Sunset Gun

The Love Song of D. Samuel Peckinpah

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.

Originally written for GQ.

Christmas With Crosby, Bing

Bing Crosby always reminds me of Christmas. And not just because of his famous movie and song, White Christmas (of which Otis Redding brilliantly covered), but because he encapsulates everything about Christmas -- the dreams, the hopes, the sentiment, the lights (linger on...your pale blue eyes, Bing), the well meaning and the holiday, and yet, the haunted quality of tradition -- the Shining like reminder of times gone past. Like Christmas, Bing carries eerie memories and an underlying dysfunction. And in real life, Bing was no saint.

But what a brilliant performer. And what a man of many talents. And (maybe because he wasn't a saint) what a...strangely erotic man. (I get why Grace Kelly chose him in High Society -- as much as I revere Frank). And what a pal for teaming with his later competition -- Sinatra. There’s a wonderful moment in the musical High Society during which Crosby and Sinatra sing an especially rousing version of Cole Porter’s “Well, Did You Evah!” Midway through the charming, inebriated song, in which two “swellegant” party pals swap banter, dish on guests and form a dipsomaniacal camaraderie, Crosby croons to Sinatra with his distinctive “ba ba ba boom” and Sinatra jokes, “Don’t dig that kind of crooning, chum.” “You must be one of the newer fellows,” Crosby answers back.

The idea of Sinatra being one of the “newer fellows” is amusing since, in 1956 (when the picture was released), the big-band, and balladeer musical style of crooning was already on the wane. Sinatra was well on his way to becoming the elder-statesman Chairman of the Board, Elvis would be anointed the King of Rock ’n’ Roll and Bing would be...Bing.

Not that anyone would ever forget Bing Crosby. The crooner, born in Tacoma, Washington, had been cinema’s number one box-office draw from 1944 to 1948 and was an enormous, multi-talented star -- radio, recordings and motion pictures all earning him legions of adoring fans. And like another famous crooner who would count him as an influence (Dean Martin), Crosby had his own cinematic comedy team, making the frequently funny (and underrated) “road” movies with wise-acre Bob Hope. He even won an Academy Award (for Going My Way) and received another nomination for his alcoholic role in The Country Girl.

There’s no denying that Crosby was and is big time. And yet...why does he feel just a little slighted through the years? Like the only moment we enjoy his music is once a year, when we roll out “White Christmas” from our holiday collection of old standards? This seems a damn shame.

Perhaps it’s just how antiquated his music sounds today -- beautifully, mysteriously antiquated, like something emerging from a dream...or a nightmare. In either moody reverie, when listening to the brilliant baritone sing “Pennies From Heaven,” “Ol’ Man River” or “Swinging on a Star,” you feel the music form around you, as if you’re riding on an ethereal echo chamber of air coming from a million miles away. It’s spacey, creepy and charming all at once. Which perfectly explains how effective the song “Mairzy Dotes” becomes in David Lynch's Twin Peaks, when daughter-murdering, Bob-haunted Leland Palmer crazily sings it in the midst of his meltdowns. And then there was that pairing of the two Thin White Dukes -- Bowie and Bing dueting “Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy” -- ideal.  These were two sexy space aliens keeping Christmas a little bit Christian and a little bit...pagan. As much as I love Frank Sinatra, this kind of cross generational extraterrestrial-ness could have only been created with Crosby.

All of these elements of Crosby are so marvelously powerful, that his music remains (particularly his earlier recordings) ever haunting, ever romantic and, in some instances, ever celestial. As musicologist J.T.H. Mize put it, Crosby could “melt a tone away, scoop it flat and sliding up to the eventual pitch as a glissando, sometimes sting a note right on the button, and take diphthongs for long musical rides.” In short, Crosby could send you. He still can. And not only at Christmas time.

Traummovie: Eyes Wide Shut

Before 2009 comes to a close, I'm dipping into my archives to consider ten years of Eyes Wide Shut. One of Stanley Kubrick's most underrated pictures, and a movie that in terms of love, sex, death, fuck, fear and träume remains timeless. It's also a great Christmas movie...

In Stanley Kubrick's cinematic universe reality, dreams, order and insanity progress on distinct, intersecting planes. Whether he was depicting an absurd, chillingly real war room in Dr. Strangelove, the disturbing but oddly sexy ultra violence of an Orwellian future in A Clockwork Orange, the siren call of insanity in The Shining, the hyper fantastical yet authentic Vietnam War in Full Metal Jacket, or the irony and powerlessness among such transcendent opulence in Barry Lyndon, life was a surreal work in progress -- an ambiguous joke that veered from hilarious to sexy to terrifying, sometimes within seconds. Attempting to understand order, or how any system designed to make our universe more rational or safe seemed fruitless. Think Sterling Hayden approaching such a predicament at the end of Kubrick's The Killing. He watches his life literally fly away on an airport tarmac and bitterly spits one of cinema’s greatest final lines: “Eh, what’s the difference?”

Which brings me to the final line of Kubrick’s frequently misunderstood Eyes Wide Shut in which Nicole Kidman states rather flatly, “Fuck” -- as in, that’s the answer, that’s what we need to do. A movie I’ve defended since its release, it’s a picture that deserves closer inspection and a worthy finale for the enigmatic auteur.

The controversial movie (some thought it silly, some, un-erotic) Eyes Wide Shut found the director once again studying the perplexing nature of dreams and reality, this time exploring them in a more personal and private arena: sexuality. As he did with Lolita, Kubrick created more than a film about sexual desire; he created a film about bitter romance, troublesome marital bonds, societal contradictions and, significantly, the fear of death.

An updating of the 1927 Traumnovelle (Dream Novel) by Arthur Schnitzler, an Austrian writer whose deeply psychological work resembled Freud's, the picture remains an unsettling blend of antiquated garishness and modern transgression -- an alternate sexual universe haunted by ghouls of the past, present and future.

