a depressing housing tract in France. His current domestic predicament only escalates his alienation and rage, feelings made clear in angry interior monologues that grow more bile-ridden as the film continues (the man, like the film, isn't subtle). When his refusal (or inability) to smile causes him to lose a job at a supermarket deli (have we felt this? I sure have), the butcher becomes a night watchman at a home for the elderly, where in one stirring moment, he assists a woman's euthanization. Afterwards, he visits a porn theater and, during a hardcore penetration close-up, he muses inwardly, "If you're a cock, you gotta stay hard to be respected; [otherwise] your only role and purpose is to be reamed." (Oh Gaspar, you're such a romantic! Sigh).

Soon after, he argues bitterly with his mistress and, in one of the film's most brutal moments, beats her, kicking her pregnant stomach (this is when the aforementioned female critic left the theater). This sick underbelly we have witnessed with amusement and detachment has, now, in fact been literally reamed. And it is at this point, that the film's existential loathing gives us our first challenge: The man we felt immediate sympathy for, the cantankerous oldster who has made us laugh with his stark philosophical observations, has finally committed a sickening act of violence. And he doesn't regret it. Confronting his modern audience, hardened from years of on-screen violence, Noé essentially asks: How do you like your underground hero now? Are you still cheering him on?

Somehow, in many ways, we are -- which points to the film's mind spinning, confusing power. With dwindling money, no job prospects and a gun, the butcher grows increasingly disgruntled over everything -- class, race, love, sexuality -- and his thoughts become both clear-headed and garbled. In the hands of a more simplistic filmmaker, this could be tedious or predictable. Noé , however, is not here just to shock. Like Taxi Driver, I Stand Alone represents a national reflection, here it’s France entering the 1980’s, personifying such unease with an unrelenting, furious protagonist. And Noé crafts a film that is so aesthetically violent--sharp gunshot sounds are used as jarring, disarming tangents, illustrating a shift in scenery or thought--that it’s surprising to realize just how little blood is actually shed onscreen. The movie deals almost entirely in thoughts of violence, rather than acts. The butcher rattles on about this or that problem, but mostly remains stuck in states of fantasy or inertia.  But he is so potently angry and the filmmaking so unyieldingly ferocious, it simply feels violent.

And Noé never slips once in this assault, even testing the viewer’s typical film sensibilities. In the picture's most infamous moment, a title card flashes on screen and cautions: “You Have 30 Seconds to Leave the Cinema.” It's a bold move, one filled with humor and horror (one part Godard, one part Castle), and despite the shocking images and words that come before it, Noé manages to back up that warning with a sequence that sent my emotions into a tailspin of sadness, distress and an unsettling amount of confusing compassion (you just have to see the ending).  I Stand Alone is true savage cinema -- a grim, exciting, nerve-wracking work of art that doesn’t just stick in your brain, but finds a way to get all five fingers up there too. Seul Contre Tous? Sous le soleil exactement, Mr. Noé.

Actress, Interrupted: Frances

 

Oh. Frances Farmer. She died 30 years ago today and for those of us who love cinema, the power of performance and all those brave, talented, intelligent "bad girls" who will not go gently into that good night -- we should feel a pang of sadness. And frustration. Deep frustration, particularly regarding the movie version of her life. Frances. Based on how many times I've watched the picture, I'm beginning to believe I harbor some kind of frustration fetish. I've viewed the movie more than necessary, in spite of its flaws and, finally had to concede that, even with Jessica Lange's genius, kick-out-the-jams-motherfucker performance, the movie is not going to change through time. I'm never going to be happy with how it fully depicts Frances Farmer, I'm never going to accept its romantic side story, and I'm never going to know the truth anyway (whatever that is), so why be frustrated? See, the frustration turns into questioning frustration. Which is...frustrating. 

But my god, how I love when Jessica Lange loses her composure and understandably smacks that bitchy hairdresser ('Your hair's so thin, you're gonna lose it if you're not careful.") in the face. And the intense power and pain I feel when she screams "You got no fucking right!" as the police break into her room, wake her up naked, and drag her out of the Knickerbocker Hotel. That hotel isn't far from my apartment and every time I pass by, I not only think of Frances, but of Jessica spitting out her rightful invective. That moment comes to me with such immediacy that I've uttered "You got no fucking right!" spontaneously, perhaps disturbingly, aloud. But this is my instinctive duty as a fellow native Seattleite. For some of us hailing from the soggy, boggy PNW, Frances is our girl, and not just our original riot girl who will one day get her revenge (god bless you Kurt Cobain), but our patron saint of "don't fuck with me fellas!"  -- and the tragic aftermath that kind of behavior creates. Alas, no Pepsi for her.

