"Bring me five more martinis, Leo, line them up right here."

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology


When I was a little girl, I was pretty sure I'd marry Nick Charles. 




Twenty years later, and my mind hasn't changed.

Have a suggestion for a future Ampersandology topic? Got something you’d like to say? All feedback welcome! Shoot us an email at ampersandology@gmail.com, or follow Ampersandology on Facebook. 

Werner Herzog Reads Madeline

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

What follows below is my Platonic ideal of children's literature. I remember the moment when I explained to my mother why Peter Pan was all about sex; I refrained from showing her my copy of Lost Girls, lest she get the wrong idea. But really, all stories about childhood are a prelude to adult desires and fears. 

For this reason, I wish I had Werner Herzog to read me my bedtime stories when I was little. His version of children's classic articulate the feelings I had as a child, but had not yet wrapped my mouth around the words. That would come much later, after much wine. 





Sometimes, people ask me about my childhood. I was, for all intents and purposes, a very strange child. I was fussy, and didn't like the outdoors or getting wet. Other children were vast nations to be negotiated carefully. I knew how powerful it was to be a child when I was one, and in this knowledge, failed to be a child at all. 


So is it so wrong that I feel Werner Herzog provides a better truth to feed my children? Ah, well. We likely will never know. Because this shall be all they get. I happen to subscribe to the Jeremy Irons school of childrearing. 





Have a suggestion for a future Ampersandology topic? Got something you’d like to say? All feedback welcome! Shoot us an email at ampersandology@gmail.com, or follow Ampersandology on Facebook. 

10 Minutes of Your Life Worth the Sacrifice

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

Jimmy Kimmel gets a lot of slack, but he's more than shown he can be funny when he puts his mind to it. He's earned near-saint status during the Coco-Leno debacle, not by taking sides per se, but using his indoor voice to point out how stupid the whole thing was in the first place.

But it's moments like this video when I thank his mother for bringing him here. The following video is something that if I had lived my life without seeing it, a small piece of me would have died, unnoticed and alone, like so many wasted dreams. Best ten minutes ever.

This is right. So right.



Don't you see? Sheer perfection. Taye Diggs. "Damn it, Lenny!" 

One thing I appreciate about Jimmy Kimmel, all cracks aside, is that his fourth or fifth place in the late-show lineup basically gives him the freedom to do whatever the hell he wants. That's probably why over the past few years, he's built up a massive mythology, which includes long-running jokes that involve Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Sarah Silverman and any number of good-natured celebrities. In a word, it's breathtaking. He's like the Lost of late night television: you need to pay attention or you'll findself your in a punk-entertainment haze of confusion and leftover pizza.

There's nothing more I can say about the Handsome Men's Club.

...except that I lied. There's so much more.

But I've leave it at this: the Handsome Men's Club is an incredible comfort, because deep down, I think we all hope that this Club will someday exist. It makes them easier to love when they're all in one place. And Handsome Men, I do love you.

Kimmel, you're officially a Bad News Bear. Do me proud. 

Homage and Rip Off, Part Two: A Breakdown of Onscreen Shorthand

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology

Part One is here.



In the last post, I talked about some possible origins of the homage—the old boys of New Hollywood, and their love of referencing  their heroes and peers on the screen. Now, to start off this look at actual homage, let’s dive into 2003’s The Dreamers.

The Dreamers, set in 1968 during the student rebellion in Paris, follows Matthew, a young American student and blossoming cinephile. Every day he sits in the front row at the Cinémathèque Française, describing what takes place in the synapses of the patrons there as something near religious in its estacsy. He eventually befriends Theo and Isabelle, brother and sister who claim to be twins. Exotic and intelligent, the pair absorb Matthew into their home, and the days devolve into a lazy game of obscure film trivia and sexual one-upmanship.


The film was based on Gilbert Adair’s novel The Holy Innocents, but Bertolucci insisted on infusing the screenplay with references to his favorite films. The Dreamers therefore becomes a love song to the films of long-forgotten eras...and Bertolucci ain't subtle.

The characters are explicit in their debates (the slapstick ballet of Buster Keaton versus the pathos of Charlie Chaplin) and reenact scenes from their idolized films in an attempt to stump each other. They let Matthew know he’s part of the group by chanting the “one of us” refrain from Freaks (1936). The three race through the Lourve to beat the record in Bande à part (1964), pin up foreign posters of Blowup (1966) and, in my favorite moment, wrap themselves into their favorite narratives: Isabelle claims that she was born on the Champs Elysees and that her first words were “New York Herald Tribune, New York Herald Tribune.” This is, of course, a direct conscious reference to the heroine of Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), helpfully accompanied by the exact scene in question.


