Welcome to my breakdown

Looking at some famous movie-breakdowns and engaging in some general acting-out on this steamy Monday in the south.

I have helpfully catalogued some of my favorite nervous breakdowns in films.

Comments welcome, and feel free to link your own personal favorite personality-disintegrations on celluloid!

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All alcoholics love this scene ... did he drink or not? Is a phantom bottle of bourbon as damaging as a real one?

Aside: I just love how Stephen King works in references to Maine in everything he does.



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I have written about Roman Polanski's Repulsion before, and how great it is, despite my various "issues" with it (see link).

Here we see that Catherine Deneuve has totally lost her shit, and is afraid of a drippy faucet. As a result, big male hands start coming out of the walls... JESUS H CHRIST! If you are a woman, do not watch this at night, alone at home. (triggers and so on)



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Unfortunately, embedding is disabled for this clip (as well as all of the others) of Charles Foster Kane's famous flip-out when Susan finally departs... but check those famous mirrors at 3:27... everybody stole from Orson Welles. I know most of the lines of the movie by heart.

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In John Ford's The Searchers, Nietzsche's idea that in hunting monsters we must take care not to become monsters ourselves, is given a very good once-over. Although most Hollywood Westerns of the day were morally righteous and fairly unambiguous, this one sure isn't, and consequently didn't make a lot of money at the time. No one wanted to see John Wayne freak out, even in his controlled, macho fashion. It was UNBECOMING. And it is therefore vindication that the movie is now a classic. John Wayne's hyper-masculine cowboys (and impersonal characterizations) have not dated as well as his heartfelt, complex and true performance in the role of Ethan... which BTW, is also the name of one of John Wayne's sons.

Things to look for: 1) Racist or not, when they zoom in on young Lucy's face (19-20 seconds in) and she looks terrified and screams? I have never seen the fear of rape communicated so clearly and realistically in a film. (I realize it is supposed to be much worse than garden-variety rape by white men, but I still think the whole scene is primal.) As a young woman, it scared me to death. 2) Natalie Wood's sister Lana plays young Natalie as a girl, which accounts for the strong resemblance. 3) Notice the first part of this clip closely matches up with Mary McDonnell's childhood trauma in "Dances With Wolves"--wherein she is instructed to run away when the house is attacked by Pawnee. 4) Also notice at 2:33, the similarity to Luke Skywalker's home being destroyed; the scene is almost exactly the same. Both #3 and #4 are deliberate homages to the film. 5) Scene @ 4:45-- me and Mr Daisy sometimes say, "Put an Amen to it!"--when the situation requires. 6) When John Wayne desecrates the Indian corpse? (7:30) Viewers suddenly realize this isn't the John Wayne we're accustomed to.

It also shows us that he is becoming (or has become) the monster Nietzsche warned us about. A strongly subversive film, for its day.



~*~

I can't pick just one scene in The Conversation... so I hereby offer the trailer. If you have never seen this amazing movie, you need to rent it ASAP. Gene Hackman's finest hour, Coppola's mesmerizing genius; this is movie-making at its most wonderful. Hackman perfectly embodies an emotionally-repressed surveillance expert with a guilty Catholic conscience. Too great for words, and more pertinent than ever, in our cameras-everywhere age.

Stuff to look for: 1) Harrison Ford at 2:12; he has maybe 3 lines in the whole movie. 2) Teri Garr's scene was cut for first release, then put back in for DVD. As much as I love Teri Garr, the film is much stronger without her scene. Harry is a loner, and it is far more effective to think of him as not having a girlfriend, or anything approximating one. His infatuation with Cindy Williams also makes more sense if he is alone.



~*~

And the all-time greatest: "Here is someone who stood up."

I know ALL of the lines of Taxi Driver by heart. Every one. I enjoy injecting them into various conversations without people knowing who/what I am quoting.

But every now and then, someone says, "Travis!"

Nothing much to say about Travis... you either understand him or you don't.



Today's blog post title comes courtesy of Alice Cooper.

Dennis Hopper 1936-2010

I mean, what are they gonna say, man, when he's gone, huh? When he dies, when IT dies, man; cause when IT dies, HE dies. What are they gonna say about him? What, are they gonna say, he was a kind man? He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom? Bullshit, man!

Am I gonna be the one to set them straight? Look at me: wrong!!!

--From Apocalypse Now, script credited to John Milius, Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Herr, based on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness... but if you know anything about the making of the movie (which was a whole movie unto itself!), you know that (unsurprisingly) Dennis made up lots of what he said, since he had trouble sticking to the script (so he didn't).

