Halloween viewing at Hugh Hefner's movie night was quite perfectly, The Exorcist. We will all one day, sing together in the white clouds of heaven or rot in hell, I think quite comfortably, in the wonderfully balmy Grotto. Either way, I think we'll be OK -- everyone was sufficiently terrified and moved by the picture to ensure this will happen.
So...naturally, the act of watching Regan stab her privates with a crucifix turned me back into that nice Catholic girl buried deep inside of me (the Catholic girl barely raised Lutheran, but familiar with the church of excessive, sometimes beautiful guilt). That girl.
That Vidal Sassoon sporting, tannis root wearing, black crib rocking girl who makes me long for ritual.That girl who would never, like Ellen Burstyn, abandon a child, even if he had "his father's eyes."
Roman's girl (that's Castevet, and yes Polanski too) and favorite Catholic -- Rosemary Woodhouse.
I think my car is trying to kill me. Not in any cinematic supernatural way, a la Christine or The Car. It’s actually far worse than that -- my car is torturing me like an abusive boyfriend or, in the case of this crazy year, a deranged psychopathic killer. Though my sturdy muscle-mobile -- my 1971 Ford Torino, has rarely steered me wrong, my deceptively adorable Datsun has, quite suddenly, become a holy terror. But why? For years, I’ve tended to the thing/bad seed/cute little “Shape of Rage” Brood creature like a spoiled child and it has remained well behaved, reliable, an absolute angel. But one, two, three, four (five?) dark and desolate nights later, everything changed and that devil in disguise has turned against me -- Henry Lee Lucas style. Breaking down repeatedly, stranding me on scary streets, leaving me in high desert dereliction, and fending for myself in gas stations that make the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family pump look like a cheery Travel Center of America truck stop, life with my car has become a real horror show.
And I don’t mean horror show the way Orange’s Alex proclaims the dark wonders of life -- those bizarre, deviant, wonderfully perverse moments that strike you in the most unusual or, sometimes, the most banal of circumstances (and I’ve encountered some strangely intriguing situations while stranded on the road -- namely taking in the weird beauty of the Alien-inspired Integratron dome in Landers, California). No, I mean quite literally, the cliché of slouching towards civilization, in the black of night, losing cell phone reception, and only finding aid in a man turned aggressive creep.
Note to self: When suffering intense second degree burns on your hand (and no, gentle gear-heads, I didn’t pull off the radiator cap, I’m not that stupid), make sure your passenger door is locked after that “nice” guy helps you. Also, always wears jeans when driving at night, no matter how hot (it was 105 degrees that day). A casual halter dress perilously close to dropping off your melting frame, mixed with a useless burned hand, and a guy thinking he stepped into either a Penthouse Forum cream dream, or a 1970’s Charlene Tilton made-for-TV hitch-hiking movie, are all a recipe for disaster.
And yet, when you’re almost amused by how ludicrously cinematic your life has become, you nearly forget to be scared. Nearly. Because oh, that night was terrifying. But that’s a slice of my real life, and though I’m being cagily candid here, I don’t want to mine that matter any further. After all, I could not pull a Last House on the Left and repeat, “It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie.” I was more like Rosemary Woodhouse exclaiming, “This is no dream! This is really happening!” But there I go into movieland again -- which is quite therapeutic. Through all this personal vehicular peril, I’m convinced my year was actually laid out by The Hitcher’s John Ryder (the Rutger Hauer version), so naturally my thoughts have turned towards horror movies, and more specifically, the car in horror movies. This settles my nerves.
In horror cinema, the car is a fierce force -- an angel of mercy, an agent of doom or a ghastly, terrorizing, torture trap -- sometimes all in one movie. Though there are numerous pictures to discuss here, films from Night of the Living Dead (those fucking keys!); to Race with the Devil (the great Warren Oates’ line, “I don’t believe a school bus on a Sunday!” has become my mantra towards anything unusual on the road); to Zodiac (the opening scene, set to Donovan's “Hurdy Gurdy Man” remains one of the scariest auto slaughters in cinema); to Psycho (even the police officer is creepy towards desperate Janet Leigh, who will meet her demise at the Bates Hotel -- and have her car ditched in a large pool of water); to the family vacation gone to mutant hell in The Hills Have Eyes (I honestly think I saw some of that clan while driving through rural Pennsylvania a year ago -- no offense to the state); to the astonishingly beautiful, yet horrific auto water grave Shelley Winters suffers, seaweed entwined in her hair, in the brilliant The Night of the Hunter (not technically a horror movie, but fulfills enough monster moments of the genre); cars are a killer’s dream.