It's built in with the reverence that many of these films inspire, and when the reality that they have created in their self-referential cinematic crashes around them, the trio disbands. I always wonder what kind of message this is really sending about film lovers and their passions—is it really the purest kind of devotion, or is it a self-aware mockery of the same, suggesting it can only exist in a vacuum?

*

A little theorizing gives us three basic types of homage: by frame, by character or by theme.

FRAME

Being a visual medium, frame homage is the most obvious and easily recognizable way to reference another film. Take The Crowd, made in 1928 by director King Vidor. It was a groundbreaking film, and ahead of its time, depicting the metropolitan workspace as a cold, unfeeling place where dreams are squandered. John Sims (James Murray) is a cog in the machine, once believing he was destined for great things but now resigned to his neutered existence as #137 out of who knows how many. He marries, has kids, and is doomed to watch his children repeat his same mistake. Born on the fourth of July, I like to think of Sims’ character as Vidor's sly dig at the American Dream—after all, what’s more American than capitalistic obscurity?



A landmark film, and this image from the film has become iconic: a visual representation of Sims’ obscurity and wasted potential. So Billy Wilder chose to famously pay tribute to it in his 1960 masterpiece The Apartment (yes, I said masterpiece!). He even gives his lead, C.C. Baxter, a number to underscore how minuscule he is in comparison to the big scheme; “I work on the 19th floor,” Baxter says in his opening monologue. “Ordinary Policy Department, Premium Accounting Division, Section W, desk number 861.”


What’s key here is not the similarity of these two shots, but how they differ. The Crowd places the camera high above the ant-like employees, emphasizing their detachment from the real world and their identical station. But Wilder chooses to angle the lens on the ground, framing the scene so that the vast scope of the space is truly realized, with row after row of diligent employees and bright, unflattering lighting (here’s some trivia for you: this set was actually only about a third of a the size it appears—Hollywood magic and trick perspective gave the illusion of an expansive office space). What The Crowd started, The Apartment finishes, rescuing Baxter from obscurity by plucking him off the corporate ladder and turning him into a self-aware, happily unwound cog. Sims couldn't escape his lot in life, but Baxter fights for his freedom (and the girl).

OTHER NOTABLE REFERENCES

Dressed to Kill/Psycho
Director Brian de Palma has often been accused of ripping off Hitchcock like it was going out of style, and none is the senior director’s influence more clear than in 1980’s Dressed to Kill. Watch the trailer—the moody lighting, the densely weighted dialogue, the ramshackle editing of murder scenes (the execution of which, by the way, never seem to match the wounds on the victim’s body)--you can find it all done first (and quite frankly, done better) in 1960's Psycho. And then there’s this shot—not to spoil either film, but come on, Brian. Did you really think we wouldn’t notice?



Rashomon/Now, Voyager
Two drastically different films—Now, Voyager (1942) and Rashomon (1950)— made years apart but bearing uncanny similarities. A mysterious woman, face hidden by an unusually large headpiece, tilts up her chin for the potent reveal of a lovely face. Trying to trace a line of connection between these drastically different films may be a shot in the dark— but what strikes me here is the symbolic threads between them: in the latter, the samurai’s wife is introduced in the film for the first time, in one of several retellings of the same event, and still no closer to revealing the truth. In the former, we’ve already seen Bette Davis, but only as a hollow echo of her inner self: here, stepping out from the shadow of her mother, she is the girl underneath finally reaching the surface. Both shots delve into the art of revelation, attraction and identity. Plus, great hats! 

CHARACTER

Down With Pillow Talk
Evoking a famous character can be its own shorthand—put any surly kid in a red leather jacket and blue jeans and suddenly you’re channeling James Dean. Sometimes the character reference is more obscure, daring the film to pick apart the reference to get some hidden clue to the themes and influences of the film at large. And rarer still, it’s a loaded commentary on a certain era or film genre, and serves as the jumping off point for a mouthful of cultural criticism.


No film proves this like 2004's Down With Love. Barbara Novak is the author of a new book that glorifies having sex like a man (in this case, without love) that's taken the world’s female population by storm, empowering housewives and single gals alike. Catcher Block is the journalist determined to take her down and get things back to normal so he can happily continue his life as a cad. So he poses as an out of town bumpkin and seduces her with a false identity, hoping to trick her into falling for him and thus invalidating her book’s philosophy.


