Sunset Gun

Motor Meltdown: Crazy Cine-Car Scenes

 

Cars usually offer me solace, a place of escape.  Speeding microcosmic shelters where I can go, as the great Ike Turner wrote, “oozin’ and cruisin’ along.” But on a recent trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I did something that occasionally happens inside a car -- I freak out. My friend was driving along the 1, and after we stopped off in Big Sur everything seemed fine. Beautiful stretch of highway, the sparkling ocean, the lovely curvy cliffs and…the dulcet tones of my irritated voice asking… “Can you speed this thing up just a little more?” My heart was beating a mile a minute, my hands were trembling -- I was entering a full scale level ten anxiety attack. For no reason.

With a little more thought and little less freak, maybe there was some reason. I wasn’t driving. I told my friend to pull over -- surrender the wheel. He complied but soon regretted this decision. Driving as fast as that stupid rental (I blame the rental) could take me, screeching around the high cliffs and stating over and over that police didn’t patrol out here anyway,  and I’m gonna pass any selfish slow-poke in front of me (how dare they enjoy the scenery, Christina!), I glanced at my friend who was as white as a sheet, bracing himself for dear life. He knew I was having a moment, and he didn't say anything lest I motor us off the cliff (but come on...I know how to drive a car). And yet, the nutty focus helped -- my rushing adrenaline became one with the accelerator -- if I couldn’t run this damn panic attack off, I was gonna drive it off.

But suddenly I thought -- what if Robert Loggia (Robert Loggia from Lost Highway) was rolling in front of me? I’m not one to tail gate, but god forbid two motorized mental meltdowns collide (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about). Which got me thinking further about something I’m always pondering on -- movies -- specifically, movies in which characters suffer similar vehicular flip-outs. There are so many: Lana losing her cool in The Bad and the Beautiful, Lana and John Garfield losing their nerve in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Alice enduring Tommy's endless joke in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Bette drunk driving with her Oscar atop the dash in The Star (drunk driving laws should be exempt if you're clutching an Oscar you won 15 years ago), Anthony Perkins scaring the shit out of Diana Ross (and taking Helmut Newton meets Wegee meets mental hygiene photos at the same time  -- in the car) in Mahogany, Kurt Russell's Cowardly Lion bawling in Death Proof, Rip Torn chucking that woman out of his car, throwing money at her, then backing up and snatching the money back in Payday, Max doing essentially, anything in Mad Max or Ann Savage and Tom Neal simply breathing behind the wheel in Detour -- movies can express motor-psycho moments perfectly. So with that (and among many others, there are too many to list all) here are six big screen freak-outs I especially love.

The Longest Yard (1974)

Robert Aldrich’s The Longest Yard contains one of cinema’s greatest opening sequences of supreme speed demon self destruction. Here’s how it goes: Washed up pro football player Paul "Wrecking" Crewe (Burt Reynolds) who was banished from the sport for point shaving, staggers out of bed with a woman who's clearly (and very loudly) keeping him. As Crewe reaches for a drink, she storms out of the bedroom hollering at him for being a loser, how she paid for his new teeth -- essentially emasculating ol’ Burt. In a move that would never, ever happen in a movie today, Crewe shoves her, he shoves her hard, and with the rage of a man who's ego's been bruised one too many times. And then he jumps into her fancy Citron. Oh this is so great. Speeding down the street, with drink in hand and Lynrd Skynrd tune blaring (no less), cops are in pursuit. But does he care? Nope. When he does stop the madness, he doesn’t turn himself in; he simply kicks the car into a watery grave. But that's just the half of it. Waltzing into a bar for more drinks -- he then casually insults the dispatched officers (to the delight of both the bartender and the cop escaping his barbs) and finally slugs the fuzz. A wonderfully hilarious, transgressive scene with Reynolds at the top of his dangerous cinematic charms, all this happens before the opening credits come to an end. Ah, the '70s.

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

In the 1930s and '40s, Ida Lupino earned deserved esteem as an actress with her tough, sensitive performances in movies like High Sierra, They Drive by Night and Road House, and would continue her talents into the 1950s with The Big Knife, While the City Sleeps and On Dangerous Ground. But the intelligent, unique and creative actress spent time studying the mechanics behind the camera, resulting in her directorial debut, Outrage, in 1950, a thoughtful, emotional B-thriller that took on the controversial subject of rape. Throughout her career as a director (she made seven pictures), Lupino would continue to approach taboo subjects with sensitivity and grit (The Bigamist is another interesting standout), but her greatest film is the intriguing psychodrama and wonderful auto-terror, The Hitch-Hiker, starring Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy and a brilliant William Talman. Chronicling a horrifying road trip in which two fishermen (O'Brien and Lovejoy) pick up a completely deranged hitchhiker (Talman), Lupino directs with shadowy menace and intense nervousness (mirroring postwar anxiety -- especially in a car) in this tight character study/thriller that rivals the car insanity of Detour. Though she called herself the "Poor man's Don Siegel," she was dubbed the "Queen of the B's" and enjoyed a successful career (especially for a female director), making a string of entertaining, thought-provoking pictures that stand the test of time. Bigamists are fine, but hitch-hiking is always creepy.

Duel (1971)

Before he struck fear in the heart of every beach-loving, ocean-swimming New Englander, Steven Spielberg crafted one of his greatest pictures with the non-stop nervous breakdown Duel, a movie that struck fear in the heart of every mid life crisis suffering traveling salesman just trying to get down a California highway. Dennis Weaver is the nebbish, Joe-Blow salesman whose life becomes a vehicular nightmare when a mysterious, ominous truck will not stop following him. But why? Well, we assume the truck wants to kill him (or just completely mess with his head) in some kind of existential sanity test the poor schlub did not need that morning. Or maybe the truck really hates his car -- a Plymouth Valiant. Whatever the case, the deranged semi vs. Plymouth makes for a superbly tense 90-minute chase film that's equally disturbing for Dennis Weaver’s absolutely (and understandably) terrified, paranoid performance.

Jeopardy (1953)

The John Sturges directed daylight noir thriller is not only a tense, daring ride, but a deliciously, devilishly, weirdly hot good time. Here's the predicament: While vacationing in Mexico with hubby Barry Sullivan and their young son, Stanywck is put to the test after Sullivan is trapped in the surf and she must find anyone (anyone) to help her. Aid arrives in smarmy Ralph Meeker (ohhhh...Ralph Meeker) a fugitive who has a few other things on his mind. He professes to help, grabs Babs, and takes charge of her car and off it goes. A lot of arguing, sexual tension, slaps, cracker eating, everything happens in that nutty car ride. And the repartee between Stanwyck and Meeker is angry, sick and erotic with standouts involving the triple slap Meeker lays on tough Babs (triple!) or Meeker’s proud preference for cheap perfume: “It doesn’t last as long.” Or my favorite moment  --  when Stanwyck realizes she must make the ultimate sacrifice. She stands near the car, faces Meeker all hard and seductive and says: “I’ll do anything for my husband. ANYTHING.” And she does. Hard-core Babs.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Sam Peckinpah's brilliantly bizarre, fantastically bloody yet strangely beautiful  1974 masterpiece (underrated masterpiece), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah's most personal picture), is not only essential viewing for Peckinpah-philes, but required viewing for every gear-head whose endured a long, tumultuous road trip - chiefly through Mexico, and with a rotting head in the car (but I’m getting ahead of myself).  The picture stars one of my favorites, Warren Oates as Bennie, an American ex-pat/small-time hustler/piano player who claims to know where Garcia can be found. For various reasons I won’t get into, once involved, Bennie's up for a major dinero if he brings in Garcia -- dead. All he needs is the head. Coincidentally Bennie's girlfriend (the great Isela Vega) was once Garcia's lover, and after informing Bennie that Garcia is already dead, he thinks, easy:  find the grave, dig up the corpse, chop off the noggin, cash in, and start anew. Well…not so easy. As the road trip progresses, Peckinpah’s realism churns into this existential hyper-real horror show that manages to be poetic, grisly and oddly romantic. When deranged avenger Bennie, be-decked in that glorious white suit (Warren Oates has never looked better), now covered in dirt, sweat and blood, drives with what will become something of a friend  -- the rotting, severed head of Alfredo Garcia -- the adventure spirals into violence, poignancy, and madness. Swatting the flies out of the car, and confiding thoughtful, sometimes angry diatribes to his newest buddy, that head becomes a body part he can trust– the one person he can actually relate to. Showing an auteur and actor at the height of brazen, violent eccentricity, the picture is highly personal and daringly touching. A movie I make sure to watch every Valentine’s Day. No, really, I do. I’ve even watched it in a car -- on Valentine’s Day. More on Alfredo Garcia later.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Another Robert Aldrich picture (another Meeker), but damn if the director didn’t have a way with characters going batty in their bucket seats -- and directly at picture start. With this seminal, sleazy noir Kiss Me Deadly, he opens the picture with a pair of naked feet running down the middle of a highway in the black of the night.  The feet belong to a hysterical, heavily panting blonde/psychiatric-ward escapee (Cloris Leachman) wearing only a trench-coat. Desperate for a ride, she places herself in the middle of the road and finally, a cool little Jaguar sports car comes to a screeching halt. The driver, Mike Hammer (the ultimate sexy shit-heel Ralph Meeker) is agitated by this mystery woman/potential loony, begrudgingly “rescuing” her with a sneer. He spits:  “You almost wrecked my car. Well? Get in!” With the camera placed behind our two characters (one absolutely frantic, the other as cool as a cucumber), the credits roll upside down against the highway’s white lines (so brilliant), and the only thing you hear is Nat King Cole’s elegant “Rather Have the Blues” co-mingling with woman’s hard, almost sexual sounding hyper-ventilating. So totally perverse and subversive, Aldrich’s kick start plays shocking even today. How many pictures would have the balls to place a viewer on this kind of edge? But Aldrich’s not playing simply for shock -- the director (and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo) instantly address the expressionistic, off kilter and monstrous universe we’re about to enter -- but in a car. Un-relenting, sleazy, mean, disorienting, neurotic, psychotic and hopeless, Leachman’s panting pick-up is the crazed conscious inside all of the film’s characters, maniacally running from a world that could explode (literally) by the opening of a suitcase, or simply your car door.

Ten Ways The Song Remains The Same

Inspired after watching Davis Guggenheim's fantastic It Might Get Loud featuring The Edge, Jack White and...Jimmy Page, I've fashioned some sort of ten point  list.

