Another fine mess

Kurt Vonnegut dedicated his 1976 novel Slapstick "to the memory of Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Norvell Hardy, two angels of my time."

Ah, weren't they, though?

Laurel and Hardy - Water fight clip



It took me a long time to find one that features Stanley starting to cry! (@ 2:14) I always adored them both, but Stanley's funny crying gave him the edge, and he was my favorite.

Everyone's gone to the movies

The futuristic movie SURROGATES (2009) unexpectedly blew my mind... a culture in which affluent humans prefer to stay ensconced in their homes, behind closed doors, directing their (good-looking, able-bodied, young) android-selves (through which they see, smell, hear, taste reality as experienced by the android) was not as far removed from everyday experience as I thought it would be. I mean, I am typing on this contraption that people now use like a 'surrogate'--right? Various events are already not regarded as "real" to people unless they've seen them on TV, and it is through a similar smallish screen that people in SURROGATES engage their world. The people who don't, are either too weird or too poor, and are therefore dubbed "meatbags" for not getting with the surrogates-program.

Scificool.com gave the movie a mostly-negative review:

It is the future, and lifelike robotic surrogates have become commonplace. In fact, they’re so commonplace that only a small portion of the population don’t use them, and these “dregs” of society have cut themselves off from the rest of the world to live in inner city reservations. They are led by The Prophet (Ving Rhames), a mysterious, homeless-looking fella who preaches revolution against the machines. The story proper begins when two surrogates are destroyed, resulting in the death of their human hosts – impossibility, we’re told by the creators of the machines.

This is, in fact, the first-ever recorded murder of a human while “jacked in”. In a world where crime is no longer a viable human endeavor, and murder is practically non-existent thanks to the presence of surrogates, the FBI, led by Greer (Willis) and Peters (Radha Mitchell) are understandably shocked. But as Greer and Peters chases the killer, they begin to realize that a larger conspiracy is at work.

But it wasn't the plot that bothered me, it was the underlying IDEAS the plot was based on. The kids at Scificool are already shrugging, but *I* was disoriented by the basic premise.

It was disturbing. I assume that's why it went straight to DVD ... nobody will pay money to go to a theater (their surrogate might) to ponder at length how seriously messed-up we are.

Because, you know, if there were surrogates, it would be just like the movie... that is the truly disturbing, disorienting thing. The perfection of the androids (like the perfection of movie stars) is intimidating, and the meatbags are at a clear disadvantage. A world of beautiful, fit androids means that more people would opt to live this way... in so many ways, we are herd animals. What if the herd stayed home en masse and sent androids out to work? Lots of people have said (when I have described the movie to them) they'd love the option of sending the android to work for them. But would that persona take over your life, becoming the only acceptable facade you can present to the world?

Mr Daisy has met the authors of the graphic novel, Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, who say they weren't inspired by Philip K Dick or JG Ballard, but were most assuredly inspired by William Gibson. Bruce Willis doesn't mind going back and forth in his role; in the first half he looks like a movie star, blond hair, about 32 years old... then he abandons the surrogate for his true meatbag self, and he is bald, obviously aging, and banged up in a fight with scars on his face for the rest of the movie. The juxtaposition between him and the beautiful androids is striking. (I found Radha Mitchell largely unrecognizable, so she made an excellent android.)

The ideas in this movie gave me nightmares and continue to do so.

~*~

During the last couple of Thursdays, I huddled up with my bowl of popcorn to watch a night of fabulous Merchant/Ivory films on Turner Classic Movies... but wait. What?

Ask yourself, if a married couple made a slew of amazing, fantastic, Oscar-winning movies, do you think they might mention that? They mention Tracy and Hepburn, who were not even legally married. They mention Bogart and Bacall. They mention Judy Garland and Vincent Minelli. And these are only off the top of my head.

Ismail Merchant and James Ivory were partners. You know, PARTNERS? THOSE KIND of partners?

I recently got the smackdown on another blog for fulminating about this after the recent death of Ismail Merchant; I was self-righteously informed in short order that Merchant, in particular, was a "private man" and IF he was gay, it's nobody's business.

Really? And who decided that? Why is it nobody's business? Bullshit, of course it is. When Spencer Tracy protested that he and Katharine Hepburn's affair was nobody's business, did anybody listen? (Tracy was already married and as a Catholic, would not get a divorce; their decades-long affair was always technically an "adulterous" affair.) Why are we suddenly being polite and respectful when some celebrity tells us something is not our business? Since when?

I think some people don't WANT to know.

The fact that these great movies were made by loving partners, is a major reason why they are so wonderful. It is clear that the director and producer had a unified vision, and worked in harmony to bring it to the audience. Just as people enjoyed the witty repartee of Tracy/Hepburn or the sexual electricity of Taylor/Burton or Newman/Woodward... these couples crackled onscreen and made audiences curious about their private lives. Movie magazines delivered all the goods. They were not allowed to declare their private lives off limits, try as they might.

It was the stunning beauty of these films, that we now call "Merchant-Ivory" (a trusted brand name, a sign of high quality) that first made me curious also. How could these men, from such different backgrounds, make such identifiable, signature films, with such a definable point of view? When I discovered they were life-partners, I was not surprised. In fact, it explains so much about their work.

But alas, nobody will mention their domestic partnership when introducing their work on classic movie networks. They are officially "artistic collaborators" only.

Again, we see how gay people are disappeared by the culture at large, as heterosexuality, even openly illicit heterosexuality, is heralded.

~*~

NOTE: Today's blog post title is of course from STEELY DAN. I'd add the song itself, but I could only find a demo version, an outtake version and a 90s live version... arrrgh, if I can't have the exact version I first heard on KATY LIED, I won't print any of them. (musical snobbery)

But the one I linked is the closest.

Sing Out Louise! Smile, Baby!

Graphic from Yellowdog Granny.