It was advertised as a send-up of all those Doris Day/Rock Hudson pairings of the 1950s and 1960s, but what everyone failed to point out how it was less a send-up than the unofficial remake of Pillow Talk, perhaps one of the most famous Day/Hudson outings. The idea of switching identities to trick the female love interest. Rock Hudson did it first, right down to the fake accent. But the translation, for the most part, works; with the freedom to explore issues that would have been taboo, or at the very least, unfashionable for a mainstream romcom in the late 1950s, Down With Love manages to both shed light on the assumptions of  its predecessor and muddle up commentary on the role of gender in society--both  past and present.

Everything—from sets, costumes, credits and visuals (note the split screen effect during phone calls—straight out of the playbook)-is lovingly reproduced, but none so thoroughly as the characters of Catcher Block and Barbara Novak, standing in for Hudson and Day, respectively. Zelleweger nails Doris Day’s throaty, pursed lip caricature of exasperation, doing her best to act like her attraction to the scandalous Catcher is nothing more than a buzzing gnat. And McGregor manages to edge Hudson’s traditional masculinity with a hint of mischievous, wide-eyed schoolboy.


But what these two characters really accomplish, besides bringing to life a pretty neat cinematic experiment, is a fulfillment of the kind of gender explorations that the older vehicles couldn’t match. A Rock Hudson/Day picture of the late 1950s and early 1960s promised a battle of the sexes, sure, but only guaranteed it for the first two thirds, at which the female character would give in just in time for the two to happily pair off. But in the updated version, their counterparts are free to explore the innuendo and inequality lying underneath those nearly-stock characters. Watch the scene where Barbara and Catcher converse on the phone, with the split screen cleverly edited to simulate every sex act in the book; can you call it innuendo when the gag is so explicit?

OTHER NOTABLE REFERENCES

Rachael in Blade Runner/Mildred Pierce in Mildred Pierce
The first time I saw Rachael’s hairdo in Blade Runner, I knew I’d seen it somewhere before. And that somewhere was on top of Joan Crawford's frankly terrifying visage in 1946's Mildred Pierce. And this got me thinking: what were they going for here? Mildred Pierce is a woman who builds her life around making her snotty, entitled brat of a daughter, Veda, happy. What exactly does that have to do with a 21st century replicant programmed to believe she's actually a human being? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense: Rachel is channeling the kind of rigid, business-like exterior that Mildred later relied on to run her life.

Mutt Williams in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull/Johnny in The Wild One
Honestly? I can’t say much more about this one without blushing. Why do I blush? Because I feel personally embarrassed for Spielberg, and partly responsible. This isn’t a character inspired by another, this is tracing paper and an old copy of the studio stills. But bless him: I can’t blame the guy, because he’s so love with film that he probably just thought he was sending a Valentine to the hungry, angry ghost of Marlon Brando. But look, Brando didn’t tolerate his shtick being stolen the first time (by James Dean, who used to study the way the older actor sat in a chair and then ripped it wholeheartedly for his starring role in Rebel Without a Cause a few years later) and I really don’t think putting SHIIIIIA on a harley would get him tickled pink. I'm just saying. I don't think the ghost of Marlon Brando is going to be any more sane and/or genial than his corporeal being. Marlon Brando could eat Shia LeBeouf for breakfast and save the magnificent embers of his arrogant youth for lunch.

THEME/STYLE

Wes Anderson

More common, and more touching, I think, is when a director chooses to embrace or continue the themes that their cinematic heroes began. And one director who has turned this into a sweetly childlike habit is Wes Anderson. Wes Anderson’s influences are usually bolded on the screen—his work has shared qualities with J.D. Salinger’s novels, Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip, the French New Wave and the 1970s auteur crowd. But one influence that stands out is the oeuvre of Orson Welles. Welles and Anderson share a handful of thematic haunts, revisiting them over and over. There is the pervasive exploration of the once great family name, tarnished by years of scandal, misuse and betrayal. Welles, of course, went epic, because I'm fairly certain he didn't know any other way, using The Magnificent Ambersons to cover an entire generation of the embittered, Southern family. For Anderson, it was more localized: in The Royal Tenenbaums, he creates an alternate New York City and sets up scene in a single household over a period of roughly two weeks. But the strains are echoed throughout both films: the betrayal of blood and the closed sense of space.

Matt Zohn Seitz breaks it down succinctly in his essay The Substance of Style:

Anderson and Wilson’s script for The Royal Tenenbaums contains many acknowledgments of Welles’s second feature, Ambersons, an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel about a prominent small-town family in decline. There’s a similarly palatial, cone-topped family home, significant action blocked on and around imposing wooden staircases, and a sense of collective anxiety born of the feeling that time has passed a once-important family by and the community knows it. Both movies feature novelistic third-person narration, by Welles in Ambersons and Alec Baldwin in Tenenbaums.