As a teenager, I discovered all kinds of music, from traditional to offbeat, blues to punk, country to classical, classic rock to rockabilly, but no matter who I got into, no matter how great I thought various ‘60s garage rock bands or Marc Bolan, or The Velvet Underground or The Stooges were, I never strayed from Led Zeppelin -- no matter how ubiquitous they were. And I was obsessed with the ever mysterious Jimmy Page. From 14-18, I had a life size poster of the guitarist in my bedroom. I also had a high school teacher who actually saw Led Zeppelin in concert and I would drive him crazy asking about it. He took to calling me Kimmy Page. There are certain Zeppelin songs that will take me back to ceramics class, when I worked on the perfect pipe, not a bong, which I explained to my teacher’s amusement (really, I was trying to make a pipe), but one tune in particular. The day the principal had a nervous breakdown, walked into class, and smashed all of our projects because he thought everything was a bong, I distinctly remember at that moment, "When the Levee Breaks" playing on the classic rock radio station, making the whole incident a perfect combination of awesome, scary and hilarious. Jimmy Page really is darkness and light.

When I was 15, buzzed after renting The Song Remains the Same, and probably stoned out of my mind, I tried to make Jimmy Page's black (or was it a dark navy blue?) moon and stars pantsuit get-up. I actually got it halfway right. I wore it to school with a pink silk scarf. I wanted to craft his white, Nudie-esque suit, the alpha to his dark lord omega costume, but that proved tougher.

One of my only childhood pictures during Christmas is me excitedly holding my copy of "Hammer of the Gods." I learned a lot about alternative uses for, ahem, fish.

When I was at the Joshua Tree Inn, I missed Robert Plant when he stayed there because I was in Los Angeles that day. On certain days, this makes me want to cry.

When I was in Los Angeles, I missed the chance to interview Jimmy Page because I was in Joshua Tree that day. This really makes me want to cry. Maybe my time is gonna come...someday. Or, as the song goes, I'm gonna make you pay for that great big hole in my heart...

Along with Frank Sinatra's "A Summer Wind," "Bron-Yr-Aur" was the only song that would chill me out during a bad acid freak out. I once walked through a thicket in the middle of the night while the song blared from the car stereo, turning imagined melting demon goblins into beautiful magical fairys. Thank you Led Zeppelin. It still calms me down in any situation.

I skipped prom at 16, gave my dress to my friend and listened to Physical Graffiti in my bedroom. I’m fairly certain my mother was downstairs in the kitchen, staring at knives, devising ways of murdering my rocker-girl ass.

I'm still annoyed Peter Jackson didn't do the no-brainer by having Tolkien obsessed Robert Plant sing "Ramble On" during the closing credits for any one or all of The Lord of the Rings movies.  

When I found my stepdad's orginal LP of Zeppelin II as well as others and (and!) a book by Aleister Crowley, I looked at him as an entirely different kind of human being. Jimmy and magick? This was serious, scary, exciting, sex, drugs, rock n' roll and everything else. I commandeered the LP. And I stole the book.

I don't care how over-played they were/are on Classic Rock Radio, Led Zeppelin is still one of the greatest rock bands ever. And "Tangerine" is still one of the prettiest rock songs ever written. As is "Going to California." As is the lush "The Rain Song." And "Sick Again" still makes me want to get into trouble. And "In My Time of Dying" is still transcendent. And the beautifully enigmatic, yet charming Jimmy Page provided me with one of my happiest, most goose-bump inducing moments in movies this year -- listening to his 45 of Link Wray’s "Rumble" in Guggenheim's It Might Get Loud, pointing out every genius aspect to the song, beaming with happiness as he air guitairs (Jimmy Page air guitars!) -- he remains the quintessence of pure musical bliss. Long live Jimmy. RIP John Bonham.

Front To Back: Five Actors As Directors

Though the term is sometimes discussed with a question mark, the actor-turned-director has proven to be an impressive evolution (or merging) since the beginning of cinema. From film pioneers like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin to innovators like Orson Welles, Elia Kazan and John Cassavetes to icons like Warren Beatty, Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood (so great in Gran Torino -- which made me return to this subject) to major stars like Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson and Tom Hanks, an impressive array of directors have worked both sides of the camera with distinction. Add actors such as Sean Penn (who has made some great pictures, including one of my favorites and I think, least talked about, The Pledge), Denzel Washington, Sarah Polley and Ben Affleck into the mix and you'll see that the double-duty directors are a talented brood that appears to be increasing.

Excluding actors largely associated with their directed work (which leaves off filmmakers and actors like Keaton, Kazan, Cassavetes, Eastwood, Woody Allen and more), I'm focusing on filmmakers who surprised, inspired and impressed with their unique turns behind the camera. Some made just one film, others crafted more, but all brought something unique to a screen they know so well. With the exception of The Night of the Hunter, here's a few American actor/director not discussed enough:

Ride the Pink Horse (1947)

Director: Robert Montgomery

Cool leading man Robert Montgomery (star of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Here Comes Mr. Jordan and They Were Expendable) made a few interesting pictures in the 1940s, chiefly in the genre of film noir. His experimental adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake (shot entirely from Philip Marlowe's POV) is one of the genre's most interesting curios, but the strangely (and sexual) titled Ride the Pink Horse, adapted by the great Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer from a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, is his most notable effort. Montgomery stars as the picture's mysterious protagonist, Lucky Gagin, an ex-GI drifter who seeks money and revenge from the sadistic gangster Frank Hugo (played by Fred Clark), the creep who murdered his best friend. The story twists when the FBI enters the picture and Lucky takes refuge at an old carousel run by carnival ride operator Pancho (a terrific Thomas Gomez) and meets the young and attractive Pilar (Wanda Hendrix). Boasting marvelous performances by everyone, with Montgomery leading the proceedings with an alienated, brooding, bitter character, Ride the Pink Horse conveys palpable postwar aimlessness. And it gives us the satisfaction of knowing what the title means: Lucky thinks all the horses on the merry-go-round look the same, something that leads him to tell a girl (who is asking which horse to ride) that she "might as well ride the pink one." Stylish, fascinating and complex, Ride the Pink Horse is an underseen gem.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

Director: Marlon Brando

Famous (and infamous) for being Marlon Brando's lone stab at directing, One-Eyed Jacks has remained underrated, underseen and misunderstood since its messy release. Coming in an era when the creative actor (and sometimes genius) would find difficulties in many of his roles, it's not surprising that when problems arose he simply decided to direct himself in this creative Western -- and replace Stanley Kubrick no less. The picture began with a rocky start -- first with Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling's initial rejected treatment; second with Sam Peckinpah's nixed screenplay (Kubrick didn't like it, so Brando fired Peckinpah); and third with new scripter Calder Willingham, who, with Kubrick, was also eventually canned. That left Brando to hire himself as director, resulting in a four-hour cut that was extensively trimmed by Paramount to 141 minutes. The story finds bank-robbing Brando facing off with his ex-partner and betrayer (Karl Malden) -- a man who became a "respectable" sheriff while Brando served five years in a Mexican prison. After Brando escapes and learns what Malden's been up to, he seeks revenge, resulting in an affair with Malden's adopted daughter (played by Pina Pellicer), a situation with the imitable Timothy Carey, and a final showdown with Malden. Though many critics find the film aimless and overly long, the picture, even with its messy backstory and clipped final product, remains an interesting, moody, richly realized Western that is, not surprisingly, beautifully acted by Brando and Malden.

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Director: Ida Lupino

In the 1930s and '40s, Ida Lupino earned deserved esteem as an actress with her tough, sensitive performances in movies like High Sierra, They Drive by Night and Road House, and would continue her talents into the 1950s with The Big Knife, While the City Sleeps and On Dangerous Ground. But the intelligent, unique and creative actress spent time studying the mechanics behind the camera, resulting in her directorial debut, Outrage, in 1950, a thoughtful, emotional B-thriller that took on the controversial subject of rape. Throughout her career as a director (she made seven pictures), Lupino would continue to approach taboo subjects with sensitivity and grit (The Bigamist is another interesting standout), but her greatest film is the intriguing psychodrama The Hitch-Hiker, starring Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy and a brilliant William Talman. Chronicling a horrifying road trip in which two fishermen (O'Brien and Lovejoy) pick up a deranged hitchhiker (Talman), Lupino directs with shadowy menace and intense nervousness (mirroring postwar anxiety) in this tight character study/thriller. Though she called herself the "Poor man's Don Siegel," she was dubbed the "Queen of the B's" and enjoyed a successful career (especially for a female director), making a string of entertaining, thought-provoking pictures that stand the test of time.

Little Murders (1971)

Director: Alan Arkin

Alan Arkin had quite the challenge on his hands when he decided to direct what would turn out to be an impressive, pitch-black screen adaptation of Jules Feiffer's stage play, a disastrous production that only lasted seven days in its initial 1967 run. The movie fared better, though not by much, and has remained a deserved cult item since its release. Expressing the unease and understandable neurosis ending the 1960s (Feiffer wrote the play partially in response to the Kennedy assassination), the picture merges comedy, violence, romance and anxiety with a jangling wit that makes viewers increasingly unsettled, putting them on the precipice of cinematic nervous breakdowns. Elliott Gould plays a photographer and "apathist" who allows violence upon himself while his girlfriend (played by Marcia Rodd) receives daily obscene phone calls from unknown perverts. The disparate lovers get married (for whatever reason) but happiness isn't their future as their personal problems increase and New York becomes even more violent and dystopian. Arkin bravely paints broadly here, with standout performances (Donald Sutherland is especially memorable as a hippie minister) and set pieces (the first meeting of the family is brilliantly anarchic and hilarious) that pile up the movie's absurdities and yet weirdly realistic feel for the anxious. A cultural panic attack of a movie, the disturbing Little Murders is something of a masterwork and unlike anything you've ever seen.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Director: Charles Laughton

It's hard to believe that the brilliant, poetic masterpiece The Night of the Hunter was Charles Laughton's sole directorial effort, and yet it is not so hard to understand: A picture this lyrical is hard to come by and certainly tough to top, by anyone. Laughton, a respected actor of stage and screen, famous for The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and other iconic performances, adapted Davis Grubb's novel (with film critic James Agee as screenwriter) into an expressionistic children's fairy tale/nightmare, utilizing dreamlike angled compositions (by cinematographer Stanley Cortez), chilling religious motifs, dark humor and disturbed perversity to full, elegiac effect. Casting Robert Mitchum was just one of Laughton's ingenious moves, giving the barrel-chested leading man his greatest, scariest performance -- electrifying the picture with a deep uneasiness and inspired weirdness. As the handsome and hatefully dangerous hymn singing "Preacher" who seduces vulnerable women only to take their money (as well as their lives), Mitchum's demented faux reverend Harry Powell hunts down the two children of poor Shelley Winters with big talk, questioning threats ("Where'd you hide the money Pearl?") and finally, just plain murderous intentions. From its most famous scene involving Mitchum's love and hate speech using tattooed knuckles, to Winters' beautiful yet horrifying watery grave, to the frightfully gorgeous way Mitchum sings ("Leaning on the everlasting arms"), especially with pure-hearted Lillian Gish, every inch of this picture is absolutely amazing.