I am hoping to make it down to Columbia for the Republican CNN dog-and-pony-show (debate, I mean), but so far, no vehicular luck. Still panhandling for a ride, if any of you brave souls plan to go down there tomorrow to check out the Democratic Process In Action (grunts for emphasis). The Ron Paul people are having their rally directly afterwards, and that sounds like a good place to start witnessing the Third Party Gospel. I'm on it! Well okay, I would ordinarily be on it, if I had a car that could safely sustain a hundred-mile round trip without a thorough examination, which I don't.

Yes, yes, I know, if I had been a conscientious DoBee [1] I would have gotten my oil changed and tires rotated and what-all, but as an unemployed person I have not seen THE POINT. (See, she pauses to point out, HOW UNEMPLOYMENT NEGATIVELY INFLUENCES THE ECONOMY?!?) At any rate, here I am, send notes and emails and Twitters and Facebook IMs and what-have-you, if you are going down to our illustrious state capital to protest or hang out with the Ron Paul people tomorrow.

My first radio excursion on Saturday morning went well. Gregg roused himself from his cardiologist's floor and aided me wonderfully! I was scared to death, and had the proverbial death-grip on my old wooden antique rosary from Notre Dame (Indiana, not France), which was left to me by a deceased female neighbor named Butch, so its very lucky. In addition, I inexplicably required a huge Double Mocha Frappucino to get it done, but I did it! (Next week, will probably be able to make do with a regular single Vanilla.)

PLEASE DROP IN AND LISTEN! WFISradio.com, 1600 AM or 94.9 FM on your radio dial... or online. 9:00 AM on Saturday mornings, which is an ungodly weekend hour, and I apologize for that.

~*~

Be-bopping around the internet today, whilst watching Doris Day (yall know how much I love Doris) in With Six You Get Eggroll. A bad movie that nonetheless fascinated me as a wide-eyed, gullible youngster... as Single Mom-with-kids marries Single Dad-with-kids, and they wholesomely "blend" their families. As many of you know, I desperately wanted my mother to get married and behave in this wonderfully-domestic fashion, particularly if it meant she would stop wearing the bubble hairdos, popping amphetamines, singing in the country and western bands every night, drinking and smoking like a rat-pack member, marrying people she had just met and dammit, ACT LIKE SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO. [2] Ha.

Of course, now I realize, neither did Doris. If I had only known!

Will somebody tell me: Did wholesome TV-dad Brian Keith die of AIDS or is that just a rumor? Am I mixing him up with Robert Reed, since the plot of this movie is where they obviously came up with THE BRADY BUNCH? (It seemed that after Robert Reed died, it was suddenly open season on the nice TV-dads and magically, they all became gay overnight.)

Okay, checked Wikipedia: No, not true. Suicide. I knew it was something uncommon.

A shame. I always liked him.

The sweet, precocious little child-star, Anissa Jones, whom I liked so much on Brian Keith's old show, Family Affair, was an accidental drug death at age 18. We were only 6 months apart in age. The other child on the show, Johnny Whitaker, has spoken at length about his addiction problems, also, and is now a drug counselor.

I guess these Hollywood-fantasy families really were fake, weren't they?

~*~

[1] To the non-baby boomers, this is from the children's TV show Romper Room and has no relationship to the word DOOBIE as a joint or the Doobie Brothers. There were Do Bees and Don't Bees, and of course, we all tried to be good DO BEES! (We marginally succeeded.)

[2] Mama! Get out your white dress/you've done it before/without much success (Stephen Sondheim to the rescue). When I first heard this song as a kid, at maybe 8 years old, I sobbed my little heart out. (And it's where we get today's blog post title.)

See, I thought, the stipper's children understand!

Charlie Sheen: Hero of the hour?

As you have undoubtedly heard, Charlie Sheen's live shows didn't go over so well over the weekend. Practicing alcoholics are never as funny as they think they are, in the long haul. With editing, yes. For a whole show, no. From ABC:

After all but getting booed off stage at the Detroit, Mich. debut of his live show, "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat Is Not an Option," it's unclear if or how Sheen's month-long tour will proceed.

Anticipation ran high for the event. Ticket holders milled about the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit before the 8 p.m. start time, sometimes yelling Sheen catchphrases like "tiger blood" and "winning" to rev up fellow attendees. As of Saturday afternoon, all 4,700 seats at the theater had been sold.

...

Sheen managed to up the crowd's enthusiasm for the start of his act. Before his official debut, he played a montage of video clips including scenes from "Apocalypse Now," the film starring Sheen's father that Sheen claims to be obsessed with. He then strutted on stage with his "goddesses," Bree Olsen and Natalie Kenly, who proceeded to engage in a passionate kiss, much to the delight of the crowd.

They then went backstage to burn a bowling shirt similar to the one Sheen wore on "Two and a Half Men." While footage of the shirt on fire in a garbage can played on the big screen behind him, Sheen urged the crowd to hold up their lighters, asking, "Doesn't anyone smoke cigarettes anymore?"

The spectacle mirrored the ranting and raving Sheen's done online and in interviews over the past few weeks. But after that, things took a turn for the weird.

Sheen stood at a podium in front of a pseudo-presidential looking seal saying "Warlock States of Sheen" and launched into a nonsensical speech seemingly directed at his critics.

He started, "Tonight I am delivered by cyber cloud, with the stomp and glisten of heaven's produce section." He then talked about burning something "down from the mount of olive" and "gasoline rainbows." He frequently damned "trolls" -- presumably, "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre and his former bosses at CBS and Warner Brothers. He called Sarah Palin a "whore" for no apparent reason.

No apparent reason? Of course there is an apparent reason, that you media-swine refuse to take seriously: He's a misogynist pig.

The fact that so many people find his woman-hating amusing and worth celebrating, lets us know exactly how far we have to go.

Anna Holmes' piece in the New York Times, linked above, details all the woman-pounding Charlie has humorously engaged in over the years. And as a rich, privileged white man, he gets by with all of it (paging Chris Brown! Chris Brown, call your office)... and of course, since so many of the women getting pounded are mere actresses, models and sex workers, they 'deserve' it:

A woman’s active embrace of the fame monster or participation in the sex industry, we seem to say, means that she compromises her right not to be assaulted, let alone humiliated, insulted or degraded; it’s part of the deal. The promise of a modern Cinderella ending — attention, fame, the love and savings account of a rich man — is always the assumed goal.

