Sunset Gun

A day in the life of dreams, nightmares, ganster double crossing and cop slapping. Guy Maddin's "Haunting," Dragnet.

With Udo Kier, a narcoleptic flatfoot, a hunchback dwarf and a gorilla.

God bless Tacoma, Washington. The dreary, though lovely NW city shivering along the cold Puget Sound, the "city of destiny," gave us Bing Crosby, Frank Herbert, Dyan Cannon and Darren McGavin. It also gave us Ted Bundy, which is quite unfortunate, but, speaking as a native Northwesterner, seems about right. Only a crazy person from Tacoma would drive a VW Bug up and down the hills of Seattle. I would know, my parents had a Bug briefly, until my mother, clutching the E break with terror, watched her young children fear for their lives on Bainbridge Island's aptly named "Toe Jam Hill." I like to think we were listening to Bing Crosby on the tape player. We weren't. But thank goodness Tacoma's other greatest gift to the world wasn't blaring from our tinny speakers: The Sonics. We would have catapulted straight into the Sound, screaming, perhaps with the song and at our mother: "I’m going out of my head. Now I wish I was dead. Psycho!!"

So god bless the efforts of Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman and Patti Smith guitarist/writer/producer Lenny Kaye, who, (among other sets back in the day) created the 1998 Nuggets compilation that included The Sonics. They allowed us raw-power-loving youngins some of their first experiences with “The Witch,” “Strychnine” and “Psycho” --  those fuzzed- out, wailing, dirty, distorted bursts of brilliance blasted by that seminal garage-rock band. The Sonics were not just a basketball team.

If you've never heard of the Sonics, well, you’re nuts. The Tacoma screamers burned bright and fast (and loud!) during their relatively short stint as garage-rock pioneers, shattering audiences’ ear drums from the early to late 1960s. With original members Gerry Roslie (lead singer, piano, organ), Andy Parypa (guitar), Larry Parypa (bass), Bob Bennett (drums), and Rob Lind (saxophone), the Sonics followed local notables the Wailers and the Kingsmen (they covered the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” -- and blew them out of the chilly Pacific Northwest water) with their down and dirty maximum R&B, making a distinctly raucous impression on the Northwest music scene. (Reportedly Jimi Hendrix was a huge fan.).

With clear (or perhaps divine) inspiration from Little Richard (whom the band covered and revered),  lead singer Roslie howled and screamed his way through primal, somewhat disturbed songs of love, bliss, angst and sex with a power that was, to younger audiences, intensely exciting and almost overwhelmingly dominant. The Sonics’ unique sound was a wild confluence of craft and recklessness (in other words, the perfect kind of sex) -- their fuzzy, harsh creations arranged pre-Gibson- fuzzbox, with band members playing through amplifiers or ripping the soundproofing off the walls while recording (guitarist Larry Parypa later mused, “We couldn't play with technique. So we pounded on everything instead.”)

Pound indeed. With a parade of local hit tunes and incredible records like “Here Are the Sonics” and “Boom,” the group easily became PNW favorites and seemed sure to break out even bigger. But alas, the world wasn’t ready for such scorching, stomping grit. Recording “Introducing the Sonics” in Hollywood, the band was disappointed with the watered- down album, calling it “the worst garbage,” and fell apart, which was probably for the best. For a band that influenced everyone from the Stooges to Mudhoney to the Fall, it they should be remembered only as unfettered, gleefully disturbed and pure. I have not seen them as a lineup today (they regrouped) and perhaps I need to. Or not. Or with my mother. They were The proto-type of punk rock; the quintessence of raw power; the band that really did go “boom.”

When iconic horror auteur/B-movie producer/shock pioneer William Castle approached Miss Mildred Pierce/Oscar winner/sensitive shopgirl/demented diva Joan Crawford about his newest project, Strait-Jacket, he explained that, she, the star would play a woman in her Fifties. "Forties" was Joan's quick, curt response, even though in 1964, the larger-than-life part-woman, part-gargoyle (beautiful gargoyle) was a ripe 60. Fine, fine, fine. Castle conceded anything for Ms. Crawford.

A mean-spirited, yet surprisingly moving offshoot of superior psycho-hag masterpieces like Robert Aldrich's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Strait-Jacket (scripted by Psycho's Robert Bloch) was really a Crawford-approved vehicle, right down to the lighting (of course), the hiring, and the firing -- namely of her first co-star. As told in Battle-Ax: The Making of Strait-Jacket (included on the DVD), Crawford didn't take to the first luscious, young thing who played her daughter, and so had her swiftly (ahem) axed from the project. No one in the documentary says why Joan didn't get on with the woman exactly (though Peter Nellhaus wrote me that in Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, actres Anne Helm claims she was fired for addressing Joan as, "Joan" and not  "Miss Crawford"), but possibly Miss Crawford wanted a statelier gal, hence the casting of the lovely Diane Baker (so arch eyed and naughty kittenish in Hitchcock's Marnie).

We also get a nice glimpse into the talented, vizard charisma that is Joan in the DVD's other special feature --  her fabulous costume and makeup tests. She's in full character, smoking sexily, believing, as every great actress should, that she is the hottest thing in high heels (and don't you forget about it). Smiling, smirking, swiveling that swimming/jogging/comet-cleansing bod in padded bra and pretty pumps, jangling her charm bracelet around all come-hither-boys, she reminds me of Bette Davis's Margaret Elliot from The Star -- no one's gonna tell her to play dumpy hausfrau. That decision didn't work out so well for Bette's Margaret (spectacularly so, The Star stands as one of Davis's finest performances of embarrassingly brutal honesty); but it did for Joan, even when screeching through a mental ward.

Particularly in later years, Crawford the star and Crawford the woman never wandered far from each other, making her alternately brilliant and terrifically terrifying. Stare at these tests and you'll knows that she's one of the most fascinating self-inventions ever to grace, or rather, claw her way across the silver screen. If you watch it numerous times (like I have), you just can't help but adore how wonderfully insane she seems. Whatever happened to actresses like Joan? They died off  --  torn away, like the old hat once resting atop the Brown Derby, dialed down like push button over rotary.

In the new, rather confused American cinema of the 60s, Strait-Jacket is the procession towards that funeral, and Joan as Lucy is poignant, scary, and yes, funny with her portrayal of a woman who, naturally, loses her mind after she finds her younger husband in bed with another girl. What to do? Grab an ax (yes, you'll think of Faye Dunaway yelling "Tina bring me the ax!") and hack the lovers to bloody hell while her young daughter looks on. Not the best idea, so she's then shoved into a mental institution (a screaming Joan is truly horrifying and sad) and is finally freed after a 20-year sentence. Upon release, she moves in with her brother, who in a sick irony not lost on St. Frances fans, is played by Leif Erickson (Frances Farmer's ex-husband. One wonders if any guilt drifted across his mind while reading the nutty script).

