pullquote

Dare to Be Stupid

Ruthless People (1986, dir. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker)

Featuring very special guest and world's nicest guy, composer of the theme song parody "Toothless People," Al Yankovic

One off

Nicholas Campbell in Knights of the City (1986, dir. Dominic Orlando)

Adventures in cinema: the freaks come out

Thanks to my friend Maura, I recently experienced 1980's The Apple.* Or as I like to think of it, what happens when you watch All That Jazz, Xanadu, and Freak Orlando at the same time. Like, layered over one another with all three audio tracks at top volume. But with the least sexy sexiness and kink ever, somehow. Even the pelvic pops fail to pop.

(Speaking of the divine Ulrike Ottinger, she has a new film out, Paris Calligrammes, available here with French, English, or German narration.)

But seriously, WTF was going on in 1979 to yield so many hallucinogenic music films maudit in 1980? Popeye, Flash Gordon, Times Square, Can't Stop the Music, The Great American Rock 'n' Roll Swindle... (spoiler: cocaine, speeeeeeed, benzedrine, poppers) Out of the Blue, Christiane F.... (spoiler: heroin)

*The reviews on Amaz*n are a fun read. BIM!

Adventures in cinema: black and white France

Under the Cherry Moon (1986, dir. Prince)

Last weekend, I "went" to Pop Convergence 2021, and this panel was revelatory:

Prince: Disrupting Notions of Blackness

Prince’s legacy as a Pop music icon is undisputed. His influence on popular culture is endless. In addition to being one of the greatest entertainers of all time, he was a groundbreaking songwriter, musician, arranger, composer, producer, and entrepreneur. Prince was also the ultimate disruptor. In a career that spanned five decades, Prince challenged systems, spaces, and sounds. In the process, he disrupted widely held notions about what it meant to be a black artist, activist, and, ultimately, a black person in a society that remains at odds with its own concepts of blackness, freedom, and equality. Through analysis of his music, lyrics, and individual acts of protest, this panel seeks to expand the discussion of Prince’s legacy by examining his role as a disruptor.

Bowling alone

Watch this, will you? I can't stop.

I know nothing about the artist (Jessie Ware) or her song ("Step Into My Life") or this dancer (Eric Schloesser). The tab has been open so long I can not recall the algorithmic alchemy that brought me to it and left me exhilarated.

His face. Its high-angled cheekbones. Deep-set hooded eyes. Joaquin Phoenix's mullet from To Die For, but make it fashion. The fluid drape and sickly color of the slightly oversized jacket. The break of his dark blue trousers. Those shoes.

Then there're the long takes and low angles of the camera, starting with the shoes, moving up and out, creating a rhythm and indulging a bit of bricolage business on the benches. All that blows apart at the chorus, leaving us lying on the ground, looking up at this sullen, whirling colossus. The camera stills, letting him dance out of the frame without following. Disco strings and horns and bass and lewd pews surge up as the bridge returns us to the first shots, but runs them backwards and forwards, the dancer leaping and spinning and flipping and sliding until the chorus again intervenes. He brings a bright green bowling ball to his lips, kisses it, taking the sacrament of Jesus-les-pins. Illogical unmotivated cuts abound.

The camera faces him from the lane, revealing the previously unseen reverse of the alley, a blip of blue. And then it comes, at 3:14, with 20 seconds left. A smirk breaks the straight line of his lips on one side only. Perfection. The camera catches a vapor and reacts with a series of super short shots as he bowls.

Does he strike? No idea. The camera abandons the 180-degree rule altogether as he turns away, starting again from his shoes and backing up and out into a wide shot, his body blocking our view as he slouches toward us, hands in pockets. The final two shots eschew matches on action almost entirely. Returning to the eternal return of brightly colored balls for the fourth and final time here, the crouched-down Stedicam rises up on its knees as he dances out of frame in the background. Cut. The camera gazes down from the ceiling like a mirror ball as the dancer slides into disco home plate. Take that, baseball, he's safe: a prone pietà. His back-arched body and splayed fingers cut across the strict verticals of the floorboards on the bias. The music stops. 

It's so good. Yes, the video does invoke Christopher Walken in Fatboy Slim's Spike Jonze-helmed "Weapon of Choice." But it shows off not with traveling mirror shots but in the modesty of its setting. There's something, too, to this solitary dancer's line, often seen from exceedingly low angles, that recalls Chris of Christine and the Queens in "Tilted," although they tend more toward dancing ensemble.

Close tab.

Adventures in cinema: frog in my throat

One Froggy Evening (1955, dir. Charles M. Jones)
how this first week of one-year pandemic anniversaries has felt: at a loss for words b/w wanting to burst into song

The Vicious Circle

An image from the cassette era. I still have the promo postcards some guy I met at the cinema during a trip to London in 1995 later sent me.

Reading this Film Comment interview with Alan Rudolph while listening to cassettes on a wee boombox I dug up in this house. The radio is mono, sports an antenna, does not have autoreverse, and belonged to my late father-in-law. It's making me uncommonly happy.

AR: Music to me is like the hub of the wheel. It’s visible, it works in your senses and emotions, and that seems to be where I reside. To me, music and emotional responses are twins, and if you want to establish emotional tone in a film then music is the number one way to do it.

FC: I read one of your early interviews where you said that you were more influenced by John Coltrane than by John Ford.

AR: Some glib asshole said that, I guess it was me. It’s true. I mean, look, I’m not going to deny John Ford, but for me personally that’s all I’ve ever been able to talk about when it comes to American filmmaking. I taught myself how to write screenplays just because the box I was in was too confining as an assistant director in the old Hollywood system. If you wanted to make a little film then you went to Roger Corman, I guess. I didn’t know where he was and I didn’t care. I just didn’t make those kinds of movies. So I started writing. I’d write a screenplay in three or four days just to learn how to do it. At the time you’d go to the Xerox machine with three dollars and you had a movie. But I always listened to music. This was before mobile technology, so when the first Walkman came out—I think it was the size of a Kleenex box—it changed my life forever. I started to tape pieces of music that I liked and I’d make little cassettes without putting labels on them. I used to prowl record stores after work every Friday night and I’d buy albums to tape them. I must have had a hundred tapes without knowing what was coming up next. It was a primitive version of shuffle. I’d walk around Manhattan and watch a movie unfold on the sidewalks listening to how it was scored in my head. But it’s funny, the number-one album was always Kind of Blue. Without that album, I’m not sure I would have been able to make films. Kind of Blue was my film school.

Shorts cinematheque: What Was the X-Girl?

Long ago, and oh-so far away [via]

From an old notebook: The Bling Ring

July 17 at the Nugget Theatre, Hanover, NH.

Once more to the barricades w. Something in the Air [ed., No idea]

why are they in underwear in bed

crickets and peepers sound design

testimony: eyes reading faces

drugs & cars & hip hop

Another slight experience. Mostly I remember the use of Azealia Banks' "212" and the way that Emma Watson's hair moved. My pal KTZ told me I should check out the reality show starring the girl Watson's character is based on. Maybe while I'm ironing.

Happy birthday, Otis Redding

There will always be a place in my heart for Duckie's "Try a Little Tenderness," but here is how I fell in love with Redding's music as a callow youth.