April 24, 2024
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BYOB: 235 Years Of Relative independence
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” â some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it â I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury â he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” â and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging â I was with her at that moment â she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy namedâ” “Yeah, sure â you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that Iâm on the phone with you now, after all thatâs been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didnât seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereâs not a case of that. He wasnât using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had â if that were what the accusation involved â the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. Iâm not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, âYou know, itâs not this, itâs thatâ? Because â let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, thatâs what it lacked. Thatâs what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
IT’S THE OLYMPICS MAN! GO US MALE GYMNIST! STICK IT TO’EM!
slow nothin
this is my busiest time of year.
which is why I am posting on a board instead of doing the work I am supposed to.
“American Teen” looks like it’ll be another huge loss for Paramount Vantage. They overspent like crazy … not that most people would know that since advertising is virtually non-existent. A shame, really, but then again, they did the same thing with another documentary (er, of sorts … ) last summer.
The great white hopes of their award season? “The Duchess” and “Defiance.” Eek.
I guess this is when the supposed late summer/early fall “lull” starts, at least in terms of serious interest from critics and prognosticators, BUT…
Is this Friday the first time in THREE MONTHS PLUS that four or more BIG-DEAL MOVIES all open the same day? All summer long, every weekend has been ONE COMIC MOVIE, ONE CHICK FLICK/COMEDY.
This weekend on the same day we get Tropic Thunder, Mirrors, Clone Wars AND Vicki Cristina Barcelona.
Being just a regular paying customer, I find it MUCH harder to keep up in April and August than I do during the relatively sparse summer schedule.
For the record: We are 11 days out from HOUSE BUNNY.
And totally off topic and of interest to NO ONE, I am reliving 1996 music-wise this evening.
What an awesome fucking year:
Poe, Bloodhound Gang, FAILURE “STUCK ON YOU,” Ammonia “Drugs,” SILVERCHAIR (might have been 1995), Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills, SAVE FERRIS, SPACE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, Everclear “Santa Monica”… even widely dissed tracks by overplayed KROQ mainstays like Bush and Goo Goo Dolls (NAKED 4 LIFE SON) kind of rule.
Who knew that a grating-ass track like Tracy Bonham’s MOTHER MOTHER would one day bring forth the pangs of nostalgia. I’m sure, as is usually the case, that was a totally mundane year for most people and a lot of that music lame, but it all depends on where you were at the right time. Like if some douche emo kid started talking up 2003 to me in five years, I’d find no distinction between 03, 02, 99, or 07. All a blur because I’m old and mean now.
But 96 and 97 were total ownage for me.
Yeah, I’d say nostalgia is definitely a factor if you’re missing a lame-ass, teenaged Nirvana clone like Silverchair.
Meanwhile, here’s a topic for you Polanders (Poles?)
A guy on another blog (cough) was talking about having seen Nixon a hundred times.
By the time I’ve seen a movie three times, I begin anticipating edits. I find myself thinking “okay, we cut to an over-the-shoulder shot when he says “foot.” I start to pick apart line readings or oddly pronounced words. I wait for music cues. Basically, I can’t enjoy the film because I get ahead of it.
My personal favorite film of all time (not to be confused with objective best, but who’s objective, anyway?) is — get ready for a shocker — Blue Velvet. But I’ve only seen it twenty times, tops, mostly in theaters (it hurts me to watch it on VHS or DVD) and that’s since it was first released over twenty years ago.
How many of you have seen a film thirty or more times (especially in a relatively short time-frame, say…ten years) and why don’t you get burned out on it? Aren’t you afraid of ruining your favorites? Or it as if you’re transfixed and magically in the moment again, which is what happens to me with BV? I’m genuinely curious.
I’m pretty sure that the only movie I’ve seen more than 15 or so times is Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is pretty much about the edits anyway.
On a different topic, I’m really preferring the Olympic events where there’s actually some drama between the various competitors to the ones where NBC is trying hard to force me to root for the pre-determined American medalist. It’s nice that Michael Phelps is getting so many golds, but why should I bother to root for him when the real drama is who gets silver?
Very sad about George Furth’s passing. Even more sad how the linked obit omitted so many of his credits, both acting and writing, including the one most people would recognize him from: BLAZING SADDLES. (Jeez, who’s left from that masterpiece now? Mel, Gene, the DeLuises, Huddleston, Karras, some bit players…)
There are dozens of movies I’ve seen 30 times or more. I’ve brought this topic up before, but those of who were “HBO KIDS” of the ’80s had this experience. They’d show the same movie twice a day, every other day… and with fewer options back then and a youthful, impressionable mind, well, you could end up watching “Alien” or “First Blood” or “Caddyshack” or “Blues Brothers” as many as 15 or 20 times JUST THAT FIRST MONTH.
I don’t think that happens today; Most people see stuff once or twice in a theater and/or DVD then maybe not again for years and years. Pay cable isn’t a primary source of movie viewing even for its ardent fans (who now mostly get it for the original programming.)
Jaws, Star Wars, the ’80s Bond movies, the first four Rockys, Vacation, Caddyshack, Alien, Halloween, Full Metal Jacket, 48HRS, Top Gun– well beyond 50 or more viewings of each of those.
And, no, they never really lose their luster. Or at the very least they become a sort of nostalgic assurance… occasionally you’ll catch some new, heretofore unrealized revelation on an umpteenth viewing (say, a Kubrick movie), but once you get up into those numbers, you’ve surpassed the nitpicking and the new discoveries and the risk of a second-viewing letdown. You’re just basking in the awesomeness, same as if you were listening to a song you’ve heard a hundred times before.
valley of the dolls, beyond the valley of the dolls, showgirls, mommie dearest, whatever happened to baby jane (original and redgrave versions), skidoo, the apple, phantom of the paradise and mother, my i sleep with danger?….
but, before you judge too harshly, understand that my friends and i have a ‘bad movies we love night’ every couple of weeks…..(btw– i’m guessing that ‘mamma mia’ will fall into this category by academy screener time)…..
re: olympics…i was going to boycott on principle but made the mistake of tuning in for phelps first meet….now, i’m totally hooked and ashamed of myself….
I’m going to see HOUSE BUNNY 30 times by mid-September.
Or at least that’s the plan.
Big Anna Faris fan (shocker).
Their new ad campaign could use some work – I have a feeling most people would prefer blonde Reese Witherspoon smiling to blonde Anna Faris looking confused and dazed on all the outdoor ads I’m seeing.
Oh, no doubt, it’s going to tank and foil my dreams of a Kat McPhee acting career.
Who?
American Idol, son.
(She made it further than ACADEMY AWARD WINNER Jennifer Hudson, albeit in a different seasons.)
Plus she’s hot.
One of my most-unwatched shows.
Except that she’s about 20 months preggers in the movie.
house bunny was actually a lot more entertaining than i thought it would be…faris is just so fucking charming…..and hefner gives robert evans a run for his money in the ‘delusional old guy’ category…..
Those men’s gymnastics team finals were pretty compelling.
Cadavra, thanks for the warning. That is seriously wack.
