Porter Wagoner shakes me up. He sings of the cold hard facts, the promise of murder, lock-downs in rubber rooms, and the power of the lord, sometimes alongside beatific, brilliant Dolly Parton and her sweet face, her gorgeous peroxide hair and her plentiful bosom and I just think...there's something so profound going on here.
Subterranean. Fathomless. American, but far beyond that. Dance of the Spirits. Or, to quote Mr. Young, "Aurora borealis, the icy sky at night." Cries and whispers.
If only Wagoner had worked with Ingmar Bergman. He's the Antonius Block of country music.
I'm not one to write extensively about movie trailers. Though seductive, and often artfully created, they are, after all, teases. And all too often, tedious, loud, inane teases. Or worse, false advertising.
But every once in a while, a trailer will come along that gets to me -- socks me in my soft underbelly and actually makes me think. Or worry. Or dread. Or experience something that I'm not even sure I can articulate. And why should I? I haven't watched the movie yet. Such is the case with David Fincher's haunting two and a half minutes on Facebook -- The Social Network.
Just as Fincher's superb, salient Fight Club (more so than Chuck Palahniuk's own novel) was darkly humorous, cynical and heartbreaking enough to reveal, within its own time, that the New World Order created by Tyler Durden/ insomniac Jack can lose control of itself, The Social Network, trailer alone, makes me wonder about Fight Club's assertion of impotence, desolation and delusion. The impotence of losing one's soul. Or power. Or uniqueness ("I wish I was special"). Or trying to retrieve/dominate it all. In the case of Fight Club, finding yourself was via fist to face. Sweaty, bloody, I want-to-throw-my-desk-at-my-boss releases of rage, submerged eroticism and quick stop enlightenment. But before Facebook even existed, Fincher revealed fearless leader Tyler Durden was a false creation. An avatar in one man's mind.
So as ever prescient as Fight Club was, Facebook seems the logical step -- and even more meaningful since it's happening as I type these letters. A new club. A club of "friends" -- real or not. A club of affirmation. A club of alienation. A club for your face. A club in your face. I'm a member. When used properly, FB can be an incredibly beneficial place, exciting, even. And I have few negative rages against the internet. It's where I work and practically live. And one can block out the dumber aspects (even with so much inanity, noxious gossip and oh-the-humanity revealing comments online) by simply turning away. And god bless email correspondence. But in darker moments, I wonder if social networking, if used too frequently, will make us become even more disconnected from ourselves. People text, they twitter, they communicate online -- again, a positive thing but often, a confusing, toxic thing. I suppose that's life, online and off. But I fear that the old phone, where at least we can hear an inflection in a voice, is becoming an irritant to those who wish to drop you five words and five words only. I won't start with the sensation of talking to a real live face -- where we can see the sincerity (or indifference) in a person's eyes. That's nearly before my time. And I stay in a lot.
If I'm in a certain kind of mood about the world and my life, this trailer makes me overwhelmingly sad -- sitting directly in my era and sad about it. As if we're all embracing Big Brother. It makes me want to hide. It makes me realize I do hide. And reveal. And then hide again -- unhealthily wishing I could always sit in the house Daniel Plainview built -- alone -- drinking my fucking milkshake. Or your fucking milkshake, holding out hope that Warren Oates will arrive to whisper sweetly in my ear, "Lighten up, Francis."
Facebook is a place of communication but also loneliness -- loneliness among many. And it's sometimes just better to be alone. Could I, would I, drop everything and search for Durden's "dilapidated house in a toxic-waste part of town"? Perhaps. But only if I had a high speed cable connection. And that is yet another, false creation -- Tyler's house. A place of movies.
One can't really drop out anymore. But one can hide in plain sight. So I suppose the next best thing is friending Tyler Durden. I hope he accepts my request.
This re-post is dedicated to a brilliant friend. You know who you are.
