the other night i had a few hours to myself. i went straight to the living room to watch television. because i’m WILD AND CRAZY. deal with it. i was flipping through the channels when i came upon the ultimate cinematic stinking pile of 90’s crap: THE CRAFT. i caught myself actually saying “oooh!” out loud and wiggling with excitement.
the craft is a wonderful picture about 4 angsty teens who start a witches coven, then go around seeking revenge on all haters in their los angeles high school, wearing mini skirts and babydoll t-shirts and thigh high tights with bad dye jobs and short haircuts. nestled within this stinking pile are such shiny 90’s turds as neve campbell, robin tunney, fairuza balk, and the shiniest 90’s turd of them all: skeet ulrich. whenever neve campbell speaks i think, “did she just take a hit of pot?” or “does she have the hiccups?” why does she talk like that? is it because she’s canadian and therefore inherently weird? or is carbonation involved? i feel like neve campbell drank too much root beer. like she’s got a belly full of rootie and she’s about to spew out a waterfall of golden brown liquid.
as for fairuza balk, she’s like a giant obnoxious rolling stones tongue attached to a miniature body. i’d like to pick up her tiny 90 pound body in my hand, twirl it around like pizza dough and toss it off of the face of the earth.
then you have the 90’s p.c. token black girl- rachel true. this was back when it was politically correct to interject a black person into a movie and give the character absolutely no substance, but it was also before the 2000’s era where black characters were interjected simply to chime in with hip-hop slang, so, what’s worse? this character is the “target of racial slurs” which are just really trite comments made by the token 90’s blonde: christine taylor (aka marsha brady). christine taylor played every bitchy popular cheerleader type in 90’s high school movies, and then married ben stiller. so, geeks win.
the craft also stars robin tunney, whose other claim to fame is the other cinematic stinking pile of 90’s crap: empire records, where she again played an angsty teen who slit her wrist. in fact, it’s the exact same character in this movie. robin tuney has andrew mccarthy eyes, she’s shifty, so naturally she was type-cast as the crazy girl. crazy eyes=crazy girl. done and done. the only difference between the two characters is in empire records she is bald. i don’t know what became of her after these two movies, perhaps in her next film she was actually successful in offing herself.
now let’s talk skeet. at this point in my life i will watch any movie featuring skeet ulrich. that’s just where i’m at.
the craft was really where skeet fever began, later that year he starred with ol’ root beer barrel neve campbell in SCREAM and the next year he shot to mediocre fame with a bit part in as good as it gets with such acting tour de forces as greg kinnear and helen hunt. oh and jack nicholson. and that amazing little dog!!! skeet ulrich was touted as the poor man’s johnny depp which is really my demographic. after his late 90’s run he sorta drifted off into obscurity and i completely and totally forgot that he ever existed. ever.
so when the craft came on the other night, i got to thinking about what ol’ skeet might be up to. in my mind he put on about 150 pounds, lost the top layer of his hair and several of his teeth and settled into a camper (not a trailer. a camper.) somewhere hot and destitute where he can regularly wear a wife beater and carry a beer cozy like fresno or turlock. he supports his 2 cases of coors light a day drinking habit by selling autographed glossy photos of himself to 30-something single mothers at the sunday flea market. he is never recognized.
if you happen to know what actually became of skeet, please do not tell me. god forbid he is still dreamy and has a full head of hair and is, like, still acting. let me have my beautiful dream where fat skeet keeps me warm at night.
Well, I grew up here all of my life, and I dreamed someday I’d go Where the blue-eyedgirls, and the red guitars, and the naked rivers flow Now I’m not all I thought I’d be, I’ve always stayed around I’ve been as far as Mercy and Grand, frozen to the ground
But I can’t stay here, and I’m scared to leave So kiss me once and then, I’ll go to hell I might as well be whistlin’ down the wind
The bus is at the corner, the clock on the wall Broken down windmill, there ain’t no wind at all And I yelled and I cursed, if I stay here I’ll rust And I’m stuck like a shipwreck out here in the dust
The sky is red, and the world is on fire, and the corn is taller than me And the dog is tied to a wagon of rain, and the road is wet as the sea And sometimes the music from a dance will carry across the plains And the places that I’m dreaming of, do they dream only of me?
