Bette Davis defines ... Oscar. After all, wasn't it the divine Miss Davis who coined the Academy's golden boy as "Oscar?" The story goes that the little man's rear-end reminded the actress of her then husband, Oscar, and saucy Bette anointed it so. Whether or not this story is true (and it's more than likely, not) -- it doesn't matter. Bette named the Oscar. Fact. No need to check. Print the legend. As Werner Herzog would say, it's ecstatically true. And, on top, Bette defines Oscar. She is the performance, the telecast, the speech and the ensuing behaviour after winning (or not winning) swirled into one nice circular motion of her ever present cigarette.
Because, as I've stated before, Bette Davis is every woman (and some men) wrapped into one: ugly and beautiful, sweet and biting, honest and deceitful, classy and vulgar. There isn't a side of Bette that every woman doesn't see in herself. Her face -- those buggy eyes flickering with homeliness and yet an odd beauty (never forget how uniquely gorgeous Bette was as a young starlet), sadness, insanity, malevolence, rage and finally, strength. And her little body -- coiled up and ready to strike (as in Another Man's Poison) or sloppy and cruelly casual (like in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?: "Here's your lunch" she announces to Joan before promptly serving her a rat) or lovely and wary (as in All This, and Heaven Too) or brassy and swishy (as in Jezebel) or an elegant liar (as in The Letter) or mousy turned gorgeous (as in Now, Voyager) or just plain gloriously melodramatic, then vulnerable (as in All About Eve) or bitchy, vain and heart-breakingingly desperate (as in The Star).
The Star. Where Bette possesses her coveted golden boy but no one cares. Well, no one cares except the audience, Natalie Wood and Sterling Hayden (pretty dam good company, I'd say). For this year's Oscars, two actors are sure winners -- Christian Bale for The Fighter and Natalie Portman for Black Swan -- partly based on their physical transformations. But (and as much as I love their performances) Bette's transformation in The Star was far more brave. Specifically because she didn't go emaciated, fat, ugly or crazy, she simply did ... dumpy and, bitter. Like Bette on a bad day with bad hair and bad frocks and a bad hangover and that kind of brutally honest insecurity actresses dare not discuss while looking blousy. They are older. They are vain. They are sensitive. The industry's harsh. They can't handle it.
In real life Bette could handle it, which is exactly why she could take on the tough material of The Star. How many actresses, in a wonderfully meta-moment, would look at their actual Academy Award and say: "Come on, Oscar, let's you and me get drunk!" before embarking on a dipsomaniacal star tour of jealousy and pity that results in an arrest -- all with their statuette in tow? Perhaps in a comedy, but aside from real life (I'm sure plenty of washed up winners have driven through Beverly Hills, their Oscar propped on the dash like a gilded GPS system, cursing the career of Scarlett Johansson), not many would take it that far.
But, again, in the under-appreciated The Star (directed by Stuart Heisler) Bette takes it that far with her Margaret Elliot, a fortysomething (looking more fiftysomething) ex-goddess -- a part played with a believable amount of sympathetic sadness and unlikable self-absorption. And she holds up beautifully, feeling as fresh today as she did then. It's a bravura performance where we know this woman has never lost her star power, even if studio's don't want her anymore (it's Bette Davis for chissakes), that blames both the cruelty of Hollywood and those living in a land of delusion. You'll wince when you see her prospective boyfriend (a strapping Hayden) suggest she get a job at Saks Fifth Avenue, but you'll positively squirm when you watch her potentially triumphant screen test, something that turns disastrous when she can't accept that her washerwoman role isn't ... sexy.
But Bette was always sexy, even weirdly sexy, when demented. And Bette was always the star -- bitchy talk show appearances, bad TV, Burnt Offerings and all. The auteur who prompted Norma Desmond to instinctively ready herself for her closeup, Mr. DeMille, has an award named after him. I think it's about time Miss Davis did too. As she said of herself, "In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star." She also said, "I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived." Bette. Even in real life she had range.
"All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people."