And Jessica Lange gets this. Her ferocious, fearless beauty saved what could have been yet another studio mangling of the life and legend of a notorious woman. Miss Lange reminds viewers that once upon a time there was this actress named Frances Farmer, a gifted but troubled actress from the 1930s who was not just crazy, but superb. And was she even crazy? Certainly no more, and probably a lot less, than many a young, intelligent woman struggling in the often alienating business of show. Frances Farmer had a soul, natural born talent, a real, thinking, searching brain, an outspoken temper, inner demons and pure beauty. You're not allowed to have all of those things at once.

And these elements are presented, though not as skillfully or as layered as they should have been. A chance to really tell her story, a tale straight from Nathaniel West or Horace McCoy, was clearly at hand when the film was conceived (read Farmer's autobiography "Will There Really Be a Morning?"--  never mind its questionable veracity, read it -- and you can see why), but through script problems, studio requests, and one strange association with the conspiracy-obsessed ex-convict and probable liar Stewart Jacobson (played in the film as "Harry York" by Sam Shepard), Frances veers into fantasy -- a fantasy Frances Farmer would not have appreciated.

Many fine films based on real lives or events stray from facts, add characters, or reinvent history (JFK and Nixon are supreme examples. Inglourious Basterds, brilliantly creates its own insane, inspired, collage mixed tape), but that's not what makes Frances suffer. It's more that the movie, though lovely period detail and certainly good, isn't entirely focused, and so never creates a strong case about just why Farmer had to endure such torment -- Harry York is an easy character to throw in. And as harrowing as many scenes play out, it also soft-pedals the core story -- about one woman's fight against both the indignities of Hollywood and the abuse of the mental profession. What happened to Frances Farmer is an abomination, and not because we'd never see her again shine as an actress but because her life was perversely and hideously stolen from her.

But in the hands of Lange, Frances is thoroughly watchable even when becoming an almost traumatizing experience. Lange not only looks like Farmer, but also embodies everything we've ever read about the talented star: The understandable drinking (who didn't tear it up in Hollywood?), the rage (how many stars were under studio control? Farmer was just too strong-willed to take it), and the desperation to find freedom. But the powers that be -- Mother, Hollywood, and the Mental Institution -- helped keep this intelligent woman from getting healthy and furthering her art -- and she had so much to give. Though much of Frances Farmer's biography is speculative (including the book "Shadowland"), I'm not with those who believe she deserved to be incarcerated. She was a drunk, she was hard to work with, she was, to some, really crazy. So what? Some even think her stay in the mental ward has been over-dramatized. I'm not certain.  My unique, beautiful great-grandmother was sent to the literal Cuckoo's Nest (the State Institution in Salem, Oregon) at an early age and she died there. She should have never been in that awful, stinking place. Even sadder, she was stuck in that snake pit so long, that when anyone realized she was fine to leave, she chose to stay. She had all but forgotten the past and knew no other life.

These things happen to "different" women. And like the young ones who exhibit their so-called "eccentric" free-thinking thoughts, Frances would both be ostracized and praised for her precociousness. The picture begins in 1931 when a 16-year-old Farmer writes a high school essay entitled "God Dies" (At 16? In 1931? How fucking great is that?). This is just the first of many cases where she enrages Seattle's moral majority, who later branded her a communist (her trip to Russia doesn't help). A talented stage actress in college, Farmer lands in Hollywood, where she declares "I'm not a glamour girl." Nevertheless, she marries a young actor and makes movies (mostly to her chagrin), including Howard Hawks' Come and Get It (a film she was proud of, despite what this movie wants us to believe).

Exasperated with Hollywood, Farmer ventures to New York and finds a home in the Group Theater, and (to her downfall) has a torrid affair with the married playwright Clifford Odets. After he harshly ditches her, she returns to Hollywood and falls into the legendary trouble that would slam her in horrifying mental institutions -- where she underwent experimental medication, shock treatments, rape, disgusting facilities, and finally (and this is speculative) a lobotomy until her release in 1950.