More importantly, her daughter (Baker), now a grown woman and sculptress,  re-unites with her tentative, insecure mother and helps her along the path of recovery. And her help is...interesting. She even gives Mama Joan a makeover to look exactly as she did when she hacked off her husband's head -- something that's just a little more than unhealthy. And then similar ax-murders begin popping up all over town. Hmm... No surprises will be given away here, but Strait-Jacket, though simple and crafted for shock, marks you deeper than you'd expect. As talented as William Castle is, that's all thanks to Ms. Crawford -- and he knew it.

Joan is just so...touching. I love Crawford (especially in pictures like The Unknown, Rain, The Women, A Woman's Face, Humoresque, Sudden Fear, Mildred Pierce, Autumn Leaves and all of her early flapper turned shopgirl roles, in which the harshness of her past, hard scrabble life resonates so poignantly), and even in such so-called exploitative fare, the actress is always excellent and fascinating to watch. In her transition from saucy lady to crazy broad to shy hausfrau to delusional sexpot (her weird come-on to her daughter's boyfriend is deliciously inappropriate while being strangely erotic), she's not as hammy as you'd think, encapsulating what it means to be Joan in one powerfhouse performance.

Aided by suspenseful pacing, an intriguing story and cheap-o, yet effective Castle effects, the picture is freaky sinister, moving and dream-like with its fake heads, blood-squirting necks and be-headings via lovingly manicured hands and strong arms bedecked with sparkling bracelets. It's not real imagery entirely (whatever that means), but real imagery that wakes you up from a nightmare -- like something Joan would dream while thinking of ways to off Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame in Sudden Fear (or perhaps rival Bette Davis and Franchot Tone in waking life). It's real, unreal, garish, aggressive and at times, strangely honest -- just like Joan. A messy house/mind made alarmingly perfect.

Cars usually offer me solace, a place of escape.  Speeding microcosmic shelters where I can go, as the great Ike Turner wrote, “oozin’ and cruisin’ along.” But on a recent trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I did something that occasionally happens inside a car -- I freak out. My friend was driving along the 1, we stopped off in Big Sur and everything seemed fine. Beautiful stretch of highway, the sparkling ocean, the lovely curvy cliffs and…the dulcet tones of my irritated voice asking… “Can you speed this thing up just a little more?” My heart was beating a mile a minute, my hands were trembling -- I was entering a full scale level ten anxiety attack. For no reason.

With a little more thought and little less freak, maybe there was some reason. I wasn’t driving. I told my friend to pull over -- surrender the wheel. He complied but soon regretted this decision. Driving as fast as that stupid rental (I blame the rental) could take me, screeching around the high cliffs and stating over and over that police didn’t patrol out here anyway,  and I’m gonna pass any selfish slow-poke in front of me (how dare they enjoy the scenery, Christina!), I glanced at my friend who was as white as a sheet, bracing himself for dear life. He knew I was having a moment, and he didn't say anything lest I motor us off the cliff (but come on...I know how to drive a car). And yet, the nutty focus helped -- my rushing adrenaline became one with the accelerator -- if I couldn’t run this damn panic attack off, I was gonna drive it off.

But suddenly I thought -- what if Robert Loggia (Robert Loggia from Lost Highway) was rolling in front of me? I’m not one to tail gate, but god forbid two motorized mental meltdowns collide (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about). Which got me thinking further about something I’m always pondering -- movies -- specifically, movies in which characters suffer similar vehicular flip-outs. There are so many: Kirk Douglas going spectacularly speed demon nutzo in Two Weeks in Another Town, Lana losing her cool in The Bad and the Beautiful, Lana and John Garfield losing their nerve in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Alice enduring Tommy's endless joke in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Bette drunk driving with her Oscar atop the dash in The Star (drunk driving laws should be exempt if you're clutching an Oscar you won 15 years ago), Anthony Perkins scaring the hell out of Diana Ross (and taking Helmut Newton meets Weegee meets mental hygiene photos at the same time  -- in the car) in Mahogany,  Rip Torn chucking that woman out of his car, throwing money at her, then backing up and snatching the money right back in Payday, Max doing essentially, anything in Mad Max or Ann Savage and Tom Neal simply breathing behind the wheel in Detour -- movies can express motor-psycho moments perfectly. So with that (and among many others, there are too many to list all) here are five big screen freak-outs I especially love.

The Longest Yard (1974)

Robert Aldrich’s The Longest Yard contains one of cinema’s greatest opening sequences of supreme speed demon self destruction. Here’s how it goes: Washed up pro football player Paul "Wrecking" Crewe (Burt Reynolds) who was banished from the sport for point shaving, staggers out of bed with a woman whose clearly (and very loudly) keeping him. As Crewe reaches for a drink, she storms out of the bedroom hollering at him for being a loser, how she paid for his new teeth -- essentially emasculating ol’ Burt. In a move that would never, ever happen in a movie today, Crewe shoves her, he shoves her hard, and with the rage of a man who's ego's been bruised one too many times. And then he jumps into her fancy Citroen. Oh this is so great. Speeding down the street, with drink in hand and Lynyrd Skynrd tune blaring (no less), cops are in pursuit. But does he care? Nope. When he does stop the madness, he doesn’t turn himself in; he simply kicks the car into a watery grave. But that's just the half of it. Waltzing into a bar for more drinks -- he then casually insults the dispatched officers (to the delight of both the bartender and the cop escaping his barbs) and finally slugs the fuzz. A wonderfully hilarious, transgressive scene with Reynolds at the top of his dangerous cinematic charms, all this happens before the opening credits come to an end.

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

In the 1930s and 40s, Ida Lupino earned deserved esteem as an actress with her tough, sensitive performances in movies like High Sierra, They Drive by Night and Road House, and would continue her talents into the 1950s with The Big Knife, While the City Sleeps and On Dangerous Ground. But the intelligent, unique and creative actress spent time studying the mechanics behind the camera, resulting in her directorial debut, Outrage, in 1950, a thoughtful, emotional B-thriller that took on the controversial subject of rape. Throughout her career as a director (she made seven pictures), Lupino would continue to approach taboo subjects with sensitivity and grit (The Bigamist is another interesting standout), but her greatest film is the intriguing psychodrama and wonderful auto-terror, The Hitch-Hiker, starring Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy and a brilliant William Talman. Chronicling a horrifying road trip in which two fishermen (O'Brien and Lovejoy) pick up a completely deranged hitchhiker (Talman), Lupino directs with shadowy menace and intense nervousness (mirroring postwar anxiety -- especially in a car) in this tight character study/thriller that rivals the car insanity of Detour. Though she called herself the "Poor man's Don Siegel," she was dubbed the "Queen of the B's" and enjoyed a successful career (especially for a female director), making a string of entertaining, thought-provoking pictures that stand the test of time. Bigamists are fine, but hitch-hiking is always creepy.