For The Love Of Lux Interior: 1946-2009

13 Reasons “She Said” The Cramps

1. Lux Interior in his growling, yowling, screaming, microphone sucking, high heel wearing glory was the ultimate macho fey and the Pied Piper of kink. No longer would I want just a rocker, I’d want a freaky, sleazy, degenerate rocker who could holler Hasil Adkins, borrow your pumps and quite possibly make out with both your sister and your brother when you weren’t looking.

2. Poison Ivy remains one of my rock goddess Idols. The quintessence of too-cool-for-school, she’d stalk across the stage like a disinterested kitty cat --  slinky, sexy, unapproachable, perfect.

3. The Cramps blasted rockabilly out of the tired retro affectations of the perfectly coiffed, Eisenhower youth, rock-and-roll-at-the-hop-hop-hop-hop tedium. They knew Link Wray was a bad-ass. They worshipped crazy man Hasil Adkins. They dug the Sonics, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, The Ventures and they brought bump and grind to Jimmie Rogers.  Fuck Fonzie. Long live Lux. 

4. Poison Ivy got me into her idol, Bo Diddley’s brilliant The Duchess. I bow down to her for this.

5. I didn’t need to take drugs or get drunk to get high at a Cramps show (though that's fun too). They were also the perfect first date show. My longest relationship (now kaput) was aided by The Cramps (with Famous Monsters). A night of a new kind of kick indeed.

6. For some reason, The Cramps always make me think of what Christmas should really be like. I always wanted to spend Christmas with The Cramps.

7. Poison Ivy inspired one of the greatest songs by one of my favorite bands, The Gun Club, aptly titled, “For the Love of Ivy.” It features the sublimely violent erotic line: “I’m gonna buy me a gun just as long as my arm.”

8. Lux and Ivy actually make marriage seem like a good idea.  They were the surprisingly clean living Charles and Morticia Adams of rock.

9. “Bend over, I'll drive, bend over I'll drive. Is this the way Ernie Kovacs died? Bend over, I'll drive."

10. The Cramps had great taste. Lux found rockabilly singers like Charlie Feathers, Sonny Burgess and Malcolm Yelvington as kindred spirits to his other major influence: the Surrealists. In an interview Lux stated: “Marcel Duchamp is quite an inspiration... Because he kind of single-handedly demolished all that had gone before, and made a brand-new art. Man Ray was great too… We're just people who remain ever-curious. We're just attracted to whatever comes in handy. Again, like the Surrealists, anything you run across is actually beautiful; within a single city block, you find miraculous things. It's a good planet -- and good things can happen." Beautiful.

11. Garage Punk, Psychobilly, whatever-the-hell. They were The Cramps.

12. The Cramps make you believe that sexy almost always has to be sleazy.

13. Lux Interior was Louis Prima to Poison Ivy’s Keely Smith. He was speed to her heroin. The living to her dead. They were sickness, health, young and old. He’s can’t possibly be gone...

Sunset Gun Top Ten Movies Of 2008

2008, the year of death, decay and the wisdom of the beautiful loser. The year movie stars examined their own mortality and fading beauty via their on-screen persona (Brad Pitt, Mickey Rourke and Clint Eastwood, who managed to be as cute as Sarah Silverman while delivering his racial humor -- I'm still wondering if that was his point -- and I'm still fond of his weirdly toned movie.) The year Heath left us and Mickey came back and Robert Downey Jr. became a superhero. The year that actually made me examine the deeper implications of Quiet Riot's "Bang Your Head" (real and appropiate title, "Metal Health"). With this in mind, here's my top ten movies of 2008:  

The Wrestler

I never gave up on Mickey Rourke  --  ever.  One of my favorite actors, the mysterious, seductive American exotic with that whispery voice that was at once sexy and conspiratorial, the actor who always leans into his conversation, as if you were the only person in the world, never left my viewing. He's an odd guy, a tortured soul, but one of the screen's most exceptional players, an actor who can funnel his uniquely soulful strangeness into any part -- even opposite the Marlboro Man (not kidding) and especially in underrated movies like the surrealistic Double Team or the sublime Bullet (a movie everyone must see -- junkie Rourke drowning his inner city blues to the swooning sounds of Barry White is not to be missed). And let’s not forget his bravura performances in The Rainmaker, Animal Factory and The Pledge in which (in his only scene) he gives us the most soul crushing moment of the entire picture. Sure, he’s back, but he was still great. His first born again splash was Sin City, the good Frank Miller movie that gave the actor terrific reviews. But we couldn't really see him. After all, this is the same beauty who at one point was deemed the next Brando (with Diner, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Rumble Fish and Barfly), so I yearned to watch that face again, no matter how much older and odder it may appear these days.

Enter Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. And there’s that face again! Nothing can take away inner charisma, and The Wrestler proves it. Rourke is the picture, and though there are many scenes I could discuss -- there's one that remains my favorite --  one that's so overwhelmingly touching, so disarming, you're a little amazed by how hard it hits you -- and it doesn't occur in the wrestling ring. It's a sequence showing Mickey Rourke's washed-up, stuck-in-the-'80s wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson working at a supermarket deli. He hides his bleached-blond lion's pride underneath a plastic cap while doling out pasta mixes and specific slices for the purpose most of us can understand: to keep a roof over his head. But it's not simply the sadness of Randy's past glory submerged in a soul-crushing job that moves us -- it's because he's actually good at it and, even better, so sly and charming and entertaining to his customers, that you see both the innumerable possibilities for a man who chose bloody smack downs, self-inflected razor cuts and the fearsome folding-chair treatment as his life's work, and exactly why he was so great at it. And bless him for it. It's the kind of sacrifice that makes Rourke's character (and real-life persona) deserve every ounce of our love, even if he considers himself a "broken-down piece of meat." But then every moment in Aronofsky's raggedly beautiful, extraordinarily wistful, perfectly nuanced and wonderfully acted picture lifts itself above easy sentimentality and tired fallen champ axioms. This is partially for the director's gritty artistry and genuine soulfulness -- never once do we feel like he's mocking wrestling or Rourke's Randy, or rendering either as a pitiful joke. But it's mostly because of Rourke's naked, heart-wrenching, art-imitating-life performance. This is blood, sweat and tears (quite literally) on a whole other inspired level.  I don’t take the Oscars too seriously, but I swear, if he doesn't get nominated for The Wrestler, I'll ... I don't know ... take a cue from the movie, crank up "Sweet Child O' Mine" and start crying.

In Bruges

"There's a Christmas tree somewhere in London with a bunch of presents underneath it that'll never be opened. And I thought, if I survive all of this, I'd go to that house, apologize to the mother there, and accept whatever punishment she chose for me. Prison... death... didn't matter. Because at least in prison and at least in death, you know, I wouldn't be in fuckin' Bruges. But then, like a flash, it came to me. And I realized, fuck man, maybe that's what hell is: the entire rest of eternity spent in fuckin' Bruges. And I really really hoped I wouldn't die. I really really hoped I wouldn't die." So ends In Bruges, one of the year’s most under-looked, and touching movies -- a movie that'll make you laugh at a gleefully offensive joke and then unexpectedly tear up over a tragic back story that somehow wrings sympathy over a man who shot up a church. A picture filled with rapid fire wit, dark, hilarious humor, vicious violence, curse words galore, surrealism, intense emotion, unpredictable action,  redemption, faith and a deeply touching soul (not to mention a dwarf  -- a dwarf who snorts lots and lots of cocaine), In Bruges never runs off the rails, but remains nicely contained in, of course, Bruges. The picture finds sensitive hit men (Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in his greatest performance to date) stuck in the medieval Belgium town of Bruges as a sort of purgatory -- waiting for their newest job (or end) via brutal boss-man Ralph Fiennes (who can use the “c” word like nobody’s business). Irish playwright Martin McDonagh makes his filmmaking debut here, and does not disappoint with sublime intelligence and un-PC humor that actually has a point beyond shock (so refreshing), you truly feel like these men talk this way. And that they really dislike Americans. Or, in the case of Ralph Fiennes, that they really can’t stand their wife, at least for a brief moment. After smashing his phone so intensely that his wife irritatingly inquires as to why he would have such anger over an inanimate object, his furious answer is: “You're in an inanimate fucking object!” And it all takes place during Christmas -- which really ought to start a viewing tradition every fookin’ year.

Pineapple Express

I still don’t get many of the negative reviews regarding director David Gordon Green and producer Judd Apatow's Pineapple Express, especially when so many things I love about the picture are exactly what many critics disliked:  the shaggy pacing, the lack of quippy-joke-a minute banter, the aimlessness, the nutty action finale, etc. and so on. I love the '80s touches from the music (Bell Biv DeVoe!), to Seth Rogen's car, to the hit men’s clothes to…yes (!) Danny McBride. And then there’s James Franco. I have a feeling that all of us "Freaks and Geeks" fans let out a collective "finally!" when we witnessed our James Franco (our Daniel Desario), give one of the greatest comedic performances of the year.  As the dippy, sweet and secretly smart pot dealer who's passionate about not just weed, but, of all things, civil engineering (and his grandmother), Franco took what could have been a stock stoner character and ratcheted it five, 10 notches above the same old, same old. Creating a fully realized lovable loser whose fondness for his favorite customer (Seth Rogen) gives the movie its soulful center, it was Franco who touched us amid hilarious car chase sequences, massive explosions and giddily ridiculous, bloody gun battles. He's a sweet, understated goofball you absolutely fall in love with and without him, the movie wouldn't have moved us with its extra magic and spark. When he says he wants to make parks with septic areas for kids to shi* in, I believe him. With this, you totally get why Rogen comes to love him -- and truly, this movie plays like a love story between these two men (Dare I say more than Milk? I dare). Though the picture is clearly sending up '80s action movies within the stoner genre, I find it interesting that no one (from what I've read anyway) has mentioned any kind of deeper message regarding drugs laws in this country. Not sure if Apatow (and David Gordon Green) were making such a specific point, but after (spoiler alert!) the entire barn blows up and Kevin Corrigan really can't make it to dinner on time, because of essentially, a plant...I thought they had to have been thinking about this. The criminalization of pot is as absurd as Rogen dueling Gary Cole with marijuana light.  Also, Franco, Franco, Franco. Afraid that the fine-featured, seriously handsome Franco would continue to brood in more Spider-Man movies or forgettable features like City by the Sea and Sonny, we finally got to see him flash that toothy, goofy smile of his. Forget Mary Tyler Moore; Franco's the one who can turn the world on with that thing.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