Last night in Berlin was the world premiere of the 4K restoration of Martin Scorsese's 1976 classic, Taxi Driver. Not surprisingly, and after many viewings throughout my life, the movie, all red light and red blood and red anger, is still lingering in my mind. And Bickle's above proclamation, "morbid self-attention" is more relevant today. So much of the picture feels frighteningly prescient. Like The King of Comedy, it seems to speak of an entire oncoming generation -- Travis Bickle's and Rupert Pupkin's, primping (inadvertently or on purpose) for their 15 minutes of fame and glory. 15 minutes and more. From Bernard Goetz to Reality TV to TMZ to YouTube to Twitter, we love to celebrate or watch or laugh at our misfits, our train-wrecks, our crackheads and ... ourselves, ready for their (our) close-ups on ... anything. We're not the Me Decade/Generation, we're the Look at Me Generation.
Screenwriter Paul Schrader and supervisor of restoration, Grover Crisp, were there to present -- Crisp going over the technical details; Schrader to briefly tell us what inspired his screenplay, a screenplay he wrote at a mere 24 years old while he was living in his car. Schrader admitted to feeling like Travis Bickle, and even owning a gun. That he, at one point, realized he hadn't talked to a single person in a month, and was so alienated by the city, that he felt he was dying a young death in his auto-coffin. He may as well have been a night shift taxi driver. Schrader said that "he had to do something about it." Much like Bickle attempting to gain advice from the Wizard (and the Wizard's advice is awful), because he felt like he was going to do something ... he just didn't know what, and that he was worried about it (a moment in which we feel terrible for Bickle, reaching out, receiving nothing), Schrader was worried too. He was going to do something.
He took that anxiety and anger and did do something -- he wrote Taxi Driver.
Here's the back-story of the restoration via the Berlinale:
"In order to restore the film in spring 2010, the original 35mm negative was first read by a high resolution 4K scanner. The film was also re-graded and digitally restored in 4K: the media files were restored by Sony Pictures in California under the supervision of Grover Crisp; Scorsese’s cinematographer Michael Chapman supervised Scott Ostrowsky as he created a colour matched version that was approved by Scorsese. The 4K files were subsequently given a digital clean up by MTI film in Los Angeles. This involved removing scratches, stains and tread marks from the archived negative. Some scratches proved especially difficult to remove without altering the underlying imagery, particularly the faces of characters. The restoration of the sound was equally extensive and involved the production of a new multi-track stereo soundtrack from the film’s original recordings. The final version of the restored film was approved by Martin Scorsese in January 2011."
To see the film on the big screen (which I hadn't viewed, writ large, since college), was a revelation. There's been much debate about the restoration of the picture -- that it might take away the grit of Travis Bickle's New York City -- a city that he discusses in terms of filth and scum (which made me wonder, while Bickle was telling his surprise cab fare Senator Palantine the needed changes to the city, if this had been Mayor Giuliani's favorite movie). But watching the movie, I believe the right balance was achieved. Never once did you feel like you weren't in NYC 1975, never once did you think the vibrant reds took away from the dirty streets, the garbage, in fact, they only seemed to highlight them more. I always though that even Betsy's dresses, often red striped or pure white, were an interesting counterpoint to the junkies and lowlifes (who were also, incredibly vibrant, even before restoration) -- she is, of course, an "angel," as Travis proclaims her. But soon, to him, like all the rest of them.
And the film, as gritty as it is, was always beautiful. Just the shot of the cab in the mist ... like something from a dream. Or Matthew ("Sports") slow-dancing with Iris, a sick moment of pimp manipulation set to the romantic Bernard Herrmann score (on their phonograph), that manages to be creepy/gross and lovely all at once. And there with that bright red -- Matthew's red polished fingernail clutching Iris's hair.