Then there’s the fixation on tracing the fall those who live under great scrutiny and crumble with the pressure. These films, more often than not, center around great men and their steep decline—it’s a pattern both directors indulge often and with abandon. Welles, obviously, did it loudest with Citizen Kane, his magnum opus right out of the gate, and his examination of a life from every angle. Citizen Kane may be the flashiest digression on the subject, but he revisited the idea often, with Touch of Evil, Othello, The Stranger---even his documentary about infamous forger Elmyr de Hory,  F for Fake, deals with the same sense of glorious, inevitable decline.

Anderson, too, revisits this idea over and over again—you get the feeling that Mr. Blume in Rushmore and Steve Zissou have more in common than simply being played by Bill Murray. His male leads all bear the smudged luster of a bright past: they’re over the hill, with their best days are behind them, and to make matters worse, they’ve got a generation of upstarts nipping close at their heels. With Anderson’s interpretation, it’s usually the families that suffer most acutely from the fall of their patriarchs. In The Darjeeling Limited, a trio of brothers are left broken and in search of some piecemeal idea of their father’s legacy. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou explores a son's desire connect with his absentee father at the cost of his own personal idenitity. And in The Royal Tenenbaums, three children have been left orphans of neglect thanks to a father who never thought to make amends until he needed a place to stay.

What makes that last comparison even more potent is the fact that the Tenenbaum children are failed child prodigies returning to their childhood home: wunderkinds who fizzled out under the weight of their family’s damages. I can’t help but think of Welles himself, who directed Citizen Kane when he was 24*, and famously spent the next forty years battling bloated expectation, studio interference and a rather persuasive alcoholism. In the end, the boy genius was crippled by his own heady potential and never really made anything to truly rival his first film, notoriously remarking, “Everybody denies I am a genius --but nobody ever called me one.”

OTHER NOTABLE REFERENCES

Blade Runner/Metropolis

Let's break down the thematic strings tying these two together: both are set in the dystopian future, both deal with the reality of robots among civilization, and the perils of losing touch with our humanity and relying on slaves. But more importantly, both portray the creators of these robots as something near god-like, with the robots believing in their divinity and trusting that he (Rotwag in Metropolis and Tyrell in Blade Runner) can solve the woes of their short, dependent lives.

The Good German/Casablanca

Exhibit A:

Enough said.

Next: Now that we've seen how homage can work in film, let's move onto the prince of thieves himself: one Quentin Tarantino.

*Yeah, I know: 24. Orson Welles makes the rest of us look like lazy slobs. Until he became one himself, of course.

Man on Wire

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology

I'm still working on the next installment of my three-part homage series (it's akin to giving birth to a long-winded baby with multiple personalities) but in the meantime I thought I'd briefly (ha) weigh in on Roman Polanski's recent arrest.

And what can I say: it's a war of my head and my heart (or, the film reel where my heart should be). My rational side says that no one, visionary artist or lowly street urchin alike, should be above the law. But the cinephile in me hates the idea of grouping a man I and so many others admire into such humdrum, ordinary circumstances.

And as much as my heart sides with the creator of marvelous films, my head still says that no matter what 'mitigating circumstances' the Polanski apologists throw out, he still committed a crime, and a pretty unspeakable one at that. It's a war inside my better judgement, actually. I've been reading a handful of commentaries against the arrest, and it takes a heaping of salt to get past the flimsiness of most of these arguments. He's an artist? He's had a tragic past? It was 30 years ago? Apply these circumstances to any other criminal and the argument dissolves. It's not logic that drives his loyalists to take up his flag, or even injustice. It's reverence and affection.

Unfortunately, I add. Because, as I said, my heart wants everything to be okay. But my head thinks my heart is a moron, and tends to win all the underhanded arguments, because my brain is stubborn and always needs to be right, as opposed to a heart that is is a film reel and only pretending it's a heart. Honestly, I don't know how I get anything done.

The Keys to the Kingdom: Hollywood Tell-Alls

I’ve got a new buzz in my brain: Mark Harris’ Pictures at a Revolution. It was only published in the last year or so, and I can remember going to purchase it but being coldly informed by Amazon that this title had not yet been released. Since then, I’ve almost ordered it a dozen times, but given that my apartment is a glorified walk-up with nowhere to leave packages, my love of online shopping has waned.

And then today, it was there at the bookstore, winking at me with its white on orange, sans-serif type: the picture of Dunaway and Beatty on its cover seemed to be smiling at me in joyous anticipation: we will finally be together.