Jeopardy (1953)

The John Sturges directed daylight noir thriller is not only a tense, daring ride, but a deliciously, devilishly, weirdly hot good time. Here's the predicament: While vacationing in Mexico with hubby Barry Sullivan (an actor I revere, and one I will discuss in an essay that needs to be written) and their young son, Stanywck is put to the test after Sullivan is trapped in the surf and she must find anyone (anyone) to help her. Aid arrives in smarmy Ralph Meeker (ohhhh...Meeker) a fugitive who has a few other things on his mind. He professes to help, grabs Babs, and takes charge of her car and off it goes. A lot of arguing, sexual tension, slaps, cracker eating, everything happens in that nutty car ride. And the repartee between Stanwyck and Meeker is angry, sick and erotic with standouts involving the triple slap Meeker lays on tough Babs (triple!) or Meeker’s proud preference for cheap perfume: “It doesn’t last as long.” Or my favorite moment  --  when Stanwyck realizes she must make the ultimate sacrifice. She stands near the car, faces Meeker all hard and seductive and says: “I’ll do anything for my husband. ANYTHING.” And she does. Hard-core Babs.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Apologies up front for returning to this movie on, seemingly, a monthly basis. But I love it so. Sam Peckinpah's brilliantly bizarre, fantastically bloody yet strangely beautiful 1974 masterpiece, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah's most personal picture), is not only essential viewing for Peckinpah-philes, but required viewing for every gear-head whose endured a long, tumultuous road trip - chiefly through Mexico, and with a rotting head in the car (but I’m getting ahead of myself).  The picture stars one of my favorites, Warren Oates as Bennie, an American ex-pat/small-time hustler/piano player who claims to know where Garcia can be found. For various reasons I won’t get into, once involved, Bennie's up for a major dinero if he brings in Garcia -- dead. All he needs is the head.

Coincidentally Bennie's girlfriend (the great Isela Vega) was once Garcia's lover, and after informing Bennie that Garcia is already dead, he thinks, easy:  find the grave, dig up the corpse, chop off the noggin, cash in, and start anew. Well…not so easy. As the road trip progresses, Peckinpah’s realism churns into this existential hyper-real horror show that manages to be poetic, grisly and oddly romantic. When deranged avenger Bennie, be-decked in that glorious white suit (Warren Oates has never looked better), now covered in dirt, sweat and blood, drives with what will become something of a friend  -- the rotting, severed head of Alfredo Garcia -- the adventure spirals into violence, poignancy, and madness. Swatting the flies out of the car, and confiding thoughtful, sometimes angry diatribes to his newest buddy, that head becomes a body part he can trust– the one person he can actually relate to. Showing an auteur and actor at the height of brazen, violent eccentricity, the picture is highly personal and daringly touching. A movie I make sure to watch every Valentine’s Day. No, really, I do. I’ve even watched it in a car -- on Valentine’s Day. More on all that right here. 

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Another Robert Aldrich picture (another Meeker), but damn if the director didn’t have a way with characters going batty in their bucket seats -- and directly at picture start. With this seminal, sleazy noir Kiss Me Deadly, he opens the picture with a pair of naked feet running down the middle of a highway in the black of the night.  The feet belong to a hysterical, heavily panting blonde/psychiatric-ward escapee (Cloris Leachman) wearing only a trench-coat. Desperate for a ride, she places herself in the middle of the road and finally, a cool little Jaguar sports car comes to a screeching halt. The driver, Mike Hammer (the ultimate sexy shit-heel Ralph Meeker) is agitated by this mystery woman/potential loony, begrudgingly “rescuing” her with a sneer. He spits:  “You almost wrecked my car. Well? Get in!” With the camera placed behind our two characters (one absolutely frantic, the other as cool as a cucumber), the credits roll upside down against the highway’s white lines (so brilliant), and the only thing you hear is Nat King Cole’s elegant “Rather Have the Blues” co-mingling with woman’s hard, almost sexual sounding hyper-ventilating. So totally perverse and subversive, Aldrich’s kick start plays shocking even today.

How many pictures would have the balls to place a viewer on this kind of edge? But Aldrich’s not playing simply for shock -- the director (and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo) instantly address the expressionistic, off kilter and monstrous universe we’re about to enter -- but in a car. Un-relenting, sleazy, mean, disorienting, neurotic, psychotic and hopeless, Leachman’s panting pick-up is the crazed conscious inside all of the film’s characters, maniacally running from a world that could explode (literally) by the opening of a suitcase, or simply your car door.

It’s not wild. But it's unforgettable.

I never understood the title of Jack Garfein’s beautiful, sad, confusingly romantic and richly empathetic Something Wild. If the title refers to the movie’s brutal rape, a wild animalistic act, it’s certainly nothing wild for the tragic protagonist, Mary Ann (played by a powerfully touching and brave Carroll Baker). Something dreadful is more apt, as she suffers the rough hands of a faceless brute, emerging from the trees like a demon spirit.

And her demise, repulsion, sickness, panic, alienation and finally, near-life-ending depression, isn’t worthy of wild either. Something despondent. She’s desperate to fling herself from her inner demons. She cannot discuss nor process the rape. She can’t even tell her parents. In a classic panic-stricken fight or flight scenario -- she flees from a crowded subway car, gasping for breath as commuters rub against every inch of her violated body. More and more, lovely Mary Ann turns into a withdrawn, clinically depressed, misunderstood woman -- a woman filled with terror and shame -- a woman who hates herself even if she did nothing wrong. A woman who was raped. This is how rape victims feel.

And rape is not something her potential savior/captor Mike (Ralph Meeker, who should have played more roles like this -- his range is extraordinary) can understand -- though in his own wordless way – he tries. He’s nothing wild either. A sad sack with a working class job, a dumpy demeanor (this is not smart alec Kiss Me Deadly Meeker) and a drinking problem, he’s not a healthy man, and not healthy towards women, but then…weirdly sympathetic. He wants this woman. He needs this woman. He needs her to save him.

