Bathroom Break Series #2

from Satantango (Bela Tarr, 1994)

It was a 7 1/2 hour movie. That's why we paused it so much.

LOVE STREAMS (#11)
Uploaded by birdy66

Michelangelo Antonioni 1912-2007

Yesterday, after hearing about Bergman's death, I said to my wife, "Antonioni's about the only old master left." How odd that he died the same day. I forgot about a few people when I said that. The French New Wave filmmakers are mostly still kicking and (mostly) still making good films, e.g. Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais. However, they are nearly a generation younger than Bergman and Antonioni. Portugal's Manoel de Oliveira is 99 years old and still making an average of two films a year. He's the only director living and, more impressively, working today who started in the silent-film era. However, though critically regarded as a master, his films haven't been distributed well, and only a handful are available on DVD in this country. So Antonioni may have been the last of a dying breed, namely, classic directors beginning their careers in the 1940s.




"Scientific man is already on the moon, and yet we are still living with the moral concepts of Homer."

"Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing."
--Michelangelo Antonioni

Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

"I hope I never get so old I get religious."
--Ingmar Bergman

persona
Uploaded by seryeuse

Bathroom Break Series #1

From now on, whenever we pause a DVD for a bathroom or get-another-beer break at the Dr. Mystery/Spacebeer household, we will take a picture of the paused screen and post the photo on Film-Watching Robot. Here is the first photo, from Guillermo Del Toro's Cronos.

From "Ordet"

The boss jumped in

Edward Yang, 1947-2007

On my 30th birthday, I suddenly said to myself, 'Damn, I'm getting old!' I realized that I had to change my life. I needed to start doing something that I could enjoy and through which I could feel fulfilled.
-- Edward Yang, on quitting his computer engineering job to make films

I could do without anymore of that language

Everyone's looking

Shoes

But we won't tell her about this

I leave that mishigoss to the Catholics

The father of the hot dog cinema mustard new wave relish movement

I'm so fucking tired of trying to read something new about John Cassavetes, and instead continuing to be bombarded with people calling him "the father of American independent film," godfather of independent cinema, master of independent low-budget American cinema, ground zero independent film, independent film starts here, blah blah blah, shut the motherfucking fuck. He's not the founder, originator, or godfather of anything except John Cassavetes films. Maybe he's "independent" of the need to lick money publicly, but he's not "independent" of the influence of previous filmmakers, writers, musicians, chefs, cab drivers, fellow human beings, friends, love, hate, getting out of bed, going to sleep. What does "independent" mean? I know what it means in terms of "independent" film or "indie" rock. A mediocre product squeezed from the hard work and blood of unappreciated, hard-working artists and peddled to dogmatic youth cultures and consumerist apathetic couch potatoes alike by young men and women with no guts, balls, clits, or souls on behalf of old white men with enormous sums of money. This is obvious, pamphleteering stuff, and I'm in danger of sounding as stupid as what I'm complaining about. It's an unfortunate but shrewd result of the successful selling and consumption of mediocre, profitable capitalist American "culture" products that any complaint about this way of life sounds even stupider, shriller, more obvious, and more immature than the way of life itself. It's a testament to the incredible power, profitability, fashionability, and potential ridiculousness of film and music that these are the only two arts saddled with the meaningless buzzword "independent," or "indie" if you're lazy, or "Ms. Indie" if you're nasty. Have you ever heard anyone say, "I'm going to the museum to check out some indie art," or "I'm going to the library to pick up some indie books." This word means nothing. And if you think John Cassavetes is responsible for films like "Thumbsucker," "Boondock Saints," any movie about how the suburbs are secretly bad places, etc., you grossly misread not only his work, but life itself. Eat a fucking hot dog and shut up.

Leaning

Who lives?