There's more to this piece, and most especially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a picture that achieves the auto horror trifecta of vehicular rescue, ruse and ravage. But you'll have to purchase the latest issue of Jesse James' Garage Magazine (out November) to read it. The Vanity Fair for gearheads features my latest piece and layout for my column, "Drive, She Said." You can pick up Garage Magazine at your local newsstands and various stores including Barnes and Noble and 7 Eleven. Thanks to Jesse James and Amy Norris for putting together my layout. Pictures by K. Morgan (me). Happy Halloween! And be careful on the road...
Those haunted, sensitive eyes that gazed at the viewer with method modernity and timeless emotion -- pleading and gentle, but with the potential for reckless selfishness. He wasn’t the sweet bad boy; he was the conflicted, tortured bad boy who wasn’t even sure if he wanted to be so virtuous in the first place. In this disappointing, alienating world, what’s the point of being the good guy? But then, cruelty isn’t necessarily the answer either, even when he spurns an Heiress.
Clift’s eyes held secrets, and not merely the secrets we know about after discovering his real life. There’s more to Clift than hiding homosexuality, there’s pain and romance and passion and hopelessness mixed with bursts of happiness that will never grow towards contentment. For a man so beautiful, his inherent existential angst almost seems perverse. But it also draws us to him -- we want to help Monty Clift, and I have a feeling, no matter what that man did, I would forgive him anything, even if he’d surely become one of the most unreliable presences in your life. In movies, he’s the man who’d promise to do anything for sad-eyed sister Marilyn in The Misfits, but, in the end, he probably wouldn’t stay. Though I love their chemistry in that picture, and their bond feels real and strong (and apparently, off screen, they understood one another), you know his cowboy was too damaged, too self destructive to take care of anybody but himself.
And yet, damn if he doesn’t untie those Mustangs for Monroe. I think because it’s Clift who performs this noble gesture, that the moment becomes so overwhelmingly moving, so eloquent. Yes, it’s a movie, but I will eternally love Monty for saying fuck the money, honoring Marilyn’s humanity, and letting those Mustangs free. It’s one of his most touching acts on film.
Today is Clift’s birthday. The man who influenced Brando and Dean would have been 89-years-old. Of course he would never have lived that long -- alcoholic, drug addled, unhappy, he died in 1966 at the age of 45 (though he was quoted that he wished to direct in his later years). There are many performances I could discuss here, since I love him so, (Red River, The Heiress, The Big Lift, A Place in the Sun, I Confess, Terminal Station, Raintree County, From Here to Eternity, Lonelyhearts, The Young Lions, Suddenly, Last Summer, Wild River, The Misfits, Freud and Judgment at Nuremberg) and yet not enough performances -- he died too soon. Instead I keep thinking about his eyes -- an Avedon Into the West character (particularly after his accident -- and he was still gorgeous), a Dorothea Lange Dustbowl Farmer, a Bruce Weber beauty and then, like Bette Davis, quite simply Montgomery Clift. He was his own masterwork.
Interestingly, I had almost forgotten that today would be his birthday, but late last night, I had the desire to watch A Place in the Sun with a friend who’d never seen it before. And I couldn’t stop talking about Clift's eyes. My god, every scene is almost too much to bear. His insecurity (in that tweed suit), his desire to make something of himself, his loneliness with Shelley Winters, his criminal, terrible, and yet tragically human act in the boat, his rapturous love for Elizabeth Taylor, his fleeting moments of happiness and then his final, failed understanding of himself -- director George Stevens got his eyes. Adapting Theodore Dreiser's masterful An American Tragedy, Stevens’ vision of Liz and Monty’s heart-stopping beauty immediately puts the viewer in the lovers' corner, no matter what they do. But it isn't just their looks that make you swoon; it's the chemistry and fragile performances, most especially by Clift.