David Fincher knows how to use his muse Brad Pitt like the movie star he is -- and god bless him for it. He makes him a better actor in the process. As Fight Club's Tyler Durden, he was the man every guy wanted to be --  a bad-ass matinee idol/idea filled prankster glammed up in tight vintage leather, colorful tee shirts and lots of sexy bruises. In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (adapted from the F. Scott Fitzgerald story), he’s many things, and much more the beautiful innocent, and like all Fincher, never simply pretty. And yet, true to the director, he's always glamorous, even when wrinkled and tiny and barely walking.  As the exceptional creature Benjamin, Pitt (with some remarkable makeup, effects and clothes) moves from older man baby (a curiously handsome old man baby), to craggy, Jack London-style tugboat worker (a great look, particularly during his affair with Tilda Swinton), to James Dean motorcycle riding hottie, to golden boy sailor, to the an almost creepy CGI vision of Pitt nearing age 20 -- something that I’m willing to bet even makes Pitt himself feel wistful (the woman next to me gasped at the rendered youth staring at her from the screen, as if she’d seen a ghost). Though the picture has been considered a bit corn-pone and Gump-ian, I find it to be neither of these things, especially with dark Fincher at the helm. Yes, this is the nicest movie he’s ever directed, but the ideas of simply living your life, no matter what the setbacks, and the study of aging and decay -- mentally, physically and geographically (I know some were annoyed by the framing, but I thought Hurricane Katrina New Orleans made for a perfect setting -- as the extraordinary, and proudly odd place reflects the funky history of the picture's protagonist -- and like him, is as poignantly mortal, no matter how lovely) makes the picture almost overwhelmingly touching at times. Thanks largely to the beauty of Fincher’s frames, and to beauty itself, Benjamin Button tells a relevant, eloquent story that touches you in mysterious ways (why am I losing it over Benjamin Button working in a parking kiosk?), but never forgets why movies are so intoxicating and, in this case, strangely beautiful in the first place.

Standard Operating Procedure

The great Errol Morris takes on the horrors of Abu Ghraib and doesn’t simply wag his finger at the actions that took place -- he actually examines them through their pictures -- those famous thumbs up Lynndie England pictures that put us in touch with such degradation and provoked such varied responses. Showing the prison as a hell on earth (for everyone), Morris interviews the American soldiers from the photographs -- and allows them to explain themselves. Again, Morris isn't interested in merely judging these people, in fact we're left disgusted by their superiors, the expectations of softening up the prisoners for torture we didn't see in any photograph. And since this is Morris, a filmmaker with a wicked intelligence and real ideas, he furthers his study by creating a meditation on photography itself -- by showing so many photographs (many we've never seen) and pondering how even those were manipulated. All the while, he manipulates the pictures himself and at times, the movie presents the snaps so stylishly, there were moments I thought I was looking at a particularly grim Juergen Teller Marc Jacobs ad.  By staring at these images, we again think of ourselves -- we see fear and power and the fear of those adminstering power, and we see how casual it all seems. And then we realize how, frequently, we casually look at it.  

Slumdog Millionaire

I'm sick of people citing Danny Boyle for being an outsider bestowing his condescending wisdom on the poor Indian people. Or calling him a showy, shallow optimist more concerned with gimmick and flash and pleasing local color than the actual hardship painted so tragically and yes, gorgeously in Slumdog Millionaire. Here's the thing -- this is a movie movie -- something that leaves you so dazzled and jazzed from frame one, that you can't help but give in to its persistent cinema-mania, Bollywood nods,  Dickensian tropes and of course, the edge-of-your-seat tension of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." But there's heart within all of this -- and it's not diminished by so many shiny objects. Boyle loves his story, loves the region and he loves his characters --especially gentle Dev Patel.  You could say the movie is corny at times, but that’s not fair. A loving mixture of Ragged Dick story gone Mumbai and a teenage fairy tale, the movie tackles poverty, death, corruption, violence, fate and the hope of young love.  And dammit, they dance at the end. So uncross your arms, take that smirk off your face and enjoy the damn thing. Charles Dickens would. So would Rege, come to think of it.

Synecdoche, New York

I know a few people, all of them Charlie Kaufman admirers, who absolutely hated this movie. I witnessed a few strangers in the theater despise this movie, emerging from their annoyed torpor to shake their heads and say "what a load of self indulgent crap" (I felt like I was walking out of a bizarre-o Woody Allen movie only to walk into a real Woody Allen movie, with Kaufman serving as Fellini). I am not going to challenge such contempt -- and I'm not going to pull the "they just don't get it routine" either. No, they just don't like it, and I can understand why. OK. So why do I like it so much? Why did the movie get to me, and beyond attempting to figure out its labyrinthian plot and outside looking in meta-movie-within-a play structure? Like other movies I championed this year, Synecdoche dealt with failure and death and disgusting rot and self absorption and is-that-all-there- is-to-a-fire ponderances with such ballsy ambition and genuine soulfulness, I was left swooning with the idea that we are indeed, special and yet, not special at all. It's Benjamin Button's incredibly ugly brother showing his reality through his own kind of disorienting, head trip cinematic dreamscape. 

The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight stuck with me -- it got under my skin in ways that surprised me hours later and, even better (or worse, depending on your mood) made me ponder everything from the hypocritical nature of mankind to current politics to, yes, the tragic loss of Heath Ledger -- something that's even more potently poignant while watching this wonderfully dark picture. As I had mourned earlier in an essay on Ledger, we've lost a major talent. The usual suspects are present of course: Christian Bale -- one of the greatest actors working -- as Bruce Wayne, the legendary, sweet Michael Caine, an understated Gary Oldman (playing a nice guy -- I love it) and Morgan Freeman. Also appearing is Maggie Gyllenhaal, who replaces Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes (Gyllenhaal is a vast improvement -- intelligent and slinky -- you totally understand why a guy who can get whatever he wants, wants her). There's also Aaron Eckhart as District Attorney Harvey Dent -- primed to become Two Face and again, a brilliant, crazed and yet, oddly soulful Ledger. Which brings me to the heart of the, at times, sublime The Dark Knight -- as Ledger's Joker shows us (and forces upon Harvey Dent), the world is a place of two faces, of darkness and light, of organization and chaos. Gotham City's criminal underbelly is a reflection of a world we sometimes walk through with willful ignorance, not realizing we are part of such chaos and destruction. Or, at the very least, we allow it to happen around us -- as long as we're warned.  The Joker doesn't want us to be warned -- he thrives on chaos, cannot be bought and has no glorious plan. He's the Tyler Durden of Super-villains and, as such, will become something of a cult figure with this character. His philosophy isn't exactly a new one (watch some film noir for prime examples) but Nolan and Ledger make it fresh and inspired. And since these ideas are universal, it's hard to not understand where The Joker is coming from. At times (and this might be a stretch for some, but not for me) it's even hard to dislike him. At times I fought the urge of punching my fist in the air in anarchic solidarity -- Ledger's Joker is my new evil hero. He's a psycho sexy beast of destruction. Believe the hype -- the movie may not be perfect, but he is.

Let the Right One In

Bullies, snow, annoying mothers, curious fathers, swimming, teenagers, a female (or male) vampire and…Swedes. Oh yes and a massive cat attack. I’m not going to say watch this instead of Twilight since they are completely different kinds of movies (and I recommend Twilight). And I’m quite frankly, tired of people writing that. This is the sparer, darker and more depressing of the two teen vampire movies, for certain, but it's entirely its own movie -- nothing is like Let the Right One In. Directed by Tomas Alfredson (from a script by novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist) the disturbing, yet sweet coming of age story opens up all kinds of thoughts (and wounds) about obsession and teen angst and the willingness to take a major leap for love by letting, yes, the right one in. Or the wrong one who feels so right -- the one you never forget. 

The Foot Fist Way

If last year was the year of Seth Rogen, then 2008 was the year of the hilarious, fantastically weird but strangely relatable Danny McBride. And sorry, Rogen fans, but McBride is funnier (something buddy Seth would probably concede). The inventive comic, who, a few years ago, toiled as a night manager at a Burbank Holiday Inn, burst on the screen in the span of one month, appearing in two major comedies, Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder, making such a uniquely riotous impression in both that even those who didn't remember his name could not forget his singular comedic talent (watch the way he walks out of the burning building at the conclusion of Express and wave ... genius). A protégé of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, the two helped the North Carolina native secure a release for his hysterical The Foot Fist Way (McBride co-wrote the indie comedy in 2006), in which he plays a ridiculously overconfident yet strangely lovable tae kwon do instructor. I could go on but I don’t need to explain any more. Just watch it. And yes, I’m totally serious -- it is one of the best movies of the year.

Also...please check out my picture page Pretty Poison: Letters from L.A.

Christmas With Seven Screwy Santas

I've always loved Santa Claus, but not only for the supposed gift giving and seasonal sweetness (which is wonderful of course.) No, I love Santa, in part for frequently appearing so...disturbed. Santa Claus is just inherently creepy. Any guy who knows when you’ve been sleeping, when you’ve been awake and when you’ve been bad or good is going to create a little tension in your life. And though one usually thinks of Santa as that jolly old fat man in a red suit riding a sleigh stuffed with presents, in world history, he’s quite a bit darker. For instance in Austria, Santa used to partner up with a devil figure named Krampus who would beat the naughty kids with switches. Santa and Satan? (Come to think of it, that would make for a really good movie -- Krampus sounds scary or...really pretentious).

But speaking of movies (and what else would I be speaking of?), cinema well understands not only the goodwill and joy that the holiday’s can bring but also the anxiety and terror. Bob Clark's brilliant sorority house slasher/masterpiece Black Christmas, a movie I've written about numerous times, put me in a morbid mood, so I thought I'd look at the darker side of Christmas via, who better? Santa Claus himself. Be them drunks, sociopaths or green Grinches, here’s my seven screwy (and in the case of Popeye Doyle) sexy Santas.

Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa (2003)

I know this comparison is rote but...is Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa the Citizen Kane of Santa movies? I think so. It's certainly more the true re-make of How the Grinch Stole Christmas than Ron Howard's horrid attempt. The story of a thieving, drunken, lecherous, cantankerous, no good son of a bitch (etc. and so on) Department Store Santa is one of the most subversive Christmas movies ever made and also, surprisingly, one of the most touching. Billy Bob Thornton carves out a role that is now iconic -- stumbling through the movie with such assured misanthropy that at a certain point, you’re actually impressed. And if any of you have felt cranky during Christmastime, you can relate. As for me, I might not get busy in a dressing room with an extra large lady (so great), but I understand the nastiness. And yet, crude humor aside, Bad Santa truly does examine the real meaning of the spirit of Christmas with a foul mouthed message that’s strangely powerful. 

