Norman Bates...Dreamboat (question mark)

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology


What's new with me, you ask? Oh, only EVERYTHING BAD EVER. A few friends and I went to take in Psycho recently at the newly launched TIFF Lightbox. I have seen Psycho at least six times, but never on a large screen, and I went anticipating nothing other than a renewed appreciation for my least liked Hitchcock film. 


And, uh. Okay. Big wrong. 

Anthony Perkins, 1960

Andrew Garfield, 2010.

It began, dear readers, when I realized Anthony Perkins reminds me a whole lot of Andrew Garfield. This is was kind of novel, because I think Andrew Garfield is just the cutest thing. But then the similarities continued beyond the superficial resemblance: they've both got this really endearing, baby ostrich quality about them, and a nervous vibe fueled by a fretful sort of social skittishness. Observe: 


Exhibit A: Andrew Garfield



Exhibit B: Anthony Perkins



If you watch Psycho again with that in mind and it will bother you. It's uncanny! But it won't bother me. Because tragically, I now find Anthony Perkins attractive. Classic transference, but there you go. Freud had my number and then some, what up. 


Have you ever really watched the scene where he'd trying to dodge the private investigator? He is just one big helping of Adorable! With his little book and sweater all rolled up, chewing on gum and being all crazy. Like, what's he gonna do next? Aww, Norman, you know better than that. You little cutie. 


Oh God. 


I don't mean to exaggerate, but this turn is probably the worst event in Canadian history since Louis Riel, sexy leader of the North-West Rebellion, was hanged for high treason. Like, seriously. You guys, I don't even want to talk about it, which is why I wrote a blog post. First World problems are awesome that way. 

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. 

The Gothic in Film: Social Structure

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

Goya-a-go-go.

PART ONE | PART TWO

Do you feel uncomfortable? Unsettled? The Gothic is pleased. It milks the grotesque; it is horrific and terrifying pleasing. The Gothic turns the familiar into the threatening, and delights in making what we think of as safe, virtuous constructs of society into dark reflections. It's here to tear down the social structure.

Picture of the Day: April 2nd

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

Tippi Hendren in a promotional photo for The Birds, 1963. 

Butch Cassidy and the Worst Idea in the World

by Jillian Leigh, Ampersandology

I can't hold my tongue any longer. Tom Cruise is planning a remake of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and..well, there goes my last vestige of hope that my childhood would survive the New 'Aughts unscathed. Oh, and it gets better: John Travolta is set to take Paul Newman's part.

Yeah. I'll let that sink in.

Look. This isn't anything against Hollywood and their annoying tendency to throw money at bad ideas. This isn't even anything against Tom Cruise or remakes in general. This is a protest against trying to improve that which cannot be improved, AKA the Greatest Buddy Film Ever Made(tm).

This may come as a shock, considering the shiny purist hat I'm known to wear on occasion, but I don't think remakes are an inherently bad idea. I think that, if done with the right intent, remakes can be an amazing gauge for the fluid changes within a society. I've had a pet theory involving Invasion of the Body Snatchers (ask me more!) and the fact that every time it gets remade, it takes on the subtle paranoias dominant in culture at the time. There's been three or four versions so far, and every time, the tenor of the aliens doin' the snatching changes, evolving from Commie fears to hippie hatred to...well, whatever conglomerate it is that troubles us in the 2000s. I don't know, Nicole Kidman's pristine, creaseless forehead maybe? Anyway, the point is, it's like a Tabula Rasa that a filmmaker can use to overlay the concerns that pulse underneath the surface of a culture.

Remakes can be a handy tool, but usually only if there's a point to making them. As much as Disturbia bugged me as a pale imitation of the perfect Rear Window, it was still kind of neat to see the classic storyline interpreted using technology that probably spies on us more than we spy on each other. I've heard rumors of an upcoming remake of The Birds starring George Clooney and Naomi Watts, and I was excited, even with Michael Bay's name attached--it wouldn't be hard to update the "nature's revenge" in a way that resonates the same way it did in 1963, considering the hypocrisy that's found in a society that drops off the weekly recycling in the back of a gas-guzzling SUV. Plus, the caliber of the attached stars (Clooney and Watts)  made me hope for a smart reinvention rather than a lame grab for money.

Anyway, back to the main point: what is the real purpose behind remaking Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid for the 2000s, especially in its current Cruise/Travolta incarnation? I've gotten pretty good at reading the writing on the wall and I don't like what I see: Meet the Parents with cowboys. Cruise has already admitted he loved the movie as a kid, which literally makes him the worst possible choice to helm the remake.