There are places where they never sleep, and the circus never ends So I will take the Marleybone coach, and be whistlin’ down the wind So I will take the Marleybone coach, and whistlin’ down the wind
i look out my bedroom window at the stars, real stars in a black sky and i say, “and if you knew me before you don’t now.” i am not who i was i am not that no one.
my body has changed, and finally, taken me with it. i have spent these years, 32 or so of them, apart. split. disassociated. in different ways. i think about the escape. and it’s not about substance or food or what we use to escape, i understand that now. simply avoiding and cutting ourselves off from the device that we used to avoid and cut ourselves off doesn’t change us. we split everything in half, cut everything up. we are amputating pieces of ourselves, calling what is painful bad and removing it.
i wonder about how i am programmed, wired, as a woman, culturally, religiously, genetically. i think about the fundamental belief that we are separate from god. we were kicked out of the garden. and we are here in this life to make up for that, to pay. and we can’t reconnect with god until we die.
how deep does that run? how many countless ways does that carry over? the body is separate from the soul. the heart separate from the mind. the ego separate from the spirit. black and white. good and evil. god and devil.
i wanted to come back, in some way. i wanted to fill my body with myself. i wanted my body to demand my attention, and not as a problem, not because it was sick and not as something separate that needed to be examined. being the most uncoordinated and ungraceful person on the planet somehow failed to dissuade me from learning to dance. i have suffered shin splints, blisters, aches in places i didn’t know were there and yet still refusing to quit. red faced and pouring sweat and cursing the name of the woman before me telling me to be patient. be patient. don’t think about it so much. don’t make it so hard. let your body move with the beat, it will follow if you don’t tell it what to do constantly. be patient. you will learn. believe in yourself.
i think of the hundreds of thousands of women who dance. who move in synchronized throngs in humid studios and gyms and aerobic centers and i feel like less of a woman. inadequacy is the main feeling in my life. and i realize, that’s just it. the feeling that i don’t know what i’m doing. that i am incompetent, incapable, less than. the loss of control. it is safer to avoid, to not change, to not move. but for once, for once, i am not willing to quit. to run away. because it is fucking hard. and it does not come naturally to me. but i want to get somewhere. i want to earn it. i want to grow.
i think about icarus, so in love with flying that he forgets his fathers warning and the sun melts his wax wings. icarus falling into the sea. but in that moment, that moment where he is soaring, suspended in the air, high with flight, with freedom, and he looks down and realizes that his wings have melted away and that he is only flapping his arms, did it not occur to him that it was never the wings that propelled him?
it’s hope that keeps us going. but i want more than that. i want faith. i want to know the difference between being motivated, inspired, driven, activated and running, never content, never touching ground. the difference between compulsion, emptiness and real hunger. the difference between being dry and sober. i mean moving while standing still. i mean the balance. i mean presence, i guess. i mean to believe in my ability to soar. to believe in my arms. to believe that the wind will carry me. that i won’t fall into the sea. and if i do, i will be able to swim.
so, i realize that i say that things are my favorite a lot. is that annoying? i can’t help it! i’m so in love with everything. that being said, the spirit of the beehive is my favorite movie. number 1. with a bullet.
this is another movie set in 1940’s spain, but a different 1940’s spain. war ravaged spain. this is not glamorous barcelona or madrid, this is the country. but even the spanish manor house that the family lives in is positively lovely. their costumes are so dear, cornflower blue country dresses and jumpers with thick tights and lace up boots. little matching smock linen coats and tiny child sized leather suitcases.
