My 10 Favourite Things About Michael Lehmann's Heathers

It has been a long time since I have posted one of "My Favourite Things" posts (nearly an entire year ago), so now is a good time to bring said recurring feature back into the fold - and what better film, than the cultish stylings of Heathers.  For the uninitiated, Heathers is the story of a cliquish trio of elitist high school juniors, all named Heather, and their more sensitive friend, Veronica, who teams up with bad boy new student, J.D., to save the school from the evil that were the Heathers.  It was the breakthrough film for both Winona Ryder and Christian Slater - and Shannon Doherty as well.  I remember, when I first saw the film, back in March of 1989, I thought it to be great fun - and a crush on Winona Ryder started as well.  I used to own the film on VHS (remember those) and watched it many a time throughout the early 1990's.

I am not sure whatever happened to that VHS copy (got lost during one of the many moves I went through throughout my twenties, I am sure) but apparently, I ended up forgetting all about the film, and for one reason or another, I had not seen the it in probably eighteen years or so.  That is, until just last month when I saw it on Netflix Instant, and could not resist hitting play.  After watching it, at the age of 45 - as opposed to 21, when I first saw the thing - I found that I was still a fan.  Perhaps now for more nostalgic reasons as well as just plain and simple entertainment.  Easily one of the best films of 1988 - the year it first opened, not going wider until early 1989 - the film manages to hold up ratehr well.  With all this said, let us take a look at my ten favourite things about the film - numbered from 1 to 10, but listed in no particular order really.  Oh, and as always, there be spoilers ahead, so if that is something that will bother you, consider ye self warned.

1) The Film's Own Unique Language - Granted, the quirky inclusive language of the world of Heathers, a language that was only spoken outside of the film as a way to copy the characters, not as the way anyone really talked, was probably just as stupid sounding to the generation before us, as Diablo Cody's ridiculous sounding teen-speak dialogue from Juno, was to me, and the rest of my Gen X compatriots, but that doesn't mean it wasn't great fun to hear.  From "Did you have a brain tumour for breakfast" to "J.D.'s "Colour me impressed" to Heather Chandler's sarcastic quips "Transfer to Washington. Transfer to Jefferson. No one at Westerberg is going to let you play their reindeer games"and "You were nothing before you met me. You were playing Barbies with Betty Finn. You were a Bluebird. You were a Brownie. You were a Girl Scout Cookie." to the most fun, and most famous lines, "What's your damage, Heather?" and "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw."  No one really ever spoke that way, but that is part of the fun that is the artificiality of cinema - the most beautiful fraud in the world, if you will.

2) Whatever Will Be...Redux - Director Michael Lehmann tried to get Doris Day's original version of Que Sera Sera, but the actress/singer would not allow something of her's to be used in an R-rated film.  So, Lehmann replaced her version with not one, but two other covers.  The film's opening credits, played over a rather vicious game of croquet, hand us a melodic version by Syd Straw, why we get Sly and the Family Stone's cover over the closing credits.  We also get the song Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It), written and performed by the fictional band, Big Fun (actually record producer Don Dixon and friends), but it is Que Sera Sera that makes the soundtrack what it is.

3) An Ode to Stanley Kubrick - Originally, screenwriter Daniel Waters had wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct his film.  Originally it was also supposed to be a three hour long movie spectacle, but more on that a little further down the page.  Director Lehmann did a fine job though, and even did manage to make it look like a Kubrick film - or at least like a Kubrickesque film.  Whether this was on purpose or not, who knows, but the film definitely has qualities of both Kubrick, and to some extent, Godard as well, and even though Waters' desired three hour script was never filmed, he did get to have the certain look he did desire.

