Melancholia

The woman on the moon is being forced to the earth

she's brought with her, cheese curds in her breasts

her milky breasts dripping tears of her temper --

Gentle Ophelia, she of crazy hormones.

Why not end a world with a cosmic bang

why not go down with a stymied prince

a secret assassination first, R and G, the stab

through the arras, you, he, and a whole world, boom.

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Warren Beatty For President

Warren should have thrown it in the ring, his hat.

Rubber chicken dinners and ten months we would have stuck it with him

July smelling of sunscreen, the campaign geared for the neighborly gusto

of good women, picnic melon, Mission figs, the local cheese and follow-up thank-yous.

I'd be a lieutenant in that corps, burnishing the leader's star

think how better we'd look, how pretty the city, how fresh the USA, what curvature the globe would spoon to, had he.

How fine-tuned a world that runs cinematically on time, cordially, but with a big stick

you need someone with panache, you need someone to explain it all that way.

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Burglary

Tingling inside the entry hall, left of the foyer stairs

where guests have glanced in worry, hot, up at her shrine.

She's not here and this is a strange, after-hours tour

any room to be cooked by flashlight, meat smells in the air.

What was that song heard coming, coming in, about gone love?

Booties forensic with quietude and task

padding up to the second floor, toes outstretching like beast noses

toward one room and crack of the next for discriminate sniff

so when it comes to choice, one follows the wits, the point of it all

as if it were a jungle night, one can't be heard,

to her mumbled voice on tape by a bedside jug

garbling her text, her very own whisper that it's all okay, he's here

the country, it's in good hands, watch:  the last act's simple comedy --

and the world goes wet, spit pearls like the ones at her neck

making it a new day in the dark, turning it upside down.

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The Long Goodbye

Maybe you're 30 and it's America's 70s and you've got a place above Franklin in Hollywood and the place is next to a roomful of New Age girls practicing naked yoga.

Maybe you've got a 'Madison' sent to you from Mexico to pay for your expenses and to buy off your friendship and you wear a thin tie and black suit and smoke too much.

Maybe there's a mysterious, classy blonde heavily put-upon by her washed-up novelist drunkard husband and they have a doberman who dislikes your face, but the blonde cooks you chicken kiev and begs your help.

Maybe the cops distrust you and the mob does, too, and you lose your cat even though you go out at 3 a.m. to buy special food for it.

Maybe you've got access to the Malibu Colony and a classic car to drive to the border.

Maybe you've got the moral grit to 'resolve all issues' and the sun is on you and maybe it is a Hollywood ending to an episode that sums up your life.

Maybe that's what it's all about.

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The Parts And What They Make Up

After almost 30 years, the magic of this still holds. 

Peter Weir is one of the few directors who has managed to allow-in, for his audiences, a sense that the world isn't flat, that our apprehension of it as a scientific object or manipulable set of economic relationships -- that understanding -- isn't the prime or only way of taking-in the world.

His The Mosquito Coast, his Picnic At Hanging Rock, his The Last Wave, surround eccentricity, weirdness, or mythic spirituality.  The Year Of Living Dangerously, which might be a love story alone, or an earnest socio-political pitch set in Sukarno's Indonesia, gains immensely from the character Billie Kwan, Linda Hunt's smashing 'trouser' role.

Billie is the puppeteer, the clever arranger of his part of Jakarta, maneuvering foreign journalists and embassy people, as he may try, to effectuate success for a -- depicted here -- sympathetic Sukarno walking a thin line between Communist insurrection and military repression.

The film is not just a liberal plea, worthy though that is.  Sacrifice shows itself, several people risking real personal jeopardy and giving themselves over to doing the right thing while surrounded by corruption and cynicism.  

The clip above, while (still!) hotly romantic, represents a moment not simply of sexual assignation, but of moral choice -- Jill (Sigourney Weaver) is betraying and committing at the same time.  In accepting what she gives, Guy (Mel Gibson) is now placed at a moment of choice himself. 

They're not conscious of it, but they have been taught Billie's idealism and they do not fail him.

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Art Means Work. Yes, Work.

This should open your eyes and interest you.  

What to those of us who are 'just plain folks', who believe in 'democratic arts', who may recognize that being called a 'philistine' is a slur, but simply show our social equality in return (Back at ya!) -- what to us appears as an elitist enterprise, ballet, really produces more sweat in a day than a lifetime of backyard barbecues and lawn-mowings.

This clip doesn't show it all:  the blisters and infected corns, the slipped discs, the exhaustion, the struggle just to be able to get a chance to suffer that way!  The schooling, the disciplined adolescence, the foregone 'outside' life, the forced 'early retirement' at 30 or -- if you're truly strong -- 40.  

The sheer physicality of it.

The mental grit needed for it.

Nils Tavernier's film of a decade ago, Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet, honors the institution it views.

It should also raise the question:  How much guts do I have -- how much have I given?

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Ms. Wasikowska. Ms. Bronte. Ms. Eyre

Hard work week at the end of which I found this reward.

Texture.