Robert Brian Wilson in Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Thank God for outraged mothers -- if not for their, uh, valiant (and successful) efforts to ban Silent Night, Deadly Night from movie theaters, we might have forgotten this 80’s slasher milestone. Because the controversy (and poster of Santa coming down the chimney with an axe) is honestly the only thing that makes this film at all memorable. That and the unusually good looking Robert Brian Wilson (who looks like he’s pissed he didn’t get that Calvin Klein contract) as a sociopathic Santa. The filmmakers had something with the story -- that of a little boy who, after witnessing the brutal killing of his parents by a homicidal, rapist Santa Claus, grows into a murderous department store St. Nick -- but they botch up their premise with horrid technique, zero tension and un-clever sleaze. Still, the film remains required viewing (you’ve got to see it once) for both the anti-Christmas classic crowd and those sanctimonious mother’s who banned it in the first place. And you know at least half of them rented it eventually....and liked it.

Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

In Miracle on 34th Street, the question isn’t just is there a Santa Claus, the question is, does Santa Claus need years of therapy and a prescription for Haldol? Because Santa might have schizophrenia. OK, that’s not really the true spirit of the movie, but I always found the picture a tad weird amidst all its “belief in the imagination of the child” hokum. The wonderful, perfectly cast Edmund Gwenn plays "Kris Kringle" a Macy’s department store Santa who warms the heart of the cute as a button Natalie Wood and eventually, her progressive work-a-holic Mother (played by Maureen O’Hara). But is he really Santa? And if he believes he is, isn’t he totally nuts? This question causes the less fanciful hearted to nearly drag poor Kris to an insane asylum which is actually pretty funny. But it’s also sad and creepy.  Because believing that strongly in Santa is a little crazy. And creepy. And sad. And beautiful. I love this fucking movie.

The Grinch in How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)

Creating his own version of Scrooge (and, again, a Bad Santa before his time) Dr. Suess’ Grinch is one of the holiday’s most enduring and powerful characters.  And thanks to director Chuck Jones (again, not Ron Howard’s suck version) he lives on via Jones’ brilliant adaptation of Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Utilizing the vocal talents of the great Boris Karloff (aka Frankenstein's Monster) to narrate the tale, the story of the green and mean Grinch and his plan to loot the sweet denizens of Whoville while pretending to be Santa is a gorgeous, animation classic. Effectively scary but with just enough humanity to make us believe his heart really does grow three times (after he cuts the “Roast Beast”); the Grinch is a sublime symbol that evil and good can, to quote The Shadow, lurk in the heart of men -- green men.

Brandon Maggert in You Better Watch Out A.K.A. Christmas Evil (1980)

What kind of people are obsessed with Santa Claus? Lunatics, clearly. That’s what director Lewis Jackson thought in his first and only movie, You Better Watch Out. The better of the homicidal Santa pictures (Silent Night, Deadly Night got more ink), this one has a lonely man (Brandon Maggert -- Fiona Apple’s real life father, another reason to love troubled, gorgeous Fiona) who thinks all will be perfect if he could only turn himself into Santa Claus. The guy starts not only dressing as Santa but spying on kids (which raises all kinds of Santa-phelia issues) and tricking out his bitchin' van with a sleigh mural. But when he finally “becomes” Santa, he takes a shine to naughty over nice and begins hacking all the badn’s. Yes, you better  effing watch out. And you better take this movie seriously because Jackson did, making the film all the more amusing, over the top and at times, curiously creepy.

José Elías Moreno in Santa Claus (1959)

Santa Claus vs...the Devil? That’s the dueling duo in Rene Cardona’s Santa Claus, a movie that trumps Santa battling those stupid Martians in that other bit of Santa-camp Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Santa (played by José Elías Moreno) knows if you’ve been bad or good via his ridiculously super-sized telescope that helps him notice all the world’s children, like poor little Lupita who just wants a doll for Christmas (awwww). But Satan’s been scoping out Santa (anagram anyone?) and he challenges Mr. Claus to a fight that, if you stick with the movie long enough (and you really should) is worthy of a WWF smackdown, tights and all. Amusing and eye-poppingly strange, Santa Claus’ version of the tough hombre Santa is impressively ambitious.

Gene Hackman in The French Connection (1971)

Santa Claus? In The French Connection?  Of course. The William Friedkin classic in which Gene Hackman’s tough NYC cop Popeye Doyle attempts to track down a massive heroin shipment, contains one of the greatest, grittiest Santa moments every put to film. The place is Brooklyn, the time, the Christmas holiday, during which hot-to-trot hothead Popeye Doyle is on stake-out as...Santa in disguise. With his partner, Buddy "Cloudy" Russo (the late great Roy Scheider) posing as a hot dog vendor (I’m making this sound like a comedy), Popeye's Santa busts out all kinds of whoop ass when chasing down a knife wielding dope dealer. It is here, that Doyle's Santa utters the movie's most iconic non-sequitur:  “When's the last time you picked your feet, Willy? Who's your connection Willy? What's his name?...I've got a man in Poughkeepsie who wants to talk to you. You ever been to Poughkeepsie?” Sigh...Oh, Mr. Hackman. (Have I ever discussed my dream about Mr. Hackman? It was in a tennis club. Maybe the next one will involve a Santa suit, which won't be kinky at all... no way.) Anyway, back on track -- a nice Christmas gift for all would be Hackman returning to pictures again. Even, or perhaps especially, in a Santa suit. 

Merry Christmas!

Also...please check out my picture page Pretty Poison: Letters from L.A.

And God Created Fashion

When I was little, one of my biggest fashion influences was Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface. Those shiny slinky dresses, that long blonde bobbed hair, those huge coke-head sunglasses, that pet tiger...watching the movie as a young one, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up -- married to a drug lord and living in a house with a glass elevator.

But as I grew older, other influences emerged. I soon learned that living in an empty apartment wih a cat would be perfectly wonderful if I were as glamorous as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, a movie that always makes me feel better about myself when I can't find my shoes, my phone or my lit matches. And there's more...Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Rita Hayworth in Gilda (that black dress), Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven, Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, Julie Christie in Petulia, Anita Pallenberg and Edie Sedgewick in anything, Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, all of the '60s French goddesses, Mick Jagger in Gimme Shelter, David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Tuesday Weld, Jean Harlow, Veronica Lake, Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot....the list goes on.  Movies, older movies, were always inspirations. I think I watched Cyd Charisse dance with Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain about eighty times partly for her black bob and that impossibly sexy flapper dress in vibrant, come hither green. 

Film and fashion are so inexorably linked, one (even the movie obsessed ) almost don't notice their trendy sway.  Working as big-screen invitations to don duds one may have feared or using fashion to signify a character's quirkiness, movies have contributed to major changes, trends and standards in hair, makeup and clothes. 

So, to credit celluloid's style authority, I'm again looking at ten important fashion moments in film. Not the ten most fashionable stars, or my own personal favorites mind you, but ten outfits that became not only iconic, but in some cases, standards. To this, I tip my hat. And, program note -- check your local listings for the documentary Starz Inside: Fashion In Film, airing Sunday, Dec. 14 (on Starz), where I among many others, discuss cinematic fashion.

Diane Keaton -- Annie Hall (1977)

Lately, Diane Keaton has been lambasted for her fashion sense. Yet there was a time when she was celebrated for it. As Woody Allen's quirky, eponymous leading lady in the beloved Annie Hall, Keaton received kudos (and an Oscar) not only for her performance but also for her irreverent style. Costume designer Ruth Morley worked alongside Ralph Lauren to create Keaton's signature look of cheeky, chic menswear. Her hat, man's tie, shirt, waistcoat and wide-leg pants appeared simultaneously polished yet just thrown on. More importantly, the look perfectly symbolized Keaton's New York character -- not overtly feminine, a little daffy yet wholesome and always up for new experiences (like reading the National Review). The look became a '70s sensation as women opted for Lauren's masculine/feminine style, making menswear à la mode. As Annie would say, it was all very "la-di-da."

The Misters -- Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Really, I would credit Tsuai Hark, John Woo, Melville and Godard for the styles present in this picture, but the average movie-going audience saw it as the Dogs look. With his finger on the pulse of Hong Kong action cinema and French new wave cool, Quentin Tarantino exploded on the movie scene in the early '90s with his debut, Reservoir Dogs, becoming popular based on gabby dialogue and grisly violence ... but the fabulous black suits worn by the fast-talking, amoral gangsters became a cultural trademark, as well. The basic black, skinny tie with white shirt and sunglasses worn by all the Mr. Colors were so popular that suddenly suits were no longer stuffy symbols of '80s yuppie-dom, but the sign of major "cool." No matter that often the suit wearers were mistaken in their daddy-o-ness, but it was nice to see men put together clothes that didn't bag off their body. The only question for fans was which Mr. they got to be. I opt for Mr. Pink.

Madonna -- Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

Every woman had thought about it: Why can't I wear this bra in public? I wear a bikini to the beach. OK, well not every woman, but it was one Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone who made the thought a reality and much more mainstream than worried fathers would have liked. As the downtown urchin Susan in Susan Seidelman's modern screwball comedy, Desperately Seeking Susan, Madonna wore her clothes -- from black dresses paired with leggings to men's pants with exposed lacy bras to rolled-down, rhinestone boots to even men's boxers. And, of course, beads, crosses, bracelets and all that obvious bleached-out hair. Madonna was so ultra-sexy and daring, it's not even necessary to point out what a sensation she became, since an entire phrase was coined for her legions of imitators: "Madonna-wanna-be." Though Debbie Harry is my favorite rock bombshell and gets less credit for her daring, sexy style, Madonna did conquer.

John Travolta -- Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Disco was already in full swing (and hated by the "Disco Sucks" crowd) by the time Saturday Night Fever arrived, but the mega-hit propelled its style into the mainstream. John Travolta's blow-dried hair, tight, shiny polyester duds, platform shoes and that famous white suit created enough of a sensation to make even your grandma take disco lessons. And guys wanted to look like him. Even movie critics. So enamored was he of the film and its look, the late Gene Siskel at one time owned the original suit. Now there's an image.

Everyone -- Blow-Up (1966)

Though Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up concerns a photographer (David Hemmings, inspired by '60s photographer David Bailey) who sees a crime in a photograph and becomes obsessed, its gorgeous presentation of Swinging London was the perfect primer for fashion that would sweep the world. The mod, Mary Quant-looking duds favored by London's youth are donned by all characters, from the film's top model Veruschka to Vanessa Redgrave's distressed heroine to every "bird" in between. Mini skirts, go-go boots, A-line dresses, colorful or patterned tights and knitwear were all infused into the youth scene with "yeah baby!" zeal. The film and clothes are, as critic Andrew Sarris claimed, "a mod masterpiece."