Lange carries us through this hell with brilliance, but Frances decides to shift the focus of the relationship with Farmer's deranged mother (perfectly played by Kim Stanley) to the more romantic overtures of Harry York. Lange and Shepard have wonderful chemistry, and he's charming, but the poetic license here bothers me. According to the film, York tried to reach out to Farmer after her inconceivably unfair and colorful court appearance (well-documented in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon in which we learn Farmer wrote her profession down as "cocksucker" -- thankfully we see that in the movie as well). 

Nice thought, but I'd rather see the entire courtroom dramas played out in their ball-busting, gory detail. Frances kicking and screaming in her sensible, disheveled suit is as iconic to me as Marilyn Monroe standing on the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. The hair, the cigarette, the smirk -- this is some woman, goddammit. I want more of her. Not some guy attempting to save the damsel in distress. But according to Frances, York was responsible for Farmer's first escape from the sanitarium and the reason she was presentable for a hearing that excused from her first asylum (the film contends Harry sneaks into her ward and convinces a doctor to inject her with a drug that would make her more lucid). He also asked her hand in marriage when she was under the legal guardianship of her mother, and he loved her until the end of her days.

Oh, life is but a dream but... bitch, please. I would burn down every rotten, abusive, mismanaged mental institution to bust Frances Farmer out of the cuckoo's nest. I understand the romantic impulse. But the idea that, despite everything written to the contrary -- Farmer may have had a chance at a decent life had she just ran away with this Prince Charming is an ill-conceived cinematic fantasy, and an insult to Farmer's memory.

It's the ultimate irony that the story of "the bad girl of West Seattle," the troubled non-conformist, short lived Hollywood star who rarely censored her thoughts, was, even after death, under the control of a major studio who deemed her real life too depressing. As director Graeme Clifford states in the commentary on the DVD, you don't want to "nickel and dime the audience with facts." Pity. Farmer's "facts" were never boring. And the movie isn't either thanks to Miss Lange. Had she been given a little more control, or maybe had she been allowed to smack Stewart Jacobson in the mouth, hell even the hairdresser (without getting arrested) she could have directed this film -- she's the picture's real auteur.

They're Gonna Make A Big Star Out of Me

Vince Vaughn loves Buck Owens. He likes Gram Parsons and the Burrito Brothers. He reveres the work of Robert Plant with Alison Krauss. He has stories about George Jones and Merle Haggard – current stories. He's hung with Willie Nelson. And he took the time to talk about all of this rather than simply discuss his newest movie, Couple's Retreat. 

I've been a Vince Vaughn booster since his beginnings, and even defend him in Psycho, so I was more than happy to learn that this tall glass of water isn't just one of the most talented and funniest actors working, he also has incredibly good taste in music  -- and not just good taste but an impressive and extensive knowledge of music. And he thinks about it, he makes historical connections, he’s moved by it.

Here was our exchange while he was promoting his movie, all started from a reporter’s question about a scene involving an uptight British guy playing Guitar Hero, and what the actors were listening to while filming. I love that he waxed so rhapsodic about such great music -- some of my favorite music. It makes one feel better about the world. Vince, acting naturally:

Vaughn:  A lot of the English guys really like country music or old blues music, like The Stones always liked Buck Owens and they liked all the old blues singers. I always thought when English bands sang, you'd hear them talk and they sound very English and then they'd sing about honky-tonk. I always thought that there was a fascination on their end with cowboys and that. So I thought it was a funny backdrop, that it'd be unexpected to put him there. Then just with the dialogue we'd own that motif and Joseph Campbell's, like, "The Writer's Journey" or any sort of mythology type of quest. So this movie actually has two different structures.

Just for us, on the day on the set we just started having fun, saying, "Let’s really embrace this and make it really western like a gunfight because it's just ridiculous because it's 'Guitar Hero'. Lets really make it mythological –' like this is an unbelievable honesty that we're about go for'."

Morgan: I don't think I've heard anyone go from Buck Owens to Joseph Campbell.

Vaughn: Buck was one of my favorites... I think that a lot of people's musical history, like she mentioned, starts with Led Zeppelin and The Stones. To me, the thing that I liked about the tour that Robert Plant did with Alison Krauss was that he really went out of his way to talk about American roots music. They were trying to sound like the old Appalachian singers and a lot of the blues singers and that's really who their idols were. What was wonderful about that show is that they played a lot of those Led Zeppelin songs Appalachian style. It was really, really beautiful. I can't listen to a lot of the modern stuff because I've been so exposed to and so in love with a lot of the older storytellers and I've always said that I think that music is the highest art form.

