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 10 Favourite Things About P. T. Anderson's Boogie Nights

When I first saw PTA's Boogie Nights, back on video sometime around 1998 (no, I did not see it in theaters at the time of its release for some reason or another), I hated it.  Really, I just hated the damn thing.  Could not have been less impressed.  Granted, it was my first taste of the auteur Anderson (his first film, Hard Eight, would actually not be sen until just this past year), long before Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood (the latter being one of the five best films of the last decade), and well before I would herald him as one of the best directors working in cinema today (if you do not believe me, just read this).  But anyway, I digress.   

So I decided to watch the film again, sometime in 2003 (after Punch Drunk came out) and really liked it.  Somehow, my mind had been changed, and rather drastically at that.  So with my mind now going in another direction (was I just in a bad mood during that first attempt?) and with There Will Be Blood now firmly encased in such a vaunted position, I decided to watch the film a third time this past year.  This time I would do it the proper way - or at least the most proper way outside of a 35mm print thrown at a silver screen - and project my newly purchased Bluray disc on the big screen at my darling Midtown Cinema.  Well, now we got ourselves one humdinger of a cinematic event (or is that hummer?  Hmmm?).  Now we get a film that is suddenly the blastiest of blasts.  Gorgeous.  Succulent.  Fantastic.  Awe-Inspiring.  Gleefully decadent.  All that kind of jazz.  Do I dare even say, a masterpiece?  Sure, I dare, let us praise it as a modern day masterpiece!   A masterpiece indeed.  How's that for a turnaround?  But I digress once more, and will now get on with why we are all gathered here today in the first place.

What follows is the long-awaited return of my one-time regular series known as My 10 Favourite Things.  I suppose it was once a favourite among those who matter.  The last one I did was nearly ten months ago, so it's about time, huh?  Yes it is.  Anyway, here are my ten favourite things about a movie I once hated - imagine that.  I have numbered things just to keep a general semblance of decorum, but really these are in no particular order, save for maybe the last one needing to be at the end, so do not take them as such.  And as always, there may very well be spoilers ahead, so for those who care about such things, ye have been warned.   Oh, and one more thing - if you are interested in even more PTA-related stuff, check out the piece I did over at Anomalous Material, titled, appropriately enough, The 10 Best Paul Thomas Anderson Characters.  Now on with the show.

1) Julianne Moore Showing It All as Amber Waves - Wow, she really is a red head.  Ha!  Actually we already knew this from Short Cuts. Seriously though, not only is Ms. Moore sexy as hell here, the actress shows just how damn good of an actor she really is.  Going from porn queen to mother hen to tragic heroine, Moore gives one of the finest performances of an already more than fine career.

2) The More-Than-Obvious Scorsese Connection - It is certainly no secret that Martin Scorsese is one of the biggest influences on PTA's career, but it is more evident in Boogie Nights than anywhere else in the auteur's oeuvre, and the most obvious Scorsese-influenced connection is to the master's 1990 modern day masterpiece Goodfellas.  From the rags to riches and back to rags story arc of Goodfellas' Henry Hill and Boogie Nights' Dirk Diggler to the ever-roaming, ever-moving camera of both films, the long, always-sharp-eyed tracking shots, Anderson shows his prowess as a filmmaker while also honoring his stylistic mentor with a hot-blooded homage.  To watch as Wahlberg's wouldbe porn icon weaves his way through clubs and pool parties and recording studios is like watching Ray Liotta leading a wide-eyed, bewildered Lorraine Bracco through the back passages of the Copacabana in Goodfellas.  Great stuff indeed.

3) Burt Reynolds and His Non-Comeback Comeback - Once upon a time, Burt Reynolds was the top box office draw in Hollywood.  He began in television and broke into movies in the early seventies in films like Deliverance and The Longest Yard.  Then Smokey and the Bandit hit theaters.  For five years running, from 1978 through 1982, Reynolds was the main man at the box office.  The main man!  Then, with films such as Stick and Rent-A-Cop and All Dogs Go to Heaven, came a quick and wicked stumble from stardom to has-been.  Relegated to appearances on game shows, the actor's career seemed pretty much over.  Then came a TV show called Evening Shade which ran from 1990 to 1994.  After the success of that he garnered a comeback in films as well with the one two punch of Striptease and Boogie Nights - the latter of which would earn him his first, and so far only Oscar nomination.  It was an award he lost to Robin Williams for his treacly performance in Good Will Hunting.  It was an award he should have won.  It was an award that would have gone to his performance of porn king Jack Horner - a role that was pretty much built just for the actor.  But alas, it was an award that would not be and it was a comeback that was quite short lived.  Now relegated to voice work on animated shows and video games, and the occasional guest spot on TV, Reynolds' film career is pretty much back where it was in the late eighties (his role as Uncle Jessie in the Dukes of Hazzard movie is the highlight of an otherwise stupendously bad movie).  But we will always have Jack Horner.