Uma Thurman -- Pulp Fiction (1994)

When style is so wonderfully simple, you often forget how key it was. Case in point: Uma Thurman's Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Though a drug-abusing, ex-B actress, Thurman's Mia was all hip simplicity. Her black pants, crisp white shirt and blunt, banged black hair (a china doll wig--something I'm quite sick of) became de rigueur from 1994 onwards. You can still open up a fashion mag and find a spread on the "crisp white shirt" or walk into any wig store to purchase that exact hair. While working with costumer Betsy Heinmann, the 6-foot-tall actress couldn't find a pair of close-fitting black pants long enough. So Heinmann just cut off another two inches, creating those slightly flared pedal pushers that looked so good when Uma twisted with John Travolta. The impeccable touch? Wearing a black bra underneath that lily-white shirt -- so much cooler than "a royale with cheese."

Brigitte Bardot -- ...And God Created Woman (1957)

French sex kitten Brigitte Bardot was such a style innovator we almost take her contribution to women's fashion for granted (two of her most famous imitators are supermodel Claudia Schiffer and bombshell Pamela Anderson). In Roger Vadim's ...And God Created Woman, the nubile nymphet sported long, unkempt hair during an era of the perfected coif and a girdle-free, tight skirt for her bongo-induced gyrations, making many a man's (and woman's) mouth drop. Who is this woman? And, more importantly, how can I look like her? And where do I get that bikini? Though many believe it was Annette Funicello who caused the demand for two-piece swimwear, it was actually BB.  Swimwear manufacturers began to market bikinis for the sun-loving American woman due to the film's popularity. Pretty amazing to think about since just six years earlier, they were banned from the Miss World contest. We can all say merci to BB for that.

Marlon Brando -- The Wild One (1954)

Though a trite statement of rebellion today, the motorcycle jacket was once synonymous with major danger. 1954's The Wild One, in which a soulful, gorgeous Marlon Brando invades a small town with his biker gang (called, yep, "Black Rebels Motorcycle Club"), was so worrisome that the British board of censors banned the film for 14 years. But Brando's iconic look of cuffed jeans, leather cap and that tuff black motorcycle jacket still created a look that says "cool" to civilians even while protecting bikers from road rash. Generations later everyone from The Ramones to Madonna to your own dad has favored the leather jacket, turning it into a staple of rock and roll style (or often an example of trying too hard). Though I always loved Lee Marvin's look in this picture, Brando is inarguably stunning. "What're you rebelling against, Johnny?" "Whaddya got?" -- preferably in premium cowhide leather?

Katharine Hepburn -- Bringing Up Baby (1938) and Woman of the Year (1942)

 

When it comes to Katharine Hepburn's style, it's almost hard to pinpoint a specific movie -- she was so defiantly individual. So revolutionary was Kate that as the story goes, when RKO heads forced her to wear a skirt, she strolled around the studio lot in her underwear until they returned her beloved slacks ("Stockings are the invention of the devil," Hepburn once stated). As the dizzy, madcap rich girl ensnaring Cary Grant in the classic screwball Bringing Up Baby, Kate almost sneaks her pants into the film via a nifty pantsuit while discussing her new leopard. It was perhaps "safer" for her to flaunt more feminine togs in this manner but the image is one indelibly linked to the screen legend and an early look at her then scandalous affinity for menswear as seen on full display in Woman of the Year. As Calvin Klein said of Kate in 1986,  she "prompted generations of fashion designers to capture her vitality and spirit."  And I can't give her anything but love, baby.

Audrey Hepburn -- Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

 

I know, I know...soooo obvious. But if there could be a patron saint of fashion, the ultimate gamine Audrey Hepburn would fit the bill, especially in the much-loved Breakfast at Tiffany's. Her gift to womankind? The simple black dress -- short or long -- that looks perfect at either the cocktail party or just hanging outside Tiffany's with pastry and coffee in hand (as Audrey does so elegantly in the film). Collaborating with famed costumer Edith Head (who could have her own film and fashion list) was Hepburn's style sovereign, Hubert de Givenchy, the couturier who costumed almost all of Hepburn's films. Breakfast at Tiffany's is special partially because her character -- the flighty, socializing, "real phony" Holly Golightly -- was the ultimate elegant waif. Those stunning dresses paired with big dark glasses, pearls (not diamonds; Golightly states that wearing them before you're 40 is "tacky") and gloves seemed effortlessly put together, chiefly because Holly could throw them on in a jiffy. More than any other film icon -- including the impossibly cool Grace Kelly or the va-va-voom Marilyn Monroe -- Audrey and her Tiffany's look still continually inspire women. And as much as many film fans loathe the use of Audrey in The Gap's latest line of skinny black pants (which she also wears in Tiffany's) you have to understand that Audrey is simply timeless. Fashion designer Mary Quant said it all when she bluntly titled Audrey "the most stylish woman who ever lived."

Here's more (among many others) fab fashion moments in film:

Steve McQueen -- The Great Escape

Jennifer Beals --  Flashdance

John Travolta -- Urban Cowboy

Brad Pitt -- Fight Club

Everyone -- Last Year at Marienbad

Faye Dunaway -- Bonnie and Clyde

Alicia Silverstone -- Clueless

Richard Gere -- American Gigolo

Jean Seberg -- Breathless

Richard Roundtree -- Shaft

Catherine Deneuve -- Belle de Jour 

Also...please check out my picture page Pretty Poison: Letters from L.A.

Ten Troubled Teens On Screen

I love the drama of teenagers. Even the over the top, bad apple, Ritalin popping insanity of them  -- sometimes especially for this (I can relate, I wasn’t exactly an angel). And lately it’s been hard to not think about teenagers with all of these hysterical girls lining up for the newest teen sensation, Twilight. I haven’t seen the movie yet but so far I’m staunchly defending the hype simply for the fact that teenage girls are wandering the streets, not paunchy fan boys. Teen girls were the original fans after all (Frank Sinatra bobby-sockers, Elvis, The Beatles) and I am both in awe of and a bit terrified by their primal screams of ear-splitting rapture (but at least they let it go). And though it's safe and nice that girls are reading novels and nutting out over a vampire movie, I do hope they get their noses out of the books and bodies out of the theater to at least experience a little bit of trouble (only a little). With that, here’s a brief history of some (some, not all, that will take another list) of my favorite troubled teens on screen -- a genre that as every teen wishes, never gets old.

Dead End (1937)

The first in the series of pictures that depicted that rough and tumble group of depression-era youths, The Dead End Kids (later known as The Bowery Boys) is also one of their best. Though Angels With Dirty Faces is their finest film appearance (They Made Me A Criminal with John Garfield is a strong contender as well), Dead End was our first glimpse of the wise-acre bunch that included Billy Halop, Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey (you really should read his autobiography--a total gas). Beautifully directed by William Wyler, the picture stars Humphrey Bogart as a gangster returning to his old neighborhood, a slum where the boys fight, steal and generally run amuck to the concern of the nice young woman Sylvia Sidney (gorgeous) who’d like better for them. Though the boys are snarly little jerks at times, they're often very funny and touching. The film offers a sensitive look at what its title states—a dead end—and how the poor are fighting for survival. As the nice architect Dave (Joel McCrea) states about the boys: “What chance have they got against all this? They gotta fight for a place to play, fight for the likes of something to eat, fight for everything. They got used to fighting. ‘Enemies of Society,” it says in the papers. Why not? What have they got to be so friendly about?” Indeed.

Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

“You’re tearing me apart!” As the misunderstood, sensitive, red-jacket wearing, bad boy teen practically forced to contend with violence, James Dean became the ultimate symbol of teen rebellion in Nicholas Ray’s stunningly beautiful Rebel Without a Cause. Boys wanted to be like him, women wanted to date him (or save him) and parents understood some of what their kids were going through -- perhaps. We know how the story goes -- Dean, new to his California school, tries to fit in but ends up facing off with the bad kids via that famous deadly chicken run. Showing his bond with a confused Natalie Wood and a deeply troubled, puppy killing Sal Mineo (who is clearly in love with Jim), the film remains a touching portrait of alienated kids acting out mostly because they’d like just a little more love, attention and understanding from their (gulp) parents -- especially if one of your parents is Jim Backus wearing an apron.

The Blackboard Jungle (1955)

Richard Brooks’ studied look at teen rebellion, race relations and teacher-student friction in a tough high school has been somewhat underrated over the years. Maybe for the fact that the more classic film, Rebel Without a Cause, was released the same year and has gained classic status. But Jungle is nearly as good, and more of a social commentary on teachers, race and rebellion. Glenn Ford gamely steps in as the new teacher at a school filled with thugs, the meanest of the bunch being a terrific Vic Morrow. The one kid with promise is the conflicted Sidney Poitier (in one of his earliest roles) which leads Ford to seek out any kind of future the young man may have. It’s an effectively dark film, rough-looking and dangerous, featuring two excellent performances by Ford and Poitier and it has the distinction of helping popularize rock and roll music by featuring Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” (in its opening credits). Teens were so excited by this movie that reportedly fights would break out in theaters, showing how much modern day teen rebellion was alive and kicking on and off the screen. 
 
Pretty Poison (1968)

I will never, ever stop talking about Tuesday Weld. I love her so much, that as I've said numerous times, it almost hurts. Lord Love a Duck, Wild in the Country, The Cincinnati Kid, Play it as it Lays, Thief and on and on... But my favorite Weld performance? As Sue Ann Stepanek in Pretty Poison. Pretty Poison is the definitive Tuesday Weld movie. Playing the beautiful but deadly high-school majorette to Anthony Perkins twitchy, creepy fire-starter, she is the deliciously deviant underbelly of America's heartland. Where blondes are supposed to be good girls but, in her case, are most definitely not. Made in 1968 and directed by Noel Black, the picture was something of a dud upon release (too sexually disturbing? too strange?) and has achieved cult status ever since. And deservedly so. With it's violence, pitch black comedy and sexy viciousness (watch Tuesday commit murder and immediately want to have sex after) the picture is wonderfully subversive and deeply strange. And Weld...she is charming, scary, beautiful and sickly erotic. Need I explain the plot? The manipulation of Perkins (who thought he was doing the manipulating)?  The killing of her mother? The crazy, beautiful, psycho intensity of Weld? No. You really should watch it for yourself. Again, Tuesday, Tuesday. As Tiny Tim sang, "If only Tuesday Weld would be my wife."