4) Winona Ryder, Once Upon a Time - There was a time in my film watching life, basically the time running from Heathers to Francis Coppola's Dracula, four years later, that I thought Winona Ryder was the be all and end all of what hot celebs were supposed to be - smart, talented and sexy.  And in interviews, I found out we liked a lot of the same books and movies and music.  This early crush, starting when she was seventeen and I was twenty-one (which is weird, because my celebrity tastes have usually run toward slightly older women), ended when I realized that her acting really was not all that up to snuff.  Sure, she was still attractive and intelligent, but after a slate of cinematic mediocrity, the potential talent had seemingly died off, and therefore, so did the crush.  Still though, after seeing her surprisingly great turn in 2010's Black Swan, not to mention her portrayal of Spock's Earthly mom in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot, maybe I was wrong all these years. Whatever the case, when Heathers came out, as well as things like Mermaids and 1969 and Edward Scissorhands and Night on Earth and the aforementioned Dracula, she was the so-called thing.

5) Regular or BQ?  BQ! - I had never had corn nuts before Heathers came out, but afterward, they were my favourite new snack.  Yeah, maybe this shows how susceptible I am to movie marketing (to quote Carrie Fisher, "I don't want my life to imitate art, I want it to be art") but I did enjoy them.  Gotta say, I haven't had a corn nut in probably a decade plus now, but after writing this, I will probably go out and get some tonight.  Of course, hopefully my experience later tonight won't be like the one poor Heather Chandler had after eating hers.  Of course she had help from J.D.'s liquid drainer concoction, in her murder-cum-suicide.  Oh the humanity.

6) Westerburg High and Archie Comics - One thing I always love in movies is references to other films, or other pop culture stuff.  It makes the film seem more like it is part of something bigger, more all-consuming.  References here include everything from the name of the high school being Westerburg High (one of Winona's favourite bands at the time was the Paul Westerburg-led Replacements) to the cops being named Milner and McCord (after Martin Milner and Kent McCord of Adam-12 fame) to friends Veronica Sawyer and Betty Finn being named after Archie's two dreamgirls in Archie Comics.

7) Christian Slater - You're Not a Rebel, You're a Psycho - Bard Pitt had originally tried out for the role of psycho killer J.D., but he was turned away for being too "nice" to play the part.  I wonder if those who turned Pitt away, ever caught his 1993 film Kalifornia?  Oh well, I digress.  Christian Slater got the role, and to this day, it is probably his best performance - or at least his most fun looking.  Usually thought of as kind of a joke around my house (I have liked him a few other times as well), Slater actually does a bang-up job with his fucked-up teenage rebel-cum-psycho.  A fucked-up teenage rebel-cum-psycho that the actor fashioned after Jack Nicholson.

8) Cool Guys Like You Out of My Life - When the end finally comes, and J.D. is blown to bits by his own bomb, Veronica is left a charred, smouldering mess in front of the school - but it is here that she makes her final stand, and decides to take back the school from the inherent poison that is the Heathers.  And even Martha Dunnstock, nee Dumptruck, gets to smile.  But one still must ask oneself, is this really the ending Daniel Waters wanted?  We are getting to that.  Be patient for fuck's sake.  First we must move on to some rather sad news.

9) When Life Imitates Art - Now this particular item is not necessarily something I like, but it is still something quite intriguing, and needs to be mentioned.  Two stars of the movie died at an early age: Jeremy Applegate (Peter Dawson, whose character prays he will never commit suicide) committed suicide with a shotgun on March 23, 2000, and Kim Walker (Heather Chandler, who had the line "Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?") died of a brain tumor on March 6, 2001.  Sad but true facts of life after Westerburg High.

10) Daniel Waters Had a Dream - As I spoke of earlier, screenwriter Dan Waters had originally planned a three hour movie, and with Stanley Kubrick at the helm.  The original screenplay had a different ending too.  Veronica kills J.D. by shooting him, and then straps the bomb to herself, blowing up as J.D. does in the filmed ending - leaving a suicide note in her locker.  The movie then closes with a creepy (one would assume) prom sequence set in Heaven - J.D. says earlier in the film, that the only place everyone will truly get along is in Heaven.  The prom begins with students dancing within their appropriate cliques, then switching partners in odd pairings, like heads dancing with Heathers and one of the murdered jocks getting his prom picture taken with a tipped cow.  The punch being served at the prom is the drain cleaner used in the Heather Chandler's murder scene, and Martha Dunnstock is singing onstage as the entertainment for the evening. This was what Waters had wanted for his film, but the studio thought it was too dark for the target teenage crowd and opted for a lighter ending.  Oh the humanity.