4) The Soundtrack That Brought Sexy Back -  Just how Scorsese's pop and rock infused Goodfellas soundtrack (see - another connection!) led us through the rise and fall of Henry Hill, Anderson's Boogie Nights soundtrack takes us from the beginnings of Dirk Diggler's meteoric rise during the golden age of porn to his darkest days in the 1980's age of excess.  From Jethro Tull and Three Dog Night to Hot Chocolate and K.C. and the Sunshine Band this is a soundtrack for the ages.  Well at least for the ages of my lifetime.  From God Only Knows by The Beach Boys to Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl, from Best of My Love by the Emotions to Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now by McFadden & Whitehead to Andrew Gold's Lonely Boy (left off the official soundtrack), we grow with the characters from one decade to the next.  Of course the two best and most important numbers from the film, not only in the songs themselves but their connection with other parts of the film, are Melanie's Brand New Key (incidentally my current ringtone) and Sister Christian by Night Ranger.  But these will be addressed later on down the list.

5) Rollergirl as Male Fantasy Id Incarnate - Heather Graham may not be the world's best actress - or even close to it - but the girl sure can make a pair of roller skates sing.  As the troubled high school dropout who becomes a plaything both on and off the set (in those days of pre-Aids promiscuity, sluttiness was much more quaint) and rolls around on her skates - Melanie's aforementioned mesmerizing melody playing behind her - Graham's childlike sexuality (there's a strange-sounding concoction, but that is how best to describe the actress and character's more freewheeling sensibilities) steals much of the show.  And baby, she doesn't take off her skates for anything.  Not for anything.

6) A Wardrobe Blast From the Decadent Past - Now of course any film set in the time period of Boogie Nights is bound to showcase a kick-ass wardrobe, but the outlandish sensibilities of PTA's film make it even more kick-ass than expected.  Of course being set in the porn industry doesn't hurt either.  From Rollergirl's knee-high tube socks and hot pants to Dirk Diggler, Reed Rothchild and Buck Swope's array of disco-era fashion, there is no doubt the wardrobe department had one hell of a good time coming up with how to dress their cast.

7) The Other Guys In and Out of the Shot - Speaking of the fashion sense of Reed Rothchild and Buck Swope, John C. Reilly and Don Cheadle do more than an admirable job living up to their being cast as porn studs.  Granted, they may not have a certain attribute that Dirk Diggler has (see number ten in our list) but they hold their own as the necessary second string stud material.  We also get Philip Seymour Hoffman as Scotty J., a typically queer (in several senses of the word) PSH kind of character and William H. Macy as Little Bill, the most pathetic but also possibly the most sympathetic character outside of Moore's Ms. Waves.

8) The Batshitcrazy World of Rahad Jackson and Sister Christian - Now there are a lot of great scenes in Boogie Nights.  Okay, pretty much all of them.  But even with all this greatness (and this from a guy who hated the film on first sight!?), there is one scene that goes bananas over all of them - batshitcrazybananas!  That scene is near the end when Dirk, Reed and Todd go to coke dealer Rahad Jackson's pad in order to (stupidly, mind you) rob the noted maniac.  Alfred Molina's  one-scene cameo performance as the maniacal Jackson, and his rendition of Night Ranger's Sister Christian, is pure cinematic bravura.  In other words - batshitcrazy!

9) The Long Gone Halcyon Days of the Golden Age of Porn - Once upon a time, porn was something very different than what it is now.  Granted, it was still very far from respectable, but back in the 1970's, the porn industry was filled with men and women that wanted to create art - and believed they actually were.  Compared to today's age of internet porn excess (really, who can not find every single pornographic fetish with a mere click of a mouse!?) this so-called golden age was an age of porn auteurs.  Films like Deep Throat proved that one could create porn with certain artistic values.  Sure, it is not high art, but at least at the time, it was some sort of art.

10) And Then Came Dirk Diggler and the Money Shot - Sure, we all know it wasn't really Mark Wahlberg, but a rather lengthy prosthetic, that made its long-awaited appearance in the final, money shot of the film, but that does not take anything away from its thunderous, unzipped screen debut.  I mean really, we are talking about porn, and this is what it is all about.  After all, as Diggler says, everyone has something special, and this was his...um, his thing.

My 10 Favourite Things About David Lynch's Dune

Okay, okay, perhaps it isn't Lynch at his directorial peak, and perhaps it isn't the most classic of the science fiction genre, and perhaps it isn't the kind of cinema you are supposed to write home about as they say, but damn if it ain't a fun little romp to sit through - especially when seeing it in all it's 2:35 ratio'd glory up on the big screen, sitting alone in the dark on a Wednesday afternoon as if you are playing hooky from real life (one of my favourite things to do as a matter of fact).