The picture starts with the innocence of Mary Ann's name. Mary Ann exits off the subway and makes her way home, at night. This appears a usual walk for the woman, but something gives her a start. A rustle of trees, a paper cup blowing on the ground, a general feeling of unease. Her fear is well founded, as a large man, almost appearing like a monster, emerges from the trees, grabs the woman, and rapes her. And he appears to rape her for a long time – even tearing off the cross she wears on her neck. God is not on her side. This rape is not titillating. This rape is just sad and draining, and you feel like Mary Ann walked into a monstrous tree satyr.

The film continues for a good twenty minutes (or more, which seems unprecented for American movies at that time) without any dialogue, and we watch Mary Ann silently trudge her way home, where she bathes, scrubs, looks at the cuts on her body with horror, take all of her clothes and cut them into tiny pieces. She flushes the tattered garments down the toilet. And then she sleeps.

Since the rape has made it impossible for her to conduct herself in normal life, Mary Ann abandons home, unannounced, leaving her mother in a panic to find her. She gets a job where a bunch of judgmental/jealous women make fun of her, she takes a tiny, dumpy little NYC flat, where a bare light bulb offers her only illumination and a loud floozy (Maureen Stapleton) cackles nearby. It seems Mary Ann can’t escape the depraved and the diseased – or perhaps, she’s throwing herself right into it – the belly of the best, so to speak. Repulsion meets The Tenant meets The Collector. And yet, Garfeien’s picture was made before any of these.

But that beast and that belly are not what she expected. After becoming so despondent, that she decides the best choice is to take her own life, she nearly jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge. She would have accomplished her act of self-destruction if not for another beast (Meeker), who saves her from leaping.

And then, he keeps her. At first, one thinks, she needs to stay. After all, he’s looking out for her – she can’t attempt suicide again. But the movie veers into far more complex areas after he locks her in – for good. Since confinement, the act of being held down and forced to submit has plagued this poor woman for months; she reacts with anger and panic. And for good reason – he won’t ever let her leave. Like The Collector, he’s keeping his sad little butterfly – a butterfly without wings.

But why? These are questions the picture never easily answers. You understand that he is also a cheerless, lonely person, an alcoholic, and a man who needs this woman near him. In his own twisted way he loves her. When he stumbles home drunk and attempts to molest Mary Ann, she reacts violently and with self-preservation, poking out one of his eyes. Suddenly the film merges Beauty and the Beast with Greek Tragedy --  Mary Ann turns Mike into a Cyclops. The next morning, he claims to barely remember the evening, and seems nonchalant about the eye patch he now must wear. He reckons he may have gotten into some kind of fight. Or maybe he does remember. Maybe he respects Mary Ann for fighting back. We just don’t know. And then again, we oddly can’t hate him.

And so there they continue living in his basement hovel of an apartment, biding their days with his “romantic” meals and need to be near Mary Ann. Mary Ann remains adamant to leave, but she will soon soften. Is this a positive step? Is this a romantic reaction to her savior? Is this indeed, the only man she can now trust? Is this Stockholm syndrome? In any case, it’s all very sad.

The movie, released in 1961, an expressionistic/naturalistic work of art that also recalls Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, before Polanski’s film was made, and Bergman, was far ahead of its time in its European sensibilties (and yet, with its actors and setting, it feels wholly American). Garfein (then Baker’s husband), who survived the Holocaust, well understood the idea of entrapment and subjugation. I have seen few films that not only deal with rape in a sympathetic light (that’s not so hard), but deal with it as a kind of submersion into a subterranean world of dirty rooms and dreams – dreams, in one terrifying moment, where girls have no faces (Lars Von Trier would love this movie) – a world where trauma is expressed through the sounds of vulgar good-time girls, the oppressiveness of the subway, the simultaneous attraction and repulsion to men, work, the city, and sex. If anyone finds Mary Ann’s feelings and actions unrealistic, they have no concept of the odd co-mingling of unreality and harshness that an act of rape can make a woman feel. For anyone wanting to forget the memory -- repression and submersion is natural.

And it’s all very much like a movie you were likely to have never seen in 1961, or now, for that matter. Garfein based his movie on the novel Mary Ann (a better title I think), and enlisted some superior talents to give the movie an expressionistic, gritty, dream-like appeal. The great Aaron Copland provided the potent music; the legendary Saul Bass created the title sequence, and brilliant cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan worked as DP. Since Schüfftan lensed Lang's Metropolis, Carné's Port of Shadows, Gance's Napoléon and Franju's Eyes Without a Face (among many other accomplishments), the look of the picture is both grubby and dreamlike. It feels like trauma, it feels Jungian, dreamy, hyper real (with such wonderful location shooting). He seems to understand, visually, the horror and fairy tale nature of a victim floating above pain. Mary Ann wants to rid herself of anguish, she wants to float, and yet, she’s stuck in a basement.

Through his lens, Schüfftan both raises Mary Ann from her trauma, while keeping her firmly on the ground  -- like Thomas Hardy’s Tess of Tess the D’Urbervilles removing herself from rape by becoming diaphanous and floating above molester Alex huffing on top of her, Mary Ann keeps herself whisper light, and yet, stuck in the dirt.  She stays in that basement. It’s tragic, gorgeous, poetic, even mythic, how she lives in two realities, which makes the ending incredibly complex. Mary Ann stays with Mike. How should one feel about this? She’s damaged, she’s now pregnant, she’s in love and yet, she still looks heartbroken. The ending creates a false kind of happiness (intentional, I think) that sits in your soul with such sadness and complication that the movie will not leave you – after all these years, it’s never left me.

Rape is never easy to come to terms with, we know that. But rape isn’t always met with counselors and discussions and getting in touch with your feelings. Perhaps Mary Ann got in touch with Mike. Perhaps she did not. Whatever the case, poor Mary Ann. I hate her entrapment, and I hate that she feels she has nowhere to go, and yet, I pray Mike treats her sensitively. I feel wrong for this, but I want them to work out. This is a dream. Or a nightmare. I can only hope she’s truly happy one day. Not wild, but happy.

I'm late to my own movie watching party, but as they say, rather late than never...showing up.

So if you're awake, or DVR able, please watch my introduction and discussion of two of my favorite films -- Jack Garfein's beautiful, shocking, experimental, empathetic, wonderfully acted Something Wild (1961), starring Carroll Baker and Ralph Meeker, and John Berry's gritty, gripping, poignant film noir, complete with tragic blacklisted star (the great John Garfield, in his last role), writer (Dalton Trumbo) and director, He Ran All the Way (1951), starring Garfield and Shelley Winters. That's on TCM, 8:30 and 11:30 (PST).