I don't know if he was a kind man, or a wise man. I know that he did have wisdom and he did have plans.

~*~



In this informative segment, Dennis explains why you can't go out into space with fractions:



Goodbye dearest Dennis.

I felt like I knew you... and so many others just like you.

Halloween horror movie thread II

Purty Fresh Market pumpkins!

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I hope you are all having a great Halloween. I have been busily running to and fro, and haven't had as much time to yammer on here as usual. I DID get a chance to pick up my beloved Fresh Market pumpkin coffee, which is to die for. I'm sure it's politically incorrect as hell, not bird-friendly and blah blah blah, but... I love it!

(((shakes head in embarrassment over this admission))))

Yall KNOW I sell all manner of politically correct, organic stuff for a living, right? Shhh! No telling.

~*~


Decided on another Halloween horror movie thread, as I did last year. Below, trailers from some of my favorite horror movies. Once again, I heartily advise SESSION 9 (below) for the brave and courageous viewer.

DON'T GO TO SLEEP!



Please add your own! I have seen most of the films that were kindly recommended here last year. Last night, JEEPERS CREEPERS (2001) robbed me of sleep. Tonight, looking for more thrills and chills. (Check out Rob Zombie's FEAR FEST on American Movie Classics!)

First we start with some vintage punk jams. My favorite Halloween song: HUMAN FLY by the Cramps. And I say BZZZZ, yes I say BZZZZ.

And did he really drink beer out of a tennis shoe? (These were the REAL PUNKS, people!)

The Cramps - Human Fly

[via FoxyTunes / The Cramps]

~*~

Once again, the fabulous SESSION 9 (2001)



Canadian psycho-director David Cronenberg (meant totally as a compliment) titled this film SHIVERS (1975) in Canada, but Roger Corman changed it to THEY CAME FROM WITHIN for USA distribution. Well, of course he did! (I confess I love the Corman title best.)

The ending is one of the all-time great horror movie endings, much copied.



Cronenberg's THE BROOD (1979) is widely considered a sexist movie, although I beg to differ. (What would Freud say?) I think it illustrates how utterly terrified men are of women's childbearing capacities. Cronenberg once said he was going through a divorce and attendant custody-battle when he made the movie, and brother, it seriously shows!



And in Cronenberg's RABID (1977), men desiring to bed the beautiful, legendary porn star Marilyn Chambers end up, well, sick as the very devil. Talk about your sexually transmitted diseases!



As a tyke, I was haunted by THE SCREAMING SKULL (1958), which was originally marketed to audiences with a certificate promising free burial services to anyone who dies of fright while seeing the movie.

I admit, I liked that it was a woman haunting a man for a change. He deserved it!



Francis Ford Coppola's DEMENTIA 13 (1963) similarly spooked me as a child, and I refused to go near ponds situated way out in deserted areas or woods ever again, even in the daytime ... no matter how sweet and bucolic the setting. Something might... be...floating... in it... (AIYEE!!! What's THAT?!)

Not ashamed of my overly cautious ways either--I'm HERE to tell the tale, yes?

Note: This may be the first-ever trailer that starts off with a psychiatrist!



And one of the veritable Cadillacs of the genre, from which we get the standby DON'T GO TO SLEEP!!!!

The original hair-raising ending of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) had Kevin McCarthy (brother of Mary!) ranting and hollering on the highway: YOU'RE NEXT! But unhappy endings weren't allowed in the 50s, so the studio wasn't having it. They quickly tacked-on an ending in which authorities discover a suspicious truck hauling weird giant pods from Santa Mira. (whew!) The ending of this trailer was actually the original ending of the film, before studio meddling.

One legacy of this movie is that the town of "Santa Mira" is featured in lots of horror movies, possibly second only to Bodega Bay (from Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS). You may also notice the first scream in this trailer is delivered by none other than Carolyn Jones, who would go on to distinguish herself as TV's Morticia Addams.



Such an amazing Cadillac it is, the remake in 1978 was also fantastic. The introduction of psychology and new age blather was a brilliant innovation, making me think that every generation might actually update this movie for themselves. (Although the third remake, by Abel Ferrara, left a lot to be desired.)

Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum and dazzling movie diva Veronica Cartwright (big favorite here at DEAD AIR!) have a great exchange in this movie that bears repeating:

Elizabeth: I have seen these flowers all over. They are growing like parasites on other plants. All of a sudden. Where are they coming from?