Objectification and abuse, it follows, is not only an accepted occupational hazard for certain women, but something that men like Mr. Sheen have earned the right to indulge in. (Mr. Sheen reportedly once said that he didn’t pay prostitutes for the sex; he paid them “to leave.”)

Haha, ain't that funny? Is he serious or joking?--go the predictable onlooker-comments... ohhh, he's just being funny. Actually, I think he means everything he says, and he has repeatedly proven that he is willing to back it up with a nice right to the jaw, if any nearby female should argue.

Indeed, it’s difficult for many to discern any difference between Mr. Sheen’s real-life, round-the-clock, recorded outbursts and the sexist narratives devised by reality television producers, in which women are routinely portrayed as backstabbing floozies, and dreadful behavior by males is explained away as a side effect of unbridled passion or too much pilsner.

And so, a pricey live show-tour by a woman-hater, or should I say ANOTHER woman-hater (there are oodles of rock stars and hip-hop stars and country-and-western stars who have gotten plenty rich off of women-hating... paging Eminem! paging Ted Nugent! etc) ... and then I see Phyllis Schlafly (barfs for emphasis) on C-Span over the weekend, telling us that feminism is over with and no longer necessary, and what are these harridans and harpies still so pissed off about?

One wonders if she has flipped her channels lately, over to ABC (live video of Charlie at above link) or to the millions of other outlets that have advertised Charlie's zealously-sexist antics over recent months. Hello? What planet is Schlafly on?

They deserve each other, most assuredly.

Elizabeth Taylor 1932-2011

The most beautiful woman in the history of the world (and the subject of Daisy's major lifelong celebrity crush!) has passed on... I simply can't talk about it. :(

Below, some of my favorite photos of Elizabeth, from an older post.

Old Hollywood is officially over. Goodbye, dearest Elizabeth.

PS: You know you're getting old when your icons start dropping like flies...

~*~

Scientology Examined by the New Yorker

"When we need somebody haunted we investigate. When we investigate we do so noisily always." - L. Ron Hubbard, MANUAL OF JUSTICE, 1959



I first met Scientologists when they showed up (uninvited) at various and sundry Yippie events, particularly Smoke-Ins, throughout the 70s. They seemed to think they could convert pot-smokers. This is possibly because the only time their theology makes any real sense is when you are stoned out of your mind. We regarded them as just another kooky 70s cult, like the Moonies, who would usually show up wherever and whenever the Church of Scientology did. It's like they were competing for the same members.

The Scientologists used to set up shop in a little booth (always smiling smiling smiling in a spooky, eager-beaver fashion), with those little tin-can things for "auditing"--called an E-meter. You see the E-meter, you know who it is.

A band of Yippies trooped up to them at one such local event, rudely pawing the sacred E-meter and peppering them with dumb questions. Finally, one Yippie put one tin can to his ear as the second Yippie started bellowing into it: "What?! What?! Play some BLACK SABBATH!"... causing onlookers to guffaw appreciatively. Rather than becoming merely grim and humorless (as Christians might) or rolling their eyes and telling us all to GROW UP (as right-wingers would), the Scientologists suddenly appeared completely furious and could barely contain their anger. One became red-faced and livid: "Back off!" he hissed at the Black Sabbath fan, who seemed shocked and put the tin can down, appropriately backing off. "Those people are crazy," he whispered to me later. "You can feel the insanity vibe, just radiating off them," he said. Wow, really?

Some years later, I would walk by the same E-meter audit-set-up in downtown Columbus, Ohio (in front of the State House, no less), accompanied by some bright yellow balloons. My daughter, about three years old at the time, pointed at the gaily-colored balloons and wanted one. Pointing at the auditing cans (flanked by numerous copies of the tell-tale book Dianetics), I replied, "You don't want those balloons, hon, those are Scientologist Balloons!" --chortling at my own wit. Then I saw a business-suited-woman standing near the booth, and felt embarrassed she had heard me. I felt sheepish and giggled (exactly as I might act in front of a nun), but the Scientologist (auditing-Thetan, in this case) wasn't amused. She gave me the most hateful, evil look I have ever witnessed--and this includes nasty looks from right-wing maniacs and Reaganoids I have protested against over the decades. It was a glowering, focused, scary look. Damn, these people mean business, I thought. And from that point onward, I was very interested in the Church of Scientology. Rather like The Visitors who come in peace... well, sure they do.

Scientology-founder L. Ron Hubbard once wrote an amazing horror novel titled FEAR, which can scare the beJesus right out of you. After reading it and having a few nightmares, I realized that a man who could write like this could easily get to the bottom of an unruly or confused psyche and turn it upside down in record time. (I could not even bear to put the novel down, and I knew it was by L. Ron Hubbard.) FEAR's level of restrained paranoia/freak-out is incredible; the dramatic tension is not fully resolved until the last pages. Any religion started by this guy is going to be BLOODY HEAVY indeed, I thought.

And now, we have a famous Scientology-defector they can't eliminate, drive crazy or simply ignore: movie director Paul Haggis, who has gone public. He reached the second-highest level in the Church, Operating Thetan VII.

I have seen the New Yorker article titled The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology posted in about a half-dozen places already, so let me add my link.

It's long, but contains some real doozies. Brother and sister scandalmongers, you must read it:

Many Hollywood actors were drawn into the church by a friend or by reading “Dianetics”; a surprising number of them, though, came through the Beverly Hills Playhouse. For decades, the resident acting coach there was Milton Katselas, and he taught hundreds of future stars, including Ted Danson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and George Clooney. “Most of Hollywood went through that class,” Anne Archer told me.

...

