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.



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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.



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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.

A devastating blow to our antiquated systems

The recent election may seem strange, you say. What can possibly be happening to human beings? Well, Jack Nicholson had the answer DECADES AGO, and explained it all... but were we listening? No.

I say, we all listen AGAIN, because it all makes (as that antique-store proprietor on the old Friday The 13th TV series was always saying) A Terrible Sense.

Apparently, they made a lot of this dialogue up on the spot. Dennis Hopper "directed" Easy Rider, so to speak, and the "script" was officially credited to Peter Fonda, Hopper and Terry Southern. I credit Fonda for bringing "Wow!" into the adult lexicon; before this time, "Wow!" was mostly reserved for children and comic books. Fonda's famous stoned "Wow!"s made the quiet utterance of "Wow!" cool--and we haven't shed this verbal habit since.

We now know that in real life, the situation (in the movie) was likely reversed, and it was Jack that probably showed Peter Fonda how to smoke weed.

Proposition 19, Rest in Peace.

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"If they're so smart, why don't they just reveal themselves and get it over with?"

"Why don't they reveal themselves to us? Because if they did reveal themselves it would cause a general panic."

I'd say they revealed themselves, at long last, yesterday.

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Jack Nicholson explains things - excerpt from Easy Rider (1969)

Too much to dream: the Monkees' HEAD

One of the more bizarre artifacts from the 60s is on display tonight on Turner Classic Movies Underground film series: The Monkees' very weird, trippy HEAD (1968), which must be seen to be believed.

The Monkees were, as you probably know, prefabricated teenybopper idols manufactured in Hollywood. They were also (yes, I admit it!) beloved by your humble narrator, whilst still a scruffy, rust-belt ragamuffin, subsisting mostly on TV-dinners and Velveeta cheese. The Monkees mass-marketed bubblegum cards fit right in with the Velveeta. One memory I have of the fourth grade: my tiny bedroom mirror lined with Mike, Peter, Davy and Micky, smelling faintly of bubblegum.

American culture shifted very suddenly during that era. The prefab Monkees took LSD and became conscious beings. Subsequently, they decided to make a movie with Jack Nicholson about what it's like to be conscious beings, while also experiencing major intergalactic teenybopper mega-fame at the same time. You have to admit, that's something else!

In HEAD, you get all manner of bizarre acidhead-slapstick repartee, later perfected by the Firesign-Theatre, and other 70s comedy troupes. There are several blatantly Beatlesesque musical knock-offs, one memorably accompanied by a psychedelic underwater swimming sequence. From Jeff Stafford at TCM:

Initially called Untitled, HEAD was an unconventional project from the beginning. According to author Patrick McGilligan in Jack's Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson, "Bob [Rafelson, director], Bert [Schneider, executive producer], and Jack, with the four Monkees in tow, went to Ojai [California] for several days. They smoked "a ton of dope" (as Davy Jones recalls) and tossed ideas into a running tape recorder...The script was set up to have the least continuity imaginable, and only the slenderest plot trigger - the four Monkees leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge in an effort to escape the mental prison of a black box, which was "Head," meaning pothead, but also meaning all the rules and straitlaced conventions inside one's head that inhibit enjoyment of life. With their tapes and notes, Nicholson and Rafelson went away to the desert for inspiration. According to at least one account, they scribbled a treatment while tripping on acid."

By the time filming began on Head, The Monkees were less than happy with their circumstances. Not only were they feuding with Columbia over their contracts and salaries but they felt betrayed by Rafelson and Nicholson after they were informed that none of them would receive a writing credit on the film. "We were disappointed and angry," Micky Dolenz said. "Mike was furious. He took all the tapes and locked them in the trunk of his car!" As a result, Micky, Davy and Mike (without Peter's involvement) refused to show up on the first day of shooting which infuriated Rafelson and Nicholson. After a day of negotiations, filming resumed with all four band members but relations between the Monkees and their director were decidedly strained after that...and Mike, Davy, Micky and Peter never received a writer's credit for their contributions.

When Head was completed, Rafelson and Nicholson launched a guerilla advertising campaign in New York City, plastering stickers for the film everywhere on taxicabs, signs, police helmets, you name it. At one point they were even arrested for being public nuisances but their efforts were in vain. The critics were unimpressed and the film held little appeal for anyone who wasn't a fan of the Monkees' TV show. Dolenz stated later, "Because the film was rated R, most of our fans couldn't even get into the theatre to see it in the first place and those who did just didn't have any idea of what we were up to." Nicholson, however, maintains even today that Head is one of his proudest accomplishments and still calls it "the best rock-'n-roll movie ever made." Despite its commercial failure, Rafelson was equally pleased with it, comparing it often to Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963).

In HEAD, the Monkees finally play their own instruments, attack a coke machine in the desert, play dandruff in Victor Mature's hair, and jump off the Golden Gate bridge. In general, they finally get to do whatever they want.

They rebelled mightily against their own Velveeta-hood.

In the process, they became Real, and as you good children know, once you are Real you can't become unreal.

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Trailer:



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Listening to: The Electric Prunes - I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)
via FoxyTunes