With that said and out of the way, here are my 10 favourite things about David Lynch's deliriously demented Dune - numbered but not necessarily in any particular order.  And for those who care about such things, there be plenty of spoilers ahead.  Don't say you haven't been warned.

1. Studly young star Kyle MacLachlan plays wouldbe messiah Paul Atreides with a perfect blend of stage-frightened rock star and closet-case mama's boy - his seemingly innocent to the nth degree snide grin and his devastatingly handsome features (not to mention that coiffed mane of almost too-good-to-be-true hair - what was it Warren Zevon said of his London Lycanthropes but could have been speaking of MacLachlan, "his hair was perfect.") a testament to his wholesome worthiness of messiahdom.  Incidentally, this was MacLachlan's screen debut and one would think his rather frigid acting in this film (albeit befitting the character in many ways) would have been the end of anything big, but he would go on to make his second film, Blue Velvet (imagine these as your first two films!?) and thus becoming the new prince of the undefinable wolf-in-sheep's-clothing (this boy seems straight-laced but underneath it all, in those traumatic situations, the freak will sneak out and show itself - even if it goes running back inside once the shooting has ceased).  This of course would make him the perfect person to star in Lynch's Twin Peaks eventually, but even from this somewhat auspicious start, MacLachlan would play the part with a perfect concoction of wooden demeanor and matter-of-fact consciousness and the hidden arrogance and chutzpah of one who will lead his people out of bondage (to go with the most obvious biblical reference in the story).

2. Speaking of Mr. Lynch, Dune stands as one of the auteur's most atypical films, but still one can see the strange world that beats just below the surface of the director's mad mad mad mind.  With a humming reverberance beneath the surface of the entire film (sometimes we hear it, other times we do not but can still feel it inside you) and his use of disembodied voice-over, Lynch gives this film (already drawn from a strange-in-its-own-way novel) his own brand of good old fashioned weirdness.  Oddly enough this blend of sci-fi and Lynchian cinematic tropes work surprisingly well in their own bizarre form of unison. 

3. Even Lynch's batshitcrazy manner of filmmaking cannot hide the fact there are some pretty bad special effects herein - even by the day's standards (producer Dino De Laurentiis is known for such things though)- but somehow these cheap looking effects, from the squared off body armour (the first attempt at creating an artificial man on scree I am told) to the riding of the sand worms (which will be discussed later on in more depth) make the film all the more creepy in a way and therefore help to give Lynch what one assumes he was looking for in the final product of his endeavors.  Imagine though, what would have become of the story if the original director, the even batshitcrazier Alejandro Jodorowsky would have made it.

4. I suppose the most disgusting thing about Dune is the pustule-covered mad man Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.  Fat and covered in disgusting boils, and devouring his prey (aka slave boys) by puncturing their nipple valve (yeah, you read that correctly) and sexually(?) draining them of life fluids, the Baron, as played by Kenneth McMillan, looks like some sort of hybrid of the baby from Eraserhead all grown up and some sort of creature feature out of Cronenberg - a filmmaker incidentally who has a much in common with M. Lynch.  Oh did I mention that he also flies - or more accurately, he floats.  Oh yeah, and he is pure evil - a supposed explanation for the kinda allegorical (in a way if you stretch) nasty-ass boils all over his fat face. Then again, some people (most notably gay rights activist Dennis Altman) have more than alluded that these boils/legions/whatever are a sign of AIDS and that the filmmakers are equating evil behaviour with homosexuality (since the Baron is obviously quite queer indeed).

5. And speaking of bad ass bitches - the bald witch women who seem to (at least try to) control all the universe are pretty fucking badass. "Get back, she has the weirding way!" a potential enemy exclaims as Paul's mother Lady Jessica puts a stranglehold on him.  And speaking of Paul's mother, the Lady Jessica, as played by Francesca Annis, and her weirding way - can you say MILF.  Actually MILF is probably a bad term considering the actress, at the time of Dune, is four years younger than I (though if the seventeen year old me had seen this film in its original glory...).  Seriously though, this planetary queen who will one day become the new Reverend Mother of the bald witch women (I don't feel like looking up the name of her people that I cannot remember right now) is smokin' hot - and that's a fact, Jack!

6. And then there is that supporting cast - some of whom are Lynchian regulars or semi-regulars.  You have Freddie Jones and Brad Dourif and Patrick Stewart and Max von Sydow and Jose Ferrer and Richard Jordan and Linda Hunt and Everett McGill and Sean Young and Virginia Madsen and of course the omnipresent Jack Nance, but the one that shines above them all (as he would go on to steal the scene in Blue Velvet two years later) is of course the always great Dean Stockwell.  The reason Stockwell is so great in Dune (other than that kick-ass mustache of course) is because he is not afraid to cry.  I mean really cry - like a little bitch.  Sure, he has just betrayed his king and his people and is now having regrets but c'mon, this crying jag plays out as if a parody of such an act.  Dean, kick-ass mustache or not, this does not make you the suave fucker you will thankfully become.