Jim Gordon, a veteran police officer in Los Angeles, and also an aspiring actor, spent ten years at the Playhouse, starting in 1990. He told me that Scientology “recruited a ton of kids out of that school.” Like Scientology, the Playhouse presented a strict hierarchy of study; under Katselas’s tutelage, students graduated from one level to the next. As Gordon advanced within the Playhouse, he began recognizing many students from the roles they were getting in Hollywood. “You see a lot of people you know from TV,” Gordon says. He began feeling the pull of the church. “When you started off, they weren’t really pushing it, but as you progressed through the Playhouse’s levels Scientology became more of a focus,” he told me. After a few years, he joined. Like the courses at the Playhouse, Scientology offered actors a method that they could apply to both their lives and their careers.

Finally, an explanation for why so many actors are Scientologists; they actually targeted the industry from the inside. I had mistakenly believed they zeroed in on celebrities from the outside, you know, like they did the pot-smokers. Nope, they get them while they are studying for something else entirely. Interesting.

Katselas received a ten-per-cent commission from the church on the money contributed by his students.

Katselas died in 2008, and Scientology no longer has a connection with the Beverly Hills Playhouse. Anne Archer told me that the reputation of Katselas’s class as, in Gordon’s words, a “Scientology clearinghouse” is overblown. “His classes averaged about fifty or sixty people, and there would be maybe seven to ten people in it who would be Scientologists,” she says. But the list of Scientologists who have studied at the Playhouse is long—it includes Jenna Elfman, Giovanni Ribisi, and Jason Lee—and the many protégés Katselas left behind helped cement the relationship between Hollywood and the church.

More goodies from the article, which you should read and pass around:

David S. Touretzky, a computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has done extensive research on Scientology. (He is not a defector.) He estimates that the coursework alone now costs nearly three hundred thousand dollars, and, with the additional auditing and contributions expected of upper-level members, the cumulative cost of the coursework may exceed half a million dollars. (The church says that there are no fixed fees, adding, “Donations requested for ‘courses’ at Church of Scientology begin at $50 and could never possibly reach the amount suggested.”)

That pesky inflation!

And by the way, although the church doesn't like it when you refer to the E-meter as "tin cans"--according to this article, it STARTED as mere SOUP CANS, seriously:

During auditing, Haggis grasped a cylindrical electrode in each hand; when he first joined Scientology, the electrodes were empty soup cans. An imperceptible electrical charge ran from the meter through his body. The auditor asked systematic questions aimed at detecting sources of “spiritual distress.” Whenever Haggis gave an answer that prompted the E-Meter’s needle to jump, that subject became an area of concentration until the auditor was satisfied that Haggis was free of the emotional consequences of the troubling experience.

And finally... yes, at long last, we're getting to Xenu! You knew he was coming!

Only a really great horror/sci-fi mind could have hatched Xenu:

The church, which considers it sacrilegious for the uninitiated to read its confidential scriptures, got a restraining order, but the Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of the [Thetan] material and printed a summary. Suddenly, the secrets that had stunned Paul Haggis in a locked room were public knowledge.

“A major cause of mankind’s problems began 75 million years ago,” the Times wrote, when the planet Earth, then called Teegeeack, was part of a confederation of ninety planets under the leadership of a despotic ruler named Xenu. “Then, as now, the materials state, the chief problem was overpopulation.” Xenu decided “to take radical measures.” The documents explained that surplus beings were transported to volcanoes on Earth. “The documents state that H-bombs far more powerful than any in existence today were dropped on these volcanoes, destroying the people but freeing their spirits—called thetans—which attached themselves to one another in clusters.” Those spirits were “trapped in a compound of frozen alcohol and glycol,” then “implanted” with “the seed of aberrant behavior.” The Times account concluded, “When people die, these clusters attach to other humans and keep perpetuating themselves.”

As that wise old shopkeeper on the old Friday the 13th TV show was always saying: It all makes a terrible sense.

And you wondered when Tom would show up.

In 2004, Cruise received a special Scientology award: the Freedom Medal of Valor. In a ceremony held in England, Miscavige called Cruise “the most dedicated Scientologist I know.” The ceremony was accompanied by a video interview with the star. Wearing a black turtleneck, and with the theme music from “Mission: Impossible” playing in the background, Cruise said, “Being a Scientologist, you look at someone and you know absolutely that you can help them. So, for me, it really is K.S.W.”—initials that stand for “Keeping Scientology Working.” He went on, “That policy to me has really gone—phist!” He made a vigorous gesture with his hand. “Boy! There’s a time I went through and I said, ‘You know what? When I read it, you know, I just went poo! This is it!’ ” Later, when the video was posted on YouTube and viewed by millions who had no idea what he was talking about, Cruise came across as unhinged.

Ya think?

(More fun with Tom below. Could not resist!)

As the father of two gay daughters, Haggis finally broke with the church over their funding of anti-gay Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California. And then he studied and found out more...

As they say, read it all.

~*~



[NOTE: The only other time I have written about Scientology at DEAD AIR, was about the death of Jett Travolta, which was predictably covered up.]

Edit: The last few seconds of the video cautions that all copies are quickly removed by the church of Scientology, so you should download it yourself and upload it to YouTube after this copy is removed. Create a different account for this purpose, since they go after that, too.

Lisa Blount 1957-2010

At left: Sid isn't gonna like what Lynette says next.



One of the greatest movie-bitches of all time has passed. She was my age.

Lisa Blount played the evil vixen Lynette, who drove nice-guy Sid (David Keith) to suicide in An Officer and a Gentleman. I also remember her from John Carpenter's creepy Prince of Darkness, which you will hopefully see rerun during Halloween weekend. She was an Oscar-winning producer, as well.

The expression worn on Blount's face as she exits the motel room in An Officer and a Gentlemen, after telling Sid her period is late? (Note: it wasn't.) Priceless, just priceless. Actresses who can convey entire WORLDS OF THOUGHT in their facial expressions, are in short supply... botox is making them obsolete, for the most part.

Goodbye dearest Lisa. People everywhere would remark for DECADES about "that bitch in Officer and a Gentleman," and I hope you were suitably proud of your work. Although the ultra-famous leads overshadowed you, your accusatory shout, "You're no different than I am, Paula!"--was the best line in the movie (and the only feminist line), delivered with the ring of truth, which it was. She wasn't any different than you, but people had to believe she was to enjoy the movie, didn't they? You kicked ass, girlfriend.