In this universe “live” the healthy, handsome walking dead -- Dr. Bill Harford (an impressive Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (a slinky, wonderfully creepy Nicole Kidman), a glamorous, rich couple who appear the picture of storybook perfection. But like most supposed perfection, there are cracks in that portrait, and in their case, it’s the usual: they want to screw other people (or at least they think they do). At a sumptuous party given by Bill's obscenely wealthy friend Victor (Sydney Pollack), Bill almost strays upstairs with two models while Alice flirts with a bizarre Hungarian man who looks like one of the cadaverous party-goers from The Shining. The next evening, in a fit of jealousy over Bill's near indiscretion (he ended up contending with a beautiful, naked drug overdose instead of a debauched roll in the hay -- though the way her body sits in this shot is disturbingly erotic), Alice confesses that she’s had thoughts of cheating and, even worse, reveals that if things had been different, she would have thrown her entire life away for one flight of sexual fancy.

Unmasking something that should remain one of those deep, dark secrets you never confess to your significant other, Alice deftly rattles Bill's perception of her fidelity and the strength of their marriage in a speech that makes his mind spin out of control (Kidman's performance here is superb). After this confession, Bill is abruptly called away to confirm the death of a patient and keeping in tune with the love/death/sex of the picture, the daughter of the deceased makes a pass at him. The grief stricken but, considering the circumstances, kinky gesture aids in Bill’s decision to not immediately return home. Instead, he wanders the streets of New York and embarks on a sequence of actions that, though not as outwardly comic, somewhat resemble those in the Scorsese movie After Hours: He discovers a surreal sexual underworld that he’s both attracted to and repelled by.

A prostitute, a piano player, a bizarre costume-store owner and his Lolita-esque 14-year-old daughter lead Bill to the film's infamous ritualistic orgy sequence, during which participants are cloaked and masked, and naked women are used as sacrificial sex lambs. The gothic, terrifying yet titillating feel of this sequence walks a fine line between horror and parody and true to Kubrick’s genius, manages to cross into both camps. The magnificent, exacting camera work and unrelenting music compel us to look, no matter what happens, and though I was actually a little scared the first time I saw this moment, I found myself highly amused --laughing even. If ever a person was out of place in a Bohemian Grove-like orgy, it is Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill. And yet, I was absolutely hypnotized, watching these moments like a waking dream and investing it with multiple meanings. What the hell is going on here besides a bunch of silly old rich men getting their jollies with beautifully breasted, long legged Helmut Newton models? And further, what do all of Bill’s adventures mean? Are Bill's encounters simply nightmares that will damage his marriage beyond repair, or are they mere titillating fantasy -- fodder for a closer relationship and better sex with his spouse?

Well, I can’t answer that. Given the picture's ominous tone, however, there is something definitely rotten within its slinky, Christmas-lit loveliness. Like the impeccable environment of The Shining, the aura of Eyes Wide Shut is one of beauty ready to be defiled, sexuality ready to be slaughtered, lovely exteriors that reek of formaldehyde. The pall that hangs over this picture is fear: fear of the unknown; fear of yourself or of others; and fear that if sex can lead to freedom, it can just as easily lead to death.

In fact, the picture can be viewed as a commentary on sexual attitudes in the last few decades -- a time when meaningless indiscretions can lead to horrifying blood-test results. It is no surprise, then, that Bill is a doctor and that throughout the film, he flashes his physician's ID as a police detective would his badge. "I'm a doctor," he constantly says, for both reassurance and intimidation. In a profession that requires intimate investigation of flesh that may well be on its way to the morgue, sex is serious. These unsettling references to AIDS, necrophilia and forbidden sex (not to mention Kubrick's own death upon bringing the film to completion, une petite mort of sorts) permeate the picture like one giant prick tease. In today's world, sex is still there for the taking, but at what cost and for what gain? Kubrick's frustrating, brilliant coda neither answers nor ignores its own questions. Rather, it leaves us in a mysterious, contradictory mishmash of dream and reality, where not only are our eyes wide shut, but our legs are too.

Ugly Talents: Who's Afraid?

Thanksgiving brought me to one of my favorite dysfunctional romances and one memorable social occasion. 

Good, better, best, bested. Many of us can understand this.

Back when I was a teenager studying movies, one of my film professors said to me, "Watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf every three years of your life; you'll understand and relate to it better upon each viewing." Perhaps horrifyingly (to some, not me), but ever so poignantly, he couldn't have been more correct. Mike Nichols' debut film, the adaptation of Edward Albee's searing stage play, is a blisteringly real, and though mostly stage-bound, a wonderfully, living, breathing depiction of the destructive and at times, psychotic battles between an aging alcoholic couple intent on outdoing each other with clever, though wickedly malicious verbal gymnastics.

A shocking picture for 1966, the film was an expletive-ridden salvo that frightened some and impressed many. So notable was Woolf that the picture that was the first to use the words "goddamn" and "bugger" went on to Oscars galore, earning Elizabeth Taylor a greatly deserved second Academy Award. It also garnered Sandy Dennis a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, a win for Haskell Wexler's gorgeous cinematography (he was the last to win for a category that doesn't exist anymore -- best Black and White cinematography). On top of those accolades, the movie was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Richard Burton), Best Supporting Actor (George Segal), Best Director (Mike Nichols), Best Screenplay (Ernest Lehman), Best Sound, Best Original Music Score (for Alex North's at times gentle, haunting score), and Best Film Editing. Though Oscars are no barometer of greatness, they can point out a certain zeitgeist. This one? Mr. Burton referring to Miss Dennis as "monkey nipples."

Though Bonnie and Clyde helped kick-start the emerging '70s cinema, Virginia Woolf was a formidable front runner and, in a few ways, more disturbingly violent. In it, words and deeds are doled out with a ferocious vitriol that's remains unmatched, at least in terms of eloquence. Nothing so nasty has ever been so sickly beautiful.

And dammit if Liz's dumpy, yet oddly sexy drunk and Burton's broke-down "bog" aren't beautiful losers. Never mind how toxic they make their lives. Beginning with a gorgeous title sequence during which we watch History Professor George (Burton) and his saucy and sauced wife Martha (Taylor) walking back from a function drunk and cackling, the movie immediately places us in their dark, disconsolate universe -- one of shattered hopes, nihilism, and dipsomaniacal game playing. To George's surprise, Martha is expecting guests (at such a late hour) and, after their return home where she famously utters the Bette Davis line "what a dump" while harping on George about a movie: "What's the name of the picture?" (I'm always happy I know the name of the picture. It was the misunderstood, borderline brilliant King Vidor camp-fest Beyond the Forest). She eats chicken (she really eats that drumstick -- and it's kind of beautiful), calls George a "cluck," and they booze it up. And booze it up. And booze it up. And then come the guests. Opening the door to a couple of young, unsuspecting colleagues, well, oh my. These two have no idea what they're in for.