7. The same people that brought us the songs "Africa" and "Rosanna" did the soundtrack for Dune?  Sure, why not.  Yes, you heard that correctly true believers - the prog-rock band Toto did the soundtrack for Dune.  This does of course explain the creepy yet non-threatening music going on in the background - sort of like a demented merry-go-round with delusions of scary grandeur.  Don't get me wrong, I like Toto (yeah, I said it, what are you gonna do about it!?) and their music does strangely fit the already discomforting effect Lynch has created here, but it still seems weird that Toto does the soundtrack to Dune.  Granted, Brian Eno also contributes a piece (which in my mind seems more appropriate) but still, Toto seems like an odd, but invariably good choice.  Though I was kinda hoping for "Africa" to show up while Paul was riding those giant-ass sand worms - now there is a musical number for the proverbial ages.

8. And speaking of dem worms dem worms - ridin' dem worms.  Nasty dangerous monsters slithering their collective way just beneath the surface of the desert world of Arrakis, these great beasties are a threat to anyone and everyone who comes across their path - well except for our intrepid wouldbe messiah, the studly and perfectly coiffed Paul Atreides.  In fact Paul will tame them and ride them (in some of the worst special effects one can imagine - c'mon guys this is after Star Wars, Tron and Blade Runner - get a budget Dino!) and use them to get his victory and revenge.  Still though, I would have loved to have heard "Africa" on the soundtrack as he rides the great beasties across the desert.

9. From everything I have read or heard on the subject, Lynch wasn't really much of a happy camper from day one.  It is the only film he did not have final cut on (he didn't officially have final cut on The Elephant Man but apparently producer Mel Brooks ended up giving him final cut anyway) and he was not happy with the outcome, which was mostly panned by the critical forces of the day.  Of course that is nothing compared to the uproar that ensued when the studio decided to re-edit Lynch's film, without Lynch's say-so or even knowledge, and release an extended "Special Edition" cut of the film for television broadcast and eventual VHS release in1989.  At this point, due to this new version being somewhat incomprehensible, Lynch petitioned to have his name taken off the film.  It would be replaced with the usual Alan Smithee directorial credit.  Lynch would also, in the best move of the whole situation, change his writing credit to Judas Booth in "honour" of Iscariot and John Wilkes.  To this day Lynch will have nothing to do with the movie (in either version) and refuses any and all invitations to do commentary of such on the film.

10. And probably the best thing this film has going for it - or at least the most fun - is the addition of Gordon Sumner to the cast.  I'm talkin' Sting baby!  Seriously, what a fun character.  Granted, the only real reason he is here is to take his shirt off, grin maniacally, be looked upon leeringly by his fat boil-faced uncle and be the bad boy rock star to MacLachlan's boy next door image.  He only speaks a handful of lines but the rock star image is still intact - probably because of such.  How can a movie go wrong when it has the only rock star (that I know of) to squeeze Nabakov into a hit song?  Really, how can you?

My 10 Favourite Things About Vincente Minnelli's The Cobweb

**Spoilers ahead, for those who worry about such things**

1) Since it is a visual medium, I suppose one should begin with the look of the film.  Minnelli, always known for vivid filmmaking, directs no differently here.  With a fluid, never pushy but always provocative camera, Minnelli makes the lurid goings-on in The Cobweb, as they say, sing with a cinematic beauty all its own.  Combine Minnelli with long-time collaborators such as Art Directors Preston Ames (An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, Gigi) and Cedric Gibbons (The Bad and the Beautiful, The Band Wagon) and cinematographer George Folsey (Meet Me in St. Louis, The Clock, uncredited on The Band Wagon) and you have an elaborately stylized (though unobtrusively so) delectable motion picture.

2) The fact that The Cobweb is basically a melodrama about the miscommunication of buying curtains for a mental hospital is quite the plot line.  Not only is such a story intriguingly convoluted in execution,  but also surprisingly fluid in outcome.  I cannot say how close this is to William Gibson's novel, but it is almost as if Minnelli took a screwball comedy plot and twisted it into serious melodrama.