(...what? You guys don’t carry on imaginary conversations with books you’re about to buy slash already own? Well, let me tell you: you are missing out! Of all the inanimate things I talk to on a regular basis, I find that future or current books in my possession are the most forthcoming.)

Pictures at a Revolution takes the Best Picture nominees of a pivotal year in cinema—1968—and examines those five pictures. Which, trust me, is the only way that Doctor Dolittle will ever be mentioned alongside The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, In the Heat of the Night and Bonnie and Clyde. The format is designed around one central concept: that after 1968, the game had changed for Hollywood, as the generational gap became yawning and more than ever in Tinsel Town, the old guard was being edged out by the ways of the new.

[There’s one moment in particular, at a party thrown at Jane Fonda’s beachhouse that’s particularly poignant. Fonda, being the Hollywood royalty that she was, was the bridge between the old and the new, inviting her father Henry, and old family friends like William Wyler and George Cukor to a party attended by her (stoner) brother Peter, Jack Nicholson, Sidney Poitier, and Andy Warhol (miserable bastard). A moment frozen in time, commemorated on a cosmic plate somewhere, almost unbelievable.]

In my mind, the history of film is an abstract form that makes the most sense to me in the written word: combine movies with words, that’s a two-for that makes me smile. Sure, documentaries have the added bonus of being able to directly reference the films they talk about, but seeing the hi-jinks of my film heroes on paper adds a delicious layer of divorced narrative, an element of the fictional to the real. So what better list to make than of the film books that inspire me?

There are many industry tell-alls, but few that really marry the investigation of biography with the comprehensive critique of film history better than these:

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood by Peter Biskind
Hands down my favorite film history book. Why? Because it’s basically 700 pages of gossip about the most screwed up people on the planet: filmmakers. I learned things that simultaneously blew my mind and comforted me like an old security blanket about the crucial New Hollywood moviemakers in the late 60s/early 70s. This isn’t even touching on how brilliantly it traces the rise of this new movement to its death at the hands of the summer blockbuster, or how it paints cunning portraits of people who I thought I already knew (Spielberg as the nerd who finally got a girl and became a jerk? Scorsese as the twerp who turned to drugs to keep his creative high? George Lucas as the bizarre voice of reason?!?). If you want anecdotes, you’ll find them here. (see also: The Kid Stays in the Picture by Robert Evans)

The Film Snob’s Dictionary by David Kamp and Lawrence Levi

At first glance, it's just a reference guide, but the more I reference it, the more I realize it's basically a history book, and a pretty bitchy one at that. Just read the entry on Ingmar Bergman or Jean Renoir. Me-OW!

Brando by Patricia Bosworth; Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando by Stefan Kanfer.
Anyone who knows me knows that I pride myself on delivering a Brando story for every occasion. Well, I owe it all to the fact I’ve read many a biography and watched many a documentary on the man. He fascinates and repulses me. These two in particular are like two flip sides of a coin: if you want a healthy overview tracing Brando’s career, go with the Bosworth. It's largely devoid of the kind of damning anecdotal evidence that inflates Brando's legend...which brings us to Somebody, which in the title alone is already delivering the kind of grit I want to see in Brando bios . But as always, when it comes to Brando, you rarely have to embellish: the truth is usually juicier than fiction.

I Lost It At the Movies by Pauline Kael
My hero. Her ability to sum up not only a film, but also its cultural context and creative ancestors in a single paragraph never fails to astound me. She may have been a tough old broad, but damn if she didn't know what she was talking about.

Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of the Independent Film by Peter Biskind
The second and less salacious of my Biskind books. The man knows his stuff (but don't seek out his film reviews unless you're willing to put up with a little bit of datedness) and it's shown in the way he deftly weaves the rise of indie films into a self-contained narrative with foreshadowing, character development and hubris. I love his portrait of Robert Redford. Slightly kinder than Easy Riders--but only slightly.

Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe

In a word, this book is a revelation. It's basically one massive, candid interview with frequent screenwriter, sometimes director and forever legend Billy Wilder as his career was winding down. Full of juicy behind the scenes stories with a mensch who's too old to pull any punches, his insight into the business he devoted his life to is at once touching, heartbreaking and terribly cynical. I re-read this often. (see also Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut for a more film-y approach to interviewing a legend)

Eight Blog Posts In Search of an Author

As is my way, I tend to get carried away with high color abstracts. I get real excited about an idea, then if I don't immediately engross myself with it before I get distracted, it falls to the wayside when the Next Big Thing comes along (and trust me: the Next Big Thing? It always comes along). So in the interest of full disclosure, I post this, which is quite literally the least I can do: a list of blog topics without a post.