i’ve read that this movie is about the power of film but i don’t think it necessarily is. it’s a story about a little girl who lives in an isolated village on the castille plateau. it is 1940 and the spanish civil war has just ended. she goes to a screening of the 1931 american horror film frankenstein that has been brought in for the town to watch and she becomes obsessed by it. her older sister tells her that an old abandoned sheepfold is frankenstein’s house.
there is a scene in the film where the little girl finds a fugitive republican soldier hiding in the sheepfold. she opens her tiny suitcase and produces a golden apple which she gives to the soldier. it’s sorta the perfect metaphor for this movie. if your soul is a starving, wounded fugitive, this movie is a lovely golden apple from a little angel.
this movie is a masterpiece. firstly the little girl ana is so achingly gorgeous that my biological clock started pounding away and my lady parts started screaming “LITTLE SPANISH BABIES!” at the sight of her. the movie is almost voyeuristic. everyone is just themselves. you are in the room as the father is at his desk, absorbed in writing about his beehives. you watch as the mother writes letters to a lover. you see the parents in their own world, but looking briefly at their children or at their work. nothing is central or pushed forward, nothing obvious or used for dramatic emphasis. these are moments out of someone’s day. this movie is so subtle and laconic.
there are few films that capture the inner world, fewer films that really convey what it is like to be a child. this movie is really about being a child, from a child’s perspective. not like shogun assassin or days of heaven where the child is narrating a story that is really about the adults. i don’t think that this movie is entirely about a child’s fixation on frankenstein and i don’t think that is a romanticized look at childhood. there are so many little moments in this film that are so intimate and so earnestly convey the loneliness of being a young child who has begun to realize that there is a world outside of their home, outside of their family. there are scenes with two sisters laying in their beds whispering to each other. a mother brushing her daughters hair. sisters drinking bowls of milk and giggling at each other across a table. a little girl being called on in class. little moments.
in the scene mentioned above with the wounded fugitive soldier, the soldier has a bloody bandage tied around his wounded ankle. the little girl goes to the man’s leg and you think she is going to dress his wound, but she reaches down to his shoe and she begins with complete determination to tie his shoe laces. because she can. because she has recently learned to tie shoelaces and she wants to help him. and this is what she knows how to do. it’s such a beautiful moment.
there is another scene that unfolds so wonderfully. it’s this amazing little moment of a girl petting her cat for a while, and then she wraps her hands around the cats neck and strangles the cat until its eyes roll back in its head. then the cat gets itself free and scratches her. she takes her finger to her lips and blows on the scratch. then she picks up a tiny mirror, and the shot is cropped so tightly that all that you see is this tiny reflection of just the girls lips, and she runs her finger over her lips so that the blood colors them red. these moments are so moving, like accessing a part of your unconscious memory that is too precious to keep out in the open.
if you are at all a fan of photography you will not believe this movie. it’s positively luminous. a crisp sunrise over the plain, honey colored light streaming through hexagonal panes of glass, very tight close ups of sections of baroque paintings, desolate and sprawling landscapes at dusk. the cinematographer, louis cuadrado was going blind during the filming of this movie. this is like a film of longing last looks, taking in and savoring the most exquisite little details of everyday life.
this movie has enormous symbolic meaning and a lot of political undertones, there is sort of an underlying narrative that has been dissected. but even if you know or consider nothing about spanish politics, there is so much to get from this film.
there are a few things that i am cry on contact-blubbering-idiotically-sentimental over. bruce springsteen. baseball. johnny cash. the first rocky. the recap scene at the beginning of rocky 2. rocky 2. the recap scene at the beginning of rocky 3. joe strummer. i could go on. but high atop that list is all things paul newman. here are just two of my favorite movies starring pa newman and the little missus.