1955's 2007

"What is the meaning of this revolution [in filmmaking]? To pass beyond the long period of submission to the manufactured product and openly renew links with the tradition of 1915, (D.W.) Griffith and Triangle, whose vitality moreover still nourished the work of the old Hollywood directors -- (Raoul) Walsh, (King) Vidor, (Allan) Dwan, and of course (Howard) Hawks; a return to lyricism, powerful feelings, melodrama (the audience at the smart halls sneer at (Nicholas) Ray's films as they did at Allan Dwan's); the rediscovery of a certain breadth of gesture, an externalizing of the roughest and most spontaneous emotions; in short, the rediscovery of naivete."
Jacques Rivette, "Notes on a Revolution" (1955)

We can't stop the dancing chicken

Helloooo....

The dirtiest sport in the world

Bug Off

Clip of the day

Since I'm going back to school soon and also keen to work on some non-blog writing projects, my blogs are going to be sporadically updated for the foreseeable future. To keep you from going away forever, I will put up some YouTube clips every day until I find something I want to write about and some time to do it. Here is the first daily film clip. (Ignore the sorta-smug actor voiceover about a minute in and look at the excellently chosen beautiful images instead. Or ignore what I just said and do what you want. Who am I to tell you what to do?)

I'm begging you

Favorite Actor Monday can take a hike this week and possibly every week hereafter. I still have plenty of favorites, but I've run out of things to say. Instead, I want to implore, beg, cajole, coerce, persuade, convince, and plead with anyone who reads this blog and lives in Austin to see Charles Burnett's "Killer of Sheep" at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown Wednesday night at 7 p.m. (if you didn't see it tonight, although feel free to see it again if you did). Burnett shot this film on weekends in 1973 with a cast of mostly nonprofessionals as his master's thesis for UCLA film school. He finally completed it in 1977. (It is worth noting that film schools once encouraged filmmakers to make art about, with, and for their communities as a means in itself and now churn out a supply of inconsequential douchebags whose goals are to get on "Entertainment Tonight" and become famous and wealthy alumni making bullshit for morons.) It was one of the first 50 films chosen for the Library of Congress Film Registry, and has never been officially released until this year due to a failure to clear music rights. It will be released on DVD later this year for the first time, along with his second feature, "My Brother's Wedding," and two shorts, "The Horse" and "When It Rains." When even our best new filmmakers seem to be obsessed with monosyllabic infantile indie rock breakups with their girlfriends, it's absolutely energizing and life-affirming to see a film with such modesty and ambition, an expansive and empathetic vision encompassing many lives and a community, an intelligent and organic feel for film language, and an artistic perspective not stuck up its own asshole. This film is poetry. It's beautiful and deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. Please go see it.

Favorite Actor Monday

Apples and oranges, yes, even though I'm talking about brothers working the same profession, but cut me a little slack and let me say that Chris Penn was a better actor than Sean Penn. He wasn't as famous, didn't get as many leading roles, had to do some truly shitty movies, and was playing mostly bit parts at the time of his death, but at his best, Chris Penn made his older brother look like a schoolboy getting depantsed (or pantsed, depending on where you're from). Chris may have been felled by an appetite for booze, drugs, and mass quantities of food, but Sean has been killed by his own ponderous humorlessness. Sean Penn tries too hard and is way too serious about it. He's as far away from his own performance as Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" as former president Dwight Eisenhower is from the nearest Burger King. Chris Penn was a fucking force of nature, scary and funny and natural and sad. Don't get me wrong. Sean Penn has turned in some incredible performances and directed some flawed but interesting films (particularly "The Indian Runner" and "The Pledge"). But he's no Chris Penn. Imagine Chris in "Mystic River" instead of Sean, and imagine a much better film. Raise your glasses and toast the forgotten Penn, our Favorite Actor of this Monday.