Music can take you the farthest and the fastest emotionally. There's sculpture, there's painting, there's acting, all these wonderful things -- but sound and song. You can be driving your car and that song comes on and you're like in tears depending on what it is. I think there's something that's happen in music, probably in all things, where when Buck or Johnny Cash, these guys, [when they] were coming up there weren't albums. Like, "Hey, I have to make a record. I'm gonna do this stuff." They [all] really had some difficult life experiences. They were telling the stories of their lives through music.

[And] there was no end game necessarily. And then of course, with Elvis and people started buying phonographs in order to listen to those records and it became a whole different thing. And now again, music is back to the '50's where it's singles. There's no longer albums. You buy one song, which is like what the '50's used to be...But like the murals in Belfast, in those neighborhoods, they would paint about the conflicts that they've gone through, both the Protestants and the Catholics. That was political. That came out of, like, "People were shooting my family and I want people to know that this isn't right." [Much like] a lot of those slave songs or plantation songs. [And] lBuck was from Texas – He ended up in Bakersfield but he came from Texas. Sherman, Texas is where he's from. Like "The Grapes of Wrath," they migrated for work and he ended up in Bakersfield.

Morgan: And created their sound.

Vaughn: Him and Merle Haggard. Merle Haggard is the only person in The Country Music Hall of Fame who was born and raised in California which is Bakersfield.

Morgan: He's still alive, too.

Vaughn: He is still alive. I heard a rumor that George Jones asked him to move next door to him and I think that would be interesting [Yes that would be interesting]. I loved George. He was great. But their songs came out of their life experiences and so there was such depth to them that it was unbelievable... I won't name some of the people that you have mentioned in those bands and all they want to talk about is Merle and Buck and a lot of the Chicago blues artists which was that early Chess Record stuff.

I think Chuck Berry punched Keith Richards the first time he met him, like, 'That's for stealing my licks –' or something like that…But when you hear that stuff and a lot of people just really haven't heard a lot of the old stuff, when you hear the other stuff I kind of go, 'God, it kind of sounds like this.' But what I think always made the English bands better than a lot of the American bands was that they really started with where the music began. That's who they were trying to sound like. So when you start to look at [classic rock] bands, a lot of the times the band that they'll mention are more the English bands because they were really trying to sound like the Bakersfield sound.

Morgan: Gram Parsons...  

Vaughn: Gram Parsons and the Burrito Brothers.

Morgan: Have you thought of doing a music biopic? You know a lot about it.

Vaughn: I would play the guy in the front row who goes like this [starts clapping]... [He ends the interview with this] I'll tell you, Willie Nelson said this to me. He said, "What is the world's shortest fairy tale?" I said, "What?" He said, "A man asks him his sweetheart to marry him. She says no and they live happily ever after." [Vince laughs happily. This makes me happy. And we didn't even get to his take on Waylon Jennings].

There was so much more I wanted to ask him about music. I didn't query, but Vince has to own a Nudie suit. If he does, he should wear it proudly.

71 Année Érotique: Don't Deliver Us From Evil

Suffering a wicked deadline, and "Jennifer's Body" to disapoint, I'm dipping into the archives of evil with a better "Body'"-- the dramatically titled, "Don't Deliver Us From Evil." A 1971 French picture that's the true blue (and blood red) of bad girl movies. And one so artistic, so subversive, so poignant, so perverse so...freakishly lovable that my ardor will never wane.

Thank heaven for evil teenage girls. Or rather, complicated teenage girls. A sub-genre of cinema I'm especially fond of, I find myself continually returning to all those sexy, young, bad girls with a certain amount of personal wonder. Why, for instance, do I love Tuesday Weld in Pretty Poison so much? Or Pattty McCormack's foot stomping brilliance from The Bad Seed? Or all those other precocious teens -- the grumpy girls from Ghost World, the swoony swans of My Summer of Love, the suicidal virgins, the Jolie/Frances amalgamation of Girl, Interrupted, those murderous heavenly creatures, that smirky, Humbert temptress Lolita, that little girl who lived down the lane...and more. I see something in myself in these young ones, of course (many women do), and I admire their individualism, I'm empathetic to their struggles, even if unhealthy and tragic. After all, as Black Snake Moan professed, it's hard out there for a nymph.