3) Gloria Grahame.  Never really considered a great beauty (even though she was) Grahame nonetheless exuded sexuality in many of her roles.  Sultry and vixenish, with an alluring come-hither pout, Grahame seemed like the kind of girl who would go batshitcrazy at any moment - and often did in her roles (even in Oklahoma! she was the wildchild) - but the kind of girl you would be okay dealing with such antics as long as those voluptuous lips kept pursing in your direction.  This is exactly what the actress does in The Cobweb.  Provocative and steamy, her full hips swiveling like a fertility goddess on ecstasy (the kind of girl no one wants to take home to mother), Grahame's unfulfilled hospital administrator's wife is the very guts of Minnelli's movie.  She may not be the lead (she received fourth billing officially) but it is she that either holds the film together or tears it apart - or holds it together then tears it apart.  Grahame would move on to more wholesome roles later in her career (after divorcing hubby Nick Ray when he found her in bed with his thirteen year old son from a previous marriage - the same thirteen year old she would nine years later make her fourth and final husband) but I definitely prefer her as the sexy, potentially batshitcrazy wife in The Cobweb.

4) The dialogue in this film, adapted from the novel by John Paxton who also wrote the screenplays for Murder My Sweet, Crossfire, Pickup Alley and The Wild One, is pure melodrama - and thus pure trash, but trash in the most positive way.  Full of double entendre and juicy, campesque dialogue, The Cobweb is brilliantly subversive and convoluted to a delightful delirium.

5) John Kerr (playing the part originally meant for James Dean - and playing it in a manner that one might expect from Dean himself) makes a stunning debut as patient Stevie Holte.  We first meet him during the opening credits as he is seen running across fields and streams until he is picked up by Gloria Grahame.  He is obviously an escapee from the hospital run by Grahame's husband (Richard Widmark) and plays it aloof, while at the same time concocting a fantasy that Grahame's petulant, neglected wife is actually hitting on him - a story he proudly (or defiantly) boasts to Widmark in their next session..  Kerr's sudden outbursts and manic cries of desperation at his own mental instability give the film a vibrant, dangerous centerpiece, where all the other characters can spoke off from - whether they know it or not.  Kerr's Stevie is grounded though by fellow patient and extreme introvert and agoraphobic Sue Brett, played (also in her film debut) by the intense and lovely Susan Strasberg.  It is Stevie who is there at the beginning and it is his image that Minnelli ends his film with.

6) Those eyes.  That voice.  That look that can destroy a man where he stands.  Lauren Bacall.  In one of her finest performances (possibly even her best), Bacall plays Dr. Meg Rinehart, an idealistic caregiver and art therapist who has just recently lost her husband and son in a car accident.  Standoffish, as only Bacall can play it, Meg becomes the love interest of Widmark's character and thus the enemy of Grahame's.  Probably the most stable character in the bunch (and she treads along the precipice as well) Bacall sort of stabilizes the group dynamic as it were.  Pauline Kael said of the movie "By the mid-50's, nobody was surprised that the new variant of Grand Hotel was an expensive, exclusive looney bin."  It is Bacall's Meg Rinehart (though other characters may claim it is they who do such) that keeps this loony bin from falling into shambles.  And did I mention that voice?  Those eyes?

7) Since he keeps getting mentioned, I suppose we should discuss Richard Widmark.   He is the lead after all.       Widmark, who has always been more of an on-the-edge kind of character actor (his performance in one of my all-time favourites, Pickup on South Street is one for the ages) who has played some rather less-than-scrupulous characters.  I suppose here he is just as on-edge as elsewhere, but here he is also the supposed voice of reason behind it all.  The man who must figure everything out before it comes crashing down on him and everyone around him.  Probably a strange casting choice, but Widmark works here as the man in way way way over his head.  Yet he has, as they say, a heart made of gold.  Still there are some moments of a sense of creeping dread laid out on the actor's face that makes the already anti-horror thing Minnelli has going, a deeper despairing creature.  Yeah, that's right, Widmark does that!

8) As the opening credits end and we see Gloria Grahame's car slow down to pick up the wandering John Kerr, a title comes up on the screen.  It scrawls across the screen as a cursive warning.  "The trouble began" it reads - and that it does.  The fact that Minnelli puts this warning there is a bit odd, but more than a bit tantalizing.  Then, as the film ends and everything is alright again (for the most part) , we are given the antidote to this first warning.  Scrawling its cursiveness across the screen we now get "The trouble was over." - and indeed it is.

9) Oscar Levant, actor and composer (and great in both An American in Paris and The Band Wagon), plays the charmingly crazy Mr. Capp in The Cobweb.  The fact that this would be the great Levant's final performance combined with the fact that he is basically playing himself (the role was styled toward Levant's own real-life psychosis that would come to take over his life) his performance is that much more resonating to watch.  He is the comic relief of the film but at the same time he is one of the saddest, most tragic figures floating around the set.  Farewell Mr. Levant.