Ian McEwan: Cold-Hearted Bastard or Lovable Mad Scientist?

5 (Other) Reasons to Beware the Ides of March

The Young People Terrify Me

You Want to be a Cool Guy? Use a Hedara.

The Rise of the Hip-Square and the Death of Camp

Bad News Bears: A User's Guide

Sad Guys on Trading Floors

The Mystifying Peggy Olson

Fake Interviews with Unlikely Subjects (an ongoing series)

I wrote them down, meant to go back to them, and never did. Sad, really. I'll probably still tackle a portion of them someday, but for now, I'll just let them stand as a monument to the addled cobweb of distraction that is my mindscape.

I have good news and bad news about Buffy.

The good news: A new Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie is officially in the works.

The bad news: You won't want anything to do with it.

Here's the lowdown: it all comes down to Fran Rubel Kuzui (whose name avid Buffy watchers, like myself, will vaguely remember rolled with every set of credits). She's the rights-holder to the entire franchise (and director of the 1992 film) and got it in her head that she'd like to resurrect (haha, get it? Resurrect? Vampires? Whew. Tough crowd) the series.

Only without Joss Whedon. Or Xander, Willow or Giles. Or Buffy. Which makes it....The Vampire Slayer?

And that's all well and good, I guess. I'll admit with only 24% shame that I've read more than one Tales of the Slayer, and most of those volumes combined with the Fray graphic novel supported the notion that a Slayer other than Buffy could be interesting.

But, um, how do I say this without betraying my 12 year old self?

Oh, I know: the story itself kind of...sucks.

Well, only really as Fran Rubel's version painted it (a technique I affectionately call a "whitewash"). Let's take a walk down Memory Lane, shall we? Back to a time which Joss Whedon probably refers to as the Dark Ages: 1992, and the release of the original theatrical version of Buffy.

Whedon's original conception, as most fans will tell you, came from a twist on an old horror movie cliche: what if the little blonde girl cowering in the alleyway turned around and beat up the villains herself? On paper, it has promise, but pointed more towards Campsville than actually provoking some kind of commentary on gender relations.

Joss wrote that script, not that you could guess from the final edit. The possibilities for camp + sexy blonde proved too tempting for the bigwigs in charge (alas--you should have seen the original version of American Pie 2. A stirring evocation of youth through the travails of its nubile, privileged characters, not unlike a young Henry Miller). Last minute casting changes, low budgets, and a studio-sized dent in the production notes left the actual release a big mess of...well, if I wasn't such a lady, I'd have a very apt description for you.

It took a deft hand many years later to turn that dreck into one of the best television shows that ever aired. To layer that little blonde girl with enough pathos, vulnerability and smarts so that we not only believe this girl can kick ass, but we really really want to see her do it. To turn a fight scene into something more emotional and cathartic than a simple kick, punch, block routine. To turn being young into something more dangerous than fighting demons, and make the monsters literal AND figurative.

In other words, it took Joss Whedon, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer mythos only caught on because of what he poured into it. It's his dialogue, his pop culture references, his infuriating tendency to rip the still-beating heart from your chest and play with it like a cat before popping it back in place.

To no one's surprise, it's the success of the Twilight franchise that has studio fingers poised over the green light button. Which really, should piss me off more, considering that this forces me to think for three seconds longer than I like to grant those stupid, brain-candy wish-fulfillment books.

[SIDERANT! On the subject of that insipid series: GOD! EDWARD! Seriously, I understand that every teenage girl needs a non-threatening sex object onto which to project her hopes and desires (though going the extra stretch to make him a spineless eunuch was a nice touch, I'll admit). But that doesn't excuse the countless people my own age who lust after what is a chesspiece in what's essentially a fable for the joys of abstinence. I've studied this subject considerably and I'm here to say: these watered down, defanged vampires that stand around all day conflicted about their blood lust aren't attractive. They're the product of a coddled, Oprah-fied society. They defeat the purpose of being a vampire and therefore, are LAME. Ahem. Siderant over.]

And Fran, honey? If you still think it's just a cute young girl punching demons and being quippy, then I don't even need to wish this project failure. It already is one.

Moviehole: Buffy Movie Officially in the Works

The Bulldog Edition: A Love Song to Newspaper Movies

The recent New York Times review of State of Play (the new Russell Crowe flick) made me all nostalgic, since, after all, the film is practically a dinosaur--not only is it about the newspaper industry, its main character, Cal Affrey, actually takes notes--with a pen and paper! It's adorable how they try to be hip and relevant by having Rachel McAdams play a political blogger (who is, naturally, barely biting her tongue at Crowe's antique, pavement hitting methods). But by the ending reel--which is a prolonged and loving depiction of a story actually going to press (on real paper and everything!) it's clear that all that hogwash about technology is just that: though ostensibly State of Play is about the unravelling of a huge political cover-up, it's really about the mysterious power of committing the truth on the fallible but somehow forever printed page. 