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

What’s teen rebellion in the future like? According to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, really, really scary. But then the whole world is pretty effing scary in the Anthony Burgess-adapted picture that was so controversial it was banned in England (Kubrick’s choice) for decades. Malcolm McDowell ‘s Alex, sociopathic teen leader of the “Droogs” gracefully terrorizes citizens in his snazzy all-white get-ups (and fantastic hats) while enjoying extra enriched milk, ultra violence, the in-out-in-out and the inspiring elevation of Beethoven (the one thing that gives him something of a redeemable soul). After a horrifying /hilarious attack on a lady fond of cats and phallic artwork, he’s arrested, sent to prison and put through a series of brutal psychological experiments that will make him (as we all remember) nauseated by the sight of violence. Basically, extreme Prozac or that terrifying anti-smoking program from the ‘80s (remember the Schick aversion therapy?). Since Alex narrates the film, we’re in the odd predicament of almost being charmed by this violent offender, leading us to seriously question the B.F. Skinner inspired methods of “curing” him. Horrifying, brilliantly filmed (the first half hour is a mini-masterpiece in itself), morbidly funny and graced by the delicious deviance of McDowell (who had a hard time shaking his character through the rest of his career) A Clockwork Orange is not only a masterful study of rebellion but also of the problematic systems that attempt to squash it.

Over the Edge (1979) 

The Cheap Trick songs get me every time. An under-looked teen classic (I first saw it on TV as a young one and it never left me) directed by Jonathan Kaplan, Over the Edge is not only one of the most realistic movies about teenage rebellion it's also a scathing indictment against some of the more ill advised methods of Urban planning. The story has young Carl (Michael Eric Cramer) moving to an ugly subdivision called New Granada (somewhere in the Southwestern United States) where kids are doing what they do best when bored, alienated and disgusted: rebelling. Smoking dope, carrying switchblades, fighting, taking acid in school (one of the film's funnier moments), these kids aren't dropping out simply because they're thoughtless, they are in fact, deeply unhappy with how sterile life is turning out. New Granada is a shit-hole, a place where even the nice houses look like you could put your fist through a wall, and their varied families (Carl's appears a liberal, which underscores the frustration going on with his sell out, though sympathetic parents) seem to be kidding themselves. It's a depressing place, a depressing new world and the teens are the only ones who can truly verbalize (or act upon) this. Kaplan completely gets why kids need to find an alternate world within their icky planned community, even if it's a destructive one. Check out both a young Matt Dillon and Vincent Spano who are especial stand-outs here. If you hated junior high, hated high-school, swilled Boone's wine and bummed around abandoned houses while rocking out to Cheap Trick, you will relate.

Foxes (1980) 

And we think young girls today are over-sexed, coked up and wild. Please. Take a look at Adrian Lyne’s entertaining yet telling and I think incredibly realistic debut film Foxes, an intriguing picture for having such a sympathetic take on female rebellion. Starring Jodie Foster, Marilyn Kagan, Kandice Stroh, and Cherie Currie (appropriately famous for helming the great all-girl rock band The Runaways), the movie follows four San Fernando Valley girls as they venture into the mean streets of Hollywood for parties, boys and concerts. Some, like Foster, have a pretty good head on their shoulders while others, Currie, are on the road to ruin. It’s a sexy movie (remember, it’s Adrian Lyne of 91/2 Weeks, the underrated Lolita and Fatal Attraction fame), but again, quite sensitive towards these troubled girls --  they are never depicted as a bunch of airheads and are restless for a reason. Maybe they're just too smart. And truly, Cheri Currie was the (cherry) bomb. I love these girls.

The Outsiders (1983)/ Rumble Fish (1983)

Francis Ford Coppola directed two of the most gorgeous, poetic and in moments, ingenious teen rebellion movies ever made with his back to back classics, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish (both adapted from S.E. Hinton’s popular young adult novels). The Outsiders, about early 1960’s “Greasers” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is the more melodramatic of the two, a movie about boys that some believe was made really for girls. These are Greasers read Gone with the Wind, know Robert Frost poems by heart and talk an awful lot about their feelings. But the film’s melodrama is what makes it so magical, evoking not only a stylish era, but also the nostalgia we feel for pictures like Rebel Without A Cause. It also cast actors who would later become big stars like Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe and of course, Tom Cruise. Rumble Fish, by contrast was the more experimental and darker of Coppola’s Hinton adaptations. The story about teen rebel Rusty James (Matt Dillon, again) and his hero worship for older brother/local legend Motorcycle Boy (a gorgeous, brilliant Mickey Rourke in one of those performances that marks you as a kid) is a beautiful meditation on what it means to actually grow up. While Rusty sees the coolest guy who ever lived, Motorcycle Boy knows he’s not worth much outside his big-fish-in-a-small-pond world. Shot in black and white with only the eponymous fish of the title shown in vivid color, Rumble Fish is as socially relevant and lyrical as it is artistically beautiful.

Freeway (1996)

Reese Witherspoon has become one of the most popular, revered and highest-paid actresses working today  -- and I guess for good reason. She’s a wonderfully versatile performer who can skillfully move from fluffy dumb comedies like Legally Blonde to pointed satires like Election to serious, full-bodied biopics like Walk the Line. But there was a time when Witherspoon was extra daring, extra subversive (and I miss this part of her).  Take her role in this little blast of comic pulp craziness, Freeway, in which she plays the trashy daughter of a prostitute who hitchhikes her way to grandma’s house. Based on the The Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, Reese encounters all sorts of dubious characters and situations along the way, chiefly a Big Bad Wolf type played by a wonderfully deviant Kiefer Sutherland. What’s so powerful about Freeway (directed by talented Matthew Bright who really ought to make more movies) is that while we’re laughing at many of her darkly comical situations, we also grow to care about this girl, no matter how much a rotten apple she may be. Also, how can you not find the girl adorable when, shocked that Sutherland isn’t dead after popping him with a gun, she proclaims: “Mister, I shot you a whole lot of times!”

thirteen (2003)

thirteen is the perfect title for this jagged little pill (sorry for that very teen girl reference) of a movie since it works, in many ways like a horror movie -- a Friday the 13th for parents. Directed by Twilight’s (ever heard of Twilight?) Catherine Hardwicke with gritty, melodramatic weight the picture finds thirteen-year-old friends Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Evie (Nikki Reed) becoming way too out of control for their own good. They buy sexy clothes, experiment with drugs, get piercings, hang with bad boys, shoplift -- you name it these girls are doing it. Some parents should watch this hard-hitting film -- it's more sobering than going through your teenager’s diaries (unless your daughters are Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, in which case you should be impressed and scared for your life) and though it does play over-the-top at times, teenage girls are over the top, dammit. And good for them injecting extra drama into our, as Lina Lamont intoned, "humdrum lives." If not for the film's honesty (the film was co-written with Reed when she was 13) and the lead actresses’ talent and realness, it could have been a hokey mess. Instead it’s a scary cautionary tale and a weirdly good time. (Oh god...I used to play slap with my sister.) Lock up your daughters! Or your sons -- not sure who is worse off.

"A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid."

Five Demented Deadly Dummies

I love dolls, I dislike dolls, dolls can sometimes scare me. I cradled them while playing mommy and daddy, I dressed their plastic bodies in ridiculous get-ups, I shoved their little parts into Campers, Dream ‘Vettes and Action Jeeps, I read about their loneliness in Dare Wright's books (which are brilliant), but when staring at their stiff faces from across a dark room in the middle of the night, the thought would occur to me: Barbie might be an agent of evil. And dear god, what if the thing starts talking to me? This fear made me throw a talking Bingo bear into the shed and then continue to obsess that the bandanna wearing teddy would emerge one night with an ax, viciously imploring: “Do you love me?”

I still have dolls and puppets and one old deer head and A.I. Teddy and too many stuffed animals (that damn claw machine) so the paranoia has been replaced with intrigue (I wish the dolls would talk), but the one item I don’t own is a ventriloquist dummy.  I want one -- I want a wisecracking wood piece of wonder, delight, humor and…horror but, they still scare me.   Could it really all stem from that one Twilight Zone episode?

Perhaps. That famed, shocking 1962 episode, entitled “The Dummy”, featured Cliff Robertson as an alcoholic ventriloquist who believes that his dummy named Willy, the more gifted and crafty of the team, is tormenting him. He packs Willy away and takes up with a new dummy named Goofy Handles (why are even the names terrifying?) but can’t get over Willy’s real or imagined abuse, something that provides the episode’s unforgettable and horrifying ending. “The Dummy” terrified many of us as children, but this wasn’t the first picture to wring terror out of dummies. 

Luckily (or unluckily) we can work out some of this paranoia through cinema, leading me to five movies that show dummies (not dolls, like the first The Devil Doll, Child’s Play, Trilogy of Terror and more -- that’s another list)  as something decidedly not delightful but rather, dreaded and in some cases, deadly.

The Unholy Three (1925, 1930)

So creepy that the great lover of freaks, Tod Browning decided to make it twice -- and with the same cast. Though these movies (one silent, the other most famously Lon Chaney’s first and only talking picture) aren’t technically dummy stories, ventriloquism plays such a key role in the picture’s dirty deeds the wooden one can’t be ignored. The ventriloquist here is named Echo (Lon Chaney) who forms the triad of unholy thieves with Hercules (Ivan Linow) the strong man, and Tweedledee (Harry Earles) the midget, after their carnival is closed down. Disguising themselves to scam people, Tweedledee dresses up as a baby (so creepy), with a pretty pickpocket named Rosie (Lila Lee) playing his mother  and, in the picture’s most impressive twist, Echo disguises himself as a little old lady named Mrs. O'Grady. Working a pet shop, Echo, among other misdeeds, throws his voice to sell "talking" parrots -- talent. Though the silent version is long considered the superior film, the talkie is nearly as good, graced by the presence of that innovative genius Chaney. Still, it’s the silent version that boasts the picture’s scary/sad ending in which Echo’s dummy bids an incredibly intriguing farewell.

The Great Gabbo (1929) 

A notable entry into the demented dummy sub-genre, The Great Gabbo (directed by James Cruze) isn’t exactly a horror film; it’s simply a movie about a seriously flawed, egotistical man. But since that man is a ventriloquist, the story is made all the more creepy, and since the wood talker is played by the infamous director and actor Erich von Stroheim, the character is made all the more unforgettable. The story finds arrogant, dummy manipulator Gabbo (Stroheim) in love with his beautiful assistant, Mary (Betty Compson), a sweet woman who thinks the poor dummy (named Otto) is the nicest, most humane thing about the man. She leaves Gabbo and eventually Gabbo and Otto become wildly successful. But success can’t change Gabbo, not even for the better, and he remains cruel and demanding til the bitter end, dragging nice little Otto behind him (interesting that some people will actually relate to sad dysfunctional Otto). Spiked with musical numbers, some of which are downright bizarre (especially when Otto sings) the movie is almost accidentally frightening, giving it an odd kind of despondency. If your dummy is a better person than you’ll ever be then, you’re definitely beyond repair.