10) Saving the best for last.  It had been twenty-two years since the great Lillian Gish had graced the MGM sound stages.  Making her triumphant return, Gish plays Victoria Inch, the cold-hearted, no-nonsense financial officer of the institute.   Her fights with Widmark, Bacall, Grahame and Charles Boyer (sadly left off this top ten list) are loud and boisterous and always from the heart of the character (perhaps it isn't nearly as cold as I alluded to earlier).  Gish would follow this film up with her spectacular mother hen role in The Night of the Hunter.  Kael said Gish was the closest The Cobweb had to a star performance, and no matter who it is she is up against in the film - even Widmark's metaphorical muzzling of her character or Grahame's explosive phone conversation (the two actresses, though both integral to the crosscutting plot and strange curtain calling, never actually share screen time) - it is Gish, and her everlasting power as an actress that wins the day.

*******

Since I left him out of the post (for the most part) here is one last image, via a lobby card costarring Miss Grahame, of Mr. Charles Boyer, playing the inevitable aged rapscallion in The Cobweb.  Think of it as number eleven.

My 10 Favourite Things About Don't Touch the White Woman

**spoilers ahead, for those who worry about such things**

1) Obviously when talking about Marco Ferreri's French/Italian hybrid Don't Touch the White Woman, something must be said about the that title.  Played as a recurring gag (or jag) throughout the film, General Custer's Indian scout Mitch is repeatedly told this (or scolded about this) by the white men around him.  When I told my friend Max that this was the movie we were going to watch on a certain night, he instinctively assumed that I was acting the fool, and making such a title up.  But lo and behold, it is indeed Don't Touch the White Woman - or Touche pas a la femme blanche in its native French (and I use the term native in several different manners of ironic twist).

2) Ferreri's absurdist take on the American Western.  Placing characters such as General George Armstrong Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody and Chief Sitting Bull smack dab in the then-current 1974 Paris - with Richard Nixon as the beloved president - and setting the climactic Battle of Little Big Horn in the recently demolished remains of the old Paris marketplace.  Mixing and matching time periods, Ferreri's film is a comic absurdist delight.

3) Marcello Mastroianni as General Custer, extremely vain and quite pompous (this may actually be a rather accurate portrayal) and kicking up his boots in a ridiculously comic salutation of sorts, is at his batshitcrazy best here.  His long dangling locks, desire to change uniforms for each battle and constant militaristic attitude - not to mention his arrogant style of wooing - is great comic fun.

4) The (far from subtle) allusions to both Vietnam and Algeria (Nixon is president here, spying down at everyone from his overly prevalent framed pictures) and an obvious (and quite legitimate if you ask this liberal critic) Leftist attitude toward the military, as well as a revisionist outlook on American/Indian affairs of the time (the Custer time that is).  The Algerians are even thought of as an Indian tribe, and thus are treated in the same cold, hateful manner by the white people in the film.

5) The Altman connection.  Or I should say, the Altman feel.  Predating Altman's own Buffalo Bill movie by two years, Ferreri's movie plays out in a very Altmanesque manner, with characters speaking over top of each other and musicians following around as balladeers and an overall constant sense of mayhem.

6) Ugo Tognazzi, long before he became the prancing star of La cage aux folles (a role played by an equally prancing Robin Williams in the remake), plays the aforementioned Mitch, the man to whom the warning of the title is told to.  Of course he is not really an American Indian (and doesn't even look like one, given a tanning session before filming began perhaps) but full-blooded, and full-bodied Italian.  His leading of a sweat shop manned by white women (with the ever-watching eyes of big brother Nixon peering down from the wall) and his defilement of one of them is one of the many highlights of this crazy ass movie.

7) The use of what appear to be real period hippies as the Indians of this so-called Little Big Horn.  I mean really, who needs the noble savage when you've got a city full of hippies who will walk around in the background for, well for pretty much anything you are wiling to give them.  We even get one who looks an awfully like that self-declared ant-hippie, Jim Morrison.  Perhaps he didn't die in that bathtub after all.  I mean he did live in Paris when he "died".

8) Michel Piccoli may very well be the most batshitcrazy Buffalo Bill in cinematic history.  Played by everyone from Roy Rogers to Joel McCrea to Clayton Moore to Chuck Heston to Paul Newman to Stephen Fucking Baldwin (even Buffalo Bill himself - as himself! - appeared in several early silent films) but I can't think of anyone who made the man look like a stark raving lunatic more than M. Piccoli.  From his white eyeliner to his big-boobied back-up dancer to his bizarro (almost) one man show to his eventual maniacal cowardice and grandiose hissy-fit, Piccoli is the premier batshitcrazy Buffalo Bill.

9) I cannot confirm this was on purpose, and it may very well be a "just me" kinda thing, but the talking heads who we first see at the beginning of the film, and who recur throughout as nosy, do-nothing politicos, remind this critic of a certain band of outsiders (if you will pardon the pun) known collectively as the Nouvelle Vague.  The two main ones even resemble the new wave's leaders (for lack of a more apt word) Godard and Truffaut.  Again, it is probably all in my imagination, but isn't imagination what cinema is all about?