Both movies are rare, both ahead of their time, both involve oddly sympathetic captors, both have never seen the light of DVD (in America) and both are masterpieces. I will write more about the films later and soon (there's so much to discuss concerning the pictures, from backstory to history to music to cinematography and more...and even more to discusss while on TCM, but time did not permit me to sit in that chair all day, though, I could have), but for now...watch them. Many thanks to Turner Classic Movies for the honor of guest programming during this month of Critic's Choice. And many thanks to Robert Osborne, a true gentleman and one of the smartest cineastes around.

Night Moves is a summer movie, but not a summer movie -- not in the traditional sense. It's a sun-soaked, sad, haunting, neo-noir.  It's a summer movie in that it plays out the way summer often really feels --  claustrophobic, oppressive, alienating with sunlight and heat, packed with an overabundance of free time -- free time to mull over your life with a certain kind of existential ennui. Is existential ennui possible? Yes. And it's certainly unleashed while watching Night Moves. The late Arthur Penn well understood this sensation, a man who knew that, even the free spirits weren't going to get out alive (Bonnie and Clyde), or that the hippies weren't just a group of easygoing simpletons (Alice's Restaurant), that Warren Beatty wasn't just a pretty face (Mickey One), and that all of this was indeed, quite tragicomic (Little Big Man). He got it. The director eased into the 1970s with both his eternally youthful questioning of authority intact, mixed with a seasoned wisdom and cynicism, beautifully and mournfully presented in this, one of his greatest pictures.

Though most 70s cineastes regard this movie (written by Alan Sharp) as a classic of the era, it’s a film that oddly, took far too long for rediscovery (and a DVD release). And this is a bit curious. The picture was directed by the auteur behind a movie largely responsible for kick-starting the changing face of cinema -- Bonnie and Clyde. It features both a teenage Melanie Griffith (in all her wild child glory) and a very young James Woods. And most importantly, it stars a powerful Gene Hackman in one of his greatest, most poignant and naturally moody performances. A complex, thoughtful and potently (or impotently) melancholic detective story/character study, Night Moves is the kind of movie people are talking about when they praise 70s cinema. It's could be the movie.

Like Bill L. Norton's elegaic Cisco Pike, Jerry Schatzberg's moving Scarecrow and Michael Ritchie's great, tough Prime Cut (the latter two also featuring Hackman) Night Moves (1975) is, again distinctly 70s -- a movie that showcases exactly why so many consider that era a golden period of filmmaking. Hackman plays Harry Moseby, a private detective and former pro football player whose glory days are behind him (one of the picture's most touching moments is simply catching Harry beam while walking into a football stadium). His marriage isn't working out, his wife (Susan Clark) is having an affair (she also likes going to Eric Rohmer films, something Harry famously says is like “watching paint dry.”) -- he's angry, but is lost inside of himself. Hackman plays this melancholia with subtlety and intelligence, giving his dread, both relatable and mysterious, an almost bittersweet pessimism.

Hired by a washed up Hollywood glamour-puss (Janet Ward) to find her teenage daughter (the nubile Griffith), Moseby takes the job and tracks down the girl who is crashing with her stepfather (John Crawford) in the Florida Keys. The unusual relationship sees the rebellious daughter in an extremely permissive and disturbingly close situation with her father whose mistress (Jennifer Warren) seems to coolly take it all in stride. Harry falls for the woman -- for her beauty, for her intelligence and for her seen-it-all sensibility that, combined with her sunny good looks, is quite disarming. A sexy blonde in a Newport cigarette ad come to angst ridden life, she's attractive because she's interesting -- there's just something off about her.

But as the plot thickens (and thickens some more) we realize just how interesting and off everyone and everything is, how very real to life they are. And with this, everyone and everything is not surprisingly, frustratingly impossible to crack. A revelation does not necessarily lead to closure because a revelation isn't always what it seems in the first place. And then there's Moseby's own mysteries -- a lot more interesting and complex for a fellow one might consider a "regular" man (there may not be such a thing as a "regular" man ). And yet, we never know quite what's stewing underneath his tough yet vulnerable veneer. The director's doggedness of not tying up the film's mysteries in one tidy bow makes Penn's Night Moves all the more meaningful, its pessimism (and amidst all the oppressive sunlight) all the more complicated. Cruising in this beautiful "paradise" Hackman's boat doesn't crash, it literally goes round and round (if you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about), making the picture's moral ambiguities open-ended, inscrutable and curiously, painfully elegant.

"Harry thinks if you call him Harry one more time he's gonna make you eat that cat." Rest in peace Arthur Penn.

Sometimes it's romantic to be alone. Not to wallow in the torpor of melancholy, not to yearn for emotional rescue, not to trick yourself with affirmational "love myself" platitudes (who always loves themselves? And who always should?) and yet, not feel disconnected from that large word (and world) called love, since amour not only comes in (as the saying goes) mysterious ways, it comes through people, yes, and the heart-sickness before returning to them, but music, art, flickering pictures, water, desert, speed, beauty, and the tenuousness of Kim Novak's smile. It's everywhere. As I've quoted before, German romantic composer Schuman said of his tortured idol Schubert, who died at 31 --  he could not speak of this man unless he spoke "to the trees and the stars." Overwrought? Not for me. This is a German Romantic. And he's right. Sometimes all you need are the trees and the stars. And solace.

Glenn Gould (whom I love, as a mystery, as a genius and as an inspired musician), one of the the world's most famous pianists, and iconic loner -- would well understand the above sentiments. Tomorrow is his birthday. Had he lived past 50, he would turn 78. I wonder if he would care? He spent much of his later life in isolation, he never married, and he loved...Petula Clark. The music, not the woman...so far as I know. According to the new documentary, The Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (out now, and which I will see on his birthday, alone) he also loved a woman named Cornelia Foss (wife of pianist, composer and friend Lukas Foss), and she discusses their long, eventual troubled courtship. Do I want to know about this? I'm not sure. I respect Gould, the elusive, but I'm naturally curious. 

Gould's mysteries and yes, romance, are beautifully rendered in Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, one of the most fascinating portraits of a musical genius ever created. Part documentary, part biopic, part music lesson, part enigmatic character study, Thirty Two Short Films (directed by François Girard and scripted by Girard and Don McKellar), eschews typical biopic trappings by, quite literally, telling the musical prodigy story of Gould (played brilliantly by Colm Feore) in 32 short films -- fascinating vignettes that wander through the eccentric Canadian pianist's life with reverence, mystery, amusement and a touch of sadness that (like real life) is never resolved.