Rest in peace.

Get me wardrobe!

Over the weekend, we very much enjoyed the film Hollywoodland (2006).






Even more than fabulous Adrien Brody, even more than the presence of legendary veteran character actress Lois Smith, and even more than the entertaining, LA-Confidentialish tale based on juicy Hollywood rumors surrounding the death of George Reeves...I loved the clothes!!!!

I kept getting distracted by the continuous Hit Parade of wonderful late-50s era dresses, blouses and accessories--even the men's shirts were terrific. And every outfit was utterly perfect for the character who wore it.

The costume designer for Hollywoodland was tremendously talented JULIE WEISS, who has designed clothes for a variety of films including American Beauty, Frida and A Simple Plan. (I also loved her flamboyant showgirl costumes and sky-diving Elvises in Honeymoon in Vegas!) She could easily go into business for herself... although if she did, I doubt regular folks could afford anything so wonderful.

Throughout the movie, I just kept thinking, WOW, I'd love to wear that!

Some of my favorites of Weiss' great outfits in Hollywoodland are below, worn by cast members Robin Tunney, Caroline Dhavernas, Diane Lane, Kathleen Robertson and Ben Affleck. (At least two other incredible dresses, could not locate the movie stills.)

~*~

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.

Thinking like a drug addict

I invite you to closely examine the photos that accompany this post. They are all of the same person.*

Would you know this, if I hadn't told you?

~*~

Ironically, Mr Daisy and I had just been watching King of the Hill DVDs when we heard the news of Brittany Murphy's death. And as a King of the Hill fan, I felt that I had lost my dear friend Luanne, whom I loved like my own cartoon-land sister. And now I can't think of Luanne's sweet, scatterbrained, thoroughly clueless southern voice without tearing up. Ohhhh no, not Luanne!

Brittany Murphy was 32 years old.

With one or two exceptions (see below), there is a huge silence around her death. The implications are pretty far-reaching, so let me say it out loud: surgery is painful. Frequent surgery will make pain a frequent, even omnipresent reality.

In Hollywood, people (once it was only women, now it's everyone) have constant surgery to look good for movies and TV, and simply to stay employable. This state-of-affairs eventually evolves into endless medical tinkering and tweaking of the appearance. Surgery hurts, of course. Thus, the patients/victims are given ample painkillers, as Michael Jackson was. The result: you have a whole town full of rich, famous junkies, whom doctors will not refuse. (Out here in the heartland, you can have an exceptionally hard time getting your painkiller-Rx refilled, even when you are ready to drop dead; in Hollywood, the doctors are eager to do housecalls.) Need drugs? Have a handful!

Brittany Murphy's bedroom contained:

According to the notes, the medications included Topamax (anti-seizure meds also to prevent migraines), Methylprednisolone (anti-inflammatory), Fluoxetine (depression med), Klonopin (anxiety med), Carbamazepine (treats Diabetic symptoms and is also a bipolar med), Ativan (anxiety med), Vicoprofen (pain reliever), Propranolol (hypertension, used to prevent heart attacks), Biaxin (antibiotic), Hydrocodone (pain med) and miscellaneous vitamins.

The notes say, "No alcohol containers, paraphernalia or illegal drugs were discovered."

(Why the hell would you need illegal drugs when you can get all of that?!)

One of those phrases heard in recovery is: You are thinking like a drug addict. I found myself mulling over the death of young Brittany and by extension, the whole crew of drug-dependent Hollywood entertainers... and I wondered if they were also thinking like drug addicts.

That is to say, is the surgery first, or are the drugs first?

If you know you will get open-ended prescriptions, is that a possible enticement for more surgery? Perhaps that's one unacknowledged reason for the endless tweaking? Drugs, drugs and more drugs... but you have to plug into the system, you have to ride the gravy train. You have to get your face cut and pasted, probably some serious liposuction. It's like a baptism; a christening as a new Hollywood-being.

As a reward, perfectly legal chemicals that make you feel marvelous all the time. You can have as much as you want, but only if you continue the tweaking, the cutting, the pasting, the surgical tinkering.

And of course you will. By then, you are thinking like a drug addict.

~*~

Director Amy Heckerling has already weighed in:

Did Brittany Murphy's death have anything to do with her weight?

"Clueless" director Amy Heckerling seems to think so.

Heckerling, who worked with a much curvier Murphy during the filming of "Clueless," told Usmagazine.com that she is "angry" about the actress' death, and believes Hollywood played a large role in transforming her from a round-faced teen to a rail-thin adult.

"It just seemed like she was blowing up, being on every magazine and being treated as though she had suddenly become beautiful.," Heckerling told the mag. "And I think she was feeling very good about that. I'm just not happy with Hollywood."

Just a couple weeks before she collapsed in her shower and was pronounced dead from cardiac arrest, Murphy even admitted that she was too skinny while speaking with reporters at a store opening.

"I am a bit thinner now than what I would like to be," she told Fox News.

Murphy's official cause of death is still listed as "pending." But I see the photos, and I know that such a radical rearranging of one's appearance could not happen without considerable pain. And painkillers.

Brittany, we hardly knew ye, dear one.

Goodbye, my dearest Luanne.





*Photos above are Brittany Murphy in the films Clueless, Girl Interrupted, 8 Mile, and the not-yet-released Abandoned.

Repulsion (1965)

As my regular readers know, I am an old movie geek. I pepper my conversation with lines from old movies. I inspect old movies like old maps, old gems, old still-photographs...I wait for great moments, great scenes and great facial expressions. I know I have written about these hundreds of times on this blog.

I also look for mistakes; I find boom-mikes in the margins of the frame, I find hippies in movies supposedly set in the 40s (The Godfather has a hippie in one frame, if you are fast enough to catch him). Movies are like songs and records to me, I watch them over and over. I know them by heart, I know the climax and the resolution. I wait for the Jack Rabbit Slim's commercial to play on the car radio as Bruce Willis is running by in PULP FICTION. I wait to hear Luke Skywalker say, "Prisoner transfer from cell block 1138." (I love THX 1138 with a passion.) I eat that stuff up.