That's not to say a remake couldn't work: give it the Deadwood treatment, and grunge up the already grungy lives of two affable outlaws. The original was admittedly light on the revisionist history angle, so you could play that up: not even cowboys lived like cowboys, after all. Try and work in something about the last frontier. Oh, and cast unknowns, as Robert Redford was at the time.

Otherwise, cast Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Those two could really use the money, you know, and they DO seem to get along. That's a remake I would proudly slide onto the shelf next to the original.

What do you think? Any remakes that you thought really worked? Or drove you crazy with their blatant wrongness?

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.

Oh, To Redesign the Past...

In a nutshell: I owe TCM all my babies. Again. Honestly, I don't know how this keeps happening.

Extreme? Perhaps. But sometimes when I switch them on, and catch a glimpse of their unbelievable marketing materials makes me feel as though I have unknowingly entered into a tangled Faustian bargain with them. Unfortunately, I didn't even need the bargain, as I would willingly hand over whatever they demand of me (including firstborn children) as long as they keep being brilliant.

You can travel down any avenue of their marketing--TV spots, print ads, even their online portal--and it all evokes the same nostalgia for old Hollywood, a kind of joyful cleverness that could be cloying but instead comes across as wildly, touchingly sincere. These wonderful people, whoever they are, really love old movies.

Every summer TCM runs a special month-long feature called 'Summer Under the Stars.' It's fairly straightforward: every day in August, they pick a new star and run their movies all day long. Don't worry; TCM is known for this kind of almost cutesy thematic programming (they celebrate the birthdays of old studio big shots). As I said, this happens every year, and it’s always fun to see who gets an Augustan welcome.

So, imagine my reaction when I log onto for my monthly rundown of what will be playing this month and happen across the most perfect thing I will ever know.

See, the bright stars at TCM thought this year they'd do something a little different. Namely, make all my dreams come true. For each day in August, they remade the posters of old Hollywood films, updating their marketing to modern standards.

What? Why aren't you excited? I'm sorry, maybe you didn't hear me: THEY REMADE OLD MOVIE POSTERS. LIKE, FOR FUNSIES.

The results? Marvelousness. If you ever wanted to see The Magnificent Seven realized as a Tarentino-esque revenge flick, or Roman Holiday as a cheery Euro-romcom, you came to the right place. Not only are they breathtaking, but damn if they don't prove what I've been saying all along: these films may be technically old, but their themes, characters and stories are universal.

There are 31 to pick from, so naturally, I weeded through to find my standouts:

Jailhouse Rock (1957)

The Story: Elvis Presley is Vince Everett, an ex-convict working in the music industry. After going to jail for a fight he didn't start, he meets and bonds with Hunk Houghton, a washed-up country singer, who teaches Everett to play an old guitar, and to sing a few songs. He later shoots to super stardom and begs the question: will success spoil Vince Everett?

This film is notable for being one of Elvis' best, as well as cementing his bad-boy rebel image. Perhaps one of the most heart-breaking things about Elvis is how badly he wanted to be Marlon Brando. But it was not to be, and the studio only put him in teenybopper-friendly fare. Brando dreams=dashed. After all, how many musicals do see Brando in? Uh... don't answer that. I'm still trying to repress.

The 2009 Result:

Ohhh, so THIS is why Elvis is awesome. I totally get it now. Rock and roll, baby.

This poster (unlike the old version) really captures the exuberance of a true rock and roller at his baby-faced prime. He's gotta dance, baby, and ain't nobody movin' like that boy could move. Look at that face: he's trying to act like he doesn't know exactly how charming this little rebel play-acting is.

To Catch a Thief (1952)

The Story: John Robie (Cary Grant) is a notorious but retired jewel thief, nicknamed "The Cat," who now leads a quiet life tending to his vineyards in the South of France. A rash of robberies that closely resemble his old style lead the police to believe that the Cat is up to his old tricks again.

If To Catch a Thief was only notable for bringing Cary Grant out of near-retirement, then we'd owe it forever. But add to that the ravishing locales, international intrigue, not to mention the unbelievable diameter of Grace Kelly's waistline, well...to that, I must tip my hat.

The 2009 Result:

HOT DOG. Well, first of all, I want to see THAT movie. I mean, I have, about twelve times, but it practically reinvents the film. Edgy intrigue with an international flair, it's this kind of sexy, urgent imagery that drives the cinephile wild. If one little snapshot can conjure up this much possibility, imagine what a whole film could do...