Gould's depth and remoteness makes one charmed and intrigued by the man even more. The mystery is never broken, only exalted through the vignettes. Some of the pieces run less than 60 seconds, others several minutes, but each is subtly told, allowing an inside look into Gould's background, process, intellectualism and his unique relationship with music -- something he quit performing live at age 32 because, "I just don't like the sound of piano music very much."

Every short film is exquisite: Gould enjoying the aforementioned unexpected musical pleasure of pop songstress Petula Clark, his daily breakfast at a 24 hour Canadian diner where the talking, eating and clanking of coffee cups creates a kind of sonic rapture for Gould, a beautiful trip through the wires and hammers of his Steinway during the moment of his last concert, and discussions with those who chatted up the reclusive man on the telephone (Gould loved the phone and would talk for hours. Oh how I wish I could have received one of those calls). Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould is a triumph in that while remaining elusive, you do you learn a few things about the man himself, but just as important, you truly feel his deep alliance (and combativeness) with his great love, music. No box of chocolates for Gould, Bach (played at proper room temperature, and on that worn out chair from his youth) was his valentine. As he said: "There is no greater community of spirit than that between the artist and the listener at home, communing with the music."

And as much as I revere Gould, I always thought I preferred Kempff and others with Beethoven. But this, one of my favorites, destroys me.

This doesn't ruin the end of my short, "Bing & Bela" directed by Guy Maddin, but...I choose Bing.

I love Bing. I love Bela. And I love Frank. But there are days I love/revere/ am captivated by Bing the most. Today is one of those days.

There’s a wonderful moment in the musical High Society during which Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra sing an especially rousing version of Cole Porter’s “Well, Did You Evah!”-- a moment I've watched too many times to count. Midway through the charming, inebriated song, in which two “swellegant” party pals swap banter, dish on guests and form a dipsomaniacal camaraderie, Crosby croons to Sinatra with his distinctive “ba ba ba boom” and Sinatra jokes, “Don’t dig that kind of crooning, chum.” “You must be one of the newer fellows,” Crosby answers back.

The idea of Sinatra being one of the “newer fellows” is amusing since, in 1956 (when the picture was released), the big-band, and balladeer musical style of crooning was already on the wane. Sinatra was well on his way to becoming the elder-statesman Chairman of the Board, Elvis would be anointed the King of Rock ’n’ Roll and Bing would be … Bing.

Not that anyone would ever forget Bing Crosby. The crooner, born in Tacoma, Washington, had been cinema’s number one box-office draw from 1944 to 1948 and was an enormous, multi-talented star -- radio, recordings and motion pictures all earning him legions of adoring fans. And like another famous crooner who would count him as an influence (Dean Martin), Crosby had his own cinematic comedy team, making the frequently funny (and underrated) “road” movies with wise-acre Bob Hope. He even won an Academy Award (for Going My Way) and received another nomination for his alcoholic role in The Country Girl.

There’s no denying that Crosby was and is big time. And yet … why does he feel just a little slighted through the years? Like the only moment we enjoy his music is once a year, when we roll out “White Christmas” from our holiday collection of old standards?

Perhaps it’s just how antiquated his music sounds today -- beautifully, mysteriously antiquated, like something emerging from a dream….or a nightmare. In either moody reverie, when listening to the brilliant baritone sing “Pennies From Heaven,” “Ol’ Man River” or “Swinging on a Star,” you feel the music form around you, as if you’re riding on an ethereal echo chamber of air coming from a million miles away. It’s spacey, creepy and charming all at once. Which perfectly explains how effective the song “Mairzy Dotes” becomes in David Lynch's Twin Peaks, when daughter-murdering, Bob-haunted Leland Palmer crazily sings it in the midst of his meltdowns. And then there was that pairing of the two Thin White Dukes -- Bowie and Bing dueting “Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy” -- ideal.  These were two sexy space aliens keeping Christmas a little bit Christian and a little bit…pagan. As much as I love Frank Sinatra, this kind of cross generational extraterrestrial-ness could have only been created with Crosby.

All of these elements of Crosby are so marvelously powerful, that his music remains (particularly his earlier recordings) ever haunting, ever romantic and, in some instances, ever celestial. As musicologist J.T.H. Mize put it, Crosby could “melt a tone away, scoop it flat and sliding up to the eventual pitch as a glissando, sometimes sting a note right on the button, and take diphthongs for long musical rides.” In short, Crosby sends me. He always does. And not only at Christmas time. Right now, actually.

When a woman wakes up with her beloved husband, and he has transformed into a white wolf -- a tragically deceased, beautiful, bloody white wolf -- the most natural inclination is to place him at the gravestone of either Bing Crosby or Bela Lugosi.

Being a Los Angeles woman, this is not an easy decision.

Bing and Bela are both laid to rest only a few plots from each other at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.  Bela bites. Bing sings. Both with bewitching beauty.

Bing...or Bela?

Stills and raw footage by Guy Maddin from his short Bing & Bela, showing with his series of Hauntings at the Toronto Film Festival. Show debuts Sunday for the opening of TIFF's new Bell Lightbox. Watch the full screen Bing & Bela stills here.

This is exciting news for me. The balcony has re-opened, and in walks Harry Lime...

Well, for my segment anyway.

Really, it's Christy Lemire and Elvis Mitchell, taking on chief review duties, Omar Moore will serve as a special correspondent, focusing on the internet's role in movies, and Ebert will be there himself. It's a wonderful thing. (Read Roger's release here).

Roger Ebert has announced today the new At the Movies, of which I am to take part in special segments that highlight a classic movie (as in, waxing rhapsodic over The Third Man) and more. I imagine some Warren Oates, Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, Tuesday Weld, Lee Van Cleef, Robert Mitchum, William Powell and John Garfield will find their way in there, as well as Sam Fuller, F.W. Murnau, Josef Von Sternberg, Jules Dassin, Howard Hawks, Douglas Sirk, Sergio Leone, Ida Lupino....this could go on forever...

Below is the demo for the new show. I'm proud to be a part of Siskel and Ebert history and many thanks to Christy, Elvis, Omar, Chaz Ebert and of course, Roger.

After listening to Schubert all morning...And the last repost here for some time. Vacation. And obsessions are obsessions.

In Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, the taciturn piano teacher cites Schubert and Schumann as her two favorite composers. Both German, both “Romantics” both tortured in art and life -- the composers are apt choices for this cinematic creature. Schubert, the bigger genius, outward bohemian and poet, was Schumann’s greatest admirer. Schumann cried over Schubert’s death at 31 and later went insane, dying in an asylum at 46. Schumann said he could not talk about Schubert unless he spoke “to the trees and the stars.”