And I've watched Roman Polanski's movies over and over, too.

Years ago, I decided that REPULSION could be the subject of a feminist dissertation. The story of a woman's sexual disintegration and pathological fear of men (driving her to kill them), is simply a stunning, amazing film. The scene in which the incredibly beautiful Catherine Deneuve picks up her roommate's boyfriend's t-shirt off the bathroom floor, recognizes it as... a MAN'S shirt... and involuntarily gags... that is a great moment and a great scene, one of those I wait for. (There is also a moment of fun inside-trivia, wherein Deneuve receives a postcard from the roommate and her boyfriend in Italy, announcing that they are enjoying "La Dolce Vita"--the title of the Fellini film Deneuve's former partner, Marcello Mastroianni, made in 1960.)

The scene in which Deneuve thinks she sees a man behind her in the mirror is utterly terrifying, and has been used by every horror-movie director in the world... but as far as I know, Polanski was the first. When the church bells wake her up and she hallucinates a man in her bed, who overpowers her? Jesus H. Christ, people. And then, her famous nightmare, the hands descending from the walls. The maze of hands, groping, grabbing, seeking to hold onto her, to harm her.

Deneuve is being hounded, to say the least. MEN will not leave her alone. And don't lots of us feel that way, at certain times in our lives? That we are being forever hounded by men?

Which females in our culture are most likely to feel this way? Well, I know that when I did, I was about 13 or 14 and just becoming accustomed to being one of the hunted.

Put another way, I was the age of Roman Polanski's victim.

The last scene shows us a photograph of Deneuve as a scary-looking child, as if to say, the kid's always been strange, but even in this photo we see her jarring, uncanny beauty. By choosing a woman of such world-renowned beauty, Polanski is telling us that she deserves to feel hunted, because she IS hunted. Men throughout the movie, poor saps, want to party with her. She has been called one of the most beautiful women in the world. In a postmodern sense, we know who she is, she is Catherine Deneuve; and this pushes the film into a dreamlike realm. One can't help but think that she HAS been stalked and followed all of her life; of course she has. She is a famous beautiful woman. She has good reason to be afraid. Men all over the world have wanted her. Imagine, we are thinking, how that feels?

Doesn't feel good.

Deneuve stands in for all of us; her coveted beauty is suddenly frightening, a notable weakness. We realize there is no escape for her, because she is too beautiful. The "princess" fantasy is that every man will worship us, and Polanski flips this adolescent daydream on its head: Yes, every man will want you. See what it's done to poor Catherine? Her sanity is gone, gone, gone.

Now that Polanski has been busted in Switzerland, and both Hollywood and Blogdonia are ablaze with defenses and counter-defenses, let me make it clear that I believe Polanski is scum. Yes, a great artist, but total and complete scum. And this movie is how I know. Yes, right here in this stunning WORK OF ART, I see what a horrible man he is.

I see a rapist.

I've always seen him, the reflection in the movie-mirror.

It's like Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, wherein Woody is unabashedly involved with high-school girl Mariel Hemingway: How can you miss it? Certain film-directors let us know, in ways large and small, exactly who they are. And Roman Polanski projects his consciousness onto Deneuve in REPULSION. Polanski is the man who has created this character, after all. And it is his incessant interest and desire that has caused Catherine to flip out, to imagine men are everywhere. Polanski's arms are the arms that emerge from the walls; Polanski is the man who appears when the church bells ring.

Roman Polanski is the man Deneuve is afraid of.




~*~


Please read these threads for further Polanski discussion: Polanski Defend-a-Thon Part 1 and Part 2, and Getting Over It (by Lauren at Feministe, a must-read).

EDITED TO ADD: Her reasons are not yours (Shakesville)

~*~

Repulsion trailer (may trigger, etc)

Sidney Poitier receives Medal of Freedom

Sidney Poitier and his Oscar in 1963, photo from Aliya S. King.




One of the most awesome men in the entire world, one of the regular cast of Daisy's feverish young adolescent dreams, has just received the MEDAL OF FREEDOM!!!! I am so thrilled!



Sir Sidney!!!

Yes, lots of other people got medals today, but I admittedly fixate on Sir Sidney:

At his first Medal of Freedom conferral, President Obama ran a tight ship of a ceremony, which began slightly after 3 p.m. and clocked in at about 40 minutes' worth of speechifying and medal-bestowing in the glittering East Room, the largest room in the White House. This year, actor Sidney Poitier, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Broadway star Chita Rivera, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and former Irish president Mary Robinson were among the 16 who received the nation's highest civilian honor.

Although the president spoke to the recipients and their enthused crowd of guests for about 20 minutes before breaking out the medals, his comments betrayed very little about his personal feelings toward (or relationships with) any of the honorees he'd selected. The silence signaled humility, and, of course, diplomacy: Robinson, for example, was the object of enmity outside the building, as supporters of Israel had deemed her undeserving after a particular rough career moment when a human-rights conference she helmed in 2001 was dominated by attacks on Jews and Israel.

In the afternoon ceremony, Obama praised Robinson as "a crusader for women and those without a voice in Ireland," saying she "shone a light on human suffering" during her work on human rights and hunger. A military aide read her citation, which praised her for "urging citizens and nations to make common cause for justice."

The president did get personal on a few occasions, his own subtly conveyed intimacy never upstaging, say, the exuberance of tennis star Billie Jean King, who entered the East Room with a victorious pump of her fist and a mouthed "Yessssss!" In the president's estimation, King gave "everyone, regardless of gender and sexual orientation, including my two daughters, a chance to compete both on the court and in life." Upon receiving her medal, she gave it a kiss and flashed the audience a grin.

The president's introductory remarks (smoothly delivered, apparently without written notes) continued in this manner, bowing more to the medal recipients' achievements than to his own experiences with them. After pronouncements were pronounced, Obama clasped medals around 16 necks, engaging in a great deal of hugging, cheek-kissing, whispering and back-patting -- a prolonged bout of physical affection that the recipients happily returned.