Proof positive lies in one of my favorite "evil" girl movies, Don't Deliver Us From Evil, a potent dose of pretty poison presented in a wonderfully deceiving package. Never released in the United States and "banned" for blasphemy, the story of two teenage convent girls who "dedicate ourselves to Satan" could have been some dippy horror movie -- a T&A fest with demons and multiple slayings and loads of sex. It could have been one of those '70s horror films that make you run for the shower directly upon watching because even your soul feels soiled (which isn't always a terrible thing).

But that's not what Don't Deliver Us From Evil is attempting. Really about the obsessive nature of female friendship, of girls suffering a tedious, square world filled with hypocrisy and becoming hopped up by literature and the forbidden and hellfire and all the stuff that's so intense when you're 15, the movie is a fiendish paean to the freaky bad girl -- girls who, when staring into that bland void would rather, quite literally, burn out than fade away.

Inspired by the original Heavenly Creatures -- Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme -- two girls whose close friendship resulted in murder, Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal (if only Serge Gainsbourg would have written their theme song) studies a female bond that twists into Sapphic love, sadism and death. More subversive than Heavenly Creatures, first time director Joel Sera considers blasphemous ideas and sequences with heroines who spit out their Communion wafers like bubble-gum and glare at their Priests while giddily spying on creepy Nuns making out in locked rooms. Heavenly? What, pray tell is that?

Gorgeous raven-haired Anne (Jeanne Goupi -- who represent ssullen, narcissistic, teen power in all its selfish glory) and her best friend Lore (Catherine Wagener -- the shyer of the duo), are two beautiful but curious girls marking their time at Catholic School by sneaking into bed with each other and reading erotic literature under the sheets. And as mentioned, they're especially fascinated by evil, which, isn't that strange considering their Catholic environment. But when they renounce Jesus Christ and all his works to become baby brides of Satan, they one-up the typical Catholic schoolgirl sacrilegious naughtiness.

On Summer break, the girls stick together, staying at Anne's parents home while her family is conveniently away. They ride bikes and flit around in those short cotton summer dresses every guy wishes for when the sun comes out and they laugh -- they laugh a lot. Considering that they're Satanists, the girls are a lovely pair of Beelzebub budies. Thank goodness they lived in the early 1970s. No manic panic hair, no PVC mini-skirts, no cheap fetish boots and tired, sullen expressions for these best friends. These girls are enjoying their evil. So much that they put together a crafty, dainty black mass in an abandoned chapel (you can feel fellow bad girl Martha Stewart heartily nodding her head in approval). With the dim groundskeeper serving as "Priest," they seal their Satanic deal and drive the man nuts while sitting in the rowboat in the thick of night -- he can see through their cotton Communion gear.

Which is their intention -- the girls get off on torturing men. Not in an overtly predatory, sexual way (they seem to hate men and only love each other), but with abject, albeit adorable sadism (yes, I really mean adorable sadism). But like all cheek pinching evil, these Bad Seeds push it too far. First they tease a cow herder leading to the near rape of Lore (Rhoda Penmark would never let that happen, even with the cagey maintenance man LeRoy up in her face). Next, they murder the groundskeeper's bird (a truly startling, tragic moment) and then laugh at the poor man when he weeps over one of his only companions. (In an interesting twist, they feel conflicted as well). And still next, they take in a stranded motorist, strip to their panties and...well, that guy is not about to take no for an answer. Like every good bad girl they take it five, six, lucky number seven steps over the line.

If this all sounds like a bunch of exploitative crap, it's not. Filmed with a painterly touch, the picture's lush cinematography is startingly beautiful -- from the pastoral shots in the country, to the lanterns lighting a night time boat ride to the unforgettable, disturbed final scene which, I can't discuss -- I'll just say it involves Baudelaire, and one hell of a school talent contest. The poetic impact is unforgettable.

The girls are natural and sympathetic and truly sexy and would be too good for this shit if the shit wasn't so good. And if their youth appears troubling, they are indeed of legal age. But the movie knows what it's doing -- it knows the unsettling nature of watching a girl who looks like she could use a few more years to develop getting her clothes torn off. And yet these actresses never feel like they're taken advantage of. Since this story is for them, and really, for anyone questioning faith and rules, the director seeks a deeper aim than mere titillation. And while I've discussed a lot of sexy moments, the picture never revels in sex and violence (it's almost bloodless, in fact). Instead, it's about teenagers alienated by their parents and stultifying systems of morality and the confusion of adolescence. Sometimes our body tell us to do bad things -- in this case very bad things -- and religion makes them even worse. Or better. I can't imagine how these girls would function under some good, old fashioned, twisted American Pentecostal.