What results is a subtle and somewhat wasted pat on the head to all the political bloggers and online news sites alike--while that instant gratification thing is all fine and good, it seems to say, there are some things that needs to go through the industry ringer and emerge on the other side as a printed, legitimate piece of investigative journalism. This leads to the weirdest meta moment of all, when the clever viewer realizes a film about the fake newspaper industry is being made as the very future of the real industry (including the paper this review appears in) is in question. 

Best of all about this review is the form: the reviewer frames the entire review on the age old perimeters of portrayals of journalists on film: snappy banter, the lone man on the trail, the cub reporter, the high stakes cover up, the series of unconnected events--and, of course, the glorious nature of investigation and discovery that makes this kind of narrative so satisfying. 

Now, I'd bet a dollar fifty that most our cultural idea of the 'newspaper business' comes in large part from the movies (with television, radio and the comic book coming up from behind). That had me thinking back to all the best portrayals of that frenetic-paced, much mythologized profession on the silver screen. And more importantly, it got me wondering--how is that the very medium seems to be the very antithesis of what the newspapers promise (film and television = immediate, mass communication, newspapers= slower, personal consumption) ends up providing some of the touching and nostalgic tributes?

Citizen Kane (1941) 

Not only one of the best newspaper flicks of all time but...oh, well, you all know the rest. Yada yada yada, Citizen Kane is the greatest movie, blah blah fishcakes. But in all seriousness,  it's also probably the only onscreen depiction of the birth of yellow journalism (which ignores legitimate news stories in favor of outrageous headlines that sell papers), as well as a damn fine portrait of the machinations behind great power and wealth. 

By now, it's no secret that Citizen Kane is in large part based on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Welles pretty much lifted wholesale chunks of Hearst's life, mostly because he is a Bad News Bear. He probably also thought it would be funny to poke the sleeping badger pit (now I'm picturing that visual and...yeah. Pretty much the best thing ever). It wasn't even subtle: the supposed telegram Hearst sent regarding the Spanish-American War, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war" showed up in Kane as, "you provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war." Obvious? Perhaps. Hilarious? Without doubt. 

You know what they say: every time someone is offended, Orson Welles gets a glass of port and a director's cut. 

The Inside Scoop: When friends asked how Kane's last words would be so well known when he died alone, Orson Welles reportedly was silent for a long beat saying, "Don't you ever tell anyone of this."

Superman: The Movie (1978)

Clark Kent by day, Superman by night...well, not exactly, because rescuing those in need doesn't exactly come with fixed hours. Either way, Clark's gotta make a living, and he does as a reporter for the Daily Planet. What I especially love about the newsroom of the Daily Planet is that it's a screaming stereotype, crossing off every genre staple in the book --the pushy, loudmouth boss, the cynical but beautiful female lead reporter, the green and hopelessly obtuse kid, and the eternal fixation on grabbing that next big lead. But don't you love it? It's comfy as an old shoe.  

The Inside Scoop: Ever the Bad News Bear, Marlon Brando refused to memorize most of his lines in advance. Let me remind you: he was paid $3.7 million and worked for just 12 days of shooting.  When he places the infant Kal-El into the escape pod in the film's beginning, he was reading his lines from the diaper of the baby. Oh, Brando! You little scamp. We just can't take you anywhere! 

His Girl Friday (1940)

Walter Burns, a fast-talking newspaper editor (Cary Grant) tries at all costs to keep Hildy, his estranged reporter wife (Rosalind Russell) from remarrying, all in the middle of covering the hottest story of the year. Notorious for the whip-fire dialogue and impossible, aching cleverness, this film makes a near perfect snapshot of everything we hold dear about that long gone Golden Age of journalism, when newspaper could really break a story and the business really seemed life or death. On one level, it's just a simple 'gal gets story, guy gets gal' tale, but, with Hildy forced to choose between a quiet, traditional life with her fiancee in the country and a hectic but fulfilling city existence, it's more a take on the modern woman's dilemma on the homestead vs. the hot lead, the family vs. the career. 

The Inside Scoop: In the play the film is based on, The Front Page, the whole 'husband wins back errant wife' plot was entirely absent--Hildy had been a man. When director Howard Hawks heard his secretary reading the lines for auditions, he liked the dynamic so much he rewrote the entire part. 