Without written notes, she emphasized. (Isn't it so nice to have a literate president?)

Certainly, Sir Sidney deserves it, and more, and everything else, too. Tomorrow, Turner Classic Movies will feature A WHOLE DAY OF SIR SIDNEY! And it's my day off, too! (Can we STAND IT?!) The day begins with The Long Ships (1964) at 6am and ends with Brother John (1971) at 4am the next day--with some utterly fabulous movies in between.

If you have a few minutes, flip over during the day, and watch the master.

You knew I would use this as an excuse to play this dopey song, dincha?



To Sir With Love (1967) will be on TCM at 6pm, right after Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (also 1967) at 4pm. (You can never watch them enough!)

"Why do my son's books tell him all men are useless?"

Daran at Feminist Critics has just posted a link to a London Daily Mail article by William Leath, titled Why do my son's books tell him all men are useless?

Some excerpts:

Why is the dad in [Zoo, by Anthony Browne], about a family trip to the zoo, such an idiot? Not just an idiot, but a grumpy, overweight idiot who tries to make jokes, but is never funny and, what's more, is always on the verge of ruining things for everybody else. He's a greedy slob, just like Homer Simpson. He's more childish than his children, even though he has hair sprouting from his ears.

Then there's the dad in Into The Forest, another book by this author. This one's about a dad who goes missing. He is clearly a weakling. He walks out of the family home and goes to stay with his mum.

A recent academic study confirmed that men - particularly fathers - are under-represented in almost all children's books. And when they do appear, like the fathers in Gorilla [also by Browne] and Zoo, they are often withdrawn, or obsessed with themselves, or just utterly ineffectual.

...

in another of our favourites, Benedict Blathwayt's The Runaway Train, the driver is called Duffy. And what does he do? He gets out of the train, forgetting to put the brake on, and the train rolls off without him. A driverless train - what a powerful symbol of male inadequacy! Yet this seems quite normal. We sit on the sofa and laugh.

'Why does Duffy forget the brake?' my son asked me. Why? Stories require fall-guys. They need some people to be malign or foolish or weak. And it just so happens that these people, in these stories, are male. It just so happens that it wouldn't seem right, to me, if these malign, foolish or weak people were female. Somehow, they have to be male. And symbols of male inadequacy are so deeply embedded in other parts of our culture. So much so, in fact, that nobody notices it any more.

For years, I've laughed at hopeless Homer Simpson and his dangerous son Bart, and the attempts of the female characters in the family to clean up after them.

...

For years, men in our stories - not just for children, but adults, too - have been losing their authority. Not just years - decades. It's crept up on us and now it's everywhere. Remember when movie stars were strong and decisive? That was a long time ago now: John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn.

Then came a new, softer type - Cary Grant and James Stewart were strong, yes, but against a background of self-doubt. And then came Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, Bill Murray, Kevin Spacey - neurotic, bumbling, deeply flawed anti-heroes.

Think of Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. The deadbeat dad, smoking dope in the garage because he can't take the pressure of family life. For a long time now, something has been happening to the way we portray men.

And wherever you look, things seem to be getting worse for guys. In a survey of 1,000 TV adverts, made by writer Frederic Hayward, he points out that: '100 per cent of the jerks singled out in male-female relationships were male.'

So does this mean that there is something wrong with the way we portray men? Or - much more seriously - is there some deep trouble with men themselves? I can't bear to have that thought. Can you?

Yet that's certainly what our culture seems to be telling us. And it's what certain feminist writers seem to be telling us, too.

And predictably, at this point, he goes on to attack Susan Faludi and feminism in general.

But until he commences blaming women (which you knew was coming, right?)--I thought he made some good points.

However, those last few paragraphs got me thinking. I very much prefer Jack Lemmon, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, Bill Murray, and Kevin Spacey to the Big Dumb Hollywood He-Men he named. I found them to be far more human, authentic, complex and 'thinking' protagonists. (I'd add Gene Hackman to that list, my all-time favorite actor.)

I loved Kevin Spacey smoking dope in the garage; he was trying to figure out what to do with his life rather than mindlessly charging ahead and continuing his unhappiness. Deadbeat Dad? He was present and accounted for in his child's life, she just didn't want anything to do with him. (And why do you suppose that was?) The pressures of family life? How about, the fact that his family was falling apart? His daughter was lying to him, he developed an obsession with a young friend of his daughter's and his wife was having an affair.

I guess John Wayne would have just pretended everything was okay and carried on anyway?

Some of us think that brand of male behavior was THE PROBLEM, not any kind of solution.

On the other hand, I don't want children to grow up expecting males not to do their share, which is how I read a lot of this fiction: Men usually screw up anyway, so don't be upset that your father has abandoned you.

If fathers are not represented in fiction, perhaps it's because fathers have been abandoning their role in real life? And this fictional presentation of male bumbling is possibly an effort to explain away the lack of men in children's lives?

How else could one explain it?

Any opinions?

Me, Mel and the Sedes

Mel Gibson directs James Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ. (2004)





I once belonged to a trad-Catholic email listserv, which took as their patron saint one Hutton Gibson. (Beware thunder-and-lightning sound effects when clicking on the link--as they used to say at the beginning of OUTER LIMITS: "There is nothing wrong with your television set.")... I later realized this was Mel's wacky dad. But at the time, I was just plain astounded and could not stop reading. I felt like I had stumbled into an amazing subculture. Which is true.

I had never met Sedevacantists before, which might be called the Black Helicopter Faction of the Catholic Church; the Area 51 of Trad theology. These people believe there hasn't been a validly elected Pope since... well, predictably, they argue about the details. (One of the "real" popes supposedly resides in Kansas, which might be the funniest damn thing I ever heard.) They are deliberately fuzzy, first attempting to convince you they are correct about papal-invalidity, and then attempting to lobby on behalf of "their" chosen Pope. The most well-known of these sub-groups is the Society of St Pius X (aka SSPX in trad lingo). [NOTE: Many Sedevacantists are splinter groups of SSPX or former fellow-travelers. Other would-be Popes include Lucian Pulvermacher and Manuel Alonso Corral.]