American cinema isn’t really that dangerously sexy anymore. Not in any mysterious way. It lacks the edge and thrill of say, Peggy Cummins shooting between her legs in Gun Crazy. Or Decoy’s Jean Gille laughing with maniac, orgasmic glee after she’s offed her duped boyfriend who’s just dug up the only thing that turns her on -- money. Or Cloris Leachman’s hard panting, hyper-ventilating co-mingling with Nat King Cole’s silky singing over the credits to Kiss Me Deadly. Or, dear God, Lana and that lipstick in The Postman Always Rings Twice. American films can pretend they're sexy, and some are. And yes, some stars will put it out there (in nude scenes, in magazine spreads, or the sublime Pedro and Penelope, who don't count because they're not American, or the entire life and current work of one misunderstood actress/artist/bad girl beauty named Lindsay Lohan..."Li-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.") But in my mind (and with some exceptions obviously), the look John Garfield gives Lana Turner when that tube of red rolls across the floor is worth one thousand contemporary sex scenes. Or Richard Egan getting an eyeful of Wicked Woman Beverly Michaels. Or Tierney tossing and turning over Trevor, wanting to rape, murder, kiss, kill...and she wanting it to.
But, clearly I’m showing a bias. Based on my examples, it’s not surprising that film noir is the place (or rather, my place) for screwy sexy made all the more erotic because even as sex, often toxic sex, motivates many of its character’s actions, the genre’s aim isn’t merely to steam your glasses. So when it does hits an arousing bulls-eye, well, as the lady says, put your lips together and blow.
Which led me to a film I hadn’t seen in years -- Robert Siodmack’s PhantomLady -- a picture that features a performance by Ella Raines that’s so sizzling and yet so alluringly poignant, you’re a little overwhelmed by it.
Adapted from the Cornell Woolrich novel, Phantom Lady was Siodmak’s first American screen success and he would later craft some sublime noirs including Criss Cross, Cry of the City, The Dark Mirror, The File on Thelma Jordan and The Killers (among others). I’ll run down the story: Ella Raines (her character’s nicknamed “Kansas” -- which seems like a Wizard of Oz reference given the subterranean world she will find herself in) works as Alan Curtis’s secretary. When he’s framed for the murder of his wife, she sets out to help him because she doesn’t believe he did it. She's also besotted with him (lucky fella). Sexing up her image as cub private dick, she’s off to find this “Phantom Lady” with the help of Curtis’s friend (Franchot Tone) and an off duty police detective (Thomas Gomez, so wonderful in Force of Evil). OK, so that's the story, but what I really want to discuss is Raines's interaction with the hep cat, hopped up jazz drummer, played by noir staple, the great sap/sleaze Elisha Cook, Jr.
I am absolutely gob-smack over their famed moments together. Ella’s seduction of Elisha -- an overwhelming sexy, conflicted, crazily drugged sequence (you can practically smell the booze, marijuana, heroin and dexies permeating the joint) in which Raines plays hot-to-trot, seems to be eating up her vampy method of getting to the straight dirt and yet, is repulsed by both Cook (that kiss!) and herself for having to go this far. Showcasing Siodmak’s (and cinematographer Woody Bredell’s) evocative, angled compositions (used gorgeously throughout the movie), the style brilliantly underscores the mounting hysteria and varied state of Raines’s psychology. This is an extreme example, but what Raines reveals is something many women feel when finding themselves in the belly of the sleazy beast. It's a little fun and a little horrifying and you're definitely not in Kansas anymore.
Not that this situation isn't also sickly erotic -- it is. And the frantic, psycho-sexual, hop headed-ness makes me feel high (I'll have what Elisha's having, thank you). It sure as hell makes me want to put on some Gene Krupa -- his drum boogie was, in real life, probably a lot sexier, dirtier and seedier than we even know. I'll bet Ella knew.
I adore Winnipeg. I love the curious quiet. I love the odd streets. I love the nighttime thunder storm after a long hot day. I love the collection of characters, staring at cars after eating grilled, processed cheese salmon sandwiches (processed, they don't lie about the cheese). I love the confusing drug stores. I love the Kit Kat markets. I love how leisurely cabbies take you to your destination. Angelenos might find them dilatory drivers. They're simply calm. And they're always friendly.