And that dance scene -- Stevens’ close-ups. They obviously reveal the actors' beauty, but also how much they, and particularly Monty, could say with their faces. Clift may be blurting out that he loves Taylor, but his beseeching, poignant eyes reveal so many layers of desire, you know something is haunting him even if you don't fully understand the circumstances (he has just witnessed his pregnant girlfriend drown and, frantically in love with Taylor, he's chosen to do nothing about it). It's a dance macabre, and it scares Liz (it would scare me too) but one of the most romantic of all time.
Again, no one had or ever will have those eyes.They were beautiful, but even Dreiser couldn't have written the power they conveyed. They were a sublime American Tragedy.
While conducting interviews for his newest picture, Spike Jonze was pleased when I called his work a children's art film, stating that art films are considered a "dirty word" to studios. He thanked me. He didn't need to. We should thank him. Jonze's masterstroke, Where the Wild Things Are isn't just a children's art film, it's an art film in itself. It's a lovely, emotional work of masterful mayhem that taps right into the spirit of growing up. How conflicted we feel. How happy, how sad, how crazy, how rambunctious and of course, how wild we are. And that can be frightening. Jonze didn't shy from any of this. Ever gracious (and knowing the certain pressure he received from studios to create a more mainstream kiddie film), Jonze extended pleasure when I cited other kid's "art" films, including "Bambi" -- which is so spare and primal and beautiful, there's no way in hell it would be made today. But spare and beautiful and primal all describe Jonze's gorgeously profound, Wild Things -- adapted from Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book, published in 1963 -- a picture book read by generations of kids and grown up kids.
Talking to the art team, Sonny Gerasimowicz, Lance Accord, and KK Barrett, I also remarked how it evokes more adult art fare from Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, to NicolasRoeg's Walkabout, which, as shot in the Australian desert -- it truly does. Watching a wild thing run down a sand dune in emotional distress was surprisingly moving. The earnestness, the playfulness, and the beauty touched me on an aesthetic level (how could it not?), but also moved me in deeper ways -- ways much more mysterious, and ways that made me think about the image. Why do I feel so much? Taking Sendak's classic, Jonze, working from a screenplay co-written with Dave Eggers, changes things a bit, but never loses Sendack's anarchic spirit. Max Records plays (aptly named) Max, a kid who loves his mother (Catherine Keener), but who runs around the house with abandon -- resulting in some power struggles with a mom who, though, appreciates her son's creativity, becomes exasperated with his rebellion. I loved how the film moved with Max -- and we experience quiet moments, like the simple tug of his mother's nylons to his extreme rough-housing. After all, kids are filled with a multitude of instincts and feelings, but unlike adults, they often display them more freely.
Max angers his mother, and upset, flees to Sendak's world in his king beast costume complete with whiskers, ear hoodie and eventual crown, setting off by boat to soon meet those "Wild Things." These are a mixed group of varied personalities (in wonderful costumes) including vulnerable Carol (James Gandolfini), the patient KW (Lauren Ambrose), funny, stubborn Judith (Catherine O'Hara), complicated Ira (Forest Whitaker), goatish Alexander (Paul Dano), and bird-like Douglas (Chris Cooper). Within those lovely sand dunes, and lush jungle, we watch unleashed, sometimes scary thoughts, instincts, actions, making the movie feel more like a tone poem over a simple and-now-to-that-big-scene experience. No typical high fives, no dumb games (aside from throwing dirt clods, a wonderful moment), no silly eyes-agog "all right!" movie kiddie moment (and thank god Jonze had the sense to never play "Wild Thing" by The Troggs, something a studio probably suggested. Instead we get the great Karen O.), Jonze made an authentic kid's movie.
It's a gritty, gorgeous hero's journey that's oddly real, truly childlike and yet uniquely adult while remaining fantastical all at once. Not an easy feat, but one Spike Jonze conquers brilliantly. This movie is personal, and though I sense many critics will be disapointed by the places it doesn't go, I loved the movie for its elusive, human and animalistic beauty -- a beauty that will occasionally make you gasp and, in certain moments, cry. And not because you feel sappy, but because, quite perfectly, you feel wild.