So many moments of the movie you notice even more on the big screen, and in such crisp detail. Bickle's clear racism is more apparent and disturbing. And even the humor, which does exist in Taxi Driver, is funnier. And not just in the Albert Brooks moments. There's something about Travis not understanding "The Pilgrim" by Kris Kristofferson ("I'm no pusher ...") that's amusing (this beautiful woman is giving him a supreme compliment and he can't see it). And yet, he buys the record, a lonely, heartbreaking moment. He doesn't even bother to listen to it. (Also interesting that Schrader was raised in the tradition of the Pilgrims -- Calvinist -- this can't be a coincidence).
And yes, the final messy shoot-out is gloriously, horrifyingly gory, and hasn't been scrubbed to death to save our stomachs (or worsen them). It still combines a kind of grindhouse blood (so red ... but in some cases, a repulsive brownish red), among the cheap plaid suits and Iris's hot pants, and remains so recklessly real and beautifully composed all at once.
And finally, putting aside the restoration -- there's the story. The fall and rise of Travis Bickle. "God's lonely man." Critics and viewers often discuss the golden age of 70s filmmaking -- and Taxi Driver is certainly one of the era's highest achievements. But it goes so far beyond that. It's so incendiary, that I don't think it could be made today. And not only because of the advent of the blockbuster or the uber popularity of 3D or the idea that "real" characters have been wiped out of popular cinema, but because the movie, like some of the greatest art, feels so potently combustible. Oddly, not once did I think of John Hinckley during the movie -- I thought of the world and I thought of myself.
Taxi Driver makes you ponder the world we live in, beyond New York City and now, and then, as a perfect character study, it makes you ponder yourself. Your soul searching, fucked-up, boot clad Cowboy and your soul searching, fucked-up, mohawked Indian. Because, truth be told, it's tough to not relate to Travis Bickle -- shy and disturbed, angry and self-hating, valiant and violent, and, in brief moments, with that weirdly winning grin, charming -- just trying to get organezized.
"Taxi Driver" (1976). Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Paul Schrader. Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, Albert Brooks and Peter Boyle.
The For the Love of Film (Noir) Blogathon hosted by the inimitableSelf-Styled Siren and Ferdy on Films, starts today -- the perfect day, really, since so much of film noir concerns an emotion that makes one moody, malicious and often, in the best cinematic scenarios, murderous. And, as a Dark City Player and a Film Noir Foundation member, how could I not contribute? Writers and film fans, please contribute not just your pen, but your payment to the blogathon. Proceeds will go to the Film Noir Foundation's restoration of the 1950 noir "The Sound of Fury." Donate here. For my contribution I'm re-posting one of my favorites -- Jacques Tourneur’s "Nightfall." A movie I love so much that I've admitted on the record (if you listen to my "Road House" commentary with Eddie Muller) to slight ... home invasion. (Hey, as Barbara Payton proclaimed "I am not ashamed." It was then a necessary measure. "Nightfall" wasn't on DVD yet.) Stay tuned for more posts through the week ...
"Mixing fear and the ridiculous can be very exciting." -- Jacques Tourneur
Nightfall is a work of striking juxtapositions and tones that by picture end, come off like an unforgettably disarming person -- you’re charmed, discombobulated, even slightly disturbed, and you're not sure what to make of it all. You just know you like it, no matter how bizarre it all ends up. And you know you're gonna follow it, Holly Martins style, no matter how dangerous it all becomes. That's Jacques Tourneur and his beauteous beasts. From cat to zombie to Mitchum to Aldo in the snow, you find yourself falling in some kind of ambrosial, demented love.
Nightfall is love of a rougher sort. We have Aldo Ray to thank for that. And then, Tourneur's terrain. The movie opens at night, in a neon lit Los Angeles jungle shimmering with welcoming Hollywood haunts like Miceli’s, Firefly and Musso and Frank, and ends within the blinding white snow of the foreboding Wyoming Wilderness. It pits an older doctor and his younger, artist friend against two thugs -- one a grinning eager beaver, violence-lusting psychopathic creep, and the other, a cool-as-a-cucumber, clever crook whose relaxed manner makes you wish he was your friend. Never mind he's a murderer. It features an ultra chic fashion show with a modern Anne Bancroft as a “mannequin” followed by a cuddly rural bus ride during which Anne and Aldo express mutual romantic feelings after rising to (decidedly non chic) whiskers. There’s ruthless violence committed against good Samaritans mixed with quippy one liners and deliciously dark humor. And did I mention Anne Bancroft falls in love with Aldo Ray? They seem mismatched, but then, perfect together -- and their moments are exceptionally romantic. In short, Nightfall is a trip.