Faris = Comic Genius. I wonder if she’s on MySpace.
but it never really shows…..lots of standing behind chairs…things like that…
Yeah, I loved it when the guy spun around on the thing. And then the other guy went ass over teakettle about a dozen times. And then they all came out of that little car…
Oops, that was Cirque du Soleil.
I watch Flash Gordon at least once a year.
2001 every time it plays on a big screen.
Those two never get old.
Yes, coming of age in the ’80s with HBO made it almost impossible to keep count of how many times I saw any particular movie. I remember WarGames was a particular favorite.
Does anyone remember a movie called Cold River? HBO must’ve been get toyalties for that one. It has a fine supporting performance by James Earl Jones’ father. I wonder if it’s on DVD?
Oh, Psycho II was another one I saw repeatedly on HBO. And The King of Comedy and Cracking Up.
Lex, I’d hardly call Mirrors a “big deal”. Same goes for Vicki Cristina Barcelona, which may be Woody Allen’s biggest hit in decades, but considering it’s Woody Allen that still won’t mean much in the grand scheme of box office things.
I watched Scream every day for a while when i was younger and still watch it regularly, I’ve definitely seen that way over 150 times.
Am looking forward to The House Bunny a lot. I hope it’s a hit just so Anna Faris can kind of move on to greater things than the Scary Movie franchise, ya know? She totally deserves it. She’s been in more Best Picture nominees than Reese Witherspoon! :p teehee
Frankbooth you wouldnt be calling Silverchair Nirvana knock offs if you had heard their new stuff, that’s for sure.
Ouch, baby. Very ouch: http://slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=3802
frankbooth, i use movies to sooth my soul whenever i feel blue, so i pop in something that makes me feel happy or silly without fail like ‘trading places’ (hoorah for landis yet again! my hero), ‘romancing the stone’, ‘midnight run’, ‘fletch’, ‘die hard’, etc etc, i can’t think of them all right now, it’s going on midnight and i’d have to drag my ass down to the dvd cabinet, but you get the idea, i’ve seen them all just a stupid number of times, they’re ‘my preciousssesssss’. and the ‘family’ dvds, yikes! my son watches movies with impunity so i don’t care to know the number of times i’ve seen or partially seen ‘time bandits’, ‘raiders’, ‘ghostbusters’, ‘galaxy quest’, ‘ice age’, ‘gremlins’, ‘et’, ‘the never ending story’, ‘prisoner of az’, but it’s okay because they all pretty much kick ass.
after a while they all become like old friends, you can recite every line, you know every shot, every character, they’re like home, comforting and familiar.
Jeff: your line of thinking always confounds me, and I find it a bit off. Phelps is going for a ridiculous record that hardly anyone will ever be able to beat. Unless they spend 13 years of their lives to make it happen. It’s a ONCE IN A LIFETIME event, and you find it boring. My fellow Americans can be really quirky when it comes to dominance in sports. Luckily for me; I do not have that same quirk :D!
Being a sucker for “Tales of the New Hollywood,” I finally decided to crack Julia Phillips’ “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.”
Yikes; what a miserable woman; and such a raging narcissist! Plus, at nearly 600 pages, you’d think Phillips was under the delusion that she was Marcel Proust.
The most amazing thing is that Phillips only (co)produced three
significant films in her entire career–“The Sting” (which I’ve always considered overrated); “Taxi Driver;” and “Close Encounters.”
Has anyone else waded through “Lunch”? If so, any thoughts?
The thing that tickled me most was that Phillips was actually on set when they shot the final scene from “The Way We Were” outside the Plaza Hotel.
If “starting and then quickly skimming the rest” counts as wading, then yes I have. It’s the literary equivalent of the laid-off factory worker who shows up the next day with a shotgun. She managed to be involved with some genuinely great movies and then suddenly found that she wasn’t actually creative and that Hollywood loves people who makes hits. Big surprise there. So, she tried to take down everybody with her.
I had much the same feeling reading KILLER INSTINCT, Jane Hamsher’s book about making NBK. The whole thing feels like “this movie was great for a lot of reasons, most of which are me!” But Hamsher was still trying to work in the business, so- aside from anything about Tarantino- she wasn’t as snide as Phillips.
I have a completely irrational love of Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn. Not the Evil Dead series, mind you. I’m not particularly fond of Evil Dead and I truly hate Army of the Dead, but I loves me some ED2:DBD.
I’ve watched it well over…hell, I have no idea…hundreds of times. I saw it at a drive-in as the back half of a double feature on it’s theatrical run while I was in high school. I attended every midnight screening at The Kentucky Theatre while I was in college, have owned it on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, and now Blu-ray.
In my career I have appeared many times as a guest pitching my company’s product on QVC. The first time I was there to do a show with Rick Domeier (he played “Evil” Ed Getley and now is a show host on QVC…oh, how the mighty have fallen) I brought along my special edition DVD for him to autograph. What surprised me was how genuinely shocked he was that the film had such a fervent cult following. He was truly unaware.
Since I was coming back the following week, he actually borrowed my DVD so he could watch it. When I came back he had autographed it in blood red ink, “Jason – For God sake, don’t go into the cellar! All the best, Rick”. To this day, it is one of my prized possessions.
I think the phrase “legend in his/her own mind” must have been
invented for Phillips.
And the most maddening thing–besides her raging, unbridled egomania–is how sloppy she is with dates, the sort of thing that renders the entire book suspect. For example, she claims to have seen “Performance” in the summer of 1969 at New York’s Trans-Lux East when it didn’t open until the following year (she did get the theater right). Not to mention her insistence upon referring to John Milius as “Jon Milius.”
I guess your brain will play tricks on you if you’ve done enough
drugs.
Worked in a theater when it came out, and then it became one of my wifes favorite comfort movies, so I have probably seen Get Shorty well over a hundred times and it never gets dull. I also watched Nobody’s Fool (with the perfect Newman role) everytime it came on cable, and then when we moved, I bought it on tape and still watch it once every two months.
I think the key to this type of comfort movie is the score. Whenever I hear the bouncing jazz of Get Shorty or the lovely winds of Nobody’s Fool it is like mentally sinking into a deep couch.
I remember when my family got our first VHS player which we bought used from a friend. It’s was one of those gigantic top-loaders and it also came with two tapes: The Big Red One and Fort Apache, The Bronx. I bet I watched each of those movies about 50 times and I don’t even really like Fort Apache, The Bronx.
The numerous HBO screenings of Beastmaster run a close third.
Since this is slightly relevant to the conversation here, I came to say that I downloaded the soundtrack to Star Wars: The Clone Wars and am listening to it in my office. My non-professional opinion is it’s horrific. Just dreadful. Everything wonderful about John Williams’ score has been reduced to ADD snippets of orchestral work infused with keyboards, drum machines, and electric guitars. God this sucks….
jesus dave, you scared the piss out of me with the butch cassidy quote at the top of the page, especially the day after the news that Paul Newman has left the hospital.
thanks for the fake out. :/
Films I have watched many times I can’t find any problem with…and they are movies that I saw when I was a kid and feed the kid-like spirit of optimism and adventure like Empire Strikes Back and Island of lost souls and maybe once a year Lawrence of Arabia.