Well, that's it for my look at Heathers - a film from my distant past that has been reborn upon recent re-viewing.  Hopefully - well I definitely plan on it - there won't be such a long gap between this and my next "My Favourite Things" post, as there was between the last two. In fact, there may be another one coming up just next month - and it may or may not have a little something to do with ectoplasmic slime, Ray Parker, Jr. and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  So, who ya gonna call?  See ya, as the kids are saying these days, in the funny papers.

My Ten Favourite Things About Breathless (No, Not That One, the Other One, the Kinda Sleazy One from the 1980's)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, or À Bout de Souffle if you will (damn dirty translators), is one of the finest achievements of cinema in the whole damn history of cinema - and yes, the film, and its director, along with his Nouvelle Vague compatriots and their earliest films, pretty much changed the way cinema is made and seen lo these past fifty years or so.  Real important stuff indeed.  I personally rank the groundbreaking 1960 film in my twenty favourite films of all time, and place it as one of the greatest French films second only to Renoir's Rules of the Game.  So yes, Godard's Breathless is both an important film and great film, and a personal favourite of mine.  But alas, this particular subject has been kind of talked to death by now (including from yours truly) so why add to the muddle.  No siree!  Not gonna do it.

We are here today to talk about that other Breathless.  You know, the oft-maligned (and sometimes quite viciously) American remake version of 1983.  Yeah, that one.  Well guess what?  I like the damn thing.  I went many years refusing to see the movie - mainly due to my love of Godard's original masterpiece - but then, after hearing so much praise from one of my favourite current filmmakers (see number one below), I finally gave in and watched the thing up on the big screen at my cinema.  Now I am not about to say it is anywhere near as good as Godard's film, nor would I ever place it in my own top 100, let alone top twenty (though if I were to stretch my favourites list to 200, who knows what strange and unusual things might occur) but damn if it isn't entertaining as hell.  With that exclamation made, let us move on to exactly why I find it so damn entertaining - in seven and a half reasons or less.

1) Quentin Tarantino and His (Questionable) Taste in Film - Usually included in the same breath (yeah, that was a purposeful pun) as films like Taxi Driver, Rio Bravo and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, QT has been pretty consistent in his adoration for Jim McBride's quite unnecessary but quite fun remake.  A die-hard cinephile, who puts every once of his vast film knowledge into every moment of cinematic homage he puts on screen, how could I say no to his (imagined?) pleading for me to watch the damn film already.  Now granted, Tarantino does have a penchant for such low brow fare as women in prison movies and 1970's kung-fu films, so perhaps one should take a recommendation from the auteur with a proverbial grain of salt.  Then again, the other three aforementioned favourite films are all favourites of mine, so what the hell, I said to myself, I am going to watch this damn thing.  And watch it I did - projected up on the big screen at my cinema.  The rest, as they say (whomever they may be) is history.

2) Richard Gere's Final Shot - Now normally, considering it is the, duh...final shot of the film, I would place this as the last "thing" to like about a film, but since this one is so ridiculously great - ie, silly as all fuck - it needed to be talked about before we get to the end ourselves.  Breaking the fourth wall in a way (just like little Jean Seberg does at the end of the 1960 original, though to a less devastatingly tragic, more unbelievably comi-tragic way here) Gere looks right into the camera like some deranged, hipster clad Mr. Roper (those in the know get that reference) and yells Breathless.  Gotta admit, pretty fun stuff indeed.  Fun stuff that only a guy like Gere, at a time like 1983 (having just given such over-the-top performances as he had in American Gigolo and An Officer and a Gentlemen the prior couple of years) could have pulled off as well as he did.  He did pull it off, right?  Anyway, I digress.