10) Catherine Deneuve as a redhead!!  I am sure I need not say more, but I will anyway.  Looking spectacular as a blonde is Mlle. Deneuve's normal style, but here she goes fiery red for her role as Custer's love interest, Marie-Hélène de Boismonfrais.  Perhaps it is in keeping with the batshitcrazy aspect of the film itself - after all (and this will get some angry comments I am sure, but I sincerely mean it in the most complimentary fashion possible) most redheads I have known have been quite batshitcrazy themselves.  Perhaps it is just to make the already drop dead Deneuve look all that hotter.  One of the final moments of the film - after the slaughter at this makeshift Little Big Horn - shows a now dead Deneauve covered partly in an American flag.  Except for the whole dead part (unless you are into that) this is a pretty spectacular image on the screen (which unfortunately cannot truly be captured by the corresponding image below).

My 10 Favourite Things About Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three

*There be spoilers ahead for those who care about such things. 
 

1. Watching Jimmy Cagney, at 62 and in what would be his final performance (until his slight respite from retirement to put in a cameo in the 1981 film Ragtime) strut, scream and swagger about, with as much vim and vigor as he had in his early gangster roles thirty years prior, and still managing to be, even in the role of an "uncool" businessman, the epitome of cool - even in his senior citizen days.

2. Red Buttons, in a tiny role as an M.P., does a Cagney impression to Cagney's character in the movie.  I just love self-referential cinema.

3. The comic tension between Cagney's Coca-Cola executive and the younger Horst Buchholz, playing a die hard card-carrying communist to Cagney's uptight executive.  In reality, there was actual tension between the two.  In Cagney's autobiography, he says that Buchholz was the only actor he really hated working with because he was uncooperative and tried all kinds of scene-stealing moves, which Cagney depended on director Wilder to correct. Had Wilder not firmly directed Buchholz, Cagney said that he "was going to knock Buchholz on his ass, which at several points I would have been very happy to do."

4. At one point, Cagney threatens to shove a half a grapefruit in Buchholz's face, lampooning the famous scene between Cagney and Mae Clarke in The Public Enemy.  Like I said, I do love self-referential cinema.
 

5. Watching Arlene Francis, who was much better known at the time as a TV star, being one of the highest paid women on the small screen while she was a regular panelist on What's My Line, trading barbs with, and quipping acerbic one-liners at Cagney.  These comic bon mots and winking asides, help make this rather unknown actress these days, the funniest person in the movie, even if she isn't in it all that much.

6. Another fun reference in the movie is the introduction of the three Russian commissars, who are an obvious homage to the 1939 Ernst Lubitsch film Ninotchka - a film written, or co-written at least, by Billy Wilder.

7. In order to frame Buchholz's crass but cuddly commie and get him arrested by the East German police, Cagney's conniving Coca-Cola exec gives him a cuckoo clock that plays Yankee Doodle Dandy.  Of course, thanks to Cagney's Oscar winning performance as George M. Cohan in the 1942 movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, we get yet another cinematically referential moment.  Have I mentioned how much I enjoy these?  

8. (ed. note: One would not know this by watching the film, but backstory is always crucial to understanding a film more, so this anecdote should count for something)  Midway through filming of One, Two, Three (and in the dark of night just to make things all that more ominous) the Brandenburg Gate was shut off between East and West Germany and the early construction on that infamous wall would begin.  Wilder, Cagney and the crew were forced to relocate to a Munich studio to finish shooting.  Nothing stops cinema dammit!

9. When Cagney's character finds out the teenage girl he is supposed to keep safe for her father, his boss, is pregnant - to a commie of all things(!?) - he grabs his head and says "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?"Of course, this is yet another cinematic reference, quoting Cagney's contemporary "rival" in Hollywood, Edward G. Robinson, from the film Little Caesar.

10. The Coca-Cola connection.  I happen to be a Coke guy (as opposed to those weird Pepsi people) and it is fun seeing the comic corporate happenings going on.  Wilder even received a visit from friend Joan Crawford, then recently widowed and sitting on the board of her late husband's company PepsiCo, asking him to change his film over to the Pepsi side of things.  Of course he did not, but he did add one final injoke (the final shot of the film actually) by having Cagney's Coke man put change into a Coke machine and pulling out a Pepsi to the great man's eternal disgust.
 

My 7 Favourite Things About Elia Kazan's A Face In The Crowd

**Spoilers ahead for those of you who worry about such things**

1) Andy Griffith's maniacal laugh that seems to be a cross between a country bumpkin who just watched his favourite Nascar driver win the big race and a mad scientist who just figured out how to bring the dead back to life (and then control them as an Earth-raging army of the undead) - or perhaps just a demented small town sheriff who just shot his idiot deputy down with the idiot deputy's own gun, using the one bullet he allows said idiot deputy to have (but perhaps, this being Mr. Griffith's film debut, this is just an omen of things to come in a hazy Mayberry future).