Movies that completely creeped me out and I would give a 10/10 I don;t watch again since once the element of surprise isn’t a factor, I’m afraid I would find things wrong with the movie and I don;t want to find things wrong with it, like Abre les Ojos, and Don’t be afraid of the dark, I would likely not see again, even though I’d like to see them one more time before I die.
I do like watching my favorite Bleak House once every year…since it was the best ever Dickensian serial.
I have watched Blue velvet about twenty times…when I first saw it I was very creeped out and Jeffrey I disliked a bit, but now after seeing it many times, I seem to overlook that Frank was a maniac sex abusing drug abusing crook probably because he’s funny, and now i really dislike Jeffrey and Sandy…I mean I despise them. But maybe that’s what Lynch intended. Jeffrey really is a detestable character. The man of spoken morals who has no morality.
Anyone see the documentary Easy Riders, Raging Bulls? In it, Richard Dreyfuss admits that when he read Julia Phillips
Re: Slant review of Vicky Christina. A sample passage:
…”an occasion for Allen to feign interest in challenging heteronormic ideals when all he’s doing is advancing a simplified view of female sexual agency…”
Get a fucking life. Sounds like a master’s thesis.
“Jeffrey really is a detestable character. The man of spoken morals who has no morality.”
Yes! You’re okay, Lota. I never did like that little bastard. Hiding in closets, stealing other people’s women (okay, she was already married to a third dude, but he doesn’t count, you can tell they weren’t happy), shooting people in the face for no good reason.
And about that “happy” ending…you know it’s not gonna last. Here’s what I always saw happening: Jeffrey marries Sandy, and everything is fine for a little while. But then he wants to play rough, because he has the “disease” in him. She’s appalled, and their sex life dries up and dies. Maybe she moves back in with mom and dad.
Meanwhile, across town, Dorothy is patiently waiting for him to come around.
The last shot of the movie is Dorothy’s kid walking toward her in a park. She hugs him. Pan up to blue sky which fills the frame as the happy Julee Cruise “Mysteries of Love” (which we associate with Sandy and her world) plays.
But — in the very last moments, the blue turns into the undulating velvet of the robe we saw during the opening credits, and Dorothy’s voice comes in, sadly singing “I still can see blue velvet through my tears,” shoving the Sandy theme aside.
Not to mention the fake robin.
And — maybe this is just me, I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere else — but when Jeffrey wakes up in the lawn chair, there’s a long shot of his dad and Detective Williams across the backyard. Order restored. But it’s curiously impotent. Dad doesn’t come over and hug his son, we don’t get a closeup or even see his face. He’s wearing a hat, similar to that of Jack Nance’s character, and Williams, from a distance, has a similar enough hairline and facial structure to resemble Frank. (Did Lynch cast this actor for that very reason, to make us suspect he might be the Well-Dressed Man? If so, it’s funny, because you can spot Hopper, with his stiff-armed walk, a mile away.) My first impression, even after all this time, is that Frank and Paul are standing there in Jeffrey’s backyard. I have nothing to back this up, but it’s my gut feeling every time.
So those are my thoughts for the day, thank you very much, ladies and gents, and it looks as if I just hijacked my own topic. Maybe I even answered my own question about the fruits of repeated viewing.
I’ve seen SKIDOO at least 40 times. ENTER THE DRAGON, 50 or more. THE GRADUATE 30. I can’t keep tabs on all the viewings. ANNIE HALL 40. But yes, if you love a movie, you can watch it again and again…very comfort food like.
“Same goes for Vicki Cristina Barcelona, which may be Woody Allen’s biggest hit in decades, but considering it’s Woody Allen that still won’t mean much in the grand scheme of box office things.”
Well, maybe it will put a stop to the tiresome and stories that pop up every couple years on why Woody has lost it forever and he should stop making movies. Then MATCH POINT makes 90 million and VCB gets raves.
WOODY ALLEN = TOTAL OWNAGE.
Weird. Though a huge cinephile, I’ve always had the attitude of “so many movies, so little time” as opposed to, “Gee, I sure like ‘Die Hard’ — I think I’ll watch it 100 more times.”
The drawback I guess is that I rarely get super-intimately familiar with even my favorite films. The upside is that I’ve seen a ton of great films that lots of supposed film buffs ignore.
JPK: Is that The Kentucky Theatre in Lexington? As an Evil Dead 2 fanatic you probably know that co-star Kassie Wesley (now DePaiva) hails from Morganfield, KY, just a few miles from my hometown of Henderson. I actually saw her sing at a Lions Club talent show when she was a kid, and a friend of mine used to work with her brother. She’s been a big soap star on “One Life to Live” for several years now.
Speaking of my hometown, I was quite surprised when it got a shout-out in “Swing Vote.” The letter that Costner reads at the debate was sent from there.
You got it. The one and only Kentucky Theatre in Lexington. I practically lived there while in college…
I’m very glad to hear about Vicky Cristina Barcelona, because Woody’s movie from earlier this year was seriously one of his worst films ever. The last time I saw Ewan McGregor give a performance so stiff was a Star Wars movie.
ALERT: Tonight on IFC: The Last Metro, arguably Francois Truffaut’s last great movie (though I confess to an irrational fondness for his final effort, Confidentially Yours). Catherine Deneuve is incandescent. And Gerard Depardieu is pretty damn good, too. And I’m sure some of you will be amused to see a critic depicted as a Nazi sympathizer.
Lota, whatever you do, stay far away from Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. NEVER watch it! That’s one of those movies that you see as a kid and it cretes a vivid mark on your soul and you can’t forget it.
See it as an adult and…man. Not so much.
I don’t get IFC, but Confidentially Yours is a very good movie.
i just wanted to add that i, too, think jeffrey is a weenie and i would sort of like to punch him in the face. kyle achieves weeniehood brilliantly
My only strong memory of Phillips’ book was the extreme distaste she left in my mouth over her chapters-long horse race between THE STING and THE EXORCIST. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the Newman/Redford vehicle just fine, but THE EXORCIST is the movie I have seen well over fifty times, not THE STING.
THE SHINING and AIRPLANE! are probably a close second for multiple viewings. And a curse on HBO for pummelling BLUE THUNDER into my brain as a child.
Yes, Kyle is fantastic. It took me quite a few viewings to properly appreciate what he does, since certain more, um, colorful characters tend to dominate the screen and get all the attention.
But he has to say stuff like “You’re a neat girl” and “why is there so much trouble in this world?” and not come across as a total joke. That can’t be easy, and he and Laura Dern both pull it off brilliantly.
If a less likable actor had been cast, he really would come across as a total sleaze, which would sort of let the audience off the hook. As it is, they’re complicit.
exactly, frank, it’s a difficult balancing act for kyle; too far one way or another and the jig is up, the movie wouldn’t work like it does. i love that lynch knows how to make you (the viewer) feel ways you really wish you didn’t.
The goal of the movie must have been “How do I get the audience to join this young guy as he hides in the closet and spies on a woman, and not think he’s a total creep?”
Clone Wars will be the first Star Wars to not hit #1. Just check the Manhattan bookings.
…and the factual gaffes just keep on coming in the Phillps’ book!
Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, gang, but this really is quite the trainwreck.
Didn’t they have any fact-checkers at her publishing house? Not even a few unpaid college interns??
Her latest boo-boos: describing buddy “Jon” Milius’ “The Wind and the Lion” as his directorial “debut.” Apparently she never saw “Dillinger” (starring her coke buddy Michelle Phillips, no less) which Milius directed in 1973.
And she claims that “Taxi Driver” opened exclusively at NYC’s Cinema 1 when it was actually the Coronet (a huge difference, trust me).
Considering the fact that Phillips was one of the “TD” producers, you might have thought she’d have at least remembered which theater it played at. Particularly since part of the book is devoted to her sweating out the opening weekend grosses with Scorsese in Manhattan.
I guess those old “…this is your brain on drugs…” PSAs were right after all.
I’m astounded that (apparently) Phillips and her self-aggrandizing tome were taken seriously when this stinker came out in 1991.
It’s sort of poetic justice that she never got to produce (or co-produce) another film, though.
The last movie Phillips received credit for–“Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” which I actually have a small measure of affection for–opened that same year and flopped.
I am as hardcore as they come with Star Wars, but Clone Wars is just a Cartoon Network flick. A flick that Warners decided to put on a lot of screens for some reason. Nevertheless; I will see it, but it’s sort of Star Wars. Sort of.
I read that book a few years ago, movieman. It’s a blur of drug abuse and petty bitching.
I wondered if even the die-hards cared about this cartoon Clone thing. I’ve seen the trailer several times, and it just looks cheap. Same exact imagery and situations we’ve seen a hundred tiimes, and Yoda sounds funny. Did they even get Oz to do the voice?
You’re playing into the Emperor’s hands, IO. Don’t give in to the dark side.
Too late Perm. I saw Don’t be Afraid…as an adult a few years ago I paid $60 for a non-stick VHS tape and it still creeped me out. Sure it was low budget but I was all by myself eating a tres leches cake by myself on a stormy dark night.
It is still atmospheric even though Kim Darby is painfully dense…and cheesy or not, the demons are F*cking creepy. Evil raisinets. I still feel alarm when I see mortared up fireplaces or hear sounds in central ventilation.
So what “hospital” are you in Frank? Heh heh. Just kidding. Good thing you can;t be locked up for theories.
I was wondering if the ending in Blue Velvet had any bearing on the fact that Jeffery’s dad was in the hospital at the beginning wasn;t he? Maybe his dad was a creep or a fink or a crook. The ending made me think Jeffery was set apart and he wasn’t the goody two shoes he would like to think himself to be. He didn;t stick up for Dorothy either at critical times that wimp. He got some, she protected him, and he still didn;t help her/defend her as he should have.
Dorothy wouldn’t be dense enough to wait for him to come around.
Frank-
The funny thing is that I bought the book when it first came out, but never bothered reading it…until now, 17 years later.
“Drug abuse and petty bitching” just about sums it up.
Sorry if my ranting about it seems like old news to those of you who are familiar with Phillips’ screed, but the sheer volume of factual errors are driving me bananas.
I can’t believe that anyone didn’t call her out on any of this stuff back then. Or were people just pissed off that she told so many of their most embarrassing drug stories out of school?
Phillips’ appalling sloppiness destroys whatever value this thing may have had as an artifact of the New Hollywood. Which was really it’s only value in the first place–and the reason I finally decided to pick it up after all these years and start reading.
yancy, I feel bad sometimes about watch a movie so many times, but there are times when it’s 10pm or whatever and the only movies I have sitting there are ones I have seen before and loved for three hour russian movies about turtle doves and, really, I’d just rather watch Ruthless People again, ya know?
BTW, I did like the start of Dargis’ Vicky Cristina Barcelona review, the part about Cruz I mean. Totally true. Only further frustrating by the fact that a foreign language performance won a year later, yet one that was far inferior and yet another biopic performance.
Why, Lota, going to break me out? Bake me a cake with a file in it. Do you have experience at that sort of thing? (Okay, I’m going to get myself in trouble here.)
The last time I saw the film, Jeffrey’s sliminess at Sandy’s house (after Dorothy shows up on the lawn) was really apparent. He’s trying to distance himself from her, as if the whole thing is distasteful. The two worlds have come together, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Like you say, he’s had his fun, but he doesn’t want it to spill over and infect his glorious picket-fence future. But it already has.
Jeffrey’s dad in with the crooks…have to think about that one. Not sure if it works for me, because the dad represents normalcy. When he gets sick, the world opens up to all the badness, and the “other” father figure comes in. Then when he’s destroyed, the “good” dad can come home. So I dunno.
But I like what you said about Jeffrey being apart. Order is restored, but there’s no real moment of being reunited with his dad.
“Dorothy wouldn’t be dense enough to wait for him to come around.”
Maybe so, maybe so. But her prospects are limited in Lumberton. Her husband Don is gone, Frank is gone. You know,it’s hard to imagine her life before. I just can’t see her and the kid and Don living in that place together. It suits her, but not the three of them.
(I actually um, dated a woman a couple of times who lived in a place that strongly reminded me of Dorothy’s apartment. She had a painting on the wall with actual barbed-wire incorporated into it, and coffee-table books of car-accident photos, but she wasn’t ostentatiously punk or “different” on the surface. Your basic, thirty-something, attractive office-worker type who you’d never notice in a crowd. And she liked to sing Blue Velvet. Sort of felt like I’d wandered into a movie for a few days. Don’t know why this is relevant, except to say that I can’t imagine a family in such a place — and that there are people like Dorothy out there.)
So why didn’t they have a house? Because Don was probably a bum. We never see him alive, but he looks sickly and kinds sleazy. He was probably living off her, maybe a drug addict. He probably already knew Frank.
But anyway, maybe she learned something and will slam the door in Jeffrey’s face when he comes slinking around under whatever pretense. That’s a good observation.
And now I feel like one of those Trek geeks making up backgrounds for fictional characters.
There’s a little of Frank in Jeffrey at the end of the movie, too. Lying on that deck chair, he looks very suave.
Indeed, Jeff.
In fact, that’s actually the “moral” of Blue Velvet: there’s a little Frank Booth in all of us.
Well if you’re in Rikers I can talk to some people, but if you’re in Bellevue you’ll have to stay put.
Dorothy’s prospects aren’t limited. She can always move.
In a way Jeffrey can’t move since he’s agreed to his middle class prison. He’s Frank in 20 y even though he’d be loathe to admit it.
“attractive office-worker type who you’d never notice in a crowd”
Geez frank you might get a frying pan in the head saying that about a girl.
Another frying pan? Those things hurt.
Anyway, she’s long gone. Like I said, it wasn’t exactly a “relationship.”
My point, not meant to be offensive, was that she didn’t wear her freakiness on the outside (though she did like to talk about it at work just to rile up her more sexually conservative co-workers.)
So do you really see Dorothy going “vanilla?” Frank is gone, but is he so easily forgotten?