I love movies that can balance perversion with ample helpings of thought and in the case of this picture, crawl under your skin just enough to make you feel guilty, complicit, even, with the character's intentions. While giving a big fat sacrilegious middle finger to the Church, the movie's general ambiance is oddly delicate -- disturbed in an intoxicating, magical way. You really fall in love with these girls. And that, quite simply and subversively, makes you feel evil.

Track down the lovingly restored, extra-laden Uncut Special Edition from Mondo Macabro.) Watch and learn Jennifer. 

 

Patrick Swayze: 1952-2009

"Nobody puts Baby in the corner."

How many young girls (and older women, and many men as well) swooned when that rough-hewn handsome yet sensitive, yet beautifully graceful Patrick Swayze stood up for the awkward,  nerdy Jennifer Grey in the admittedly cheesy but now classic Dirty Dancing? Legions. Legions. I remember sitting on the school bus in 1987, wondering what these girls were excitedly yammering on about like middle-aged housewives -- a 1960s-era story of the mismatched but eventual love between a Catskills dance instructor/bad boy and a sweet, smart but insecure vacationing teenager? OK. When I finally got around to seeing the movie later, I thought, wow, kind of cornpone, and …“She’s like the wind?”

But there was something -- a definite "it" quality that spiked directly into the world's romantic fantasy jugular. But for me, that "it" was Swayze himself. He was the movie. He could dance. And was, perhaps, one the last tough guy dancers who could reveal his significant talent without worrying about being feminized by it. In many ways, and through many pictures, Patrick Swayze is the perfect example of pre-1990s irony. It’s not funny he can dance -- it’s goddamn lovely he can dance.

His dancing was not only erotic swagger; he brought the heart and soul and heat and sexuality and even a wounded vulnerability to his part (and the music, particularly the Otis Redding, helped). Much like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, this was a man, not a little boy, not Zac Effron, but a man, dancing with such impressive athleticism and grace that, no matter what you thought of the movie itself, you could not take your eyes off of him.

Born in 1952 in Houston, this rough-around-the-edges Road House toughie was actually (and perhaps, not surprisingly) the son of a choreographer/dancer mother, who influenced young Swayze toward dance. Rounding out his abilities nicely, he took up ice skating, classical ballet, gymnastics and acting. But it's the dancing that stuck, so, in 1972, he completed his formal dance training in New York at the Harkness and Joffrey ballet schools.

But, in spite of his training, it wasn’t the dancing that gave him his Hollywood breakthrough. It was the movie in which I first saw him: Francis Ford Coppola's lovingly made, bad boy teen melodrama The Outsiders, in which he played Darrel -- the older, greaser brother and concerned surrogate parent for his troubled Tulsan siblings Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) and Sodapop (Rob Lowe). Lecturing his brothers with a rugged, likable and stern quality (he had that kind of face), this somewhat odd looking yet severely handsome man could rumble, carry heavy artillery and fight. And we knew it especially in works like the spectacular Red Dawn, Youngblood and his acclaimed Civil War TV miniseries North and South. He was well on his way to becoming a huge star. Who even knew this guy was a dancer? By 1987, everyone.

And then, there was the absurdly entertaining Road House.  Though considered trash by those who should know better, the picture is another  un-ironic tale (and truly, one of the last serious good ol’ boy type movies) that finds Swayze's bar "cooler" taking on crazy drunks, a hot blonde and a town run by a ridiculously, yet hilariously neofascist Ben Gazzara.  Road House has since (and deservedly) become a cult classic and it’s rather surprising, refreshingly shocking line (“I used to fuck guys like you in Prison”) spat to Swayze,  is among Road House fanatics just as famous that "Baby in the corner" business. Or “Ditto.” (I personally like the simplicity of “left boot” but I love watching people excel at their job).