Schubert worship runs through Haneke’s picture as teacher Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) instructs in Schubert’s dynamics from “scream to whisper, not loud to soft.” Such is her disposition, and, like Schumann, she, the outwardly ordered woman is inwardly screaming -- one step away from the nuthouse herself, where as we learn in passing, her father is suffering through the rest of his life.

But that’s only one aspect to Haneke’s intensely complex study of a woman living on the precipice. As with all of Haneke’s philosophical “horror” pictures from Benny's Video to the brilliant, terrifying Funny Games (and the underrated, powerfully horrifying re-make) to Code Unknown to The White Ribbon, there’s a consistent theme of claustrophobia, voyeurism, oppression, terrorism (personal or institutional) and perversion -- perversion of not only the characters, but also of audiences wishing to lap it up and beg for more (master). But Haneke (and this is where many cannot stand the director, and I have to admit, I can barely read an interview with the man -- he spells it all out...) wants you to think while salivating and, in his own cleverly cinematic way, punishes you for doing so (it's no wonder Haneke was -- as he states on the DVD -- profoundly influenced by Pier Pasolini’s Salò). He likes to rattle your brain and moral center, making you ruminate long and hard on what you’ve just witnessed. With The Piano Teacher, it might be when our fine character lies in a bathtub and...I'll get to that moment later. The Piano Teacher, as squirm inducing as it can become, may be the director's most powerfully unsettling, erotic and at times, comic film.

The movie has the 40-ish Erika still living with her unpleasant mother (Annie Giradot) in a relationship so antagonistic, unhealthy and, for lack of a better word, close that the two still share a bed (and you’ll see what that’s like through the course of the film). Erika is a distinguished professor at a prestigious Viennese school who’s worshipped but feared as she harshly criticizes students: “A wrong note in Beethoven is better than a bad interpretation.”

But she’s a loner with some pretty intriguing outlets for her sexuality. Trolling sex shops, sitting in the booths to smell the refuse left by horny patrons, she’s more than just a repressed female seeking release -- she’s a sadist as well. And there’s something proud about her thrills that, amid the beautiful classical piano music, works some convoluted ideas about the human condition. Gorgeous depravity or rather...is anything truly exalting unless you’ve witnessed the sullied? The disgusting? The sexually deviant? She's something you rarely see in cinema --- a beautiful female creep. And that (for men possibly more than women...but possibly not) is simultaneously erotic and especially scary.

When a curious, handsome young student, Walter (Benoit Magimel), becomes interested in her musically and sexually, he falls hard for the seemingly placid teacher. He changes a public performance of a Schoenberg piece to Schubert just for her (and that is quite a difference -- modern discordance to Romanticism), and she begins to test his limits of sexuality, specifically in a masterful sequence in the conservatory’s bathroom where a bizarre, painful dance of erotic control commences.

Few films really dissect "odd"/neurotic female desire on film (Polanski's Repulsion, so far, for me is the greatest study of this. Hitchcock's Vertigo and Marnie and Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves ranks high as well), and The Piano Teacher goes right (as Edward Albee's Martha would say) to the meat of things. This may be the only film I can think of where the female protagonist is something of a lurker, a sadist/masochist (in one scene she places broken glass in a student’s coat pocket; in another she cuts her vagina in the bathtub -- tough to watch but weirdly mesmerizing) and yet, she is oddly sympathetic. We feel for her. Some may even like her (I did).

In one of film’s bravest performances, Huppert creates a character of such intrigue and bottomless depth that we can’t possibly crack her. Though something of a female "pervert" (whatever that means) she remains reserved -- acting through pinched, near non-expressions that explode into manias, she's never obvious, never entirely fathomable, never strained or trying too hard to be transgressive. Somehow, the actress feels naturally perverse, at times frightening. And though a lover of Romantic music, she is anything but romanticized. Subversive, meditative and poetic, The Piano Teacher, thanks largely to Huppert, is a daring work of sexually strange, unmitigated genius. Like truly feeling music, which comes from precise craftmanship and then spins you into mysterious, emotional and exalted places, so can the workings of love and all the other, stuff. Sex, desire, neurosis and romance are often quite specific and yet deeply enigmatic sensations. For that, the movie, though disturbing remains unsettling erotic and yet unusually romantic. To the trees and the stars and the beds and to the...sex shops.  

More from Bifrost. Bifrost, Manitoba.

Or, the "rainbow bridge connecting heaven and earth” -- Odin's realm of Asgard, and as I wrote, the  everyday people place called Midgard -- otherwise known as Earth. Oh, small towns in Canada...

Heaven, earth, house and Air..."Dark Messages."

View the entire slide show of the Old Odin House here. Photos by Guy Maddin.

A repost. Because I miss my sisters...

In real life, memories don’t follow the patterns of a typical movie. Recollections are not played out in fully developed narrative timeframes, perfectly balanced and structured strands of thought, or tangible, easily understood events. Memories can be visited but never wholly embraced. They can be strong and unforgettable, but bit by bit, they lose their edges, making them, for many, even more melancholic. The more they elude us, the less simplistic they become -- never just happy or sad, but mysterious and bittersweet, replete with or bereft of emotion for reasons often beyond comprehension.

Sofia Coppola's poetic, tragic and mysterious The Virgin Suicides (released nearly ten years ago and, which emerged to me today, a memory itself while thinking of my siblings), captures the ambiguity of such hazy recollections with tender, albeit horrifying ennui.

Adapted from the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, Coppola's picture doesn't tell a story; instead, it leaves a swoony, foggy impression, a darkly beautiful intangibility filled with almost torturously elusive feeling. Set in Michigan in the early 70s, the film is marked immediately with the pall of death and the dangling unknown of why it happened. The five teenage Lisbon sisters -- all blonde and beautiful -- kill themselves, and a group of smitten teenage boys struggle to understand why. The suicides are a defining period in these boys' lives, but even as they narrate the film, they have never gotten their heads around the loss. In an unusual narrative and cinematic point of view, the boys wistfully re-create the girls' lives through a swiped diary, bits of bric-a-brac memorabilia and remembrances of voyeurism, idealism and fleeting carnality. Never really understanding these girls as living, breathing flesh, their communication acts much like modern ways of "connecting" -- through the computer, through online social networking, through pictures, through texts. Just as now, interacting with the real person as opposed to an idealized representation is usually much messier, much more real and much scarier.