It’d be a cliche by this point, but it would be fun to see a Shining-style trailer remix. “Little did they know he would touch their hearts, and change their lives forever…”
there’s a little ‘jeffrey’ in all of us, too, a voyaristic weenie who doesn’t really have the guts to live large, hiding in a closet, spying…we just don’t want to admit it of ourselves (and that’s probably why we – or i, at least – kinda want to punch him in the nose)
You must love the Meadow Lane scene, Leah.
They are two of my favorite movies regardless, but “Lost Highway” owns “Blue Velvet.”
Blue Velvet > Lost Highway and every other Lynch film with the exception of Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive.
1. LH is set in L.A.
2. Loggia.
3. Getty.
4. MARILYN MANSON = TOTAL OWNAGE.
5. BEST SOUNDTRACK EVER.
6. Arquette > Dern.
7. PRYOR.
8. By LH, Lynch had fully developed his unsettling sound design, full of ambient drones and rumbles.
9. There’s more “akew” imagery in LH than the ’50s-esque BV. Not a complaint against the earlier film, which again is one of my 20 or so all-time favorites. But seems there are long stretches of BV that are practically quaint, whereas LH is a 135-minute SYMPHONY OF ASS-KICKING AWESOMENESS.
10. I’d go so far as to say LH even trumps Mulholland; LH is just completely subversive, heavy-metal, relentless MAYHEM and fuckery, without the wide-eyed protagonist of BV and MD.
“Askew,” sorry.
I realized most of the first 5 or 6 things are totally arbitrary and based on personal preferences, but I think Highway is the most effective full-on Lynch freakout. Mulholland is a classier, maybe more fully realized film, and Inland Empire kinda goes the other direction into total nonsense.
But HIGHWAY represents pretty much his world and worldview unleashed without the entry point of a genuinely wide-eyed, optimistic character.
I have always had extremely mixed feelings about Wild at Heart; Like True Romance, it’s one of those young-lovers-on-the-lam movies where we’re supposed to be so in awe of the naive love they have for each other, we’ll forget all the hideous mayhem they’re inflicting on perfectly innocent people. That’s the most awkward mix of mainstream elements and freakshow stuff in his canon… maybe even moreso than Dune.
frank, has jeffrey been punched enough, do you think?
i haven’t watched ‘blue velvet’ in a while (i only watch ‘find a happy place’ stuff over and over again, lynch is strictly ‘an evening of psychotherapy’ for me), but the thing about the meadow lane scene is…what can one say about that scene apart from the obvious, that frank is pretty much the most bizarre, brutal psycho ever to be immortalised on screen (making liotta’s hair trigger violent psychopathy look positively pippi longstocking in comparison)…i wonder if heath took a face-painting leaf from frank’s book in that one, doesn’t he smear lipstick all over his face? the thing about lynch that i can’t figure out is that he depicts such degradation (often of women), such debased, twisted human nature, but i never feel like he’s doing it to exploit, but rather to explore, to provoke, which is quite a nifty trick. anyone else depicting the stuff he does and i’d likely hate it, but lynch rises above into true artistry. i want to kiss him on the cheek.
whenever i see = symbols i feel like i’m back at school in friggin math class! stop that! i hate math class.
wow, when i posted that just now it was ‘ = symbols’, it erased my bits, that’s ticketyboo
no way! why won’t it post my ‘greater than’ ‘less than’ symbols? :O
“LH is just completely subversive, heavy-metal, relentless MAYHEM and fuckery, without the wide-eyed protagonist of BV and MD.”
Which, perhaps paradoxically, makes it less powerful. I think Lynch does better with a strong narrative. Even Eraserhead has one.
If Jeff’s statement is the conventional wisdom, this is one case where I have to agree with the conventional wisdom.
Lost Highway seemed a disappointment when it was new, and is often ripped-on, but I think Mullholland Drive may be the key to it. It now almost comes off a trial-run for MD, and I’d love to watch them back-to-back. (I ran out and bought the widescreen DVD of LH when it came out earlier this year, but I haven’t watched it yet, and I confess to not having seen it recently.
What mayhem? I think you may be blurring it with Stone’s NBK (which is vastly inferior, even though Lost Highway is NOT one of my favorite Lynch films.) Sailor and Lula don’t attack innocents, they’re just trying to get by and get away. (Well, okay, I’ll concede the failed robbery. But that was mostly Bobby Peru’s doing.)
Leah, I was able to do italics from my mobile device, but not from the laptop, oddly enough. The entire word just vanished, which I guess is what hapened to you. I’m using Firefox, could that be it? What browser are you using?
(And Blue Velvet IS “find a happy place’ stuff” for me.)
For one thing, I forgot the purest Lex-based meaning of ‘own’ which isn’t ‘is good and excellent work’ but rather means ‘has guys who get to bang hot chicks and blood and tits’ etc. in which case, yes indeed, Lost Highway has more of that stuff than Blue Velvet.
The other thing is, Lost Highway looks ‘subversive’ with its Rammstein soundtrack and slick cinematography, but it’s actually one of the more conservative movies in the Lynch canon, because it’s Lynch ‘doing Lynch’ and trying to do ‘his thing’ for fun and profit. Compared to something like Twin Peaks FWWM or Mulholland or Straight Story, it’s a little shallow.
But that’s just me.
Oh, and Lex — to further elaborate on that point (not because I have nothing better to do, but because I do and am looking to avoid it), I don’t think Lynch ever depicts an amoral world. Some of his characters are questionable, yes, but they’re pretty clearly depicted as villains or at least compromised heroes.
Something like the big-budget, mainstream Hannibal is far more morally suspect. A serial-killer is okay and can even be a movie’s protagonist as long as he’s more polite, witty and well-educated than the people he kills. Which is also completely contrary to original depiction of the same character in Red Dragon (the novel) and Manhunter, in which he’s a monster who murders innocents.
And now we have Dexter, which I haven’t seen. Is there something to it, or does it glorify psycho-killers?
I said Dorothy could move to a new town…doesn’t mean she has to change her essence. And maybe she’s tired of Spumoni and wants to be vanilla again. Now I’m hungry. Time to go finish the tres leches cake. I bought a $30 tres leches cake. It will last ~48 hours.
Leave Dorothy alone Frank. She can move to a new city and start over again, right?
I think Lynch is one of the few really GREAT modern directors so I like almost everything he’s ever done.
I do think Blue Velvet was an amazing parable. Lost Highway is like his Indie movie, Eraserhead is like his personal catharsis movie (maybe it’s what living in small towns does), Mulholland Drive I felt was as Hollywood as he was going to get, and even that was spearing the Hwood culture. Inland Empire…it was like a cross between a Japanese horror movie and a eastern Euro style tragedy flick.
I don;t think LH owns BV Lex. Everything Lynch has done is good.
Wild at Heart is not my fave, but it’s still good. I love the scene in Wild at heart where Diane Ladd ends up putting lipstick all over her face. Nic Cage was annoying. He should do more Raising Arizona, less leading man. Diane Ladd made the film. She rocks. An unsung talent.