I love the gorgeous hotel I'm currently residing. A national landmark of chateau, Francois I style, complete with opulent ornamentation, steep roof lines, and my favorite -- turrets. It's also haunted. Even better, opening in 1913, it was formerly the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway hotel and offered luxury to weary train travelers. As many know, I love trains. Alas, I flew to Winnipeg.
And I love the resplendent, primal, epic, bizarre, baroque grandeur of Guy Maddin's aesthetic as he crafts his newest, ambitious project right here, in his Winnipeg. Keyhole, starring Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini and the great Udo Kier, and a series of short films called Hauntings. Enchantment all around. And work. And the dress. And the hair. And for Mr. Maddin casting me as elegant Udo Kier's gun moll girlfriend...and his kidnap victim...and his wife...and a woman on a wolf...well, I'll explain more later. Processed dream. And no salmon sandwiches. So far.
But the Winnipeg washrooms, I suppose, like many, can be quite woeful.
Roman
Polanski emerged from the womb understanding
the art of filmmaking. Or, rather, understanding the art of wombs -- diseased, depraved, disordered wombs. Cruelty, violence, twisted sexuality, madness, absurdity -- all of Polanski's hallmark obsessions -- are almost always confined to one space. The director loves nothing more than trapping his
characters in devil worshiping apartment buildings, phallic, knife-wielding boat trips and unhappy, unsound houses. And water continually
means something. The superb Cul-de-Sac (1966) is his bats in the belfry, bat shit crazy house picture, and what weird, sexy, subversive, screwy fun it all is. Party at Polanksi's? I'm there. Even if Shelley Winters is invited.
And yet, Cul-de-Sac is so under-seen. (When will it be released in the United States on DVD?) A precursor to
themes he would continually dabble in: tortured relationships,
bizarre blonde behavior, infidelity, cross-dressing, even film noir, via
the stalwart, gravel voiced Lionel Stander, alas, best known to some for his role
in Hart to Hart ("Mrs. H, she's goooorgeous!") but who should also be remembered as the blacklisted, veteran
hard-boiled American
character actor, Cul-de-Sac (considered minor by some), is stunningly, at times, brilliantly unhinged, while being, decidedly Pinteresque. But this is pure Polanski.
Donald
Pleasence plays an odd fellow (a grand understatement) who lucks out (or not) with a
gorgeous, beguiling wife (the ever poignant Francoise Dorléac; sister to Catherine Deneuve, and an actress who left the world too soon), whom he keeps in an enormous, isolated house on a tiny island off the northeast
coast of Britain. Playing like an especially kinky Desperate Hours, the couple will be forced to host two escaped
criminals (Stander and Jack MacGowran) after the thugs land at their nutty abode. And then things get...really interesting. But it's not just crime and entrapment
that make the story compelling, it's all of the Polanski touches, particularly when he observes the idle activities of Dorléac.
Dorléac is cheating on her husband (who takes to wearing ladies
clothes a la Roman's tortured Tenant Trelkowski), she's also perpetually bored, stuck in the house like a more spirited, extra primal Virgin Suicide sister, and engages in childlike
activities to amuse herself. She tears around the house barefoot, applies exaggerated eyeliner (or helps her husband with his), messes with rifles and, the best, most hilarious, lights a sleeping
Stander's feet on fire with burning pieces of newspaper between his toes ("It's called a
bicycle" she taunts). Oh...you just don't do that to Lionel Stander. Or perhaps, you do. Between these two mismatched misfits, it's disarmingly sexy. These characters don't establish things like "safe" words nor do they understand the
concept of such a thing, so the perversity, stark beauty, the isolation, the bleakness, the menacing sexuality and the insanity make the whole experience a strangely good time. A romp, in fact. A Roman romp.
What better way to celebrate the flag waving, fire cracker popping indulgence of Independence Day than with great American Warren Oates, whose birthday comes one day after? Here, a re-post of Oates at his sexy, demented, sensible (to me), romantic best. Happy Birthday Mr. Oates. You left us too soon.