Nick (Segal) and Honey (Dennis) are attempting to be cordial, but since Martha's father holds weight in the university, Nick's going to sit this one out, no matter how weird, no matter how sexual, no matter how "Georgie Boy!" it gets. And the two-hour party (in movie time, the picture takes the group into the wee hours) goes beyond weird -- it enters a vortex of nasty, though sometimes wistful, revelations for both parties. The two couples become increasingly sauced, and move their action to a nighttime bar where a vulgar dance breaks out between Nick and Martha (Oh how I love this dance). Things fall apart. The center cannot hold -- just the way George and Martha like it. Nervous Honey admits she yearns for a baby. "Well built" Nick admits his wife (whom George calls "slim hipped") had a hysterical pregnancy. George recalls a tragic story of a child killing his parents that's probably about him. And Martha, well, she pulls out the big guns by bringing up the "blue-haired, blonde-eyed" kid (the game, "Bringing up Baby"). And that is quite enough -- George digs in his claws once and for all.

With such substantial, fearless performances, and Nichols' active, observing camera, the picture attains a visceral power that leaves the viewer both raw and transfixed. There is little respite from these character's actions, and even moments of humor are soon met with yet another discomforting bout of disgrace, cruelty, or sadness. But it never becomes sickening; on the contrary, there's a sense of nobility to this movie that's unusual for its often-crass subject matter. And once we make it through this harrowing night, we learn that there's a lot of love between dueling G and M. George and Martha may be poster children for extreme dysfunction, but dammit if they're not meant to be. And there's something oddly romantic about that. By film end, I am firmly on their side. All these inane romantic comedies are supposed to make you feel inspired by love. Not me. I'm pro-George and Martha. I want them to never lose each other -- ever. Have another drink and stick it out with your "quietly noisy relaxed intensity."

So professor was right. Watching the movie every three years does deepen the experience. And in my perhaps, perverse case (I've been watching the thing about once a year since then), I feel a sadness, nostalgia and fondness for G and M. Again, there's something heroic about their dissipation. When Martha sticks up for George after her indiscretion with Segal ("Him can't. Him too drunk.") and the broken-down couple take to calling Segal "houseboy, well, at that point, I get it. Quite simply, I love George and Martha.

Find yourself a healthy relationship, fine. Good luck. But if not, and if you've found your soulmate, even in the bottom of a liquor bottle, then, I say, "Get the Guests," get your booze, get your dreams, get your nightmares, get your monkey nipples, and hold on to each other. Even if you have to cradle a bottle of gin in the process. After all, Martha's "thirsty." 
 

Think Pink: Letters From Los Angeles

Greet the day in the parking lot of a pink motel. Close it out in the parking lot of the Pink Elephant Liquor and Deli. And a car wash in between.

November in Hollywood.

Another day in my neighborhood. Driving around this odd, stretched out, old, new, pretty, ugly, pretty, lather, rinse, repeat, what on earth is that, I've never seen that before city.

A Good Cop Is Hard To Find

Werner Herzog's approach to "the truth" has always been fascinating, fearless, at times ferocious and to continue in this alliterative vein, faithful.  Faithful to life -- to its wonderful or horrifying craziness, to its lyrical splendor, and to its appalling ugliness that in turn, can often reveal a deep, multi-faceted beauty. Life is unclean. Life is violent. Life is corrupt. Life is fantastical. Life is chaos. Life is, yes, beautiful.

Watch his Lessons of Darkness, concerning the Kuwait fires and you’re left breathless by their destructive magnificence.  As the oil wells burn we hear Prokofiev, Verdi, Wagner, Grieg and gloriously, Mahler’s "Resurrection" (2nd) Symphony. Interestingly, Mahler conceived the second Resurrection as recalling positive remembrances for the dead. Yes. Laudable thoughts. Burn baby, burn -- in a wonderfully optimistic and exalting pitch. This feels like Herzog.

And Herzog feels like Herzog. When meeting him, I was so inspired by his presence, his intelligence, his realness, his voice, that talking to him made me feel (and please excuse me for sounding hyperbolic but I’m being honest here) like how Marlene Dietrich described Orson Welles, like “a plant that’s been watered.” And I thank god I’ll never forget our meeting because, perhaps not surprisingly, after one of the most interesting and fulfilling interviews I’ve ever conducted, the tape jammed. Sitting late at night in my bedroom, ready to transcribe this fascinating talk, my heart stopped when I heard that awful sound of tape being sucked into machine. Broken. Fearful of pulling it out of the recorder, I stared at it in disbelief. Unspool and possibly repair? Or leave it? I decided to leave it there. I suddenly felt like Herzog was telling me I must never listen to it. 

This disappointing reality caused further reflection of Herzog and his movies. You don’t go to a Werner Herzog picture and think: “That’s not realistic.” Because, really, what does that mean anyway? This is his truth. This is their truth. Or your truth. Or an iguana’s truth. It’s part of Herzog’s grand yet entirely grounded theories about "reality" -- what he calls "ecstatic truth." Herzog claims that his approach toward filmmaking, whether in his documentaries (like Little Dieter Needs to Fly or Grizzly Man) or biographical pictures (like Aguirre: The Wrath of God or Fitzcarraldo) reveals, as he has said: "Something deeply inherent, where you recognize yourself as a human being again, where you find images that have been dormant inside of you for so many years and all of a sudden it becomes visible and understandable for you -- you read the world differently, your perceptions change."

A true auteur and a true adventurer, Herzog  understands (instinctively and intellectually) just how much we take for granted when not looking out of the corner of our eye -- when we only see what’s right in front of us. “Reading the world differently” is an important element to his filmmaking, and as he braves Antarctica, or walks hundreds of miles, or drags boats over mountains, or contends with true forces of nature -- the jungle, the cold, the animals and Klaus Kinski -- Herzog is adept at tackling any type of movie, any type of obstacle, any type of eccentricity.

And now he’s taken on Nicolas Cage.