3) How the Film Resembles an Homage Made by a Shiny Guy Named Vince Who Hangs Out at Strip Clubs at Two O'clock on a Tuesday Afternoon - Now I am not saying director Jim McBride is actually a shiny guy named Vince who hangs out at strip clubs at two in the afternoon (though he may be, who knows), but let's face it, this film does look like it was made by such a guy.  That creepy guy drinking scotch and sodas, pinky ring extended so all can see, while getting a lap dance from somewhat bruised, drugged-out woman who goes by the name of Brandi but whose real name is Tina, and who says she is just doing "this" so she can feed her two year old son Tyler, who stays with his chain-smoking grandma while Tina/Brandi is hook...er, I mean stripping, but who in reality is actually doing "this" so she can feed her meth habit and pay for all the beers consumed by her boyfriend Gill, who beats her on a regular basis, but whom she cannot leave because she "loves" him....okay, perhaps this is dragging on too long, and maybe this really has nothing whatsoever to do with the film, and in essence is merely just a space filler because I could not come up with enough things I liked about Breathless to make up a respectably long enough post.  But yeah, this is the kind of guy one would expect to have made this ridiculous but quite entertaining little film.

4) How Film Snobs Look Down Upon the Whole Thing - You know what grinds my gears?  All those so-called film snobs, those who look down on any film that is not a pseudo-serious art film by Antonioni or Bergman (two directors I personally love, so this is not meant as a dig on them so much as on the aforementioned film snobs).  All those snooty bastards genuflect to anything and everything from someone like Tarkovsky or Fellini (again, two filmmakers I like) but toss aside most of the oeuvre of a Nick Ray or Sam Fuller (two more filmmakers I quite like) because they may not take themselves seriously enough.  All those narrow-minded cinephiles who cannot get past Citizen Kane being the greatest film of all-time (and once again, this is a film that I truly love and adore, but a film that I can see past to see other, somewhat non-canonical works to fill a best of list with).  Yeah, I hate 'em.  Now me on the other hand, I tend to lean toward the so-called film geek side of things.  That group that includes people like Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich and Quentin "There is That Name Again" Tarantino.  Ones that can appreciate the finer things in cinema (the Bergman's, the Fellini's, the Antonioni's) while also taking great pleasure in the, for lack of a better term, seedier side of cinema (that would be your Polanski's, your Powell, Pressburger's, your, and here is the zinger, your Jean-Luc Godard's).  These aforementioned film snobs are the ones who will not even mention this film when talking about cinema other than to degrade it for their own wicked, self-serving purposes.  This was me for a while, but then, thanks to that Tarantino fella, I have now seen the goddamn light.  Hallelujah!

5) Sometimes It is All About the Music Baby - Now one would think, with me being born in 1967 and ostensibly growing up in what was the mid seventies and into the early eighties, my musical tastes would run somewhere in either the glam rock, disco, punk or new wave realms - and yes, to varying degrees, I do like most of those genres and their ilk - but thanks to my Elvis fanatic mom, my tastes go back a bit further than that.  My early introduction to the likes of Del Shannon and Frankie Lyman and Sam Cooke, and such long lost groups as the Diamonds and The Fleetwoods and The Crests, as well as Presley and Jerry-Lee and Bill Haley and the Comets, kinda makes me quite predisposed to the soundtrack that McBride puts together for this film.  Now granted, there is more modern music in here - Brian Eno, Phillip Glass, X, even a Dexy's Midnight Runners song can be heard at one point - but Gere's bad boy Jesse and his obvious love for the music of Jerry Lee Lewis (not to mention his wardrobe, which we will get to in a bit) send the feel of this film right back to those days that are so often called the days of old time rock and roll.