Dead of Night (1945)

Some consider this British Ealing quintet of horror tales one of cinema’s most chilling -- especially the final film, “Ventriloquist's Dummy” (directed by Alberto Cavalcanti) -- the scariest of the bunch.  That terrible tale concerns ventriloquist Maxwell Frere (played by a remarkable Michael Redgrave) who believes his dummy, Hugo, is out to get him -- like really, distressingly, sneaking out of the box, out to get him. Since Maxwell’s act is based on disparity between him and Hugo, the realization that Hugo is running the show more than Maxwell makes their banter extra disturbing. When Maxwell suspects Hugo’s ambition is not only causing him to look at other dummy masters for partnering but purposely sabotaging his shows, his fears result in one truly terrifying hotel room confrontation. The picture’s structure (flashbacks and even flashbacks within a flashback) is expertly handled with Hugo’s horror equaling Redgrave’s potently freaky nuttiness.

Devil Doll (1964)

Devil Doll isn’t the best addition to dummy movie-dom (Tod Browning’s The Devil Doll from 1936, starring Lionel Barrymore about a man who creates miniaturized humans is far superior) but director Lindsay Shonteff’s 1964 picture is an interesting and certainly memorable picture.  The intriguing twist finds human souls living in the bodies of dummies (hmmm). When American newspaperman William Sylvester sets out to do a story about a hypnotist-ventriloquist (Bryant Halliday) who might be a fake, the ventriloquist successfully hypnotizes the journalist’s girlfriend with the evil intention of transferring her soul into the body of a dummy. But like every good demented dummy, the wood-man has other ideas. But what’s truly scary about Devil Doll is that the dummy (named Hugo) was played by a person --the un-credited female midget Sadie Corre. 

Magic (1978)

Some regard Magic as the Citizen Kane of demented dummy movies, and though the film (directed by Richard Attenborough) deserves high praise, it’s almost a masterpiece (which is pretty damn good). Holding up wonderfully after nearly 30 years, the movie remains sad, scary, tense and sad again (thanks to a wonderfully tortured Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret and a brilliant Burgess Meredith). Hopkins plays Corky, the distressed puppeteer who manipulates the smiling, smug, a-hole named Fats (ugh, shudder). Fats and Corky wear matching clothes and have vocal outburst that Corky may, or may not be uttering. Things go from bad to worse when, for whatever reason (a crippling fear of success?) Corky runs away from his shot at the big time. He reunites with old girlfriend Ann-Margret and attempts to get his head screwed on straight but Fats (ugh, shudder) just won’t let that happen. Or maybe Corky won’t let himself. It’s all depressingly ambiguous, making the picture especially frightening.  And, again, Fats…shudder.

Doing What They Say Can't Be Done...

With the passing of the great Jerry Reed last week, I've been thinking more and more about a prominent genre of the 1970’s  -- the good ol’ boy movies -- a genre that's all but vanished. Depicting wily, rough and tumble men (and some women) usually of the Southern persuasion working occupations that ranged from race car drivers, moon shiners, truckers, stunt men and sheriffs, there was something extra special and charming about some of these pictures -- even the lesser ones. Filled with characters who usually had a beef with someone -- either the law or those not abiding by it -- their numerous action-packed sequences frequently revelead some sort of journey  -- a journey to rectify their situation, or maybe drop out completely.

Though many elitist types might simply label pictures like these "redneck trash," there’s a grittiness and subversive lawlessness you don’t see in movies these days -- not for the rural poor anyway. In films from Smokey and the Bandit to White Line Fever, law enforcement was often either stupid or corrupt -- things to mock, attack or evade. And justice, towards cops or criminals, could work collectively or vigilante style depending on your predicament. You could carry a big stick or rally a convoy of trucks. Either way the TCB message, even if sometimes rendered cheesy, was distinctly American and frequently thrilling.

Really, these movies glorified rugged individualism, even a certain kind of counterculture, and given their wonderful lack of slickness (can you imagine Michael Bay directing Macon County Line?) they feel all the more compelling. I miss these movies and I miss stars like Jan-Michael Vincent, Joe Don Baker, Kris Kristofferson and Bandit-style Burt Reynolds. But for reasons I’m not entirely sure of (a change in fashion to more ‘80s tomes like Star Wars), the films ran out of steam and only a smattering popped up in the 1980’s and ‘90s.

To honor the lost genre of really, white-sploitation, and Mr. Reed's iconic Snowman, I’m listing my ten favorite good ol’ boy movies. And keep in mind, these are distinctly good ol’ boy movies -- so you won’t see great Southern films like Deliverance, Cockfigher, Cool Hand Luke or Prime Cut gracing the list. This is strictly CB’s, fist fights, pissed off sheriffs and fast, dirty cars.

Thunder Road (1958)

A wonderfully complex (and fun) Robert Mitchum starred in this depiction of the trials and tribulations of Appalachian moon shiners. The setting is evocative, the chase scenes exciting and the performances are sympathetic and regionally proud. A precursor to the good ol’ boy movies of the ‘70s, Thunder Road is hillybilly heaven. And Mitchum wrote the theme song and, by many accounts, co-directed the picture. Also, one is required to watch any movie Robert Mitchum stars in -- no matter what. A drunken jewel

White Line Fever (1975)

There's so much going for this picture that I'm not sure where to start. First, the title, perhaps one of the greatest in all of good ol' boy cinema (truckers or...cocaine? And on those long rides, the two can go together perfectly). Then there's director Jonathan Kaplan, who made one of the greatest teen pictures of all time, Over the Edge. And oh yes...Jan-Michael Vincent as Carrol Jo Hummer (you could be named Carrol Hummer in the '70s and no one batted an eye) a young trucker who stumbles into a dirty trucking scheme after borrowing money to purchase his big rig. Once his wife (Kay Lenz) is threatened, vengeance will be his -- brutally so. Rounding out the cast is the perfect Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones and Dick Miller, among others. Violent, somewhat shocking and even, at times, bizarre, White Line Fever is a youth movie in many ways, On the Waterfront meets Every Which way But Loose (minus the chimp) -- with whippersnapper Jan Michael up against a bunch of fat cats. The moral? Never trust anyone involved in the trucker business over 30 -- unless he's Clint Eastwood or Jerry Reed, of course.

Walking Tall (1973)

Based on the real Tennessee sheriff, Buford Pusser (love that name), the irrepressible Joe Don Baker dominates in a hard edged look at violent social justice. Taking a stand against bully gambling syndicates in his precious hometown, Baker’s Pusser resorts to some serious brutality in this gritty, popular film. Controversial for its message, Walking Tall makes an indelible impression on anyone who watches it -- and Baker, with 2 by 4 in hand, is a perfect, populist, potent Pusser. (John Waters helped me with that one...)

Hooper (1978)

Burt Reynolds stars in the great Hal Needham’s (yes, I said great) take on a profession the director knew a lot about -- stunt work. Dealing with injuries, pill popping and a young nemesis (the sometimes brilliant Jan-Michael Vincent), Reynolds' aging stuntman Sonny Hooper has a heap of obstacles interrupting his jumps, falls and explosions. Throw in lots of country music, James Best pre-Roscoe P. Coltrane, Sally Field and copious beer drinking and here’s a good ol’ boy classic.

Every Which Way But Loose (1978)

Ah yes, the trucker movie -- a genre long gone but certainly not forgotten. Especially when it comes to Clint Eastwood (or, ahem, Oscar winner Clint Eastwood) as the chivalrous, fist-fighting, Orangutan-befriending, country music-loving truck driver in Every Which Way But Loose. Looking for his country music singing gal pal he and Clyde (the ape) roam the country with bikers in pursuit. A sweet tough guy movie that also features the unforgettable Ruth Gordon as Ma -- it's hard not to be fond of it, even if frequently ridiculous. And dig the opening Eddie Rabbit theme song with handsome Clint casually driving his haul -- goddamn, it's so touching...

Convoy (1978)

Sam Peckinpah, he of (obviously) The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs and my favorite, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, directs this rough-and-tumble trucker movie in which, next to the great Kris Kristofferson, the trucks are the real stars. A movie for big boys and their big wheels, Convoy showcases some of the greatest trucker action sequences in the history of the genre peppered with a continual stream of car crunching (cars are useless when it comes to trucks), CB radio usage and tough, tough talking. And you have to love a movie in which truckers put together a mile long "convoy" as a sort of hands across America backing of a trucker's feud with a shifty sheriff. Gritty and nutty, Convoy is an unforgettable Peckinpah oddity. (Back door to the rubber duck?)

Macon County Line (1974)

A year after Walking Tall, Richard Compton’s Macon County Line deals with similar issues (a supposedly factual story about a Southern sheriff intent on justice after his wife is killed by two drifters) and similar amounts of violence. The acting is extraordinarily effective, notably Max Baer, Jr. as the sheriff and real life brothers Alan and Jesse Vint playing nice, Yankee drifter brothers (as opposed to the bad ones who show up). A breakout drive-in hit Macon, a high point in low budget filmmaking, is some powerful Southern fried ferociousness.

White Lightning (1973)

Burt Reynolds begins his run as Gator McKlusky, the moon-shiner anti-hero of White Lightning. Another story with a corrupt sheriff (played by Ned Beatty), this one finds Reynolds pitted against the lawman who killed his younger brother. Loads of action doesn’t get in the way of some genuinely interesting, emotional characters and the Arkansas locale is refreshingly rugged. The movie ads don't lie: “Meet the Bayou’s baddest good ol’ boy!”

Last American Hero (also called Hard Driver ) (1973)

Based on writer Tom Wolfe’s famed articles on stock car racer Junior Johnson (Wolfe deemed him “The Last American Hero”), Lamont Johnson’s look at moonshine, racing and good old American rugged individualism  works an insightful, engrossing and thrilling charm . A terrific Jeff Bridges stars as Johnson, a sweet guy who moves from running moonshine to stock car racing as a way to help his jailed father. A tight, wonderful script, top notch acting and superb racing footage place this film in the lost classic category. And the always impressive Bridges imbues the film with a fine mixture of necessary Southern roughness and poignant, poor boy charm.

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

Undeniable fun abounds in the king of the good ol’ boy movies -- Smokey and the Bandit. Bo Darville nicknamed Bandit (Burt Reynolds) recruits his pal Cledus Snow (my weird crush, Jerry Reed -- who sings the movie’s unforgettable hit theme song) and his eighteen-wheeler in the job of transporting 400 crates of beer from Texas to Georgia. But along the way, wily Bandit picks up a runaway bride hitchhiker (Sally Field) who ditched her wedding to the son of the foul-mouthed, ornery Sheriff Buford T. Justice (a brilliant Jackie Gleason) who’s none too happy about the situation. As the boys attempt to deliver the beer quickly, Justice is on their tail resulting in hilarious highlights with Gleason, excellent car chase sequences (thanks to director Hal Needham) and a bona-fide, but funny romance (and real life chemistry) between Reynolds and Field. For a southern fried comedy actioner, this is as good as it gets.