And what a trip, quite literally, and a noteworthy addition to noir innovator Jacques Tourneur’s oeuvre (which includes, among other splendid pictures, the horror/noir classics Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie and his key noir, Out of the Past).
Adapted by Stirling Silliphant from hard boiled writer David Goodis's 1947 novel (this guy knew how to write a novel as a movie -- dear lord) and exquisitely shot by Burnett Guffey (who also lensed Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece of existential ennui, In a Lonely Place and Arthur Penn’s savage blast of brilliance Bonnie and Clyde, as well as other magnificent movies), the picture is considered by some, a minor film noir -- something that’s always baffled me. Made in the later cycle of the genre (released in 1957), the picture ingeniously weaves a convoluted story, blistering violence, existential angst, naturalistic acting and gentle romanticism without ever feeling forced. And as stated earlier -- it’s very funny -- something Tourneur always intended. And though the theme song seems a bit overheated (Al Hibler crooning “Nightfall…and you!” -- a tune that really ought to grace a Ross Hunter production) even that works. Akin to the startling laughs spiking the movie, it echoes Tourneur’s own sly sense of humor.
The story is structured much like Out of the Past, with our hero (who's not guilty, unlike Mitchum), Rayburn Vanning (Ray) relating his waking nightmare to a woman. Only in this instance, that lovely lady, Marie Gardner (Bancroft), isn't so innocent -- but she means well. Pulling a damsel in distress act for the benefit of two thugs intent on jumping Ray, she sets up the poor lug thinking these jerks are police officers. Vanning is then accosted by Red (Rudy Bond) and John (Brian Keith) and taken to a deserted oil derrick (an unsettling yet amusing scene) where he’s set to be tortured. They want to know where that money’s hidden, something Vanning continually states he does not know. Vanning escapes, finds his way to Marie’s apartment and gives her the skinny. Or rather, the thick skinny.
He explains the convoluted predicament that’s left him understandably paranoid. Shall I repeat? OK...here goes. While on a camping/hunting trip in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with best friend Dr. Edward Gurston (Frank Albertson) during which a rather sticky discussion of Doc’s much younger wife (whom we learn later has a thing for Vanning and sent him letters saying so) commences, their conversation is cut short when a car crashes off an embankment (naturally). Out emerge two shady characters (Red and John), worse for wear but jacked up on crooked adrenaline. Doc fixes John’s arm, soon realizes they’re now unlucky witnesses (the men just robbed a bank) and then, shockingly, Doc is shot dead. Vanning is left injured and the crooks blaze off. But in a perfectly stupid film noir blunder, they make an enormous mistake -- they grab the doctor’s bag instead of their loot. Vanning stashes the dough and high-tails it -- moving from town to town under suspicion that he killed Doc, and ending up in Los Angeles, where the poor, sensitive lug is being tailed by insurance investigator Ben Fraser (James Gregory), who can't see Vanning committing the crime. He ain't the type.
And as played by Aldo Ray -- he doesn’t seem the type. One of the more striking aspects to Nightfall is its casting, and the barrel-chested, thick necked Ray, who was a natural born actor (watch his first and largely unschooled leading role in George Cukor’s The Marrying Kind and you’ll see how immediately gifted the man was. Also in Anthony Mann’s brilliant Men in War.) Ray is the consummate good guy in-over-his-head. With his razor blade, yet uniquely delicate voice, masculine, yet boyish appeal (he looked like he literally walked off a football field, which is why Cukor made him take ballet before The Marrying Kind) Ray always exuded a different kind of mystery than say, Mitchum or Ryan or Widmark -- men, with Widmark on exception, who rarely appeared “normal.” Ray, an ex Frogman who fought in Iwo Jima, was a brawny man’s man certainly, but he always looked like he was hiding something -- something nice. That inside he had the soul of a poet or artist -- a man of depth beyond his tough exterior. And perhaps being nice in a nasty world (and I'm talking about Ray on film. Let's put aside his rocky real life for a moment) is a curse. Appropriately, in Nightfall, he’s a nice artist. He's really gonna struggle.