6) Gere Perfectly Cast as a Last Days of Disco era Belmondo - Perhaps Gere's coolness as an actor is not the same kind of coolness shown by Belmondo in his younger days (think Richard Widmark cool versus Humphrey Bogart cool) but there is no denying, as I more than alluded to way back at number two, that Gere in this time and this place - the Looking For Mr. Goodbar/American Gigolo Gere, not the Pretty Woman era Gere, though when you really look at it, he was pretty sleazy there as well - is perfectly cast to play cad cop killer Jesse Lujack.  And those eyes are so dreamy too.

7) Valérie Kaprisky, From Porn to Breathless, and then Into Obscurity - Let's face it, French actress Valérie Kaprisky, having starred in a few soft-core films in the early eighties (think French Skinemax), was not hired here for her great thespianic endowments.  Even Gere said he told McBride to cast her because she looked like someone who could make love to - a thing that was reputedly going on during the time of filming, and a thing the actress said was the most thrilling thing about filming her scenes ("It was half real" she said) though Kaprsiky has since denied such stories.  No siree, even though she would garbner a César nomination the year after Breathless (for La femme publique), Ms. Kaprisky was definitely hired for a different set of endowments than acting.

8) To Paraphrase a Famous Saying by Alfred Hitchcock and Twist it Around so it Sounds Like it Was Coming from Edith Head, Wardrobe Wardrobe Wardrobe - I told you I would get around to talking about the clothes in this film.  Gere's bad boy, like Belmondo's own bad boy, is dressed like someone on the edge of society.  In Belmondo's case it is a lot less noticeable due to men still having a rather sophisticated style in 1960, but in 1983 L.A., after the advent of the hippies and hipsters and punk and glam rockers, Gere's wardrobe shows how his character is not someone that you would trust to walk your dog...or your girl.  In fact he resembles what one would imagine Charlie Sheen to look like when he goes out on one of his strip club nights.  Hey, lookie there, we came back around to the stripper motif once again.

9) On Meeting Kit Carson, the Guy Who Wrote the Damn Thing - I suppose talking about meeting screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson is not really a "thing to like" about the movie -and let's be honest, his actual screenplay really is not either - but it was fun to have the man who gave Gere his howl, as a guest of our cinema.  For those of you who are unaware (and really, why aren't you paying better attention to my life dammit), my lovely wife and I run a three screen arthouse cinema in Harrisburg Pa.  Last year, during our capital city's film festival, we hosted a screening of Jim McBride's 1967 film David Holzman's Diary.  The film starred the aforementioned Kit Carson, so somehow (he is such a big star after all) we managed to get him to come and do a Q&A after the film.  He seemed like a pretty fun guy while he was here - and he even signed the leg cast of one of our cinema employees.  Carson would later go on to write the screenplay for the modern classic Paris, Texas, as well as for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.  His screenplay for Breathless?  Certainly not great, but once again, a damn entertaining film.

10) Behold the Sentinel of the Spaceways, Norrin Radd, the Spectacular Silver Surfer - Being a comic book nerd from long ago, it should not surprise me that one of my favourite things about this particular film is Gere's character's obsession with that classic Sentinel of the Spaceways, the former herald of the Mighty World Devourer Galactus, and friend and ally to The Fantastic Four and belated founding member of the non-group super hero team The Defenders.  Yeah, I'm a nerd.  What's it to ya?  But I digress once again.  One of my favourite things about this version of Breathless, is how Gere's bad boy identifies with the loner Marvel super hero Silver Surfer.  This also brings us all the way back around to Quentin Tarantino, as we see Jesse's obsession with the Surfer copied in Reservoir Dogs, with a strategically placed Surfer poster in Freddy's (Tim Roth's Mr. Orange) apartment.  See, everything goes back to QT (and he likes strip clubs too), which is why you should listen to the man and watch this damn film.  So there.  Breathless!!