2) Elia Kazan's way of allowing his camera to record the entire room surrounding his characters, almost making the furniture and knick-knacks to be characters themselves, though with far less method acting on their behalf. 

3) Budd Schulberg's scathing screenplay.  Sure he named names (as did director Kazan) but whether he is a rat or not, his acerbic writing is an inspiration to any hard-hitting screenwriter that came after him.  Perhaps, without Schulberg, there would be no Aaron Sorkin writing today.  Perhaps some people would be more than okay with that, but I for one, would not be.

4) A 22 year old (playing and looking 17) Lee Remick twirling her baton (and her tail) for the camera and for Griffith's folksy rapscallion Lonesome Rhodes (and perhaps for some others too).

5) Not that anyone would know this by watching the film, but the majority of A Face In The Crowd was filmed at the old Biograph Studios of D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Lillian & Dorothy Gish (considered the very first movie studio ever, founded by Edison in 1895) - and for a rabid film history lover like yours truly here, that just gives the film (in hindsight) an extra kick.

6) A drunk with power Andy Griffith, making snide cracks about the sheep of America and bedding every woman he comes across (especially risque in a 1957 Hollywood that was just then beginning to eat away at the Hays Code) and hawking what is basically an early form of speed for the TV cameras, is extra fun to watch after having grown up on the overly sweet and always helpful Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show.

7) As a legacy, watching Keith Olbermann calling Glenn Beck "Lonesome Rhodes" in honour of Griffith's back-handed political huckster-cum-demagogue from A Face In The Crowd.  I know this really has nothing to do with the film itself, but rather with Beck's obvious similarity to this TV and radio shyster of a character - but anytime we get an opportunity to take a crack at Beck, we should not hesitate.  (Okay, political statement over now, we can move on).

My 10 Favourite Things About Peter Bogdanovich's Targets

**Spoilers ahead for those who worry about such things**

1) This film helped to make Boris Karloff, playing a not-so-thinly veiled version of himself named Byron Orlok, even cooler than he already was, which was a major feat since he was already one of the coolest people in show business.  I mean c'mon, this is Boris Fucking Karloff.

2) The police vehicle rushing in at the end of the spectacular freeway shooting sequence was an actual police vehicle coming to investigate the illegal film crew shooting a movie where no one is allowed to shoot movies.  Bogdanovich had Laszlo Kovacs shoot the oncoming police vehicle before the director, his D.P. and the rest of the crew headed for the hills so as not to get arrested.

3) Peter Bogdanovich, also playing a not-so-thinly veiled version of himself, shushing Karloff as they watch a scene from Howard Hawks' The Criminal Code, featuring Karloff himself in what the actor (both in the movie as Orlok and in real life as Karloff) calls his first important role.

4) Sam Fuller did a major rewrite of Bogdanovich's script - in one night, while Bogdanovich watched - but refused to take screen credit or a paycheck for it because that would take away from the young filmmaker, who was just starting out.  Bogdanovich states in the commentary, that this is just the kind of guy Sam Fuller was, and then went on to give tribute to his friend and mentor by naming his character Sammy Michaels after Samuel Michael Fuller.

5) The dazzling montage sequence when Tim O'Kelly's Bobby Thompson shoots and kills his wife (the Hitchcockian ubiquitous blonde in her blue bathrobe) and then offs his mother and the "wrong place, wrong time" delivery boy - and the follow-up long shot/tracking shot of the Bobby's post-spree clean-up that turns into a directorial P.O.V. shot that eventually ends on Bobby's death note, in red (Sam Fuller's idea we are told).

6) Boris Karloff, as creepy as creepy can be, telling a scary story for the camera that really has no bearing on anything else in the movie - a scene that was added because Bogdanovich loved Karloff's narration in the then recently released How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

7) Bogdanovich's casting of the actual projectionist (incidentally named Byron) at the drive-in where they shot the finale to play the projectionist at the drive-in where they shot the finale (it seems as if everybody is playing essentially themselves in this movie), and his showing of the inner workings of the projection room from the threading of the film to the now outdated, but still quite quaint little bell that precipitates the change-over.  Of course our intrepid projectionist gets shot and killed by the sniper, but you can't have everything.

8) Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicut of M*A*S*H) fatefully crawling toward the nearest car and futilely grasping for the door handle after being shot in the drive-in phone booth.

9) Bogdanovich proudly boasting on the commentary track that, as far as he can recall (and this is a guy with an encyclopedic mind when it comes to film history) he is the only man to ever share a bed on film, albeit platonically, with Boris Karloff.

10) Karloff putting the smack down on Bobby after his drive-in killing spree and reducing the sniper to a whimpering child-like creature cowering in the corner and the way Karloff is coming at him from one side while the Karloff on the drive-in screen is coming at him from the other.