Yes, Romantic sentiment between socially vulnerable young woman and a Byronic older man.

Yes, 'Gothic' secrets, 1830s English country conservatism, heath, rain, snow.

Yes, a mute servant class, a knowing but powerless housekeeper.

Yes, many sins, some revealed, some merely suggested.

Candle fire.  Hearth fire.  Room fire.  Estate fire.

But we're not merely interested in the discharge of formulas, are we?

The film is a real one.

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But With A Little S** In It

Love the brashness of Preston Sturges's mid-Century 'screwball' characters.  In this clip from Sullivan's Travels (1941), Joel McCrea, a film director, is on a mission.  It shows a long-standing literary/artistic clash.  Witness Philip Sidney's An Apology For Poetry (1595):

Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word Mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth -- to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture; with this end, to teach and delight.

Director Sully wants to teach, but his studio guardians insist on the delight, and he reluctantly gives some leeway.  The film follows his earnest, yet naive, attempts at what he sees as a kind of social realism -- until he accidentally falls victim to problems he barely, only idealistically, understood.  

By the film's end, he's learned something about what's to be taught and how people laboring under social miseries take their art.

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With Jeanne Moreau As 'Christine'

We get a lot of that, the logging debris, splinter chips, hillsides looking like a bad shave, bark-shred torn away like venison mauled-off by a bear.

Walking the moss that's grown seasons high up, now in low shadows of treelings cracked haphazardly and interlocked, we follow the path of mammals.

Last night I watched John Frankenheimer's film, the one about the train burglarizing Modern art from Paris into Germany,

The mania of a colonel steeled to steal.  He's High-Cultured, sure, a man with an eye and a purpose.

But he's a Nazi and uses the ways of The Reich to fetch the paintings home to him, chafed between their 'decadence' and excellence.

The Allies are near.  The Resistance has its work cut out, and as in all the post-War winning views, heroic French leave lives, in existential black-and-white.

Burt Lancaster, here a Frenchman, diverts the art train's path for a full screen-hour, finally chuffs up a hill, and with his bum leg slips and staggers and ultimately rolls to loosen the lugs on the railroad ties and knock out their quoins, derailing, when soon it comes, the engine and its first car.

The end takes place, in this case, by the wooded hill abutting the railway line, the way to Deutschland.

This end brings death to hostages and 'Krauts', this ends in boxes of Degas, scattered-about Seurat, piled-up Picasso, contents of the Jeu de Paume atumble amidst the timber-trash of broken ties, 

Art ambiguously crated-up from sight, inert and quiet, beautiful inside, ready for the next appreciator's ego, ready for the next dare and swaggering excuse.

Ends always come.

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Another Year, Another Quiet Mike Leigh Triumph

No murder.  No sinking ships.  No wise-ass teens.

No Legions, no small-town-joe-makes-good.

No court of law.  No con.  No 'bad-lieutenant' cops.

No talking dogs. No blackmail, and no hooker scenes.

 

No corporate conspiracy.  No royal court.  No 'hood'.

No war.  No aliens.  No capers.  No 'black-ops'.

No poor-class gal to get the handsome lead.

No 'magic' world of shallow, feel-good 'myth'.

No rape shock. No coming-of-age in a 'simpler' time.

No cowboys, no pop music.  No selling-out for greed.

No mystery to solve of someone's quirky death.

No vampires, zombies, cannibals.  No crime.

With humans, we know the fragility of bliss.

Simply, cinematically, we aren't prepared for this. 

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Go Figure

Dead people.

You can't live with 'em.

You can't live without 'em.

Ten Things I Don't Like

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                                                                                     **

1)  People walking and conversing on cell phones as if the person were actually 'there'

2)  Living off the same adolescent 'oldie' music for 20 . . . or 30 . . . or 40 . . . years

3)  Being monitored on the job in order to 'document' the 'quality' of my work

4)  Power tools on quiet mornings

5)  How -- almost anywhere, certainly in politics -- cheap words drive out the worthy ones

6)  Film titles with any of the following words: 'chocolate', 'deadly', 'hell', 'kill', or 'wedding'

7)  The violence inborn in humans that is exercised for just about any excuse

8)  Customer service being redefined as irrelevant, pre-recorded phone options -- or -- pages of FAQ

9)  Full-body tattoos executed by a needle-man who thinks cartoons are 'high art'

10)  Having to pretend I'm having fun

* Great country, very good cast,  bad idea

** One good player, vastly overrated director, worse idea

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Knowing The Reward All Along

John Cassavetes, director and actor, has a screen face whose eyes don't seem to smile even when he himself chooses to.

Yet his life reads a story of a artist dedicated to conveying the interconnectedness of human beings, heart to heart.

Connecting is impure, precipitous, and rare.  And the only real quest.

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Points East

The mythic power of film is larger than even those who claim it to be large fully understand.   

Try stumbling onto a film, like this one, Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (. . .Of Shangri-La), at age 16, a movie buff never having seen or heard of the film and only distantly aware of the term 'Shangri-La'.