I blame Warren Oates. Or rather, his white suited, blood spattered beautiful loser named Bennie. This is the man who ruined me for all others -- romantically, sexually, heroically, pitifully, existentially, all of it -- throw in the filthy kitchen sink soaking a seeping red sack.
I may never find a romantic paramour as powerful as Oates’ Bennie, or by extension, Sam Peckinpah, the man who blasted my brain with such wild-eyed, gritty grandeur, bleeding sweaty passion and maniacally sincere poetry. This movie, one of the only pictures Peckinpah had total control over, isn’t just personal, it’s fucking personal. For Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia isn’t merely declarative for those seeking the headless bounty, but for those demons rattling around Peckinpah’s near nihilistic noggin.
I say near nihilistic because the movie isn’t as hopeless as many perceive it to be and Peckinpah isn’t the mean-spirited misogynist he’s painted as. Like Bennie, he’s a fighter and a lover, dammit. Though the picture begins with a Mexican land baron violently extracting the name of the man who seduced his daughter, it remains oddly sensitive, even as the girl is stripped and beaten. You feel for her. And in the end, Bennie feels for her. And you feel for Oates’ Bennie, the piano playing drifter hired to collect the million dollar bounty. Bennie’s desperate determination to make a better life for himself and his lovely, seasoned girlfriend Elita (Isela Vega) who just happens to be a whore (and is all the stronger for it), can be summed up in his assertion: “Nobody loses all of the time.” No, they do not, particularly when they’ve experienced love, no matter how doomed, and happiness, no matter how fleeting. Maybe in a world filled with insensitive one-nighters, phony thinkers, blood-sucking scumbags, casual rapists and reprobate renegades, these two supposed lowlifes are deluding themselves, and maybe they know it.
But really, who the hell isn’t?
And yet, their love isn’t a delusion. In one small moment that moves me more than a hundred sweeping melodramas, Bennie senses Elita’s sadness as she take a shower. It’s soon after she was nearly raped, something he harshly convinces himself: “She can handle it better than I can.” Opening the curtain, tough Elita sits wet, vulnerable, sad-eyed, and Bennie simply, movingly says, “I love you.” Stated with such empathy and gentleness, this is all she needs to hear. This is all I need to hear.
It makes me realize just how much this critique of capitalistic greed, this ingenious, viscerally violent orchestration of madness and dread, is at its heart, a love story. So when Elita is killed, it makes perfect sense that Bennie goes nuts, finds Alfredo’s rotting head and, with a perverse sort of respect, drives around with it, talks to it, swats at the flies swarming around it and stops to cleanse and ice the foul cranium. Bennie bonds with that head, the head of his dead lover’s ex, possessed by a crushing nostalgia for his girl, a gleefully gruesome bloodlust for her killers and a passionate, single-minded self destruction for himself, that’s as ruinous as it is valiant as it is romantic and it is just...so...beautiful.
Forget “We’ll always have Paris.” What gets me to the core is Bennie repeatedly shooting a dead man and exclaiming, “Why? Because it feels so damn good!” Yes it does. Over-the-moon crazy love dripping crimson romantic damn good -- which is how it should always be. Damn you Warren Oates.
So as ever prescient as Fight Club was, Facebook seems the logical step -- and even more meaningful since it's happening as I type these letters. A new club. A club of "friends" -- real or not. A club of affirmation. A club of alienation. A club for your face. A club in your face. I'm a member. When used properly, FB can be an incredibly beneficial place, exciting, even. And I have few negative rages against the internet. It's where I work and practically live. And one can block out the dumber aspects (even with so much inanity, noxious gossip and oh-the-humanity revealing comments online) by simply turning away. And god bless email correspondence. But in darker moments, I wonder if social networking, if used too frequently, will make us become even more disconnected from ourselves. People text, they twitter, they communicate online -- again, a positive thing but often, a confusing, toxic thing. I suppose that's life, online and off. But I fear that the old phone, where at least we can hear an inflection in a voice, is becoming an irritant to those who wish to drop you five words and five words only. I won't start with the sensation of talking to a real live face -- where we can see the sincerity (or indifference) in a person's eyes. That's nearly before my time. And I stay in a lot.