Recommended (a few of these movies are atrocious, but there's something happening when Chris Penn is on screen):
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983)
Footloose (Herbert Ross, 1984) (atrocioulicious)
At Close Range (James Foley, 1986)
Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
Best of the Best 2 (Robert Radler, 1993) (I dare you to rent this movie)
Short Cuts (Robert Altman, 1993)
True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993)
Mulholland Falls (Lee Tamahori, 1996) (atrocious)
The Funeral (Abel Ferrara, 1996)
Masked and Anonymous (Larry Charles, 2003)
+
a couple of TV performances I caught on late-night reruns of particularly awful material actually being transformed to something more than watchable by Chris Penn's performance:
"Grave Young Men" episode of CSI:Miami (2003)
"Fanilow" episode of Will & Grace (2003)













I'd like to see Sean Penn be taught how to dance by Kevin Bacon in a musical montage and totally commit to it without worrying about looking ridiculous:

Favorite Actor Monday

What else is left to say about Marlene Dietrich? I don't have any new insights. However, I should probably write something. Here's three observations and a quote:
1) She exudes an intense sexuality that fills the screen and the room where the film is being projected or watched on television while she herself seems less interested in sex than any other person on earth. There is an odd yet thrilling disconnect between her effortlessly magnetic presence and her uninterested detachment from it. She's like a spider who doesn't give a damn about its web.
2) She doesn't get enough credit for being one of the greatest comedic actors. She's funny.
3) It's difficult to find a picture of her without a cigarette in her hand or mouth, and she loved to get drunk. Somehow, she lived to be 90.
4) "There is a lack of dignity to film stardom" - Marlene Dietrich.

Recommended:
The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg, 1931)
Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)

Favorite Actor Monday

Burt Lancaster delivered his lines the same way, same cadence, same tone, in every film of his I've seen (except for "The Leopard," in which his voice is dubbed in Italian), but his performances still managed to be richly varied. How did he do that? Facial expressions and body language are part of the answer, but the rest is a mystery. There are many films he's in I want to see but haven't yet. He's good in "Field of Dreams," but I can hardly recommend that. Additionally, he started out in showbiz as a circus acrobat.

Recommended:
The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949)
Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)
Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks, 1960)
A Child Is Waiting (John Cassavetes, 1963)
The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963)
Ulzana's Raid (Robert Aldrich, 1972)
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (Robert Altman, 1976)
Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980)
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983)

Favorite Actor Monday

I'm a fan of her mother (Ingrid Bergman), I'm a huge fan of her father (Roberto Rossellini), and I like her, too. Isabella Rossellini, you have what it takes to be a Favorite Actor Monday. It was ridiculous when the media talked about how "brave" Nicole Kidman was for putting on a fake nose in "The Hours." If you want to see a brave performance, watch Rossellini in "Blue Velvet." (Not to slam Nicole Kidman. She was pretty great in "Dogville.")

Recommended:
Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990)
Big Night (Stanley Tucci & Campbell Scott, 1996)
The Funeral (Abel Ferrara, 1996)
"Mom and Pop Art" episode of "The Simpsons" (1999)
The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin, 2003)

Favorite Actor Monday

David Thomson, a film writer I usually enjoy reading even though I rarely agree with him, is right on target when he says about Cary Grant, his favorite actor: "...no one else has or could have done so well for two directors [Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks] as radically opposed in attitude." This is an important point for anyone to consider who thinks of Grant as merely a movie star or a light entertainer. When we think of capital-A actors, we are usually programmed to think of Brando, De Niro, Pacino, or some other very serious man with a name ending in "O." Not to take anything away from these men at their best, but Cary Grant deserves to be in their company, if not a few tiers higher. Hitchcock famously said that actors were cattle and dictatorially controlled and meticulously planned each frame of his films, while Hawks loved actors dearly and granted them many freedoms. That Cary Grant is such a central figure in both men's filmographies is testament to his complexity and talent.