a long hot summer. might as well start with newman and woodward’s first cinematic collaboration. this movie was made in the late 50’s and is based on a william faulkner story about a small town in mississippi. newman plays ben quick, a black sheep rebel type who was allegedly kicked out of the town from whence he came for burning down a barn to get revenge. consequently he is referred to as a “barn burner” which is decidedly hilarious. joanne woodward plays clara, the sorta aging single daughter of the big man in town, played by none other than orsen welles. the movie is fraught with tension between newman and woodward, just fraught! here is a movie where you really get to see them argue. it also features the gorgeous lee remick as the ditzy babe of a sister-in-law. this movie looks fabulous, plantation south shot in cinemascope equals beauty. what kills is that paul newman is so unbelievably, jaw droppingly good looking that it literally makes a lady have to rub her eyes and look a-gain. there’s a scene where he is standing out on the balcony without a shirt on that made me audibly gulp. -gulp- so it’s really no wonder that joanne woodward’s character simply can’t stay away from the dangerous barn burner. he is downright irresistible.
from the terrace. call me cuckoo but this is sorta my favorite newman/woodward movie. this was a 1960 picture about an ambitious young kid who forces his way into marrying a gorgeous high society type played by joanne woodward. after a heartbreaking failed business venture he quickly climbs his way up the corporate ladder at a new york financial firm and at the brink of reaching the top, he has to choose between his marriage and his career. what i love about this movie is that it’s not totally obvious in a 1960 hollywood picture kinda way. this movie says a lot about youth and growing up. newman starts out a young hot-head, determined to get the girl and have it all, and then realizes having it all ain’t real much. the marriage implodes and newman falls for a younger woman, played but the incredibly sweet ina balin. joanne woodward is nothing short of phenomenal in this movie. seductive and willful and (obviously) a complete effin knockout. more fantastic arguing in this movie, i don’t think i’ve ever loved watching a couple fight like i do with newman and woodward.
it’s hard for me to talk about john cassavetes and gena rowlands without crying. i think that the films that they made together are some of the most fucking staggering films ever made. opening night is probably the film that makes me feel most in love with gena rowlands.
opening night, like all cassavetes films, starts out strangely. for the first half hour or so you are thinking i don’t know what the hell is going on and then suddenly it sucker punches you. right in the gut. that’s cassavetes. opening night is about a broadway star who is starring in a play about a woman who is fighting aging. early on she witnesses the death of a fan and begins to lose her shit. entirely.
gena rowlands’ character in opening night is having a nervous breakdown of sorts. she’s unraveling. but there’s something to it. rowlands is a mess. she’s crazy. bat shit fucking crazy. but she has this little girl like fragility and playfulness to her. she can be hysterically crying, yet have a cigarette perfectly hanging from her lips like a complete bad ass, and somehow manage to have FLAWLESS glamourous film siren hair. she’s obviously nuts, yet she’s just so…1000% loveable.
gena rowlands is such an unbelievable actress. she’s such a brilliant alcoholic. there’s a line in opening night where a stage hand says, “i never saw anybody as drunk as you and you can still walk. you’re fantastic!” but opening night (and i think this is true of the characters that rowlands plays in cassavetes films, generally) is not about alcoholism. alcohol is sort of secondary or just something that she does. it’s part of it, but, there’s this enormous elephant in the room, this strange ambiguity to the fact that she is out of her god damn mind. nobody ever really dares to ask, what’s wrong with her?
what’s so brilliant about this movie is that the play that she is starring in is woven into the story. it’s only slowly revealed how integral the play is to what is happening to the actress. what really kills me is that at the end of the film you see gena rowlands and john cassavetes on stage together doing the most wonderful banter act. every time i watch it i just think, they were really something. i know how corny that sounds. but it’s the same way that i feel watching paul newman and joanne woodward act together. you sort of have to marvel over the fact that somehow the stars aligned and two of the most fantastic people on the planet found each other.
i love how this movie looks. there’s something bergman-esque about how everything is cardinal red. bergman red walls and carpets combined with that fabulous mid-1970’s burnt orange decor thing makes it looks great.