And against Brian Keith, Ray's artistic vulnerability really rises to the surface. Like Ray, Keith feels so real and new school/ old school (if that makes sense). His delivery manages to be both distracted and pithy rather than rat-a-tat. And he’s so agreeable here that the sweeter side of Ray works like Keith's catnip. But he's a meanie. A funny meanie. When he humorously claims that Red’s homicidal kicks stem from his lack of childhood play (“When Red was a kid they didn’t have enough playgrounds. He’s sort of an adult delinquent.”) he’s both revelatory and teasing. All of his banter towards Red is cleverly berating: “The top of your head never closed up when you were a kid. Neither did your mouth.” Cracking wise with Red, the two spar like men fixing to off each other, but who are, quite simply, getting on each others nerves (preceding some of Tarantino’s talky criminals or the Coen's chatty/stoic crooks in Fargo). They talk and argue and Keith is all sexy, fatherly menace, but darker fates await them in white, silent snow, secret snow.
This wild, almost ridiculous fate was something Tourneur excelled at. It was practically encoded in his DNA -- a result of real life trauma. Based on the oddball, mean spiritedtreatment at the hands of his filmmaker father, Tourneur developed a dark sense of the absurd. As written in John Wakemen’s “Film Directors Vol. 1 1890-1946,” Tourneur believed that the childhood he endured -- one of “grotesque punishment” lied at the root of his cinematic obsessions. Relating that he was sent to a poor school and teased unmercifully for his square suspenders, Tourneau claimed: “I think this is what prompted me to introduce comic touches into the dramatic moments of my films…Mixing fear and the ridiculous can be very exciting.”
Indeed they can. As Red can’t wait to torture a terrified Vanning, he sinisterly and bizarrely sings: “The tougher they are the more fun they are tra-la.”
And again, I'm urging writers and film fans to please contribute not just your pen, but your payment to the blogathon. Thanks so much to Siren and Ferdy. Don't forget to donate here. And Ooh La La ... Aldo Ray ... as Anne says: "You're the most wanted man I know." I heartily agree.
"There's no reason for you to treat me this way. You’re killing me. You're killing me with the way you are towards me! All I want is the fucking number and that should be goddamn good enough for you! Now give me the fucking number! You fucking hear me? I'm sick of this fucking shit! Stop treating me this way and give me the fucking number! I'll fucking kill you!"
Adam Sandler. Yelling. In a phone booth. In Hawaiii. In a blue suit. Threatening death upon his sister. It makes my heart soar. How can this be? Well, to be quite simple and downright corny about it -- because it's love. Love, American-Paul-Thomas-Anderson-style. The director's exalting, superb, poetic Punch-Drunk Love remains one of the most romantic movies of the last near ten years.
And yet, many don't agree. I've written about this movie here before, but since it's Valentine's Day, a day I don't care for (raw, real emotions are not what you see when going out on this day, unless you count the raw, real strain couples usually express while attempting, or, worse, being forced to ignite "romance"), I wanted to return to the film. Since I was baffled by the picture’s lukewarm to mixed reception upon release (in 2002), I wonder if it remains misunderstood to this day. I know that even many Anderson lovers scratched their heads over the movie’s lack of epic heft, extra multiple storylines and large scale speeches. (Many did the same with There Will Be Blood, another movie that features a strong central performance and person who seems to polarize people -- the brilliant Daniel Day Lewis). And then there was that Adam Sandler bias -- the knee jerk and unfair question of, why? Why, Happy Gilmore? (And to clarify, I like Happy Gilmore).