Some random Cary Grant facts:
1) A reporter once wired Grant's agent "HOW OLD CARY GRANT?" Grant read the wire while in his agent's office and wired back "OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?"
2) Grant and Randolph Scott roomed together for several years and were rumored to be in a sexual relationship. Scott even jokingly referred to himself as "Cary Grant's wife." This made the studio unhappy. A recent Grant biography claimed both men were bisexuals and were open about their relationship, but this has also been disputed.
3) Grant was one of the first people to use LSD while it was still legal, as part of an experimental psychotherapy program. He was a vocal proponent of the drug.
4) He retired from the movies in 1966 and never appeared in a film again, despite offers from Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, and Howard Hawks.
5) He once killed a man for spilling grape juice on his tie, later drinking the man's blood for its "rejuvenating powers."

One of these facts is not true. Guess which one and win a slice of old-fashioned loaf.

Recommended:
Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939)
His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941)
Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944)
Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)
North By Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)




















Here he is with Siegfried and Roy in the late 1970s. Why does Roy look like a wax figure?

The process

Here is a link to graphic designer Eric Skillman's guest post on the Criterion Collection blog about his process at arriving at the cover art for their DVD release of Jules Dassin's "Night and the City" and "Thieves' Highway." I haven't seen the films, but I'm posting the link here for a chance to get a look at an artist's creative process. I find it fascinating and useful to see the trial and error involved in any creative endeavor. Read it here.

Additionally, Skillman also designed the covers for Criterion's releases of Ermanno Olmi's "Il Posto" and "I Fidanzati." In addition to Skillman's handsome cover designs, I want to recommend both of these films as two of my favorite movies ever. I love, love, love these two films. I hope someone else does, too. Please validate part of my hard-scrabble existence by acknowledging my superior taste in everything. Give Ermanno Olmi some love. I hope you know I'm joking about my superior taste even though I have a lot of self-belief in it.

Kisses,
Captain Arrogance

Favorite Actor Monday

Susan Tyrrell is intense and strange and not so strange. She's in a lot of movies I haven't seen yet, but want to, like "Big Top Pee-Wee," "The Killer Inside Me," and "Andy Warhol's Bad." Pauline Kael hated her, which puts her in the fine company of John Cassavetes and Robert Bresson. She described her acting style as "buried overacting." Her mother's last words, spoken to her, were "Your life is a celebration of everything that is cheap and tawdry." She meant it as a compliment. Tyrrell hates to work and only does so when she needs money, which she says is once a year. She contracted a rare blood disease in 2000 and had to have both her legs amputated at the knee. Her performance in "Fat City" is so good it deserves its own planet. Whether she's even a competent actor or not is irrelevant.

Recommended:
Fat City (John Huston, 1972)
Forbidden Zone (Richard Elfman, 1980)
Tapeheads (Bill Fishman, 1988)
Cry-Baby (John Waters, 1990)
Motorama (Barry Shils, 1991)
Masked and Anonymous (Larry Charles, 2003)

Favorite Actor Monday

Michel Piccoli will class up your film. He's been in movies since 1945, and will never stop until he's killed by death. He was a very iconic and cool actor as a younger man, and has matured into a performer of great depth and subtlety. He probably knows the best place to get a drink and a decent haircut in every city on the globe. I write like this when I have too many margaritas.


Recommended:
Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
Belle de jour (Luis Bunuel, 1967)
The Milky Way (Luis Bunuel, 1969)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel, 1972)
Wedding in Blood (Claude Chabrol, 1973)
The Phantom of Liberty (Luis Bunuel, 1974)
Atlantic City (Louis Malle, 1980)
Passion (Jean-Luc Godard, 1982)
Mauvais sang (Leos Carax, 1986)
La Belle noiseuse (Jacques Rivette, 1991)
I'm Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira, 2001)

New blog

Hey everybody. I have yet another blog, this one devoted exclusively to my foolish attempt to watch all 101 horror films in the book "Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen." The blog is called Decapitated Zombie Vampire Bloodbath. Check it out at http://www.zombievamp.blogspot.com, if you dare. This is not an April Fool's joke.