“come on. let’s go outside if you’re going to fight with me. i’m not going to wake up my parents.” hissing at me his 4am slur.
his finger in my mouth. nailing me against the bathroom wall. blind with jealousy. dying for each other. dying at the notion that anything else existed. anything but his finger in my mouth anything but my mouth around his finger. promise becoming my least favorite word. fidelity in the form of betrayal. fidelity in a dead language in letters unsent in bottles thrown out to sea.
pulling down the driveway his father running after the car. rolling down the window letting the smoke out in long breaths. expired license he was distracted day dreamer never present one foot out the back door down in the cellar the secret between wine stained lips mafia bottles his mothers fingers peeling off labels recipes written on scraps folded into coat pockets with my polaroids and matchbooks ends of pens chewed on his black coffee soft pack yellowing teeth sinking into my neck.
“don’t move.” between my legs his glory morning wishing on lashes stuck to my cheek. held captive. this love a vacuum a paradigm breaking each others fingers setting casts molding spending the rest of our lives speaking in broken chants meeting in dreams spending the rest of our lives together apart. the tide never came back in. our youth tied to the mast.
picking me up from the airport pulling into a parking lot pulling over to use both hands making out in record stores in funeral bathrooms in someone else’s bed tangled up in the blue of his peacoat torn out pockets jutting hipbone finding old letters old lovers taking me back home down home and breaking me slowly it was the first time it occurred to me he was not mine born that way not born for me not born in my tower my big brass bedroom with drops running down ringlets running down golden eyelashes running down hot cheeks beads of sweat drops of rain tear drops his fury always running but never escaping the bars of my four post cell.
he was running water. i wanted to bottle him up. keep him. where is home. home within me home without me home before me home after me. those missouri fields those flatlands those sprawls. honey wheat blonde like his hair. my bone colt a wild horse. i was the pasture the gate and garden but i never broke him.
the other day i watched a matador’s mistress. this movie was shot in 2005 and never found any takers for a theatrical run. it changed names a couple of times, and was shelved for a few years. it will finally be released on dvd this june. straight to video.
there’s some controversy because the film was supposed to be a bio-pic about the most celebrated spanish bullfighter evs, manolete, and his love affair with actress lupe sino. the affair turned into a scandal due to lupe sino’s left wing politics. the affair took place not long before manolete was gored to death in the bullring at the age of 30. apart from those few facts, writer/director menno meyjes pretty much took the story into fantasy dreamland territory and many people were upset that the movie and characters weren’t truer to the actual people depicted. personally i don’t give a rip, i love this made up horse shit. i mean, a romantic saga set in 1940’s spain alone has me at hello. add adrien brody in a bullfighting costume and i’m done for!
the performances are pretty darn good. adrien brody doesn’t even attempt a spanish accent which i applaud him for. nothing worse than a failed accent or worse- a dumb british accent where a european one should be. if you can’t hack it- don’t try it.
penelope cruz plays lupe sino and she’s really at her best here. she’s heartbreaking. passionate and intense and tragic, seductive and fragile and adorable. she’s got to be the most beautiful crying woman i ever saw. there’s something very fellini-esque about her in this film. she’s mother, child, whore and devil, saint and martyr and you can’t take your eyes away from watching her walk in heels and a pencil skirt up cobbled european streets. my bff says that you either hate penelope cruz or you love her. well, i love her. but even if i didn’t, i would still love her in this movie.
adrien brody plays this one subtly. he’s shy and does a pretty good job of being the fall guy or straight man or dead wood. he pulls off making the character come off as naive and not dim-witted. there’s a real weakness to him right from the start, he doesn’t come off as cowardly but incredibly fragile, like he’s about to literally break. it’s a great contrast to being the most famous bullfighter in the world. i digress, i love adrien brody with my whole heart. seeing him do the sort of operatic bravado of a bullfighter made me actually blow kisses at the tv screen. visually it’s pure romance, how could it not be? seville, barcelona, madrid. gorgeous spanish courtyards and indoor gardens. penelope cruz in 1940’s bombshell costumes. sigh.