And I don’t just like Punch-Drunk Love, I lovePunch-Drunk Love. I love it with an odd fear, and with my entire body, like how I feel when an anxiety attack has passed and my brain is still tripping from the surge of adrenaline -- when birds and trees and cab drivers suddenly gain a glowing, but warped beauty. An extraordinary, unique picture that manages to simultaneously subvert and showcase the Sandler persona beautifully, while maintaining Anderson’s singular éclat as a filmmaker. Anderson’s masterpiece, There Will Be Blood has proven the director can handle multiple genres, but he had revealed his versatility earlier with Punch-Drunk. No long Anderson, extraordinary monologues, no expertly interwoven subplots, no drugs, Punch-Drunk Love was a film we'd not only never seen Anderson create, it was (and still is) a movie we’d never seen anywhere. And no matter how you feel about Sandler, he leaves a lasting impression as lonely, alienated Barry Egan, the Californian businessman and put-upon brother who falls for the ever-patient Emily Watson.
To explain the off-kilter, dissonant power of Punch-Drunk Love (aided by Jon Brion’s compelling, lovely, yet anxiety ridden score) is nearly impossible: So alien yet incredibly human is the movie, it frequently puts the viewer right into the uncomfortable, anxious mind of Barry -- an unsettling, but to many, familiar place to be. We have no idea what will happen next (but with delight, and sometimes heartbreak). Sandler, who had displayed talent before this, has never been so fantastically abstract, utilizing his scared-yet-angry-but-violent-little-boy persona with a sublime darkness. This may sound ridiculous to some but Anderson's influence on Sandler is somewhat akin to Alfred Hitchcock's use of Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo (who had certainly played darker characters before Vertigo) -- pulling the dusky and misunderstood out of a popular American movie star and layering him with wounded depth. He did the same with Tom Cruise's transcendent performance in Magnolia ("I will drop kick those fucking dogs" is almost a Barry Egan moment).
Sandler’s verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown, yet deeply romantic Barry is so powerfully beguiling that when Anderson films his journey to Hawaii, it's a moment that's so overwhelmingly romantic, so remarkably special, it both swoons with gorgeousness and rattles your nerves -- all those deep seated raw emotions bubbling to the surface. Tuned to Shelley Duvall singing Harry Nilsson's enchanting and offbeat "He Needs Me" from Robert Altman's great, underrated Popeye (so spot on, bullseye perfect), Barry moves from work to airport to cab to phone booth, where he finally takes a stand against his sister (“You’re killing me. You're killing me with the way you are towards me. All I want is the fucking number and that should be goddamn good enough for you!"), and then reaches Lena. In a beautiful touch, when she answers, the payphone lights up to her voice. A musical sequence that plays like Anderson’s twisted version of the Arthur Freed unit (Barry’s Technicolor blue suit alone) it’s a masterful ode to vulnerability, fear and power, and something that seems impossible to replicate -- stamped with all that live wire, off the cliff Anderson energy and influence.
This might be why some respond so strongly to the picture, or just cannot wrap their heart or mind around the thing. I'm not certain. There are those who don't understand a woman loving her man so much that she wants to "chew" his eyeballs, and there are those who do. Love can make you do and say crazy things -- and can become so overwhelming that when it enters the realms of violent thought -- positive or negative -- it isn’t so strange, to you. Anderson clearly digs this dynamic so, if letting your guard down leads to deception, you might kill that impostor in a rage a la There Will Be Blood’s Daniel Plainview, who dumps his faux brother into a shallow grave and shovels dirt over his dead body (a scene I completely comprehend). And if finally sleeping with your beloved makes you realize the strength of your love so much, you can easily confess: “I'm lookin' at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty.” Well, that’s just bloody fucking brilliant beautiful.
Working with yellow wallpaper all around you -- it's impossible.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote her famous story The Yellow Wallpaper based on her own experience -- as a patient suffering the "Rest Cure" and staring at that miserable but supposedly cheerful wallpaper all day -- used the colorful covering as inspiration (if you can call it that) to create her powerful tale about madness, women and creativity. Ever since reading it, I've been fascinated by yellow wallpaper. I notice it everywhere. I even imagine yellow wallpaper.