Why aren't there more women directors, Part II

Elaine May's career as a film director may have ended too soon, but she has worked steadily as a playwright and theater director, with occasional film acting and screenwriting jobs. Barbara Loden wasn't so lucky. Born in Marion, North Carolina in 1932, the same year as Elaine May, Loden directed only one feature film, the wildly overlooked "Wanda," and a short that was never released. "Wanda" was well-received on the film festival circuit, but opened, and closed, theatrically, in only one New York theater. It was never released on VHS, and didn't make it to DVD until last year. I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen in 2001, when it was shown as a part of the Austin Film Society's women directors of the 1970s and 1980s series (which also included May's "Mikey & Nicky," Kathryn Bigelow's fantastic vampire western "Near Dark," and a couple of wonderfully trashy B-movies, "Terminal Island" and "Humanoids from the Deep"). I was both frustrated and mesmerized by "Wanda," and it's been buzzing around my head ever since. I plan on seeing it again soon on DVD, but my recollections of the film are from six years ago, so I apologize for any inaccuracies I will probably make. The film is about a housewife in rural Pennsylvania, married to a coal miner, with a child (or two, I don't remember). She leaves one day, becoming a drifter. Eventually she meets up with an inept crook, forming an odd partnership. Then more drifting. In addition to writing and directing the film, Loden plays the title character. It's a frightening, lonely performance. Loden's Wanda resists metaphor, allegory, or any fixed understanding of who she is or where she's going. She could be a void if she wasn't such an exposed nerve. She says very little, allows herself to become attached to people through their efforts, and always keeps moving. Not forward, not backward, just moving. Loden has the courage to play her as an unintelligent, but far from stupid, woman who abandons her family to drift, and keep drifting. No one saves her, and she saves no one. She doesn't figure much out and is not in a better place when the closing credits begin, just a different one. The final scene is devastating, in a very quiet way. If Loden's Wanda were meant to stand for all women, this could be a horror film. But Loden's work is too mysterious, too difficult to trap, figure out, and throw away to be reduced to representational symbology or sociopolitical statement. Tonally and structurally, the film shares some surface similarity with cinema verite documentaries, Italian neo-realism, Monte Hellman's road movies and westerns, Jim Jarmusch's deadpan warm-hearted hipness, John Cassavetes' focus on tonal shifts in body language and behavior and his late-period melancholy, Michelangelo Antonioni's symbiotic relationships between human alienation and geographical landscape, Vincent Gallo's solitary road trip in "The Brown Bunny," and a keen eye for geographical setting that brings to mind such disparate filmmakers as Ross McElwee, early Errol Morris, and Werner Herzog. However, these are superficial observations by a guy who's seen too many movies. Mostly, Loden's film is tonally and structurally a film by Barbara Loden.






