The reasons these folks believe the Chair of Peter is Vacant (Latin derivation of the word SEDEVACANTIST) are in alignment with the Religious Right; the well-worn view that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, with the Catholic Church regarded as just another obvious manifestation of this truth. Modernism, in the sneaky form of Vatican Council II, overtook the Mass and unexpectedly monkeyed with ancient rubrics. In the traditionalists' view, Latin was dissed, priests turned their backs on the tabernacle, people put their dirty fingers all over the Host, dopey hymns invaded where angels feared to tread... and many other hotly-contested changes came with the introduction of the Novus Ordo.

A very good point from the Trads: these transformations of the Mass seemed to demystify a very mystical practice, and detracted from its sanctity... rather as noise in the library detracts from reading; teens giggling in the back rows of dramatic movies ruin your absorption in the narrative. Sudden outbursts of English singing seem very, well... American. Many of the people (such as Evelyn Waugh) who hated the Novus Ordo, hated it because of its zealously-assimilationist tendencies. It seemed very Protestant, complete with a dorky Dr Feelgood homily that often sounded like it came from the pages of Reader's Digest. (Can't we hear what St John of the Cross or some heavy-hitter like that had to say, please?) The Roman Catholic Church has a very rich tradition of mysticism, saints' visions, ideas, theology, folk-piety, litanies and old sermons that one can easily draw upon... and instead, it was not unusual to hear some priest's sentimental story about his dog, or some deacon reading some canned-homily written by Catholic Answers. Those of us hungry for historical liturgy and the old writings (as well as those of us who do not want to assimilate to mass-American culture) ended up net-surfing right into the old AOL Catholic chat rooms, duly named after the Holy Archangels: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

For awhile, these three internet chat rooms stayed separate, depending upon whether one was trad, liberal or centrist/undecided... and then, of course, you know what happened. The denizens of all three got all mixed up and finally, the rooms became a free-for-all, with charges of heresy, blasphemy and schism flying right and left. It was at this colorful juncture that the Sedevacantists, well-organized and determined, invaded the rooms as a coordinated group. And it was from this mass invasion that I eventually learned of the listserv, and the Hutton/Mel/Sede connection.

Having their very own movie-star connection was intoxicating for these folks. Mel Gibson took on the characteristics of sainthood, complete with hagiography. He has seven children, they would say, admiringly. He was obviously a right-on kind of guy. The Sedevacantist-adulation of Mel was as intense as the adulation of his schismatic father and their various would-be popes. But at that time, Mel did not publicly "declare himself" as anything but a regular Catholic, to the great irritation of the list-serv members.

When I discovered through the Alcoholics Anonymous grapevine that Mel was "people like us"--I thought, uh oh. If there is one thing alcoholics chronically embrace, it's extremes. Lots of them. I am, for instance, one of the few people who can tell you all about the lefty factions of the 70s and then turn around and tell you all about Hutton Gibson and SSPX. There is a reason for that. I am grateful that I now have the wisdom to know that I am given to this character defect, but it doesn't necessarily prevent me from exercising it. However, it DOES usually prevent me from preening overmuch about my wonderfulness, since I am acutely aware that my wonderfulness could well collapse on a dime, and often has.

I had high hopes for Mel when I learned he was a sponsor of Robert Downey, Jr. I hoped he would back away from the religious extremism of his father and stick to the New Agey-Catholicism one tends to encounter in progressive recovery circles, particularly in a place like Hollywood.

And then I heard that Mel Gibson had built his own church. What? A Catholic?!? Catholics do not build their own churches (although of course, your local Diocese may take all of your money and build one and name a wing after you)... NOOO, Catholics do not build our own churches unless we are...ohhhh no, I thought. No. Not Mel.

A Sede. (slang for Sedevacantist, which also has a very appropriate pod-people sound to it; pronounced SEED.) Mel is a SEDE!

The news traveled through the always-rambunctious Michael, Gabriel and Raphael chat rooms like wildfire. The Sedes themselves were drunk on Mel-Gibson PR and cocky as the devil, you should pardon expression. Not every crackpot breakaway-faction has their own movie-star, after all.

But I wondered. I worried about Mel's wife, Robyn, stuck with the legendary 7 kids while Mel jetsetted all over the world making movies. How genuine is this Sede thing? Is he just trying to impress dad? Or other Catholics? Is this a form of penance for his alcoholism (something I deeply understand and identified with). I wondered how long it would last. As everyone gasped over the graphic violence of The Passion of the Christ, I vividly remember thinking: such extremes... such alcoholic behavior.

And then, Mel famously tied one on, delivering himself of an antisemitic rant in the process... and suddenly, all bets were off.

(I wondered: Is the Church still there? Does he still go?)

~*~

And now, the man who was repeatedly held up to me as First Class Catholic Family Man extraordinaire--is getting a divorce. (I assume you all know that divorce is not sanctioned by Catholic doctrine, even the liberal Vatican II Catholic doctrine that Mel and his father proudly placed themselves above.) His seven children, those objects of affection, envy and admiration in Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, are now the children of divorce... just like so many of the rest of us. They are also, like so many other Catholics (including me), the children of an alcoholic. They have learned the psychology of extremes at their daddy's knee, as Mel learned from his daddy, Sedevacantist Holocaust-denier Hutton Gibson.

What can we learn from this? The Buddhist lesson of the Middle Path; few of us can reside full-time at the feverish extremes throughout our entire lives. Simply put: we will fail. And instead of trying to mend something, we flush it down the toilet and run away. That is the way of extremes, the way of the addict: We will not settle for your banal choices, we will build our own church, we will find our own Pope.

And fall in love with a younger woman, and forget everything we say we believed in. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

What does the lesson of Mel Gibson teach us about religious extremism? I am still trying to figure it out. I am not really surprised.

But then again, of course I am.