So after much stress from a simultaneously troublesome and glorious year (thank you, Guy), I felt I needed some sort of well, "Rest Cure" myself, but with the hopes of writing. I holed up in an antique Inn and chose to ... rest. But. I wasn't prepared for the yellow-hued wallpaper. No writing was accomplished -- I never dressed out of my black nightgown those long days, and never wrote a thing. Instead, movies, pictures, masks, crowns, tinsel and noise makers from New Year's Eve were brought out. That was nice. And fun. I actually smiled without caring how freakish my full grin and tangled teeth usually look in photos -- especially and because of that worrisome wallpaper all around me. I fell in love with that winsome wallpaper. But the next day there, I became ill: Yellow wallpaper.
As Perkins wrote:
"It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw -- not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper -- the smell! … The only thing I can think of that it is like, is the color of the paper! A yellow smell."
No, it didn't smell, but it wasn't a soft baby chick, it wasn't a dandelion, it wasn't ... something ... and then it wasn't something else. What was it? It's possible I wanted Gilman's yellow trapped woman to appear. I only hoped it wasn't me. Perhaps it was. The day after obsessively taking these pictures, my eyes are still suffering a severe reaction from, of all things, wrongly prescribed eye drops (Too much staring? I deserve it. I can't produce regular tears ... I want to cry, but they don't flow ... a bizarre, frustrating feelingt). Perfect. An eye sore.No crying. Peeling. Yellow wallpaper. The curious eye issue is slowly getting better. But the doctor says... different drops, heal the ducts, remove the stress. How about some (of course) rest. Yellow wallpaper. (Maybe the wallpaper is actually red.) But, no. Yellow wallpaper.
So, here's the photos. If you look at the last picture presented, multiple images of Jean Arthur appear across my mask. I have no idea how this phantom set of tracers happened. My back was to her as she tried to resist Joel McCrea's charms. Perhaps Jean Arthur's the woman in the yellow wallpaper. A good omen. But I'm not going back to check: Yelllow wallpaper.
Click on lower right side of slide show for full images.
Oh, Tura Satana, how do I love thee? Let me count the curves, but also the kicks, the punches, the smoldering stares, the black-suited, unique beauty and the awe-inspiring power that ripped through the screen like an amazon from another universe. As much as I love these actresses, Tura wasn't sublime Anita Ekberg, she wasn't Lynda Carter's busty Wonder Woman, she wasn't delicious Ann-Margret circa Kitten with a Whip -- Tura was a tiger with a blackbelt, a true exotic who actually lived a life of hard knocks and one she, no doubt, disgorged in cathartic release on screen. And she did it with style.
Tura accomplished and endured many things in her eventful life, a life that could only be described as cinematic -- a veritable Kill Bill Part 1, 2, 3, and 4. There were her stories at an internment camp, an early, horrific gang rape, reform school, and a 15-year revenge on her victimizers (Beatrix Kiddo indeed, but the real thing). There were her impressive stints as model, dancer, girlfriend and influencer of Elvis Presley, her work with Billy Wilder in Irma La Douce and then that movie, the most obvious, but the most iconic and emblematic of Tura, the icon.
Her Varla in the beautifully shot exploitation classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! remains one of the toughest female performances on screen. Though director Russ Meyer and his unique, often gorgeous filming, did help create the ultimate ultra-vixen uber-babe -- one who inspired countless other bad babes of the big screen, and one so brazenly scary that you definitely didn't want to take her home to mom and dad (but then, maybe they'd like her. I can personally attest that the woman was certainly nice in person) -- he couldn't have done it without her.
Tura is so potent, she personifies "powerful woman" far beyond her obvious assets. Taking charge as the leader of three bad girls who first, kill a dragster in a smashing fight and then kidnap his bikini-wearing girlfriend, Tura is the one to watch. She lifts the picture to a whole other level. Taking in the spectacle of Tura and a man actually fighting -- hand-to-hand combat, is sexy, for sure, but it's genuinely terrifying. And unlike many cutesy action babes of present times (those big screen Charlie's Angels kick butt "girls rule" fantasies) you actually believe she could take down any man.