I was very very upset about what happened to my man Harry Dean S in Wild at Heart. Oh Johnnie… : (
frank, i’m a slave to ‘the man’ and use boring old ‘microsoft’. oh well, no ‘greater than’ or ‘less than’ symbols for me i guess.
my i ask, what’s the deal with people smearing their faces with lippy in lynch’s flicks? what does it MEAN? self-loathing? primal beautification? toddler-like application skills? (i’d love to ask him)
hey frank, if ‘bv’ is your ‘find a happy place’ flick, what’s your ‘find your heart of darkness to hell and back’ flick?
Field of Dreams.
I always saw the lipstick out-of-control thing (Diane Ladd) because
1) Ladd used to go berserk if her wishes weren’t followed
2) it was her way of “cutting” herself since she couldn’t control what had caused her so much rage/frustration
Field of Dreams? Did you get cut from a farm team Frank?
Frank is “marking” Jeffrey. He’s contaminating him. “You’re like me.”
I like Lota’s take on LH.
i like the ‘cutting herself’ theory, lota, she was likely too vain to actually cut herself, the red lippy as ‘self-harm’ for vain people.
frank, doesn’t the movie frank smear lippy all over his OWN face, or am i remembering that wrong?
Yes — The Chargers. The uniforms were black.
Originally called The Gas-Sucking Kidnapping Ear-Cutters, but it didn’t fit on the jersey.
I don’t think Frank’s contaminating him as much as he is Recognizing someone who has the potential to act as he does–a rival, albeit a younger wishy-washy one. I hate Jeffery.
Dorothy wouldn’t have asked him to hit her if she knew he wouldn’t.
‘Cutting’ sounds both psychologically and cinematically right.
jeff, did frank smear his own face or jeffrey’s face first? please, it’s bugging me now and my ‘bv’ is lent out so i can’t just check!
I’ll check.
Frank smears lipstick on his own face, then kisses Jeffrey a bunch of times.
whew, glad we settled that or I couldn’t sleep.
I hope I don’t have bad dreams now. Here let’s sing a little song for Frank…all together now:
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper
Go to sleep. everything is all right.
I close my eyes, then I drift away
Into the magic night. I softly say
A silent prayerlike dreamers do.
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you.
In dreams I walk with you. in dreams I talk to you.
In dreams youre mine. all of the time were together
In dreams, in dreams.
But just before the dawn, I awake and find you gone.
I cant help it, I cant help it, if I cry.
I remember that you said goodbye.
Its too bad that all these things, can only happen in my dreams
Only in dreams in beautiful dreams.”
(Roy Orbison…he OWNS)
Are you crying yet Frank? : *
nighty night!
Yes. Nighty-night, Lota.
thanks jeff, i’m relieved my memory isn’t completely goldfish-o-rama
Badalementi’s score in Lost Highway is complete awesomeness. Yes, the credits theme to Blue Velvet is beautiful and mysterious and BRILLIANT, but THE HIGHWAY is WALL-TO-WALL filled with creepy, ambient cues… again, Lynch’s soundtrack is unbelievably alive and brilliant there…
Not just the ACES cuts from NIN, SMASHING PUMPKINS, Lou Reed, Rammstein, MANSON, BOWIE… but the entire off-kilter sound design.
Maybe Loggia himself doesn’t quite eclipse Frank Booth, but combined with Robert Blake and his powder makeup and that SLEAZY MOTHERFUCKER who plays Dick Laurent, it’s more than just a warmup for Mulholland Dr.
It’s a fucking EPIC of sexual uncertainty and male neurosis and a depiction of MEN who think THEY OWN but in fact THEY GET OWNED. Mulholland Dr. has similar stylistics but is essentially an homage to classic Hollywood Women’s Pictures and Melodramas and tells basically the same story from a Feminist Perspective.
That is fine, too, and totally fascinating, and again we’re splitting hairs because all of these are masterpieces, but the paranoid, obsessive male entry point of Lost Highway is infinitely more relatable for me, and again, it’s like HEAVY METAL LYNCH as opposed to SIRK LYNCH or ’50S LYNCH or SMALL TOWN LYNCH.
And, Frank, “what mayhem”???? Really? Hopper owns some people, sure, but how about Dick Laurent getting a owned by a glass coffee table corner? Or Loggia laying laws on that tailgater? Or Marilyn Manson in a porno banging the hotness? And Blake showing up at the cabin with the camcorder, and Pullman fixin’ to mess somebody up and then THEY START CRANKING METAL FUCK YEAH!
THE HIGHWAY is just more hardcore and extreme and features more porn and crime shit.
FIRE WALK WITH ME also rules, though every time I watch it I mostly can’t wait for the part with the strobe lights in the club, because STROBE LIGHTING OWNS.
McM, I am listening to the LOST HIGHWAY SOUNDTRACK this very second and getting OWNED.
This soundtrack is the best thing in the history of anything ever.
That’s nice for you.
No, no. Should have been more clear. Or maybe I was, and you’re just too drunk, ha ha.
You said: “it’s one of those young-lovers-on-the-lam movies where we’re supposed to be so in awe of the naive love they have for each other, we’ll forget all the hideous mayhem they’re inflicting on perfectly innocent people.”
Now go back and read my reply again. The references to Sailor and Lula and Bobby Peru should have tipped you off. Plus the NBK comparison. How drunk are you tonight, anyway?
Plenty of mayhem in LH, no doubt about it. Also plenty – maybe even more — in WAH. But it’s not being perpetrated by our protagonists, for the most part, except in self-defense.
(Is that asterisk up above what I think it is? Lota IS gonna get me in trouble. It’s an innocent kiss on the cheek, right? Like you’d give your uncle. Good ol’ Uncle Frank.)
this will sound silly, but for me the scariest scene in ‘lost highway’ is when fred walks down that dark hallway in his house. i think of it whenever i walk down a dark hallway in my house
I ain’t gonna eat, I ain’t gonna sleep
Ain’t gonna breathe, til I see, what I wanna see
And what I wanna see, is you go to sleep, in the dirt
Permanently, you just being hurt, this ain’t gonna work
For me, it just wouldn’t be, sufficient enough
Cuz we, are just gonna be, enemies
As long as we breathe, I don’t ever see, either of us
Coming to terms, where we can agree
There ain’t gonna be, no reason, speakin wit me
You speak on my seed, then me, no speakin Englais
So we gonna beef, and keep on beefin, unless
You’re gonna agree, to meet with me in the flesh
And settle this face to face, and you’re gonna see
A demon unleashed in me, that you’ve never seen
And you’re gonna see, this gangsta pee on himself
I see you D-12, and thanks, but me need no help
Me do this one all by my lonely, I don’t need fifteen of my homies
When I see you, I’m seeing you, me and you only
We never met, but best believe you gon’ know me
When I’m this close, to see you exposed as phony
Come on, bitch, show me, pick me up, throw me
Lift me up, hold me, just like you told me
You was gonna do, that’s what I thought, you’re pitiful
I’m rid of you, all you, Ja, you’ll get it too!
Now go to sleep bitch!
Die, motherfucker, die! Ugh, time’s up, bitch, close ya eyes
Go to sleep, bitch! (what?)
Why are you still alive? How many times I gotta tell ya, close ya eyes?
And go to sleep bitch! (what?)
Die motherfucker die, bye, bye, motherfucker, bye, bye!
Go to sleep bitch! (what?)