The Strange Decadent Beauty of The Makioka Sisters & the Elegant Old World Way the Japanese Do Melodrama

The natural beauty of the blossoming rain-dabbled cherry blossoms.  The old world elegance of brightly coloured and delicately designed kimonos.  The deep-hued wooden interiors of the Osaka homes.  The cheaply lit bars and opulent restaurants.  The eponymous snow-capped peaks in the not so far off distance.  The knowing, cunning look of each of the four titled sisters as they slowly and intricately weave their way through the rapidly changing world around them.  The innocent yet passionate stares of one husband for his sister-in-law and the unsurprised, revealing look of the sister-in-law as she takes in these obvious glances.  The traditions and rituals of arranged marriages.  The hissing finality of the train whistles.  These are the images, the sounds, the moods and transactions of Kon Ichikawa's 1983 masterpiece The Makioka Sisters.

Ichikawa's film, the third and by far most famous adaptation of the 1948 novel, is a perfect example of a mood piece.  With stares and words that mean more than what meets the eyes and ears, every nuance, every backward glance, every sideways motion give way to a multitude of emotional theories.  And though the film is of course reminiscent of such classic Japanese filmmakers as Ozu and Naruse, it is the 1950's melodrama that comes to mind more oft than not while watching this gorgeous motion picture.  With allusions to Sirk's Written on the Wind and Quine's Strangers When We Meet (on purpose or not - and it is more likely the latter) Ichikawa breathes vibrant life into his WWII set period piece. But then this is not a movie about the war (mentions of the tragedies of such are done in only peripheral moments) but about family and duty and tradition.  A film rife for the melodramatic touch it gets.

The Makioka Sisters is the story of four sisters from a once prominent Osaka family who, thanks to the great depression, have now fallen on harder times.  Now granted, these harder times, though forcing them to sell the family business, are still times of prominence when compared to the abject poverty that hit Japan in the 1930's and became even worse after the war.  We still see a family of ways and means but a family that does not know how to cope with being what they have become.  But still, Ichikawa, a director who showed the horrors of this war torn era in The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain, never delves into the squalor that the youngest sister subjects herself too in order to be free of the restrictive past.  Perhaps in the day and age of 1980's Japan, when the boom of their economy was hitting astronomical levels, Ichikawa was afraid audiences would not take to being reminded of their sometimes ugly past.  Instead, the director, even with the inherent sadness, gives us just the beauty of the past.

As far as the social structure of the family goes, it is headed by the eldest sister and her husband (the husbands in the story are what one would call adoptive husbands as they came from lower stations in life and took their wives' family name) who do their best to keep their once good name out of the muck.  She is run afoul by the third sister's refusal to marry any of the train of prospective husbands brought in front of her and the youngest sister's wild ways (smoking, adopting western style of dress, working for a living, sleeping around), as well as the second sister's attempt at usurping control of the family (not for any nefarious soap opera reasons, but for what she thinks is the good of her sisters).  The story, with all of its traditions and rituals, plays out like an Ozu film, though without Ozu's sense of subtle style, but there is more than just this going on here.

As I said before, and in what is essentially the whole point of this piece, all of this, even in the traditional, melodic feel of old world Japan and the classic Japanese cinema of Ozu and Mizoguchi, is pure 1950's Sirkian melodrama.  The way Ichikawa lights his film, the movement of his camera, the natural beauty juxtaposed with the inner turmoil of his characters is all Sirk.  Now I am not saying Ichikawa's film was necessarily influenced by films such as Written on the Wind or A Time To Live and a Time to Die, or for that matter the works of Nick Ray or Richard Quine or even Satyajit Ray, which also bear resemblance here (Ichikawa, who started as an animator, considered himself a cartoonist at heart and Chaplin and Disney were his biggest influences) but the feel of the film still conjures up memories of this bold, oft-maligned cinema of the past.  