With his un-hinged, gloriously debauched, hilarious, and uniquely gorgeous The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (one of the best films of the year so far), he’s dazzlingly in synch with his subject --  the portrait of a man, a crooked cop (Cage) rotting and raving in a decimated land.  That’s post-Katrina New Orleans, a place that well covers Herzogian themes -- the violence, the beauty, the destruction of nature, the warped passion of a fanatical man. Cage’s Terence McDonagh -- drug impaired, dishonest, abusive, and yet, often kind and certainly conflicted is a jangly, imbalanced creature of inspired madness. What’s brilliant here is that Herzog, not one to create a standard police procedural, places Cage in something like that:  there’s a an internal affairs investigation, a murder mystery and strangely sweet complications with a prostitute (Eva Mendes) and a drug dealer (Xzibit). There’s also gambling and drug addiction, inappropriate pat-downs, lucky crack pipes and relations with his impaired dad and stepmother, that recalled a Flannery O’Connor story or Rip Torn visiting his pill addicted mother in the brilliantly brave Payday.

And like Mr. Torn, Cage is absolutely fearless in his approach to character. Throw out all the rules and just be. Be crazy.  But be real. He's true to his own style -- that of Nicolas Cage -- but Herzog must cast magical spells on actors because as the movie goes along, Cage begins to resemble a Nosferatu or an Aguirre -- he even walks with a slight hunchback. And then, he tops it by throwing in some giggling Richard Widmark Tommy Udo and snarling Edward G. Robinson Little Caesar. It's a diabolically mythical performance.  To describe his rhythms and humor and in the end, his humanity isn’t easy -- Cage is almost musical in his approach, and he stirs mysterious,  complicated emotions that will yes, make many people laugh. At him, with him, and with the very things that make him laugh. When we are looking at iguanas from the perspective of the animal and the perspective of drugged out Cage considering the animal, the hallucinatory power borders on hilarious and yet, remains honestly poetic (it reminded me a bit of the chicken at the end of Stroszek).

Which comes to the question: what kind of movie is Bad Lieutenant? It’s a noir, it’s a comedy, it’s a character study, it’s a southern gothic, it’s a police story. Yes, it’s all those things. But really, it’s a Herzog picture. Real, unreal, maddening, inspiring and utterly sincere.

Ten Years Of Fight Club

If any picture was the movie to usher in the new millennium, it was David Fincher's Fight Club. To me, it was the movie of the 1990s -- as prescient as Network was in the 1970s towards the future of “news,” and as equally misunderstood. As Fight Club revealed and essentially, proselytized, we live in a world where we seek to express ourselves, either through conspicuous consumption, or following philosophies for supposed betterment, or to simply remember what it was like to actually feel like a man after the world has feminized us so (something as a woman I find frustrating and heartbreaking -- let men be men again). 

But Fight Club isn't saying something as simple and inane as men are pussies. It's not a dumb jock statement of  being a "man." Rather, it shows how through the alienation of social institutions, and the de-masculination of culture, the rugged individualist is rare. How to tap into being a man, fast? "Punch me as hard as you can."

Based on the diabolical novel by Portland's Chuck Palahniuk (skillfully adapted by Jim Uhls), Fight Club is a multifaceted satire. It attacks not only the dehumanizing, corporate Starbucks/Ikea world we inhabit (and still inhabit -- even more), but also self-help philosophies, men's movements, commercials, TV and, interestingly, movies, but oh-so cleverly. The way cinema is blamed for contributing to real-life violence is not only woven into the picture, but it became a reality lobbed at the movie upon release. Like A Clockwork Orange, Fight Club was considered fascist by some critics, that it would encourage men to fight (not always a bad thing), and that it might actually create fight clubs (which it did -- not always a good thing).

A movie that ends on man and woman watching two high rise office towers tumbling down from the skyline before the World Trade Center's collapse is creepy, scary prophetic. As Tyler Durden proclaims: "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off." And...then through the 2000's? A war. And an economic crisis.

Then, to a certain extent, Fight Club took on Generation X, but it also applied to the onset of the next generation. Challenging so many silly articles, books and movies that have attempted to label "Generation X" as listless, flannel-wearing, grunge-listening slackers, the film argued that it's not a lack of passion that kept those in their late twenties to early thirties befuddled, but a lack of personal power, a lack of freedom -- the impotence of not knowing your real soul.

Revealing the absurdity, hilarity and sadness of the type of man who, for example, would sit at home and listen to self-help Guru Anthony Robbins instructing him on how to "awaken the giant within," then go through the motions, and achieving nothing -- Fight Club asks: Do you want to awaken your giant? Do you really want to look inside yourself? What if your giant turns into a monster?

Fight Club begins with a character who is always awake (in fact, he can never sleep) but is certainly no giant --not yet, anyway. The film's insomniac narrator "Jack" (Edward Norton), like so many of his generation, is full of cynicism but mild-mannered and desperately searching for something -- anything. When he becomes fed up with sleepwalking through his job at a major automobile manufacturer (where, he says, everything looks like "a copy of a copy of a copy"), Jack finally goes to a doctor and begs for sleeping pills. The doctor tells him to quit his whining -- if he really wants to see suffering, he should go to a support group for testicular-cancer survivors. Good idea? Not really for Jack. He soon becomes addicted to every support group he can locate. They become the outlet he’s needed for his confounded emotions; he does receive the attention he craves, and he can finally sleep, but he’s really just a support group tourist.

His warm fuzzy, self help universe spell is broken when another tourist enters. That’s Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a chain-smoking accidental-overdose-waiting-to-happen who attends meetings because (as she says) "it's cheaper than a movie, and the coffee is free." Jack sees himself reflected in her perverse presence; he hates her, which means he hates himself. They are both fakes.

And then the epiphany: During a plane trip, he meets eccentric soap maker Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), he returns home to find his condo has blown up and, desperate, he rushes to, of course, Tyler.  He lives in the "dilapidated house in a toxic-waste part of town" -- and never leaves.