Nancy: Outer space?

Jack: What are you talking about? A space flower?

Nancy: Well why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?

Jack: I've never expected metal ships.

Only Jeff Goldblum can deliver a line like that and make you laugh when you are simultaneously scared out of your wits.

Also, a Christian aside for those attuned to such minutiae: when (notably Jewish, in this context) Goldblum offers himself to the pod-people mob to save his friends, he stretches his arms out just like Jesus. (No greater love than this, and even a horror movie takes a second to remind us. For emphasis, this scene is featured in the trailer accompanied by AMAZING GRACE, on bagpipes no less, at 1:55.)



Unfortunately, I couldn't locate a trailer for the old Stella Stevens/Shelley Winters shocker, THE MAD ROOM (1969), and too bad. If you find it anywhere, have a look, great fun it is.

Have a great Halloween, everyone!

War is hell

At left: Jane Fonda's mug shot during her infamous "Hanoi Jane" period.









I don't usually get a multitude of comments on my blog, but I am hoping this time yall will jump in and add your two cents. A rather heated exchange on another blog has resulted in this post. I'm not really prepared to write it, and it keeps coming out all wrong, or at the very least, it sounds limited. Thus, I need some of you folks to help: clarify, add, subtract, criticize, correct me, whatever it takes. I welcome it. No offense at all will be taken. I would like to have a serious discussion. Canadians and other non-USA-citizens are particularly welcome: Please don't be shy.

Here are the questions for discussion:

Can one "support the troops" without supporting the war? How?

Can one criticize the atrocities of the war without actually describing in some detail WHAT "the troops" have done?

I don't think so, unless one is deliberately, determinedly vague. Yes, it's nasty over there. How nasty?

And then, the discussion grinds to a halt.

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Some time during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the mantra "Support the troops!" developed into a full-fledged battle cry; a compulsory litmus test of any criticism of American military adventures abroad, which are constant and never-ending. The United States has had it's fingers in the business of so many countries, I couldn't begin to name them all. As people here at home die from no transplanted kidneys and no health insurance, we have propped up corrupt dictators with millions of dollars. We have funded covert operations in every nook and cranny of the world. We have kept countries from having elections (as we nullified the election of Ho Chi Minh), and forced others into having elections they weren't ready to have, or perhaps, didn't even want. We have invaded countries, supposedly on the behalf of other countries. The list is interminable. I am ashamed of it. This was never my decision; I wasn't consulted, although they HAVE used my money to do it. Just as I belong to the biggest bully of Christendom, the Catholic Church, I belong to the biggest bully of the nations, the USA. It is my task (my destiny?) to reform both, to do whatever I can to humanize these institutions. I seek to increase and magnify the good in them (and there IS so much good) and minimize or eliminate the bad. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me.

Since Vietnam and the abolition of the draft (and certainly, even before), the army has been drawn from the poor and working classes of the USA. This has been deliberate. Ashley Wilkes went dashing off to fight the yankees, but that is probably how long it has been since large numbers of upper-class men enlisted, William F. Buckley and a few other adventurous rich men notwithstanding. As the Bruce Springsteen song reminded us, prisons have habitually been emptied in times of war, with poor kid-car thieves and dope dealers used as cannon fodder. During the Reagan Admin, an increase in the "college funds" incentive was added to the formidable list of military benefits in the existing G.I. Bill. Obviously, kids who already have college paid for, wouldn't find this any kind of incentive to enlist. The class element is very clearcut and unapologetic.

Eliminating the draft army and using only volunteers meant there had to be SOME incentive to enlist; three-hots-and-a-cot wasn't enough. (As my brother once said, you can get that much in JAIL, forgodsake, and jail is safer than the battlefield.) Health care for life (however slipshod, it's better than none), preference in Civil Service jobs, life insurance packages, social networking for future employment leading to a solid place in the middle class--these are valuable incentives. But above all, the free-college bribe, the G.I. Bill? That was the big enchilada, and poor kids from the ghettos, the barrios, the farms, the projects, all saw a way out.

And so, the US military had a ready supply of cannon fodder, as needed.

I will never forget the documentary film Soldier Girls, in which the girls from the Bronx tell each other they have to hang in there--they MUST endure the abusive basic training drill instructors--because then they will go back to the neighborhood in uniform, looking fine. "Everyone will see that we made it!" one girl says to the other, embracing her as she cries that she can't go on.