So what happened to it? Why was it so shoddily distributed? A couple of anecdotes on Boston University professor Ray Carney's website may provide two likely answers. Carney, or someone writing an email to him, I forget which, mentions a screening of "Wanda" that devolved into an excoriation of the film by radical feminists for failing to provide solutions for women in Wanda's position. Neoliberal political correctness in higher education, good intentions aside, has become an anti-art, anti-life fascist whinefest of stupidity that has no place for any artwork that doesn't flatter the prevailing winds of academic fashion. "Wanda" is too hard to pin down, and doesn't provide neat solutions for individuals and groups who expect art to be solvable or politically validating. It requires reflection and thought. Any film that attempts to deal honestly with the incredible messiness of life is going to be messy. When the world demands neatness, films like "Wanda" are going to slip through the cracks. In Carney's other anecdote, he mentions talking to Elia Kazan, Loden's husband until her death, on the telephone. I'm unclear what the conversation was about, presumably either a visit by Kazan to the BU campus or a screening of his films. Carney, who regularly shows "Wanda" in his classes, asked Kazan about the film, assuming he would be thrilled to talk about his late wife's unfairly neglected work. Instead, Kazan unleashed a torrent of obscenities at Carney and hung up. Why? Though she is a prominent part of Kazan's autobiography, much has been written about his hostility toward Loden's directorial ambitions. Not knowing either of them personally, and since they are both dead, not expecting to ever get to know them, I can't speculate on Kazan's hostility. I can only look at the facts. This much is true. Loden was a pin-up girl and model and began taking acting classes in the 1950s. She got a small part in Kazan's "Wild River." He liked her so much in the role that he cast her as one of the leads in "Splendor in the Grass" alongside Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. She married Kazan in the late 1960s, and her acting career ended, aside from her performance in "Wanda." After "Wanda," her directing career ended. Kazan wrote a thinly disguised autobiographical novel about their relationship, "The Arrangement," in the late sixties and adapted it into a film. He cast Loden and Marlon Brando. When Brando dropped out of the film, Kirk Douglas took his place. The studio told Kazan to drop Loden and get a big-name actress. Instead of standing up for his wife, Kazan replaced her with Faye Dunaway. In 1978, Loden was diagnosed with breast cancer. Kazan asked her for a divorce in 1979, but stayed with her when the cancer spread to her liver. She died in 1980. She was 48 years old. Her final word, spoken three times, was, according to friends and relatives, spoken angrily. They were appropriate final words for a female director, an independent artist, and a person dying young, of which she was all three. "Shit. Shit. Shit."


For more on "Wanda," click here for Berenice Reynaud's article in Senses of Cinema.

Why aren't there more women directors?

If anyone has any theories, I would love to hear them. There's no doubt the film industry is every bit as sexist as any other major or minor institution, but there has to be something more insidious and culturally devastating than your run-of-the-mill good ol' boy network to explain the scarcity of films directed by women, possibly an evil inherent in the medium (maybe "Inland Empire" addresses this in some way). The music business and the publishing world are equally slimy, but many, many female writers and musicians have managed to create lasting bodies of work. In highly opinionated fact, current women writers seem to have a much easier time getting their books reviewed than men. Some of my favorite films have been directed by women, but virtually none of these women have been able to make more than a handful of films. Quality is more important than quantity, but why do women directors generally get fewer chances to make films? Looking at this comprehensive list of prominent women directors online, I wished I was surprised at my disappointment. Most of these women haven't been able to make as many movies as their male counterparts, most of them have had more trouble finding distribution (though this is a problem that seems to plague everyone except Hollywood hacks), many of them are unknown even to rabid film buffs (I watch every goddamn thing, and I'd either never heard of, or hadn't seen any films by, probably one-third of these women), and though the list is twelve years old, hardly any new names jump out as likely additions. European women directors seem to have better luck sustaining film careers than their colleagues in other continents, but only slightly. Female filmmakers can't catch a break. Why? (Keep in mind, I'm not talking about Nora Ephron or any other worthless void like her.) My two favorite American female filmmakers, Elaine May and Barbara Loden, are perfect examples of film industry marginalization of women's art.