But back to “ditto” -- the enormously successful Ghost would provide Swayze a colossal hit. The movie was nominated for Best Picture, Goldberg won Best Supporting Actress, and Demi's pixie haircut became as famous as "the Farrah" or "the Rachel." It seems like Swayze was left out of the accolades, which is a shame. Among all of the picture’s sappy "Unchained Melody," pottery wheel spinning eroticism, it was Swayze who provided the picture’s emotional weight. Carrying the universal understanding of sadness, love and regret – and in particular, the regret of not saying those things we should have said to loved ones, he was the film’s center. No matter how schmaltzy the movie was, Swayze always seemed real to me. 

And he had range. After Ghost, a tanned and coiffed Swayze starred in Kathryn Bigelow’s undeniably entertaining Point Break, playing the guru villain opposite Keanu Reeves. And watch it again. It’s so giddily entertaining and he's so yes, magical here, that you’re sad movies like this, really, don’t exist anymore. Again, Irony. Oh the irony of movies these days.  Not that Swayze didn’t allow self humor -- he did. But he also, wonderfully, memorably played it straight. God bless him for that.

After a riding accident in which he fell from a horse and broke both of his legs -- not good for an actor, and especially a dancer -- his career was on hold for a while. He was depressed. He was reportedly drinking. I have to think that his bouts with darkness were always in him, making him a lot more interesting than he was given credit for. I loved that Richard Kelly recognized his varied sides and so brilliantly cast him as a motivational speaker/secret pedophile in 2000's Donnie Darko. What a bold move for Swayze. And what a complicated performance. He plays it as a joke at first (that scale of fear and love), and then becomes a monster, and then…an oddly heartbreaking human being  -- and in one brief moment.  During a beautifully filmed sequence set to Gary Jules' cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World," he conveys such intense anguish it’s hard to not gasp by how intensely moving he is.

And his face, his tough yet pleading face, filled with such mysterious need that, combined with his body, a body that understood dance, made him a unique, underrated creature. He may have become typecast as a kind of cheesy relic of the 1980s, but, really, he was so much more than that. He had a great career, certainly, but it could have been greater. Had he’d been allowed to stretch, been allowed to express his natural poignancy (think of that oddly touching Chippendale’s comedy sketch with Chris Farley), and been allowed (or able) or to extend his dancing, Swayze could have soared even higher.  Since early dance training may have caused Swayze to fight against any labels of “sissy,” he exuded a touching empathy while looking like a guy you’d want on your side in a bar fight. 

Ah, I’ll state the obvious here, but it’s damn sad. Quite simply, I liked him. And I’d love for him to come back, if only for one moment, and even just to say that one corny line: “Ditto.” Or better yet and without a trace of irony, “Left boot.”

Inglourious Poetic Political Lyrical Sons

[Re-printed from my story "What Inglourious Basterds Owes to History" publlished at IFC. Spoilers ahead for those who haven't seen Inglourious Basterds.]

There have been two moments in film this year that have moved me to my cine-loving core. Both involved individuals stirred by the power of image, art and mythology. And both illustrated a personal investment for each character (some, real-life characters), revealing a potent significance and identification -- something that ascended beyond mere fandom. Simple and yet complex, these moments were meaningful to these people.

One, occurred in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Watching John Dillinger (played by Johnny Depp) fatefully sitting inside the Biograph watching Clark Gable as Blackie, essentially playing a version of Johnny (Johnny Dillinger) in Manhattan Melodrama, the look on J.D.'s face was gripping. And not only because we know what's going to happen to the legendary gangster once he steps out of that theater, but for all of the imagined ideas going through Dillinger's head at that moment. How could he not think of his girl (or any girl he'd like to sleep with that night) while basking in the gorgeousness of Myrna Loy? How could he not ponder the picture's ending? And how could he not get a kick out of the very idea, that he, the most popular American criminal at that time, was watching the most beloved Hollywood movie star at that moment? An Icon for an icon. And then, as he exists the theater, a cowardly tooth for a tooth.

And then there's the moment in the movie of discussion here, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, a moment that, given all of the controversy surrounding the picture's violence, is one filled with human empathy and, as Tarantino said, tragedy that's closer to "Romeo and Juliet." It's when theater owner Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), a French Jew seeking vengeance for the execution of her family, agrees to hold the premiere of war hero Fredrick Zoller's (Daniel Brühl) picture Nation's Pride. Readying for her spectacular final act, in which the movie will cut to her giant, beautiful face declaring that all of the Nazis in attendance (including Goebbels and Hitler) are going to die ("look deep in the face of the Jew who's going to do it"), Shosanna is abruptly interrupted by Zoller himself. Ducking out of his own movie because he doesn't like watching violence, the young, smitten man comes on strong, and in order to defend herself and complete her mission, she shoots him.