In Tyler, he finally finds the "power animal" that his original cancer-support group instructed him to get in touch with. Tyler teaches him Nietzschean ideals of freedom and puts him in tune with his manly center -- his hunter. And even more importantly, Jack and Tyler fight: Their fights are sweaty, bloody, I want-to-throw-my-desk-at-my-boss releases of rage, submerged eroticism and enlightenment. And men are intrigued. Watching Tyler and Jack's parking-lot brawls creates a new form of therapy for men, and as we well remember, they organize their beat-downs into the movement and philosophy of "Fight Club.” As members grow and chapters sprout up in different cities, the club morphs into something called "Project Mayhem" -- a terrorist revolution that encourages members to spread to the outside world -- vigilante/philosophical style with charismatic Tyler as leader of the revolution. In Tyler they trust. His leadership, their trust and their acts become morbidly funny, increasingly frightening and oddly inspiring.

Fincher’s brilliant fusion of style and substance, created an exciting, thought-provoking, bloody experience that was worshipped, studied and criticized for its controversial takes on moviemaking, manhood, violence and corporate culture. Again, like Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Fight Club articulates the darkness (and humor) of those who don't want to feel numb anymore while, simultaneously, commenting on the powers that made them numb in the first place. And like Kubrick's picture, Fight Club was considered dangerous, a film that incites violence or promotes nihilism.

And this seemed to be exactly what Fincher wanted. The more fingers wag at him, the more his point is proven: It’s easier to pin society's ills on entertainment, then look out into the real world or (gasp) within oneself. (Even if our therapist continues to say: "you’re doing great….you’re doing great").  Fincher’s other masterpiece, Zodiac, also touched on this -- defying what was expected of him, Fincher made a movie about obsession and didn’t simply satiate our desire to watch yet another serial killer movie.

But, like all of Fincher’s movies, the picture also works as supreme entertainment -- especially because master prankster Tyler is "form of"… Brad Pitt. Does the picture take Tyler's side? In many ways, yes. Though the movie pokes fun at the men who join Tyler, it understands their pain, and it understands that their pain has been sold out to self-help groups that do them no good. In the transformation from "Fight Club" to "Project Mayhem," the members merely shift their anger from each other to the outside world -- the soul-deadening culture that has merged New Age spirituality with consumerism, hiding dehumanization behind politically correct calm. As Tyler explains, "Self-improvement is masturbation...self-destruction might be the answer."

And yet, the picture understands that the answer is too simple; it can only lead to further confusion. Because Fight Club is essentially a satire, it knows that though Tyler's eloquent assertions make sense, and are emboldening, they will become borderline fascistic and not entirely reliable. Still, I couldn’t help feeling moved by its muscular assertions. When Tyler declares to a terrified fat cat, whose face has been duct-taped courtesy of Project Mayhem: "We are the people who take out your garbage...we watch over you while you sleep...DO NOT FUCK WITH US!" I’m all Kick-out the-Jams-motherfucker, Fight-the-power exhilarated.

What I admire about Fight Club, is that it never denies that violence can be glamorous. Fincher shows that a fight can be a crucial part of life, that a violent act can be horrifying, but weirdly fun and sometimes necessary. It can be a soul-altering experience, it can liberate. But it can also, as the picture artfully complicates by not strictly advocating violence, destroy and entrap one with feelings of paranoia and pain.

Fincher reached new levels in filmmaking, not only by his wink-wink take on violence, but also his wink-wink take on exploiting his own arena of expression: cinema, or rather the corporate world of cinema. Like the pranksters he's chronicling, Fincher had bitten the hand that fed him. He knows the commercial Hollywood system. He knows how to take a successful franchise like Alien, or an ideal hunk like Pitt (something he also deconstructed in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and turn it into something subversive, because, as much (or more) than any traditional "indie" director would, he understands the system he mocks. When Tyler yells at his Project Mayhem recruits that they will never be movie stars, the scene works as both a hard truth and as a deconstruction of the movie ideal. Tyler/Pitt is the ideal movie star we all want to be, but should we listen to him?

Yes and no. The film is cynical enough to show that a New World Order like Tyler and Jack's can lose control of itself. Yet the movie doesn't deny that such a "second coming" is attractive and, in ways, beneficial. After all, what is more powerful: movie stars putting knuckles to skin, or fleshy nubs munching scones and itemizing reports? And watching Fight Club, ten years later, with all that we have available to us, it seems even more prescient. For better and often for worse, we’ve become even more disconnected from ourselves. And even more narcissistic. People text, they twitter, they communicate online instead of talk on the phone or in person. They create alternate identities and pretend to be tough in, of all places, chat rooms, and blogs. Can you imagine a flame war in a biker bar? It's no surprise Fincher’s making a movie about the social networking site Facebook. Tyler Durden would now be a viral creation.

Filled with so many potent comments on society that it demands more than one, two, three viewings, Fight Club is a challenging and powerful work of art that sticks in both the primal and the intellectual parts of one's brain and, for many of us, will never be dislodged -- not even by a sucker punch.

Got To Be Free: Il Posto

Sometimes it’s all in a face. Young Sandro Panseri‘s visage relays so many subtle, unsure, gentle, poignant emotions that you can’t believe he’s acting.  Perhaps he wasn’t.  He wasn’t an actor. Not professionally anyway.  Director Ermanno Olmi aptly understood Panseri’s vulnerable power, and worked the youth’s already wistful eyes within his stunningly composed frames.  As a result, Il Posto remains one of the most thoughtful, affective and timeless studies of alienation among the drones. The Office, Italian style.

And yet, Italian Neo-Realist Olmi isn't typically the first name to pop when the average viewer thinks of postwar Italian cinema. De Sica, Antonioni and Fellini are the names we hear.  Regardless, Olmi was a highly influential and, in his own quiet way, highly infuriating director among the New Wave cinema of the '60s and into the '70s. An auteur whose attention to the small details of everyday life created quiet character studies of tedium, irony, hilarity, and sadness, he had a marked quality of making the hum-drum almost fantastical. Reality depends on how you look at it, and his aggressively common depictions also contained an element of Kafkaesque torture.

Again and again, in films like, Tempo si E Fermato (1959), Il Posto (1961) and I Fidanzati (1963), he displays those little heartbreaks that lead people to inspiration or desperation with a beguiling combination of warmth and melancholia. Such is markedly apparent in Il Posto, a film that observed a job ("Il Posto" means "The Job") through the eyes of a teenager just entering the work-force. Saucer-eyed and languid Domenico (Panseri) endures a series of tests to land a position within a company in an Italian city. The tests include fractions, but also physical dexterity, like how well one can deep-knee bend. He also must answer personal questions, like "Does the future seem hopeless to you?" Domenico is too young to know (though you see a poignant mixture of simultaneous hope and doom in his eyes), but the other figures around him would answer a disheartening yes.
 