Why are you still alive? Why, die motherfucker, ah, ah, ah…
…Go to sleep bitch!
I think Joe has something he’s trying to convey to someone.
Frank…
Doesn’t the OPENING INTRODUCTION to our “hero” SAILOR bashing a hapless bodyguard’s (who’s just doing his JOB) brains into marble leave just a bit of a bad taste in your mouth?
Doing his job by trying to stab Sailor? And who is he guarding, exactly?
wow, was that for me, joe? pretty vile.
if so, sorry to offend or step on your toes, i’ve been following this lynch stuff so i’m just blogging around trying to take my mind off other stuff. it’s 8:53 pm here
I believe it was for Jeff, Leah, unless you and Joe have some history I don’t know about.
I give up. Staying out of this one.
It couldn’t be for me, not in this thread.
Sailor doesn’t just swiftly handle him, he beats the guy into the ground long past the acceptable point for a movie protagonist, basing his brains out long after the guy’s been overtaken. It’s just unrelenting, and as Ebert points out, in even more questionable taste by the fact that the bodyguard happens to be African-American. That may or may not be entirely coincidental, but it certainly adds an unfortunate queasy factor. (I’m also remembering that the bodyguard’s threat to Sailor is issued in a bit of a stereotypical “jive” cadence for maximum questionable taste.)
Were the movie made today, even by a maverick like Lynch, I seriously doubt that scene would pass without some fairly legit criticism. Even if I’m just being entirely sensitive and P.C. about it, it’s an unsettling intro to your earnest/naive/hillbilly Elvis PROTAGONIST, and a noticeably ugly mark right off the bat for a movie that persists in that vein for the rest of its run time.
Those are all reasons why Wild at Heart is the one and only Lynch movie that I don’t like.
i have no history with joe that i know of.
Well, the racial aspect IS uncomfortable. That’s one aspect of Lynch’s personality I’m just not sure about. Have you even read the essay about him by David Foster Wallace? Gets into some of that stuff — if, for instance, he cruelly uses Richard Pryor for freak value in LH.
Yes, LH is over-the-top in many ways. It’s the first Lynch movie to feature what I consider leering, gratuitous nudity, for instance. And there’s a messy, “everything including the kitchen sink” quality to it. It feels borderline insincere at times, like one of those films made by a Lynch imitator. Like I said, it’s not a personal favorite. But I watched it not too long ago, and it’s still very entertaining.
Jeff, you’re the only one Joe has a beef with, and you two did get back into it recently.Or it’s just that time of night.
Don’t leave us guessing, Joe.
Frank, you ask too many questions, some things best left unsolved and mysterious.
Wild at Heart:
Wild at Heart is about rednecks essentially…low-lifes at every turn, and I always felt that was Lynch’s statement about some of the small towns he lived in, including that small towns are very racially/culturally unfriendly. It’s not a comfortable thing to watch but I have met people city and country lowlifes of all colors who would do exactly the same types of things that Wild at Heart depicted (especially to people they perceive as a “different”). After seeing Wild at Heart one would become quite a proponent for birth control and more investigative authority of Child protective services. That was the point.
Lost Highway:
LH is a kitchen sink of everything since it is about personal ambivalence (morals/responsibility) and confusion (sexual & societal). Like an Indie movie which can’t decide which way to go…with all the melodramatic elements that you would unlikely see in real life. LH, like all Lynch, is good but not my favorite. Bill Pullman…I love him. And I liked when he had longish hair in Spaceballs.
pleeze…Joe and Jeff make peace, not war. Hug it out.
Adore and worship Lynch (one of my favorite interview subjects btw) but I find WAH over the top gruesome even for Lynch.
Yes, DEXTER glorifies serial killers. Part of the over hyping of the show is due to the fact that people want to show how hip and dark they are. We’ve become a nation that deifies thugs gangsters serial killers and it’s quite revealing the contempt we hold for each other. Just watch tv for a night. Pure hatred.
All under a family values president too.
Fine with me, Mystery Girl. Did you sleep well? Pleasant dreams? I did.
What’s said on the blog stays on the blog. Oh shit, it does, doesn’t it? Just to be safe, I’m going to hide the cutlery around here. The frying pans, too.
C, I know you’ve similar comments about The Sopranos. How much of the show have you actually watched? I don’t think it really glamorizes the lifestyle or characters, except to the people who are dumb enough to want to emulate it. Tony becomes less and less human and sympathetic as the series goes on. It’s kind of like Godfather 2 stretched out over many seasons. You could even cal it an indictment of the American dream, as cliche as that sounds.
We watched the entire series over the course of about six months (never really saw it when it was on, no HBO) and the cumulative effect is depressing. You would not want to live like these people.
But to depict actual psycohpathic sex-murderers are somehow heroic (though notice that this angle is always downplayed; in real life, Hannibal Lecter would probably be a rapist and/or necrophiliac, but we can’t have that and still admire him) really seems to be crossing some line for me. Me! Maybe I’m just getting old, but it’s no fun being a psycho in a psycho society. What was the joker’s line? “I’m just ahead of the curve.” But what happens when everyone else catches up?
Actually, I just posted the song lyrics because… well, isn’t that what people do on this blog from time to time? Randomly post song lyrics? Er… you guys did recgonize what song it was, right?
And besides: I think that theme from Cradle 2 the Grave should have earned Eminem another Oscar. But only if he would have actually sung it himself during the Oscarcast. Somehow, I don’t think Celine Dion could pull it off.
Of course, I also felt that way about the theme to Blue Collar.
Oh, and Leahnz: Sorry, no offense intended.
“C, I know you’ve similar comments about The Sopranos. How much of the show have you actually watched?”
A lot. Plus, I learned what I need to know about the Sopranos from THE TAO OF BADA BING and LEADERSHIP SOPRANOS STYLE: HOW TO BECOME A MORE EFFECTIVE BOSS and TONY SOPRANO ON MANAGEMENT: LEADERSHIP LESSONS INSPIRED BY AMERICA’S FAVORITE MOBSTER…all available at Amazon.com.
I await the DEXTER: RULEZ FOR COOL SERIAL KILLERS tome anyday now…
Well, if you want to, you can interpret Guernica to mean “look at how cool it looks when people get bombed”. The artist can’t be (totally) responsible for dumb and/or greedy people misunderstanding his or her work. Blame the marketing weasels at HBO who’ve licensed the names out to all those side projects, not David Chase.
I know that Chase himself was sickened by folks turning Tony into a hero, but the fact is, if you listen to how real mafia guys talk, the racism would make you vomit, a detail barely touched upon in the show. THE SOPRANOS is brilliantly done, but my point about our nation becoming a lover of thugs and bullies remains. Bada bing!
I have a feeling it always has been.
I’d agree with Jeff on that. Every generation must bemoan the state of the country and how it’s going into the crapper, but I don’t think there’s any real difference. Witness the great outlaws of Western times. We can still remember the names of a lot of those thugs nd bad guys even today. And back then people looked up to them, sheltered them, and bought books about them.
Jesse James was a hero to many.
I wasn’t aware of those books. That’s pathetic.