But then... she glances at his movie from the projection booth. While all of the Nazi top brass have been gleefully enjoying the blood-soaked antics of Zoller, Shosanna responds to an intimate moment. Her face softens as Zoller, in beautiful black and white, takes a breather from the carnage and appears quite emotional and even, a bit tortured. Acting? Perhaps. But ever the cinema lover, it's upon watching his face on screen (not writhing on the floor) that she walks towards his half-dead body, emotional about what she's done. And like John Dillinger, just that act of taking in a movie facilitates her own demise. Zoller shoots her.

But unlike John Dillinger, she gets the final payback - and through her own movie. With help from her black lover Marcel (Jacky Ido), she takes down the "despicable German swine" Bill Epton-style: "Burn, baby, burn."

Is Tarantino glamorizing violence here? To be blunt about it, hell, yes, he is. Should we feel guilty about it? To be even blunter, fuck no.

And I'm not simply being flip with this declaration. I'm not trying to trivialize the real-life atrocities that occurred under Hitler during World War II (or under President Truman for that matter, let's not forget Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Japanese internment camps). And neither is Tarantino, who though never shy about expressing pro-vigilance in real life (and that's his own business, frankly), crafts a movie that delivers both pulpy satisfaction and a complicated look at how we process violence -- historical, personal or otherwise. All of his pictures, from Reservoir Dogs to Jackie Brown to Kill Bill to Basterds, have revealed the filmmaker's interest in the grandeur and meaning of violence, aesthetically and thematically. And many filmmakers, from Cecil B. DeMille to Samuel Fuller to Sam Peckinpah to Stanley Kubrick have crafted works of violent beauty. But that was the past, and as controversial as The Wild Bunch or A Clockwork Orange were in their day, most critics find these pictures acceptable -- classics -- working on a different level. Enough has been written. Not so with Tarantino. And so the reaction? Outrage!

Of course, there’s a difference between Alex’s ultraviolence and the Basterds’ Nazi-hunting, Apache-style scalping. I know that the anger lies in Tarantino making a movie in which Jews viciously retaliate against Nazis, which, to some critics, makes the Basterds just as hideous as their goose-stepping enemy. I know that certain critics believe that QT’s spectacular alternate universe of fantastical revisionism, one in which Hitler meets his maker all bloody and burned in (of course) a movie theater, is a form of Holocaust denial (Jonathan Rosenbaum, specifically). But…really? I’ve not read a critic (and perhaps I’ve missed one) who actually believes a person will walk out of the theater thinking that’s how it all went down. That Adolf didn’t off himself in a bunker and, instead, was burned alive after the director of Hostel and Hostel II pumped his face full of lead. (And for anyone who’s stood up for Eli Roth’s movies — god, wouldn’t that be awesome?). But the idea that Tarantino is going to eradicate memories of the Holocaust is almost as ludicrous as believing Col. Hogan really did convince Col. Klink he was psychic, and that the episode “Psychic Kommandant” really did happen. I realize there’s a lot of dummies in this country, but…do I say it? Please.

Let’s return to the Biograph. Let’s pretend we’re John Dillinger for a moment. Let’s pretend we’ve killed people. Let’s pretend we’ve robbed banks during an economic depression in a country that’s not only killed many, but among other minorities, oppressed blacks, Jews, women and those who were here first -- the Native Americans. As in, all groups addressed and celebrated via Inglourious Basterds. Haven’t we all pretended such a thing? And not just as children, but as adults? Through dreams, imagination and art, and in this case, the art of cinema, doesn’t the very act of tapping into our own primal (and very real) need of vengeance offer catharsis in a world filled with hypocrisy and uncertainty? Why should we feel guilty about it?

And in terms of Inglourious Basterds, a movie that seamlessly mingles superbly written, tense dialogue with horrific though inspiring violence, it does mean something. If a person thinks I’m sick in the head because I find it strangely beautiful and, by the final line, thrilling, when Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) carves that swastika into Lt. Landa’s (Christoph Waltz) forehead, then so be it. The fact that Raine will allow Landa his life (which we like; I’ll admit I didn’t want Landa to die), but not the ability to hide is Tarantino’s version of “never again.” And the fact that Tarantino allows you to get off on this moment, even just a little, does indeed make you complicit. Yes. But it also makes you a human being.