All the President's Men (1976)

Any list of newspaper movies that left this one off the list would probably be immediately disqualified. A celluloid chronicle of the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporting of Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) that uncovered the Watergate scandal and was the driving investigative force that brought down the Nixon administration. The first time I saw it, I was amazed at not only how watchable it was, but how subtly thrilling: knowing that this event bomb blasted American politics, this film always sends me straight back to the history books to refresh my memory. From all accounts, the film set was marked by a remarkable attention to detail, right down to reproducing out of print phonebooks. I guess this did not extend to the accuracy of casting: 

Real life Woodward and Bernstein. 

Hollywood Woodward and Bernstein. 

Yeah. Because an alarmingly large percentage of investigative journalists look like Robert freakin' Redford. Guys, I do not appreciate this deception; I almost totally believed you. For realsies. 

The Inside Scoop: Both Redford and Hoffman memorized the other's lines so they could interrupt each other in character. This left a lot of the other actors on set awesomely out in the cold. 

Meet John Doe (1941)

A newspaper woman (played by Barbara Stanwyck) is fired from her job, she creates a fake letter from an unemployed 'John Doe' who threatens to commit suicide to protest the ills of society. The letter causes a city-wide sensation, and her paper takes her back--which means she is forced to find a fake John Doe (Gary Cooper) to keep the story going. It escalates pretty quickly, thanks in large part to one of those great stock B&W villains whose motivations are fuzzy, apart from a moral setting stuck on 'evil.' Sentimental old social finger-wagger that redeems itself from the clunker bin with a convincing display of the fickle nature of celebrity and the luscious presence of Stanwyck.

The Inside Scoop: Gary Cooper signed onto the project without a script--he had enjoyed working with director Frank Capra on Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and wanted to work with Barbara Stanwyck. No one with eyes can blame him. I would watch her do anything, and luckily, I have proof: Christmas in Connecticut. Watched that sucker twice, y'all. 

Newsies (1992)

Based on the real-life Newsboys Strike of 1899, and starring a wee Christian Bale. Who cares if it was any good or not? LOOK AT THOSE LITTLE HATS! Price of admission= repaid in full.

The Inside Scoop: Most of the cast trained for ten weeks in dance and martial arts. I guess that proved useful for some of them later. 

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For more on this deeply fascinating topic, try the literary journal the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture: guaranteed hours of fun. 

This is right for so many reasons.

I've been reading Brando biographies again, which is nothing sort of usual around these parts. This week it's Patricia Bosworth's Marlon Brando.  I've found a lot of speculation on screen legends in general (and Brando in particular) gets caught up in wading through the pile-up of hard-to-verify anecdotes that gather up over the crawling decades, trying to separate man/woman from myth. 

I don't think that should ever be a factor with Brando. If anything, my excessive reading on this hot mess dandy has taught me that I don't really believe there IS a separation to be found. Yes, I'm pretty sure Brando actually was that unbelievable. 

Any Brando biography worth its salt will deliver on this front, serving up an outstanding anecdote or two which all defy explanation, rationalization, and beg to be proven wrong. But you can't. Brando was a Bad News Bear of the first degree.

I like this one: violence, bitchiness and the triumph of Brando (despite himself). Brando had been cast as Stanley for Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. The role was originally written for a much older man, but Tennessee fell head first for Brando's vicious portrayal and practically gift-wrapped the role for him (he was known to admonish director Elia Kazan to just "Let Marlon be."). Rehearsals began in the New Amsterdam Roof Theater and newcomer Brando was a bit of a loose cannon.... 

…Brando’s instincts took him all sorts of places in rehearsals, as in the famous birthday party scene in which he stormed from the table, then slammed his hand down on the plate, smashing it to smithereens. As he delivered his line, My place is cleared, you want me to clear your places?” he swept the rest of the plates from the table with a great crash. The first time he played the scene full out, he had to keep picking shards of china from his bloodied fingers, but he spoke his lines anyway. He was totally into his character.

On opening night in New Haven the show was a technical shambles. The complex lighting didn't work. Music cues were off. But when Brando entered as Blanche DuBois' brutal executioner, in his jeans and t-shirt clutching his bloody package of meat, the audience gasped.

[…]

 [After the show] playwright Thornton Wilder, author of The Skin of Our Teeth…primly gave his critique of Streetcar: it was negative. He maintained that the play was based on a totally false premise. No southern belle as genteel as Stella would marry a brute like Stanley, let alone succumb to his sexual violence.

Tennessee Williams listened politely for as long as he could, but when Wilder was out of earshot, he murmured, "That man has never had a good lay!"

Ha.  Outstanding.