Read more Kim Morgan at her picture and video page, Pretty Poison.
A re-do of The Stepfather? It only led me to my archive of demented dads, a movie (and real life) character I'm fascinated by. From the anti-Atticus Finch figures of Bigger than Life to Lord Love a Duck to Paper Moon, varied degrees of problematic parenting are always interesting. But for those special psycho stepfathers, however, no one should ever forget the biggest, baddest, most brilliantly baneful stepdad of all time: Robert Mitchum's Harry Powell in Charles Laughton's genius, Night of the Hunter.
A man's man and a hep cat who projected a natural-born charisma entirely his own, Robert Mitchum was, and still is an American original. There is no actor or man quite like Robert Mitchum. Brimming with understated talent (the kind that’s always underrated), the actor could run the spectrum from gorgeous leading man (Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison) to light comedian (What a Way to Go!) to war hero (The Story of G.I. Joe) to Western existentialist (Pursued) to flawed noir antihero (Out of the Past, Angel Face, Where Danger Lives) to aged gumshoe (Farewell My Lovely) to sexy psycho (Cape Fear) to hillbilly moonshiner (Thunder Road) with nary a trace of effort. Though he was quoted as saying he sleepwalked through many of his roles (and that heavy-lidded, laconic demeanor was a large part of his barrel-chested appeal), he did work at some (or many) of his big-screen characters. Nowhere is this more evident than in one of the actor’s greatest and most terrifying roles -- as the demented preacher and scariest stepfather who ever lived, Harry Powell in Charles Laughton’s masterpiece, The Night of the Hunter.
Adapting Davis Grubb's novel (with film critic James Agee as screenwriter) into an expressionistic children's fairy tale/nightmare, Laughton not only directed a movie, but cast an elegiac spell over the audience with dreamlike, angled compositions (by cinematographer Stanley Cortez), chilling religious motifs, dark humor, disturbed perversity and pure horror. And casting the frequently flawed but lovable, romantic Robert Mitchum was just another of Laughton's ingenious moves -- the actor took viewers aback with his inspired, demonic weirdness, creating an unease that’s still palpable today.
From his first moment on-screen, there’s something off about Mitchum’s preacher -- and that creepiness grows and expands with each succeeding scene (the switchblade popping from the pocket while watching a dancer is a terrific moment of phallic sex and death). He’s a handsome hunk of man (which makes him even more frightening), he can sing hymns, he can preach the Good Book and he can seduce -- particularly the weaker of the fairer sex.
The weaker one here is an easy catch and he quickly ensnares lonely, vulnerable Shelley Winters (poor, sick Shelley) with the intent of stealing the money her late husband recently lifted (the money is hidden in her daughter’s doll). After disposing of Winters (her underwater death scene is one of cinema’s most startling, yet beautiful, moments), Mitchum's faux reverend hunts down her two children (wonderfully played by Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) with big talk, questioning threats ("Where'd you hide the money, Pearl?") and finally just plain murderous intentions.
From the picture’s famous scene involving Mitchum's love-and-hate speech using tattooed knuckles, to the poetic shots of the children fleeing their pursuer down a dreamlike river, to the frightfully gorgeous way Mitchum sings "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," especially with pure-hearted Lillian Gish -- every moment of this picture and especially Mitchum’s performance is scary, stunning and paternally demented. What's so powerful here is that, even as he loses himself in the role, you constantly fight a bizarre attraction to this animal (think of Lillian Gish's teenage orphan who can't resist) and then recoil from his unadulterated evil (it is a hard world for little things, dammit). Mitchum is a monster, a beast of a daddy, but one of bad, beautiful brilliance.
With the buzz that Marlon Wayans has replaced Eddie Murphy in the upcoming biopic, Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said? I was brought back to one of my favorite comedy show, album, and film of all time: Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip.