Then again, much of this also conjures up the cinema of the mostly forgotten fellow Japanese director Keisuke Kinoshita and his groundbreaking work on such films as The Ballad of Narayama and The River Fuefuki.  Of course with Kinoshita being the closest thing classic Japanese cinema has to a Douglas Sirk, perhaps this is all mere happenstance.  Whatever the case, The Makioka Sisters is a true masterpiece of cinema and deserves to be recognized as such.  Its recent restoration (it made a repertory round last Summer) and release as part of the ever growing Criterion Collection (a beautiful transfer indeed) will hopefully make this happen.

David Cronenberg and His Rather Disgusting Cinematic Art and Psychosis of Bodily Mutilation and Transmogrification

The following is my contribution to The LAMBs in the Director's Chair #19: David Cronenberg.  And as a warning, there are probably some spoilers ahead, so if that is a concern of yours, ye have been warned.

He made people's heads explode in Scanners.  He turned James Woods into a living breathing VCR in Videodrome by putting the most vaginal of openings in his belly.  He shoved bio-mechanical USB cords into slimy, fleshy spinal holes of his gamers in eXistenZ.  He put parasitic venereal diseases into promiscuous young women in Shivers.  He gave erotic pleasure to mutilated auto accident victims in Crash.  He gave a woman an oozing phallic underarm stinger in Rabid.  He made emotional states dictate how your body would deform in The Brood.  He had a demented, drug-fueled Jeremy Irons go to town on women with the most medieval of gynecological contraptions in Dead Ringers.   He gave grotesque physical life to the warped creatures in William Burroughs' head in his adaptation of Naked Lunch.  He transformed Jeff Goldblum into a freakin' fly for crying out loud - a filthy, disgusting, pus-covered freakin' fly. 

Now I have a rather strong stomach and can take pretty much anything in stride, but let's face it, David Cronenberg isn't the kind of director you go see with lots of snacks in hand.   The images that are brought to mind from the above-mentioned cinematic moments are merely the tip of the proverbial (and quite repugnant) iceberg of what can be called Cronenbergian cinema.  What I am trying to say is that the career of Cronenberg, one-time master of the genre known as body horror (yes, every genre has a name), has been strewn with the most repulsive, oft-times horrific images of body mutilation ever put on film.  Other directors have tried their respective hands at the genre (Lynch with Eraserhead, Carpenter with his remake of The Thing, del Toro with Cronos) but it is Cronenberg who has made a lifetime commitment out of the whole grotesque affair.   It is Cronenberg that has come to nearly perfect a certain type of Grand Guignol filmmaking style that at once titillates and repulses.   Like his characters in Crash, an erotic turn-on in the midst of death and destruction and mangled human flesh.  Guns and flesh becoming one in revolting nightmarish style.  Pulsating, talking typewriters that resembles melting assholes.  Goldblum's transmogrifying insectoid vomiting up his own food.  Nauseating, offensive, turns-one's-stomach kind of stuff.

Now I am not saying any of this as a negative critical reaction to the filmmaker and his work - his films feature repugnant imagery and that is just what they are meant to do.  Cronenberg's oeuvre has ranged from the awful to the spectacular (leaning perhaps more toward the latter than the former) but it has always been the outrageous ick factor (for better and for worse) that has given the director his auteurial signature.   As of late though, this ick factor has gone by the wayside, to be replaced with a more strictly psychological bent.  Still a horror-based psychological bent when all is said and done (or at least a horror-based undercurrent) but still a more thinking than seeing kind of horror.  Granted, even Cronenberg's earlier, more pure horror (or more precisely, 'body horror') films were of course laced with a certain type of demented psychology, but as the man has grown as a director, his films too have grown - grown into multi-headed beasts - and Cronenberg has grown into a more mature, and more multi-faceted filmmaker.