The story follows a man jostled by a war-torn world and seeking a peaceful one. 

It finds him.  He loses it.  He fights to get it back. 

The archetype around which I've seen my life playing.

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Crikey

Sociopathologically speaking, in Badlands,

Martin Sheen and Spacek ('underage') go on a rampage, killing at random and making the Dakotas a place of crazy Eden.

When he's finally stopped, he places a cluster of rocks to mark the spot:  Here is where you caught us.  They might have shot him there and built a dolmen instead of a mound of stones.

All the Druid stuff I know fits in a thimble.

The extent to which monuments of stone, of brick, of glass, of steel, the reinforced concrete and electrical systems of the tall places in order to elevate a visitant up there

-- the pains we go through, the politics of design, the revenue requests, the generational teaching of technique, not to leave out the brute physicality of shifting a ton of dead weight,

all our temples, mosques, and churches, revolving restaurants high above metropolis, business parks and three-deck malls and bars --

articulates a reason, goes to explain why we're here, what's it all about, alfie.

Here is where you caught us.

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To Tell A White Truth

One of the following is true:

1) I've killed five men.

2) The priesthood rejected me on the grounds that I'm not Catholic.

3) Lifetime Channel has slotted a show for me as 'The Lovelorn Guru'.
 

4) I wear a size 10 shoe.

5) After she ducked away from a premier, Michelle Pfeiffer -- this was in the 90s -- Michelle arrived shamefaced and needful, wet from having walked a distance in a rain, came to my hotel room, and I let her in.

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Serially, Folks

Celebrity impression elements I've tried to work on and 'do':

1) Brando reciting Eliot's 'The Hollow Men' in Apocalypse Now -- or simply 'doing' Brando as Kurtz.

2) Olivier's gesture of open-mouthed wonderment -- or his 'eye-roll' at having to face a life-shattering truth.

3) Kingsley's changes in pitch and dynamics -- or nervously-stuttering laugh during a quick conversational response.

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A Place In The Sun

Those who love this movie often point to this scene and the lingering close-ups of beautiful actors.  

I love this scene for another reason.  The film is based on Dreiser's An American Tragedy, and we do indeed get oppressive class structure, a pathetic marriage, a universe where human effort inevitably gets trumped by malevolent circumstance, punctuated by a scene wherein Raymond Burr demonstrates a murder by smashing an oar to bits inside a courtroom.

I love this particular scene for the musical theme, and incidentally for the lovers (Liz and Monty) caught up first in dance and then on the verandah, orchestra still within earshot.

The plans, the passion.  

Despite the utter improbability of any social acceptance, they race at doom.

That moment motivates.

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Hey, Pop! The Real Mid-Century 'Look'

Buoyant, crass, optimistic, richer than anywhere else, innocent of its arrogance, arrogant about its innocence, 'modern' with a 'T' for tasteless, fast, practical, goofy, criminal with a 'B' for brass knuckles, an 'S' for switchblade, and a 'C' for cement overcoat, commercial, blandly religious, conformist to the point of bigotry, classless but racist, democratic but rigidly institutional, forthright yet hypocritical, stupid yet innovative, proud of a be-wigged history yet seeing history as a 'future', Constitution-thumping yet run by social prejudice whose every legal construction and interpretation stank of exegetical cavil.  And The Creature From The Black Lagoon, in 3D.

Ah.  The 50s.

It's great having come this far away.  It is.

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Erato

I've dreamt about this woman, in her storefront,

Hollowed-out office shell on the first floor,

And anxious once again to wend my way

Peek at her place, empty except for a junk piano.

Middle-aged, gothic, ballerina-thin, this wraith,

Watch her again on her feet, arching up,

Reaching into the high-set, arc-lit nook

For inventoried goods, for offerings my way

With a promise of a sparrow, Katherine

Hepburn, plain nickels, dimes, a celestial map,

French words, leaning towers, beads,

Chowder, bubbles, child head of future kings

Rattan and stone, twigs, yellow feathers

Bingo discs, springs and blocks and portraits,

Apothecary powders, small, rare eggs, 

Dehydrated peaches, targets, roots,

Sullen nests and blood spots, winding wire,

Toothpicks and a clapboard storage bin,

Corked flasks and the Goddess Isis,

Handbill, parakeet and string, smooth frames.

Things not there -- but more for that:

Lauren Bacall, a Bakelite grill, owl eyes,

Sticks, The Palazzo Pink, old carpet wedge,

Stoppers in a cabinet, wire barriers, soot

Medici and mah-jongg tiles, shadow

Collages, shadows of collages orbiting sun,

Bric-a-brac inside the fold of dreams -- she's

Offering in her turn my way, her adagio --

Text of a romance, fireplace, matches to burn

An architect's schematic, pool house, transept

Smelling of chlorine and sky, The Café Mar,

Money news and a shaving brush, number 12

Sunlight wet as an after-rain, copper rings, a vow

Renting a boat in Prague and going all the way

A marriage of the mind of her black corneas

Extended pen, and the history of what's next.


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