It is a mathematical fact (or my highly biased opinion) that Elaine May's films are ten times better than her old comedy partner Mike Nichols', but she has directed only four films, while he has made (so far) 18 features, a concert film, a short, and two made-for-cable films. Is he more willing to play nice with Dr. Hollywood and Capt. Business? If he stands up for himself, is he in no danger of being called an uppity cunt by an old man with bags of money? Yes, these answers are obvious, but there's got to be more to it than this. Why has one of the greatest directors in the history of the medium had such a truncated career? I say this having seen only three of her four films, and the fourth may hold part of the answer to my question, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Elaine May was born in Philadelphia in 1932 and was in a stand-up comedy duo with Mike Nichols in the 1950s and 1960s that I know very little about, except that they were highly regarded and were closely tied to another great comic, Shelley Berman. They had an acrimonious split, and later got involved in theater, acting, and film, making amends in the mid-1990s. Nichols directed "The Graduate," among many famous films. May's debut feature, 1971's "A New Leaf," is a great comedy, despite studio interference so severe that May wanted her name taken off the film. She stars in it herself, with Walter Matthau. He's an aging playboy who's just spent most of his fortune. She's a shy, klutzy spinster who happens to be the heiress to a fortune of her own. A marriage of convenience ensues, with Matthau plotting May's "accidental" death. Despite the well-worn plot, the film is awkward, weird, hilarious, and wonderful. The studio cut over an hour of the running time, including two murders committed by Matthau, turning him into a repentant, fuzzy, redemption-worthy heart-warmer. He wasn't meant to be, and is not that way during the bulk of the film. One of the two murders excised was of May's character, at the end of the film. This brutally dark ending to a light comedy would have been a perfect example of May's ability to fuck with tone in a confident, relaxed way, but even in the filmmaker-friendly early 1970s, the studio flipped out. Would a man have been allowed freer rein? Probably. May had better creative and financial luck with her next film, the only one she didn't write, an adaptation of Neil Simon's "The Heartbreak Kid," starring Charles Grodin, Cybill Sheperd, and May's daughter Jeannie Berlin. The first of her two masterpieces, 1972's "The Heartbreak Kid" perfects the mixture of light-hearted comedy and the queasy brutalities and disappointments of living that is her unique specialty. A beautifully tough film that is much more her creation than Neil Simon's, "The Heartbreak Kid" has one of the greatest endings I've ever seen. Unfortunately, nearly every review I've read of the film mentions how great it is until the ending, usually described as an anti-climactic abandonment. This indicates to me how little even people who love movies pay attention to quiet detail and body language, especially douchebag critics. In my drunken opinion, this is one of maybe only a handful of films in existence with a perfect ending. I've just ruined this film for you with that sentence, probably, but I stand by it. May's next film, 1976's "Mikey and Nicky," (note the possible reference to Mike Nichols in the title) is the smartest and most emotionally intense film I've ever seen about male friendship. It stars John Cassavetes and Peter Falk as lifelong best friends who've gotten mixed up with local gangsters. Cassavetes has apparently ripped some of them off, and he is on the run. The movie takes place over one very long night in Philadelphia, and is May's best film. It is also one of my ten favorite films ever. Take that with a grain of salt, if you will, (especially if you think "Star Wars" is as good as it gets) but it means a lot to me. It shows how hard it is for men to be friends over a long period of time, how they can become awkward and brutal to each other, how they care about each other, how they could allow certain things to happen. It's a masterpiece of shifting tone, body language, empathy, and brutality. It's the most perceptive piece of art by a woman about men I've watched/heard/read so far. The studio, irritated with how long May was spending editing it, released it unfinished. It was unfairly but understandably compared to Cassavetes' films and declared a minor knockoff, though, despite some affinities, May's style as a writer and filmmaker is very different from Cassavetes'. May's cut of the film was finally released in the mid-1980s, and is the version available on video and DVD. Bitter about the studio interference, May never directed another film until 1987, and it killed her directorial career. Given the chance to direct a massively expensive Hollywood blockbuster, May delivered one of the most critically reviled and financially destructive box office failures in movie history, "Ishtar." It's the only film of hers I haven't seen yet, but I haven't been avoiding it because of its reputation. I've been saving it, like a precious illegal firework, for the right moment. Despite audience indifference and critical hatred, "Ishtar" enjoys an excellent reputation among the handful of my favorite movie critics, and a whole bunch of smart, interesting people I'm friends or friendly acquaintances with who aren't film buffs. This intrigues me. May is one of the best, and I'm going to be sad when there are no more films of hers to see. I'm sad that I have exhausted Cassavetes' filmography. I'm saving some Mike Leighs, some Fassbinders, some George Romeros, and I'm saving "Ishtar." But I digress. The colossal failure of "Ishtar" was almost solely blamed on co-star and producer Warren Beatty. May was even marginalized during her biggest career disaster. A woman does not have a strong enough personality to create either a masterpiece or a major flopola, the media seemed to say. It was that goddamn Warren Beatty and his hubris. Never mind that May wrote and directed the fucking movie, and that the negative critical reaction was largely due to the film's expensive budget, hype, and subsequent financial splat (when it comes down to the wire, the mainstream media will always side with businessmen over artists). As a female filmmaker, and a damn good one, she was constantly marginalized and finally gave up. Why does this continue to happen?