Yes, as Meyer so fetishized, she has a tremendous pair, but she has a tremendous face and a tremendous presence and a tremendous style all her own. Who was ever like Tura? To me she IS the ultimate Meyer icon and even out-did her director by becoming something of a feminist icon on top. Ace Meyer shot her perfectly, but he needed that look and that attitude and that realness. Out of her tough and lovely life, she was her own creation.
Rest in peace Tura Satana. If there is a God, he's been eagerly awaiting his Satana.
John Garfield and Palm Noir. Low key black and white in the hot, yellow-hued high desert. John Garfield meant a lot to me last year. So, the 2010 Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival was a special one -- not only did the festival break records with audiences soaking in all of that sun and sin, light and vice, early mornings and existential angst -- but I was able to introduce one of my favorite and important John Garfield movies, He Ran All the Way, rarely seen on the big screen. And the best: interviewing his daughter, Julie Garfield, who's become a great friend.
This had been my third year presenting films and interviewing guests on stage, and my favorite year of all. Alongside peerless festival organizer, Alan K. Rode (author of "Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy"), the esteemed Foster Hirsch, who penned the first Film Noir book I ever read, "The Dark Side of the Screen" (among other works -- and a person who reveres The Bad Seed even more than I do), and my Road House co-commentator/ partner in Widmark/Lupino love, writer, filmmaker and president of the Film Noir Foundation, Eddie Muller, the team was properly noir obsessed.
Alan, nice man that he is, and perhaps, terrified knowing enough about my Garfield worship, that I might possibly throw a fit as big as Lana Turner's car meltdown in The Bad and the Beautiful had I not presented the picture (I also, as guest programmer, introduced and discussed the film on Turner Classic Movies just last October), let me take on He Ran All the Way with Julie -- acclaimed stage actress, teacher and all around fascinating woman. So thanks to the Film Noir Foundation for taping our interview (and check out the video on their site as well). After a late night and some hard theater lights set to the Stanley Kowalski "Let's taunt Blanche with a naked light bulb" meter (holy christ ... over-imbibing on noir makes for an appropriate hung-over look -- I say this because I know Julie will agree, though she looks smashing, but again, it's fitting), here's our interview, divided into four parts.
My Introduction:
Julie on John Garfield's troubled youth, his parents, his mentor and the rheumatic fever that would cause his heart problems:
Julie on Garfield in the Group Theater, Garfield's pre-Brando type of raw, rugged, realness on screen, The Postman, his patriotism, the Blacklist and his job as diaphragm salesman:
Julie on Joan Crawford, Garfield's infidelity, her favorite roles, HUAC's hounding, renewed interest in the star, and a beautiful quote from He Ran All the Way director John Berry:
Discussing the movie, her father and his life, Julie (on stage and off) is what I imagine her dad was like. Fiercely intelligent, down to earth, funny, warm, and charming as hell. If ever a woman is charismatic enough to play De Niro's wife in Goodfellas (and to make that much of an impression when Ray Liotta's Henry Hill testifies against him in court -- that look she gives!), it is Julie. It's impossible not to fall in love with her.
There was the power of the film, its history and the real life tragedy of Garfield, and then Julie, sitting next to me. She had never seen her father's final film on the big screen, and experiencing her taking in daddy so beautifully shot by James Wong Howe, and his tough, vulnerable, wounded, complicated performance, his last performance, was especially moving. An experience I will never forget.
Mulit-faceted actor that he was, Garfield was, clearly, a noir icon, so with that in mind, please contribute to the For the Love of Film (Noir) Blogathon hosted by the inimitable Self-Styled Siren and Ferdy on Films. Bloggers will contribute, and more should contribute so readers and film lovers can donate to the Film Noir Foundation's restoration of the 1950 noir THE SOUND OF FURY. Please read more at the Siren.