In Olmi's world, sitting at a desk all day is no life to live. Domenico gets the job, but he's not excited by the work -- instead he's hopeful that he'll see pretty Magali (Loredana Detto), the girl he shyly spent the day with, playing grown-up while drinking an espresso together. The next day (there's an extraordinarily visceral scene where Domenico, at dawn, walks to the train with his father -- new hopes, but with dad at his side, a reminder that the grind has begun) he's happy to see Magali got the job as well, only she's in a different department. Revealing how alienating and open-ended a workplace can be (this place is sprawled out like a campus, or a prison, a veritable city of work), Domenico is assigned to a separate building as an apprentice messenger. Company policy enforces different lunch breaks and time-outs, so Domenico almost never gets a chance to even talk to his prospect. She appears once in the hallway, and they chat briefly, but her supervisor gives her the evil eye. And on a rain-soaked day, Domenico sees her leaving, laughing and happy with a group of kids -- they've got umbrellas, but Domenico must share one with an old lady at the work cafeteria.

In one of the picture’s most touchingly sad, yet strangely hopeful moments, on New Year's Eve (perhaps one of the saddest celebrations of the year), Domenico ventures out alone, hoping once again he'll meet up with Magali. But he instead shares a table with an older couple, and as the evening opens up he lets himself go in a dance. The fact that he's momentarily happy, widening his usual placid face with toothy grins and jumping in a circle with other party-goers, makes the sequence all the more moving. The New Year brings a new position, as well as a potentially endless life of staring at a co-worker's head in front of him.

Olmi's genius in Il Posto is in his beautifully composed, lingering shots. Whether in a medium, hand-held, or close-up, Olmi studies a face or a scene long enough for us to see its platitudes with subtle power. Domenico's face is a landscape of emotion, though heavily suppressed -- in small smiles, dejected eyes, and embarrassed blushes, we virtually watch him grow before our eyes. Some critics couldn't stomach Olmi's passive Domenico, but there's nothing pathetic about him, he's just a shy, confused person right at the start of life. He’s like the embodiment of a plaintive song by The Kinks: "I've got to be proud and stand up straight and let people see I ain't nobody's slave. I've got to be free before it's too late. I've just got to be free. Got to be free to do what I want. Walk if I want, talk if I want."

There's a lot of De Sica in Olmi (whom Olmi acknowledged as an influence) but we also see what came after. As stated in Kent Jones's essay included with the Criterion DVD, Martin Scorsese borrowed shots from Il Posto for Raging Bull, and there are similar echoes in Clockwatchers (director Jill Sprecher credits Olmi as an influence on that film), Office Space, The Office, Time Out and even Fight Club. So, it's startling, but then I suppose, not surprising to notice that, before computer cubicles, endless streams of useless emails, hours of data entry, multi-phone conference calls with faceless bosses, and whatever else, desk jobs were just as dismal 40 years ago as they are today.

I do hope Domenico got the hell out of that place. But I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. And yet, just as he discovers at the New Year’s party, maybe he’ll find happiness in the small (and bigger) things, no matter how fleeting. After all, one’s life should never be defined by their desk.

Al Green, Soul Survivor

I'm feeling blue. I need Green. From my archive of Al...

Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, Ike Turner…they are all gone dammit. Gone.  How any self respecting (or self flagellating) Christian thinks I should believe in God is beyond me. Not that I need God necessarily, or that I don't believe (in something), and yet, when I hear that true soul survivor, Al Green, I start thinking…Jesus Christ…maybe I do need the Lord. Green, one of the greatest soul singers ever placed on this God-forsaken planet (yes, thank God again, apologies Christopher Hitchens) is still living, still putting out records (Lay it Down is superb) and still performing live. One of the last real soul singers blessing our landscape -- especially a musical landscape populated by lip-synching video vixens, pop punk whiners and the very allowance of Kevin Federline cutting a rap record those few years ago, Al Green will make you believe.

The Arkansas–born, Michigan–raised, Memphis-living Green made brilliant albums during his Hi Records heyday (Al Green Gets Next to You, Let’s Stay Together, I’m Still in Love With You, Call Me), his live performances (which I’ve fanatically collected over the years) were something to behold -- sexy, inspirational, transcendent experiences that weren’t simply swoon-worthy (though the ladies love Al Green), but genius examples of tightness and improvisation. Al Green can riff out of the margins, break from his sensuous midrange to talk to the audience and then lift to falsetto only to bust into a goose-bump–inducing raw growl that comes from a place so deep it’s nearly impossible to describe its power.

To use simpler terms, Green performs with raw, soulful intensity in its purest form. And where do you see that anymore? Excuse the easy takedowns, but seriously, Beyonce, Rihanna? Not bad, I know. But give those girls some Al Green Midnight Special performances simply to remind them not, what only a real singer is, but a real entertainer, and a real interpreter of song.

And Green’s realness can be achieved anywhere, from the soundstages of Soul Train to still-packed concert halls to his Full Gospel Tabernacle where the soul icon remains the residing reverend. If you’re ever in Memphis, don’t miss the chance to possibly catch Mr. Green presiding over worship -- an experience that, years back, one of my atheist-leaning friends caught and was so significantly inspired by, the tough guy was moved to tears. If you’ve ever watched Green perform the baptism-by-orgasm “Take Me to the River,” you’ll completely understand my friend’s reaction.

And further, if you’ve ever suffered through many of our current pop stars, you’ll feel a little sadness that performers like Al Green barely exist anymore in popular entertainment. I mean, really. What the hell happened? There’s plenty of gritty soulful artists out there (thank you Andre Williams, thank you T. Model Ford, thank you Black Keys -- and thank you for almost recording an album with Ike Turner) but gone are the days when you could actually turn a large clunky dial and see these kinds of geniuses on the five channel boob tube. I hate to say this, but our parents were lucky. No wonder my father went through that leather vest, leather cap, butterfly collar phase. I always thought it might have been some Charles Bronson Death Wish nervous breakdown situation. (Remember when Bronson remodels his apartment all swinging '70s garish in the movie? That's what divorce did to some men, even without the murder and vigilantism -- but I digress.) Anyway, it was probably all that Al Green on his, even then, out-moded, old school 8-track. That’s some potent stuff.