The Letter (1940)

The Story: On a moonlit night, Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis), the wife of a British plantation manager in Malaya, shoots and kills a man whom is identified as Geoff Hammond (David Newell). She says it was to save her honor, as the brute tried to force himself on her. Everyone celebrates Leslie as a hero...until a letter emerges that threatens Leslie's alibi and hints at a piece of the story left untold...

I always found The Letter fascinating for its treatment of its central conflict, and how it ultimately resolves Leslie's crime (no, you won't be spoiled here). Obviously, on one level, you have a wounded, defensive woman who has been through a nightmare--as the tagline goes, "With all my heart, I still love the man I killed." So tragic. But on the other hand, you cast Bette Davis. She ain't no victim, let me tell you. It's part of the reason I find Now, Voyager (1942) and Bette's initial cowing to her overbearing mother so hilarious: seriously, nobody puts Bette in a corner. Why are you even trying?

The 2009 Result:

BADASSNESS. Check out Bette, guns ablazing! She is taking names, everybody! I always knew you ought not to mess with her, and now I have proof. I love how this poster evokes the same sort of helpless passion of its protagonist, as well as start developing the film's central mystery even before the first reel.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967)

The Story: A young woman (Katherine Houghton) brings her new fiancee (Sidney Poitier) home to meet her liberal, upper class parents (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn). Unfortunately, she's white...and he's not. Oh, and it's also 1967. Uh oh! I sense a conflict.

This film is a bittersweet success because beloved Spencer Tracy died just 17 days after filming wrapped. In fact, both Hepburn and director Stanley Donner had to take pay cuts to ensure the movie was made, because no insurance company would touch the ailing Tracy.

The 2009 Result:

It all boils down to black and white. Stanley Kramer crafted Sidney Poitier's character, Dr. John Prentice, to be virtually without flaws-- he is a young, handsome doctor who is accomplished, honorable and respectful: the only possibility objection could be the color of his skin. I like how this new poster (unlike the neon-orange scream team of the '67 version) better paints a picture of what awaits the viewer: a simple, straightforward parlour room drama, with impeccable manners.

(For more Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, pick up up Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution. DO IT. It's amazing.)

The Big Heat (1953)

The Story: A cop takes on the crime syndicate that controls his city after the brutal murder of his beloved wife. And hey, look, Lee Marvin showed up!

The Big Heat marked not only a new kind of noir (thanks to German-born director Fritz Lang), but also a new take on crime on film: in the 1950s, with the gradual realization that crime in America had become an empire, that corrupted nearly every facet of society--including those who thought they were immune, the all all-important typical citizen. So, noir pictures start to focus on the lonely hero taking it on himself to buck up and bring down the bad guys--a stand-in for the average American citizen.

The 2009 Result:

Noir gold. Remember all those other movies, that pretended to be noir but really just landed somewhere around 'lame potboiler'? Let those lesser movies fall to their knees before the real deal. If you try and tell me Gloria Grahame isn't everything a woman is meant to be (and then some) I will laugh directly in your face. Directly. You will feel a fool.

Grahame was considered the Hard Luck Dame--so many of her characters fell to tragic fates. More often than not, she wound up slinknig through a noir picture, as the sullied, hard-luck but still ravishing femme fatale. It was a typecast that, for me, was best served in It's A Wonderful Life, wherein she plays Violet, who finds herself in non-specific 'trouble' that George (Jimmy Stewart) can't help but try to save her from. But it wasn't all bad; as a Lady Noir, she got to drop gems like, "I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better."

Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

The Story: General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) is a delusional commander of a United States Air Force base who initiates a plan to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, hoping to thwart a Communist conspiracy to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with fluoridated water. Yeah. No, it's meant to be ludicrous and funny. I'm, like 95% sure, anyway.

Kubrick didn't even intend to make the film into satire until the studio insisted on casting Peter Sellers (whose work on Kubrick's Lolita was thought to be responsible for its European success). Not only that, Columbia wanted Sellers to play multiple roles...perhaps hoping for each billing to increase the mathematical chances of success? Who knows. Studios have come up with less plausible strategies.

The 2009 Result:

Hilarious. Somebody sure did their homework on this one. Phallic symbol, check. Suggestions of male virility, check. Scribblings of a crazy fluid-guy, check and check. I guess that makes you awesome, Poster.

I don't care what anyone says: Sterling Hayden is kind of hot. He's got that whole 'surly Viking' thing cornered.

Find it here: TCM Summer Under the Stars.

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)