Coming tomorrow: Barbara Loden and "Wanda."

Favorite Actor Monday

I know a handful of people who react with distaste as soon as Chloe Sevigny's name is mentioned, but I don't really understand why. Sure, from the late nineties to the early 2000s she was a ubiquitous party/club girl, her brother's terrible band got a lot of media attention for a very brief period thanks to nepotism, her fashion sense can be unfortunate (I even notice this and I don't know anything about clothes), and some people have a problem with that Vincent Gallo blowjob (me, I'm undecided). These things have nothing to do with her worth as an actor, though, and from the moment I saw her onscreen for the first time in 1995, I was an ardent admirer. Her performances have never disappointed me, and goddamn she takes some risks. I wish she'd get more leading roles. (I blame the blowjob for that.)

Recommended:
Kids (Larry Clark, 1995)
Trees Lounge (Steve Buscemi, 1996)
Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1997)
The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998) (This is probably not a good film, but she's great in it.)
Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)
Julien Donkey-Boy (Harmony Korine, 1999)
American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)
Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002)
Dogville (Lars Von Trier, 2003)
The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, 2003) (She does more than give a blowjob in this, you know.)
Manderlay (Lars Von Trier, 2005)
Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007) (A thankless, cliched role that she still manages to do something with.)

Nice job

Dave Kehr's latest New York Times DVD column contains a couple of unusual yet wildly sensible observations. The first is a surprisingly apt comparison between W.C. Fields and Yasujiro Ozu. The second is a reevaluation (a "flip-flop," if you will) of "Re-Animator," a movie Kehr trashed in the Chicago Reader when it came out in 1985. He thinks it looks much better now, particularly because of the resemblance between the disembodied reanimated head of actor David Gale and a certain presidential candidate. (I should also mention imdb's new plot keywords feature. "Re-Animator"'s plot keywords: Brain/Naked Woman/Syringe/Panties/Loss of Control.)

Favorite Actor Monday

This is my first crossover post with Spacebeer's Secret Boyfriend Wednesday. I like Willem Dafoe quite a bit. It's getting harder and harder to find novel reasons to love each actor each week (which is why I will be retiring this weekly feature after the one-year anniversary), but I mostly love watching him because he seems to take the craft of acting seriously without taking himself seriously. He loves and respects what he does without being fucking ponderous about it (which separates him from an actor I used to love, but now find unbearable, Sean Penn). He also usually picks either great characters, great movies, or both.
Recommended:
To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985)
Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986) (excellent performance, terrible movie, also great in Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July," a movie I find otherwise unwatchable)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese, 1988)
Cry-Baby (John Waters, 1990)
Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990)
"Fishing with John" (John Lurie, ice-fishing episode, 1991)
Light Sleeper (Paul Schrader, 1992)
Basquiat (Julian Schnabel, 1996)
Affliction (Paul Schrader, 1997)
New Rose Hotel (Abel Ferrara, 1998)
eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999)
American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)
Animal Factory (Steve Buscemi, 2000)
Shadow of the Vampire (E. Elias Merhige, 2000)
Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002)
Auto Focus (Paul Schrader, 2002)
Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004)
The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004)
Manderlay (Lars Von Trier, 2005)