The year was 1981 and the late, great Richard Pryor, that groundbreaking genius, that innovative, influential, trash talking/truth telling original King of Comedy was already a star. He’d released numerous inspired comedy albums, enjoyed big screen success, most notably with Gene Wilder in Silver Streak, and Stir Crazy, and his stand-up concert, Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (released as a film in 1979) had sealed the proverbial deal -- this guy was not only beyond brilliant, but one of the most important comedians/philosophers of the 20th century.
But back to 1981, back when he strode onstage at the Hollywood Palladium in his red suit and black bowtie and, at the start of his routine, exhibited something of a nervous disposition, and then…just went there. And not just there, as in, all of the bold areas Pryor was known to examine with brash humanity and riotous hilarity (racism, sex, politics and then some) but to the incident -- the “accident” that not only left 50 percent of his body covered in burns but nearly killed him. “Have you ever heard of a motherfucker burning up freebasing, other than me? If nobody else burned up freebasing, why do you think it happened to me? I did not burn up freebasing; I burned up because I quit freebasing.”
By covering his monumental act of self destruction, by delving into that day on June 9, 1980 when the comedian lit himself on fire while, yes, freebasing a whole lot of cocaine, and the drug addiction leading up to that infamous moment, Pryor created a routine of such self confessional brilliance, that, to me, it remains unsurpassed to this day. Comedians then and now, delve into the real, for sure. Comedians shock us, yes. Sometimes with hilarious profundity, but frequently for simply the sake of shock -- the kind that makes me roll my eyes and think dryly, “Oh, I’ve been duly shaken. What will I ever do with myself?” Boring. Not boring? When Pryor professed: “When that fire hit your ass, it will sober your ass up quick! I saw something, I went, ‘Well, that's a pretty blue. You know what? That looks like fire!’ Fire is inspirational. They should use it in the Olympics, because I ran the 100 in 4.3.”
Fire, drugs, demons, women, money, Richard -- it's all inspirational the way he tells it. Even if he'd struggle with addiction his entire life, during Live he was shaking that shit off, at least for that moment, and damn it is powerful. But what makes Richard PryorLive on the Sunset Strip (released as a movie and album in 1982 -- the album I stole from my big brother at far too young of an age and listened to repeatedly) so exceptional and important isn’t simply Pryor’s discussion of his inner demons lit up for the world to see, but how he approaches such searing self examination. Discussing topics ranging from prisons to the mafia to messy relationships to an extraordinarily moving epiphany while in Africa (Pryor decided never to use the “N” word again), Pryor wants his audience to laugh, but he wants them to hold their breath in for a second, to stop for a moment and to think.
Like, really think. And with his unflinching and at times, heartbreakingly honest vulnerability, Pryor not only makes one think about the emotional and moral shakiness of the human condition, but the shakiness within our own selves. How many comedians can make you laugh until you cry, and then genuinely, make you cry? And then, cause you to laugh again? Jesus, and laugh and cry at the same time? Richard Pryor could. There may be funnier Pryor shows, but Live on the Sunset Strip isn’t just funny, it’s a profoundly moving, historic experience.
Today I was asked a question I can never answer -- "what's your favorite movie?" When pressed to choose, the same picture always rises to the surface -- "The Third Man." It haunts me. No matter how many films I have seen and will see in the future, I'm fairly certain "The Third Man" will remain my eternal, instinctual favorite. With that I'm revisiting my adoration of the Carol Reed classic.
In 1948, British novelist Graham Greene wrote this bit of character description for a movie treatment on which he was working: "Don't picture Harry Lime as a smooth scoundrel. He wasn't that. The picture I have of him...is an excellent one: he is caught by a street photographer with his stocky legs apart, big shoulders a little hunched, a belly that has known too much good food for too long, on his face a look of cheerful rascality, a geniality, a recognition that his happiness will make the world's day." A year later, that rascal later turned out to be an oddly gorgeous Orson Welles, and the movie became The Third Man, a picture that in spirit matches the lilting recklessness of Greene's character.