And I do mean stuff, since Green makes me want to pop a doll and worship God at the same time. Especially when he sings the sexy haunting “Jesus Is Waiting” -- and with a sling!  You can interpret this Soul Train performance as pure holy high or, pure holy high-high (check out Green's eyes) or whatever kind of godliness you apply to your Green, but one thing’s for sure, it’s on a holy high mountain of silky hot brilliance. That's religion.

Words From The Saint, Eva Marie

In her first movie, she kissed Marlon Brando. And then she won an Oscar. How many actresses get that kind of a debut? But then, how many actresses are as wonderful as Eva Marie Saint?  A performer (and woman) of elegance, vulnerability, charm, beauty, intelligence and great wit, Miss Saint remains, not just a movie star, but a real actor, one of the innovators. And she's still a powerful presence on screen.

A woman who has worked with talents ranging from Kazan to Wenders, Brando to Shepard, Preminger to Mulligan, Frankenheimer to Singer, Hope to Segal, Clift to Beatty, Grant to Grammar and then, a man named Hitchcock, Miss Saint has enjoyed sixty years of experience, and more to come. With the 50th Anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense, action, sex-tastic classic North by Northwest, the funny, personable Miss Saint took the time to talk to me about her beautiful, brilliant career. And shopping with Hitchcock. Now that would be something. 

Where do I start, Miss Saint?

“Take a deep breath...”

On North by Northwest remaining so timeless:

“When I think of North by Northwest as 50 years old, I just can't believe it. It seemed to me, 20 years ago. But 50 years ago is half a hundred!  One reason it seems timeless: Hitch had this thing with not coming to work with what people were wearing at the time.  He thought that it dated the movie. And at the time, we were wearing these dresses without any belts; I think we called them sheaths.  I went to rehearsals, went to the studio that way.  And he sent everybody home. I think it was the auction scene, and they scheduled that day for another shooting and another scene because it dated the film. He said, ‘Come back with a more classic look, a suit, a sweater, a skirt.’ Ladies were wearing trousers…so anything that I wore, even the red dress or the black dress with the roses could be worn today. People ask me, 'Did you get that black dress?’ I said, ‘No. It’s a little like maternity clothes -- once you get out of them, you don’t want to go back and I was in that dress a long time.’  [There was hair and costume] but Hitchcock, he did oversee everything, of course.  And the makeup, and the jewels and the shoes and the bags, and the dresses. I loved it! Because he had this idea about this sexy spy lady and it helped me compose my character and all of that. It’s not only the internal, but the external always helps. Costumes are of such importance to an actor."

Working with Hitchcock:

 “I’m not sure what he saw me in, where he saw me as a sexy spy. I don’t know…well she’s a human being first… I did a program a few years ago; they should have taped it or filmed it, and all the Hitchcock blondes were there, and Suzanne Pleshette too [from The Birds]. And all of us were on the stage taking questions and talking about him and our experience working with him. And everyone had a different story. I couldn’t believe we were talking about the same man!  And I remember in the middle of the discussion, saying to the audience: ‘I really feel like we’re all talking about the same husband -- and all of us are the different wives.’ And you know, Tippi was very vulnerable at the time when she was shooting with him, but I was married. I had just given birth a few weeks back, it was my second child. I was very happily married, still am (I just had my 58th wedding anniversary last night). And so I was at a different place from the other actresses."

Shopping with Hitchcock, Vertigo style:

"I called him my sugar daddy. I did! I’ve never called anyone my sugar daddy, not even my husband. [Laughs]. He wasn’t happy with some of the clothes they had given me [on the movie] so he took me to New York, took me to Bergdorf Goodman and we sat down and he had arranged some clothes he had seen and picked them out. The beautiful models came out and I’d say [in an excited hushed voice]: ‘Oh I do like that black dress with the red roses!’ And he’d say [imitates Hitchcock’s famous voice]: ‘Fine. Wrap it up in this case.’ And that was the beginning of that famous dress. [Laughs] That was quite a shopping trip. I have never had it before and I have never had it since." [Laughs]

On working with so many different actors through the years:

"I’m from the Actor’s Studio. You don’t depend on anyone else but yourself and all the other actors you’re working with. With On the Waterfront, the Kazan set was pretty much closed -- it was very quiet. He would whisper in your ear when he had a bit of direction which was very precise and just the perfect few words. You never heard him talk to other actors, he would whisper in their ears.  But then I stepped on the Bob Hope set [for That Certain Feeling] and the first day we were filming, I saw a whole football team watching [laughs]. I mean, right on the set. I saw this out of the corner of my eye and sort of swallowed hard and thought, ‘OK, this is going to be a challenge.’ But it was fine! And the days we didn’t have people watching, I missed the audience!  But I went from Marlon to Bob Hope and that’s what you’re supposed to. You’re supposed to work with different people, you’re supposed to find what you like about them, what you don’t like about them and just work with them. Now, with Cary Grant, it was hard to not find things to love about him."

So...working with Cary Grant:

"Whatever you think about him is correct. He was larger than life and beautiful and wonderful. And he was very, very kind and sweet. He himself said he created himself, he started in the circus! He created Cary Grant… Before he died, he was giving back. He was going around the country with his wife to little theaters and wonderful audiences would clamor to see him in person. He wasn’t living somewhere on a hilltop, he was giving back. He was an amazing man."

Her famous ingénue debut as young Edie in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront:

"I had done theater and mostly live television and again, I was from the Actor’s Studio, so I wasn’t intimidated. I was intimidated by making a movie because I had never made a movie. And I remember, my husband and I, we lived on 29th West 9th Street in the village, and as I was leaving, they were picking me up to go the set -- I was crying! Because I had never made a movie. It all seemed a little overwhelming. And my dear, sweet husband put his arms around me and said: ‘Honey you’re in good hands. Kazan is directing. Marlon is in it. You know all of these people. Lee Cobb, Karl Malden, Nicky [Nehemiah] Persoff, you know them, you’ve seen them at the Studio, you’re going to have a wonderful time!’ So by the time they opened the door and whisked me away to Hoboken, I was feeling really good about it all. My husband was absolutely right, and so the first day I felt very comfortable and had a wonderful time." 