This transformation came not abruptly, but over a matter of time and a matter of films.  Beginning with Dead Ringers in 1988 and working through Naked Lunch in 1991, Crash in 1996, and eXistenZ in 1999, his work would eventually lead to films like Spider in 2002, A History of Violence in 2005, Eastern Promises in 2007 and to his latest work, A Dangerous Method coming to US theaters later this year.  The director's more recent works look more at the mind than the body (although the body is still a large part of his oeuvre, and shows in these films) and delve into subjects of hallucinations, dreams and the ideas of sex and violence on humanity.  Still though, even as Cronenberg transforms his cinema from the outside to the inside, he still manages to creep his audience out - he has now just invented new ways to do so.  But then Cronenberg has always been inside our heads, just as his imagery has come out of his own - and sometimes his own life as well.  In his 1992 book Cronenberg on Cronenberg, the director revealed that The Brood was inspired by events that occurred during the unraveling of his first marriage, which caused both Cronenberg and his daughter Cassandra a great deal of turmoil. The character of Nola Carveth, mother of the brood, is based on Cassandra's mother. Cronenberg said that he found the shooting of the climactic scene, in which Nola was strangled by her husband, to be "very satisfying".  Now how's that for some inner turmoil bubbling to the surface?

The Taste of Blue Velvet

I must admit to committing a rather peculiar act the other day.  You see, besides being a (world famous!?) film critic and a (still relatively novice) film historian, I also run, along with my lovely wife, a small arthouse cinema in my hometown of Harrisburg PA.  In connection with our local film festival, we play a few midnight movies each and every Memorial Day weekend.  This year, one of the films was David Lynch's brilliantly subversive Blue Velvet.  I have never seen BV on the big screen (my first viewing was on VHS way back in 1987) and here it was right in front of me - and on 35mm to boot!

Now every time I would venture back to the projection room (we had the print in our grubby little possession for three days) I would run my hands over the film.  Now this is not the peculiar part of my story.  Really, it's not.  I love the feel of celluloid - always have - but when I would touch, nay, when I would rub, nay again, when I would caress that print of Blue Velvet, it took on a somewhat more, shall we say, erotic nature!?  Perhaps I was channeling Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper passed away sometime during this whole scenario) or maybe I was subconsciously dreaming of Dorothy Vallens - who knows.  All I knew was, something had possessed me.  But again, this is not the peculiar part - or at least it is not the most peculiar part.  Just wait.

 You see, at some point, don't ask me when, I came to the conclusion that caressing was just not enough.  I wanted more.  I needed more!  I had to have more!!  So, of course, I took the next logical step.  I licked that 35mm print of Blue Velvet.  You read that right - I licked it.  It was just a tiny lick mind you, but a lick nonetheless.  My wife once contemplated licking a Picasso at the Guggenheim in NY, but the beefy, burly guards had scared her off.  Alas, there were no beefy, burly guards back in that projection room, so I gave it a lick.  A gentle, loving lick.  The lick of a born and bred cinephile.  The revolutionaries of the sixties may have chained themselves to the cinematheque doors, but how many of them actually licked those films they adored so much?  None I bet - none!  Okay, this may seem quite strange - and indeed it may very well be - but there you have it.  I licked Blue Velvet.

I suppose this story could have gotten a lot weirder (think Jason Biggs and a certain apple pie that mom was told had been eaten) so perhaps a mere lick (okay, two licks dammit!!) is not the worst thing that could have happened.  Of course, then after all that was said and done (and licked) I sat down with a crowd of unsuspecting moviegoers and watched Blue Velvet up there on the big screen.  I couldn't really tell which few frames had been licked and I am sure no one else would have even fathomed such a thing had even occurred, but I believe it brought something more to the already luscious viewing on that big screen, amongst all those poor unsuspecting fellow viewers.

A brilliant film - licked or unlicked - and it was beyond a thrill to see it on 35mm and projected on the big screen for a crowd filled with mostly first-time viewers.  Most seemed to enjoy it (though some of the younger crowd seemed to laugh at the more melodramatic parts) and the screening was a great success - even if no one had any idea that I had gotten to second base with the movie earlier that evening.