The Third Man is an exquisite work of discordant power crammed full of shifting moods. An expressionist film noir, it reveals a dark, unsettling pessimism in its ravaged night atmosphere. A jaunty, bittersweet comedy, it conveys a soulful playfulness among its likable characters. A stylistic achievement, it is a baroque composition of the absurd, a tilted wonder of visual anxiety. It is dreamlike and sensible, seamless and jagged, heartbreaking and hilarious and oddly, mockingly wistful, despite its sad ending. Greene's words that Lime's happiness "will make the world's day" are key. It isn't simply that Greene wrote a likable villain; he wrote a lovable story -- even though it revealed the paranoia and unease that would later characterize the Cold War.
Directed by Carol Reed (who also directed Greene's masterful The Fallen Idol), photographed by Robert Krasker and beautifully scored by Anton Karas, The Third Man is a rare work of art that tickles as much as it torments. The story takes place in Allied-occupied Vienna. During the film's opening moments, a narrator (voiced by director Reed) states it's "the classic period of the black market when the city is divided into four zones, each occupied by a power -- the American, the British, the Russian, and the French. But the center of the city--that's international, policed by an International Patrol. What a hope they had, all strangers to the place and none of them could speak the same language. Vienna doesn't really look any worse than a lot of other European cities, bombed about a bit." Enter an American into this rubble of sadness and crooked opportunity: American hack novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a jobless "poor chap, happy as a lark and without a cent," seeking out his old friend Harry Lime (Welles), who has promised him a job. Unfortunately, Holly learns that his school chum was run over by a truck, a death that seems increasingly unlikely to the American.
A conspiracy emerges -- that of the mysterious "third man," who supposedly helped carry Harry's dead body out of view -- and the naive Holly is impassioned (or stupid) enough to become entrenched in it. In an odd, unconventional teaming, Holly develops a relationship with both Harry's lover, Anna (Alida Valli), to whom he's sexually drawn, and a British investigating officer named Calloway (Trevor Howard), who wishes the hayseed American would mind his own business. Holly also meets an assortment of exotic characters -- friends of Harry's -- and they aid in developing the film's humorous predicament of Western writer Holly attempting to work with such bizarre Kafkaesque visions. Crooked, gargoyle-like and most certainly not American, these multilingual characters further exemplify how ridiculous Holly's American optimism is. Externally and internally there is a cynicism presented to Holly, who, like the characters in his pulp novels, attempts to work on basic levels of good and evil. However, the complexities that Holly faces are neither black nor white.
The movie makes sure to display both character and situation with a jaunty and jaundiced flavor. There is no such thing as simplicity in The Third Man, a concept that's continually underscored by the film's style. Visually, it is an off-kilter intersection of vertical and horizontal lines (some scenes feel framed by the tilt of a man's hat) and a textured variety of high-contrast, low-key lighting techniques. Characters emerge from and duck back into shadows, a visual device Reed uses metaphorically to represent moral complexity. Karas' score is also wonderfully unpredictable. Bouncy, beautiful, ugly and panicky, the music follows and responds to the action like an id let loose. The score also conveys the irresistible, crooked charm of Harry Lime -- a figure so prominent that you forget he is in just a half-hour of the film.
But then Reed gave Orson Welles one of the most famous entrances in movie history: A cat walks down the street, spies a man's shoes in a darkened doorway, curls up at his feet and meows loudly enough for Holly to notice from across a street. A window opens, and light flickers on Lime, and the camera holds a mysterious, mischievous and disarmingly smiling face. Welles (as Lime) looks back at Holly with eyes that silently return the two men back to childhood. Seductive, playful and enigmatic, this moment is suspended with an overwhelming sense of rapture (I get chills, and sometimes tear up every time I watch it) and makes you understand what Anna later says about Lime: "Harry never grew up. The world grew up around him." You forget about the terrible things he's done. You just want to follow him, anywhere, no matter what the repercussions.
These complicated emotions might cause anxiety and hardship, but they may result in delight, which is what makes The Third Man so unique among movies. The film is about expressing the inexpressible feelings that are gnarled in our psyches as fantasies or nightmares. It gets to the heart of that "obscure object of desire" without ever delineating just what it is we yearn for. A timeless masterpiece, The Third Man both restores your hope and breaks your heart.
"Harry never grew up. The world grew up around him."