Thus, there is also significant pride in military service, a sense of some lofty accomplishment that is preserved as long as the mystique of the military is preserved. To question that mystique is to puncture the egos of anyone who subscribes to it, including people who have spent their lives being proud of the uniform.

The Reaganites knew all of this. Reading The American Spectator and other right-wing publications throughout the 80s, one could read their open discussions regarding how to capitalize on these emotions, the need to build "a poor man's ego" and the accompanying need to feel accomplished, important and useful. The working class/poor have so little to be proud of--we can give them this... and fight our colonialist wars in the bargain. We can make them The Few, The Proud. Be All You Can Be, was the 80s army recruitment slogan.

And now, in America, it is virtually verboten to discuss WHAT soldiering is. As a consequence, many soldiers are stunned when they find out. "Peacekeeping forces"--after all, doesn't sound so bad, as Orwell's WAR IS PEACE doesn't either. Hey, it HAS TO BE DONE. Somebody has to keep the peace, right? The PR of "peacekeeping" served two functions, one for politicians to ask for more warbucks from the voters, and one to keep the soldiers in the dark. Many soldiers have no idea whatsoever of the politics of the countries they are deployed to. They don't know the languages, religion or cultures. The army likes to keep it that way. No classes in any of that are included in Basic Training, beyond what is necessary to find one's way around. (History? We don't need no stinking history!)

~*~

In the discussion I refer to, someone actually used the phrase "they were only following orders"--apparently with no irony and no memory of the Nuremberg Trials, where that line was first popularized.

Let's backtrack a minute.

My first introduction into world politics was the Indochina Peace Campaign, a road-tour by Tom Hayden, Holly Near and Jane Fonda. I loved them all, so I went to hear them. I was 14 years old. I still have the flyer in an old scrapbook, advertising their visit to the Ohio State University campus. They had just come from their highly controversial (putting it mildly!) FTA Tour, which was made into a movie that few people have ever seen. The concept was to go to the troops directly, based on some of the ideas presented above: the soldiers are often poor and working class, and need to be educated that Vietnam is a quagmire, a no-win situation, that benefits a certain class of American profiteers. A review of the movie fills us in:

During 1971 and 1972, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland led a quasi-USO tour that played in towns outside of U.S. military bases along the West Coast and throughout the Pacific. Fonda referred to the tour as "political vaudeville" and the show itself was called "FTA" (the acronym standing for "Free the Army" and "Fuck the Army"). The audiences were primarily the men and women of the U.S. armed services, and during the tour Fonda and her company interviewed the various soldiers, sailors and marines regarding their thoughts on the Indochina slaughterhouse.

Viewing "FTA" today is like opening a long-forgotten time capsule. The film's true power comes in the frank, often rude comments from the servicemen and women who openly question the purpose and planning of the American involvement in Vietnam. Most memorable here are the members of the U.S.S. Coral Sea, who presented a petition to their superiors demanding a halt to the bombing in Vietnam; African-American soldiers and marines who angrily decried racist attitudes among the white commanding officers at the U.S. military installations, usually with an upraised fist of the Black Power movement; women serving in the U.S. Air Force who talk unhappily about sexual harassment from their male counterparts; and soldiers who pointedly refer to the dictatorial government in South Vietnam which was being presented as the democracy which they were supposedly defending. The extraordinary air of dissent that rises out of "FTA" provides a rare glimpse into a unhappy and demoralized fighting force stuck in a war which they did not believe in.

Here we clearly see that the soldiers themselves often didn't agree with what they were doing.

If there are any who do not NOW agree, we certainly aren't hearing about them.

Perhaps the "Support the Troops!" mantra only refers troops that have accepted their fates? Can we support dissident troops? (Are there any?)

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In 1970, one of the bloodiest years of the Vietnam engagement, Hollywood gave us some blatant, pro-war propaganda in the movie PATTON. General Patton, of course, was a commander during World War II, not Vietnam, but in this manner, Americans could look back to a time in which we had been on the morally-correct side of a military action. It was a cozy, well-acted valentine to Richard Nixon and General Westmoreland. George C. Scott earned himself an Academy Award, which he famously refused.

Despite the fact that Hollywood is supposedly so liberal, then as now, precious few openly anti-war movies have EVER been made. (One fascinating fact is that one of the co-authors of this screenplay, Francis Ford Coppola, DID go on to make one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made, Apocalypse Now.)



~*~

Speaking personally, I will do anything to end this war. Playing games about what war is, avoiding the truth, is not the way to do it.

"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
Letter to Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta,
September 12, 1864