On winning an Oscar for her first movie role:

"Young actresses ask me ‘Oh did you know that you were going to get an Oscar?’ And I  say, ‘My God, you’re just there to do a job and do the best you can and you don’t think about those things!’ And no one does."

That glove scene with Brando and how it remains of cinema’s sexiest moments:

"I know, I know, I know! I could just see Marlon and hear him right now. The way Kazan worked, you were always rehearsing on set, so none of the actors were left to their own devices….we were always rehearsing in another room for the next scene up. And Kazan would still be filming a scene. And when they were doing the lights, he would leave that scene and watch what we were working on for the next scene. It was a difficult scene. Why the girl from the Waterfront? Why the girl from the convent, the Catholic School and all that? Why would she stand there?  Well, in the rehearsal, I dropped my glove.  [Says slowly and delicately] Marlon picked up the glove, put it on his hand, started sort of fondling the glove, and it was very sensual. Edie had to get the glove, she had to go on her way, and so that sort of detained her.  We could play the scene. We told Kazan how it happened and he loved it, and so he said ‘Keep it in.’"

On Brando the actor:

"He was always in the moment, while rehearsing or on the set. We both were. And that’s from the workings of the studio. It really is. [The glove scene], it showed what a brilliant actor Marlon was. Most actors would have picked it up in rehearsal, given it back to me and then we would have started from the beginning. He didn’t do that. You just use all of these wonderful things that happen -- you don’t disregard them. You don’t take the straight line.  He was one of the best actors we ever had. I don’t know what happened. I think he was in wonderful spirits when we made the movie. And some people change, and things happen in your life, and I think he lost the joy of acting. I still have it. Even at my age, after all these years. But he seemed to lose it."

The great, under-seen movie, John Frankenheimer’s All Fall Down:

"It’s one of my favorites!  And when people come up to and say ‘Oh! Miss Saint. There’s a movie…’ And I always say, ‘I know. All Fall Down.’  Everything is timing in this business and I guess we had competition for bigger, more money making movies, whatever they were. And so it didn’t get the publicity. But look at the cast! I mean Angela Lansbury, Karl Malden, Warren Beatty, Brandon DeWilde. Johnny Frankenheimer directed us in that (I also worked with him in Grand Prix), and it’s such a dear, sweet movie. He was a very nice man, he died too early." 

Montgomery Clift in Edward Dmytryk’s Raintree County...his shyness, his eyes:

"He was very, very quiet. Except when we had the dialogue on the set. And I remember in one of the dressing rooms over at MGM (we all had our own dressing rooms) and so I invited him to lunch and to go over lines. And we were sitting there waiting for them to bring the lunch from the commissary. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. It was very quiet. He was so shy. And I used to be shy….but I’m Episcopalian and Quaker and I can be shy. So we didn’t say a word. I didn’t get to know him. I didn’t get to know anything about him. With someone at that time who was that painfully shy, I would fall right into being painfully shy too. And nowadays, if someone is shy, I try to help them and to bring them out. However, Elizabeth [Taylor] and Monty were very close, and they were such a beautiful team. She adored him, he adored her. If Elizabeth had been there for the lunch, it would have been a whole different situation.  Although, when we were working, and I looked into his eyes, he looked a little frightened.  Not from a scene, not from acting. But, as a person…maybe he had demons.  His eyes. Haunted. I can see it in my mind’s eye right now as we speak. Haunted. Maybe not troubles, maybe not demons, haunted is the word."

The notorious Otto Preminger:

"I only worked once with him in Exodus and that was a huge undertaking…all those people! Preminger did do an incredible job keeping it all together, and it was not easy because it was like 115 degrees. I have never been so hot. But he had a temper and it would come maybe once a day, so before it came, people were a little nervous and then after the explosion, people were nervous. He never yelled at the stars (Paul, yes his eyes were that blue…). He would scream down at the extras if someone was doing something incorrectly, or not the way he liked. There were a lot of extras and many of them had been on the real Exodus and they said that that was easier than working with Preminger!" [Laughs]

Sam Shepard’s tooth:

"Oh yes, I loved playing that lady [In Wim Wenders’ Don’t Come Knocking]. I met Sam and Wim and he said, ‘Well do you want to do this?’And I said, 'Sam Shepard, I’m so happy but I don’t feel like your mother!' He’s so attractive. [Laughs] And one day at set, he was smiling and I said, ‘Now about that tooth.’ And he said, ‘What about that tooth?’ And I said, ‘Oh come on! What do you mean about that tooth? That’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen!' [Laughs] and it is! I said, ‘Don’t ever have that fixed!’ He’s a very interesting man."

How have movies changed?

"I don’t want to sound cranky. Once in a while, there are some wonderful movies but I think the menu has changed. I loved Up.  Look how brave they were to have a wife die. And the movie had so many qualities of real life, and yet it was funny and visually it was exciting. As far as dramas, you know once in a year, maybe there will be one or two that are really wonderful. But there’s just so much violence. I don’t know which comes first? Does the audience want the violence? Or do they accept the violence because that’s what the studios want? It’s the chicken and the egg. There’s so much violence in the world now. You pick up the paper and you just shudder before you read the headlines. The violence. Our boys being killed. Oh my god almighty how awful that is! There’s so much violence, why do people want to see that in movies? Especially when we’re just trying to find a little peace?"

Watching movies as a girl:

"My parents loved going to the movies! When I was younger, every Saturday night that’s what we did. I loved Charles Boyer and Ronald Colman, those were my heroes. But those were movies we could all go to. Now the world has changed, I know, and you can’t go back…"

Words of wisdom based on her mentor:

"My mentor was Lillian Gish. We did The Trip to the Bountiful together, we did the play, that’s where Kazan saw me and thought of me for On the Waterfront. Lillian, she never married, she loved my husband, and she loved my children. And when she was getting older and frailer, she said she was proud of me for handling a career and family and she was never able to do that. But she always looked ahead, she never looked back, she was never cranky about, 'Oh my God, it’s not like it was in the silent movies!' That’s why I say, I don’t want to be pessimistic. Today is a beautiful day -- in California anyway."