I think for some unintelligent people, they do idolize thugs for real in their day to day lives…they often end up banged up in the Big House for petty crime, battery or tax evasion since being a smart crook is harder than it looks at TV makes it look so easy.
Most people want to admire the successful alpha male and sometimes that alpha male is a thug! Mr DArcy (Pride & Prej; 1995 BBC not the crap film) is an alpha male and a legal thug; Neil McAuley (Heat) is an alpha male living outside the law. I love them both equally, even though I can see the distinction.
But for some shows, the thuggery gets more depraved and we are getting into serial killers and alpha males who just beat on people.
Mr Swayze is a total alpha male fighting 40-y-old drunk adolescents and small corruption in Road House, but he still behaves with thug and illegal methods.
So it’s hard to draw the line between glorification of alpha males…I think I’d go as far as worshipping Neil McAuley but no further (sorry Frank Booth…you’re a bit too illegal), but yeah Tony Soprano is vile and Dexter…I’d really worry if anyone thought he was hip unless they’re just trying to piss off their parents.
I’ve heard how real mafiosos and other real gangsters talk…and terrorists (I used to do “negotiation” with them) and yes they have major hate issues with anyone different from themselves. I think it is part of their isolation thing where they think they can’t trust anyone…but relatives. A big mistake since your relatives would sell you out faster than a lifelong friend. Look at Fredo. He broke my heart too.
Awww, come on. At least I’m honest, unlike that weasel Beaumont (oops, here we go again with the Jeffrey-bashing.) Admit it, you like bad boys.
We all get a little crazy on Saturday nights. A little ride, a little beer, a little lipstick…
And don’t forget, Neil McAuley killed in cold blood. It was after that clown Waingro (now there’s your classic real-life criminal type) screwed things up, but still.
Lota, are you saying that DeNiro’s character in Heat is a better guy than Swayze in Road House?
No–I am not saying that…don’t get your perm in a dent. McAuley appears just more upmarket (and very hot), but they both revert to thug methods when the chips are down due to the “job” they chose. They are both undeniably admirable for their leadership qualities and their ability to think on their feet.
I like Swayze in Road House, obviously he’s the nice guy, the philosopher in the pig pen, but he still resorts to plenty of extrajudicial methods to “win” and avenge. Which eventually I’d have to admit leaves a bad taste for what they do.
Plus, Swayze has bigger hair.
The difference Lota, is that McAuley causes the events that lead to his thug actions, whereas if people would not try to take on Swayze’s mullet, everyone would get along just fine.
Huge difference.
Well what Neil McAuley did Frank might be justified given his circumstances. And yes psycho Waingro ruined everything since there was to be no killing.
He did try to take his lady away to New Zealand, if only he left the dispatch of Waingro to someone else.
Frank if you hadn’t cut the dude’s ear off I could have maybe worshipped you more. I might like Bad but not torture.
I suppose I like bad guys who aren’t too morally bad.
Oh, great. A chance to shamelessly plug my book — still available on Amazon.com — by lifting a passage and casually dropping it into a posting:
In the end, of course, crime can
Well we can’t compare the requirements for white collar to blue collar jobs directly, so neither can we compare McAuley and Dalton.
McAuley did time in Folsom prison and he ‘wasn’t going back’ again. He had skills in gems and metals and he was doing his heists, he just didn’t get the best personnel. He didn;t want or enjoy violence but due to the nature of his vocation, it was a hazard.
Compared to Shiherlis(sp?) Val Kilmer’s part, where he was ready to fight, gambled, cheated on his wife. I didn’t like him! đ
Dalton…he chose to be in a directly violent job. He had a frickin degree in Philisophy–he could have applied for lots of other jobs having a degree. Christ most of the people in Road House you’d wonder if they could read the Wonder bread label, they were that dumb. And he chooses to go to the DOuble Deuce because it was a challenge!
Neil McAuley 4-ever
Dalton’s hair 4-ever
Well, fair enough.
So let me get this straight — you were a hostage negotiator?
I don’t think the market for people with degrees in Philosophy is nearly that vibrant. Becoming a bouncer is probably a pretty good place for Dalton.
An old friend of mine has a philosophy degree. Last I heard, he was making cabinets.
No, no hostages Frank.
I did conflict resolution at first as a volunteer. I had to talk to terrorists in prisons in Europe. Some were gangsters additionally, most were political. Some did some pretty heinous things but the important thing is to try to resolve/defuse their intensity and get them involved in other things after they did their Time; some were wrongfully convicted but were convicted due to their power over other people. They liked me. Very smart, very dangerous people. If they got rerouted to something more useful which many did, they were great leaders.
Gangsters like me for some reason. I did it with gangsters too in the US.
But was just my side job since I was good at talking to crooks/thugs. I should work for talent agents.
I talk to you Frank don’t I?
Making cabinets is a good job Frank. I love furniture.
I mean what do you do aside from drinking PBR and breathing gas and keeping a chanteuse as a sex hostage?
You like bad guys, and bad guys like you. But I had already figured that out.
As much — or as little — as I can get away with.
We are probably becoming annoyingly off-topic, if we haven’t already.
lumberton_2000@yahoo.com
I might send you some self-help literature if you are still stuck in the warm happy place that is Lumberton, Frank.
Which brings me back to the topic of the last half of the thread.
I guess the reason why I couldn’t maybe be brought to a Happy Place in Lost Highway (unlike Blue Velvet)is that essentially you have to buy into the schizophrenia–the metamorph into another character–
it’s either mental illness (schizophrenia)
or catalyzed by the devil
especially from how the clothes and the changes came about later with Arquette (you’ll never have me)
so I have to accept viewing the ‘dreamlife’ through a schizoid murderer’s viewpoint or that it is entirely supernatural via the devil and a faustian body swap on death row.
I find it hard to do either. good movie but hard to accept…and very Indie for Lynch. Mulholland Dr was the more mature dual identity.
whereas Blue velvet..it is It’s a Wonderful Life in an inverted way. It’s like George Bailey was never born and the people just LOOKED on the outside like there were in the normal cheerful Bedford Falls before it became Pottersville. It’s more a complete story where you get the beginning and the end and the characters are all very fallible with no ability anymore to shield what they inevitably are.
I mean if you really look closely at the scenes if George had never been born…well they are Lynchian. complete with eerie muzak. Well since Capra was first, Lynch is being a Capra-esque downer on PBR in Blue Velvet.
Whew PBR is poison. Makes people do bad things. I did take picture of a PBR can with my mobile device camera and it usually is my screensaver.
a final thought from Road House:
Steve: Being called a c*cks*ck*r isn’t personal?
Dalton: No. It’s two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response.
Steve: What if somebody calls my mama a whore?
Dalton: Is she?
Well, it was fun while it lasted.
Last night we said a great many things…we’ll always have the BYOB Sloooooow thread.
I know David doesn’t want to hear this — but I can remember a time not so long ago when there were more, and more frequent, postings on this blog.
people get busy Joe…and the only time I post is when I am at my busiest and have a “block” i.e. the last thing i should be doing is posting on a blog. Like now. and one hour from now.
Also, a few people told me they didn’t have time to wade through multi-capped idiocy of a few weeks back. It has died down and the peeps may roll back.
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