Which connects to the death of 13-year-old sister Cecilia (Hanna Hall). The suicide places sisters Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook) and Therese (Leslie Hayman) into a mourning period marked not by obvious wailing drama, but by a peculiar inwardness that only sisters can understand. When one feels alienated by their parents, the bonding of siblings is frequently strong -- so intense that secret languages and, in the case with my sisters, coded words and private hand signals, are created to invent one's own world. These are the people who understand you. But blood bonds can be frightfully concentrated, and in the worst cases, veer into madness.

So when a psychiatrist tells the grieving parents (Kathleen Turner and James Woods) that the girls need more social contact, they allow the sexually curious Lux (with sisters and their assigned dates in tow) to attend a homecoming dance with heartthrob Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). After an innocent, oddly heartbreaking transgression occurs, the strict Roman Catholic family (led mostly by Mom) cloisters the girls in the house, taking them out of school and depriving them of all social contact. Of course, this can't come without consequences. The girls will grow ever closer, ever secretive, and ever destructive.

But Coppola doesn't place those consequences within a moral straitjacket -- no one is demonized, and no one is entirely understood. Many criticized the picture for its lack of fully developed characters, but that is exactly the point. Who are these girls? These girls are memories, these girls are tragic beauties put on pedestals. These girls are characters one writes books about, but one never truly knows. And the not knowing is part of the tragedy (does anyone really want to know them? Or do they want to keep them? Or stare at them? Or, after a night of passion, leave them waking up alone and cold in a football field?). And then these are girls, who committed, really, in the plain light of day, an ugly act that turned their young, lilting beauty and promise of a full life into rotting corpses. Death. Teen death. A stepbrother's urn my hard-hearted, but privately heartbroken and morbidly curious stepsister opened after a game of Scrabble.

The Virgin Suicides is shot with a gauzy, haloed beauty that is obsessive but never perverse (and the haunting music by Air is especially poignant and otherworldly). The point is to capture an adolescence lost, both to the sisters and to the boys themselves. Coppola's intelligence, sensitivity and ethereal style avoids obvious irony and easy interpretation, which can be maddening -- but then suicide is maddening, both for those who achieve the act and those who suffer the aftermath. Coppola's vision of this uptight suburbia is made both erotic and exotic by these fairy-tale Rapunzels who live there -- troubled, creative and intriguing girls trapped in the unfathomable and misty glaze of worship and memories.

Though August in L.A., it's Autumn in...Manitoba, or so it feels that way. Perfect for a drive to the perfectly named rural municipality of Bifrost only to stumble across a perfectly derelict house, perfectly sinking in the middle of, seemingly, nowhere.

But the abandoned Bifrost abode residing in the Interlake Region of Manitoba, Canada -- a municipality on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg -- comes with Scandinavian baggage -- specifically from Norse mythology. Bifröst means  “rainbow bridge connecting heaven and earth” (that's Odin's realm of Asgard, and the  everyday people place called Midgard or, Earth).

And I assumed Bifrost simply meant...double cold. Instead it's something more exalted, Valhalla by way of the temporal world.  Seems a rather heavy load for this home to carry. No wonder its foundation and spirits are quite literally, sagging.

Click on lower right, or here for full slide show. Separate shots here. Photos by Guy Maddin.

With madness on the mind, and a stay in Gimli, Manitoba where I'm happily, though perhaps crazily conducting research, and my constant urgings for viewers to watch this documentary, I'm returning to the movie Asylum. Please watch. And read.

"David...will you please stop talking. Please David. Please be quiet David..."

These are the urgings of beautiful, disturbed Julia, one inmate or rather, tenant in Peter Robinson's 1972 documentary Asylum -- a movie that should be re-discovered as one the greats of documentary filmmaking. A superlative example of late 60s, 1970s cinema verite, direct-cinema, Robinson's picture shares much in common with The Maysles Brother's Grey Gardens, Frederick Wiseman's High School and Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida. Without standard voice-over narration and nary an introductory statement (there is short scroll at picture start) the filmmaker shunts us into this world -- one that's frequently funny, terribly sad and continually fascinating. Once you settle into the place, you don't want the movie to end. After recently receiving a lovely, heartfelt email and later phone discussion from the film's cameraman/editor and in effect co-director, Richard Adams, and director Robinson's wonderful son, Kenneth I wanted to watch the picture, yet again, and run (now) an even longer piece on this fascinating document every cinephile must watch.

The picture begins with R.D. Laing, the controversial Scottish psychiatrist who, in the '60s started the anti-psychiatry movement, an idea based on the theory that insanity was less disease and more social construction. Instead of placing the mentally ill (largely schizophrenics) in white-walled, overly-medicated hospitals, Laing's "patients" lived communally in "safe houses" where they had free reign to subsist as they please. Laing believed that autonomy and understanding were necessary to aid mental health and that self reliance would make a person stronger and a successful part of the community. To Laing, there's no reason these people must be outcasts.

Robinson's study consisted of a seven week stay in 1971 at the Archway Community safe house in London, a row house on a residential East End street that harbors a dog, a cat, a bird, and a bunch of schizophrenics. But of course, the patients (some looking like modern day hipsters) are more than their disease as the film so starkly and often, eloquently reveals. We see them discuss feelings of terror in a very rational manner or ramble on conspiracy-theory-like about computers and various notions that range from gibberish to somewhat profound declarations. We see patients comfort each other with words like "don't listen to them, they're only voices" to rubbing heads together in physical bonds of empathy. We also see them ignore one another, cry out and fight -- and by film end, fight a lot  -- particularly with one inmate -- David, who becomes such a nuisance to the others that they engage in serious discussion to eject him.

David -- a handsome, startlingly blue-eyed man in his 40's or early 50's, talks with an almost Richard Burton lilt -- but blathers incessantly and demands attention wearing dramatic scarves and, in one scene, a string of woman's beads. He's as mad as a hatter, but you also get the sense that he knows partially, some of the trouble he's starting and is remaining obstinate to change (which isn't so crazy when you think of people in the "sane" world). Nevertheless, he hits people, screams, scares Julia -- an angel faced girl who bears an uncanny resemblance to Gwyneth Paltrow (only lovelier) -- and continually utters “People in glass houses should not throw stones!”

As we see in drama worthy of Shakespeare's crazy/lovely Ophelia, mental illness is certainly not reserved for the ugly. Julia (as well as a few other women in the house) looks more like a Roman Polanski heroine, crawling about a la Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, a blonde beauty quaking with fear but giving in to the sporadic joke. As she rocks back and forth with internal horror and eventually reverts to an infantile state, we later learn that she believes she had let off the atom bomb and "made the air bad." Her family takes her out of the house for a spell (they are distrustful of the experiment) but return the beauty when others beckon her back. She sits in bed and tells the filmmakers of the stay, showing them a hair tie, and how her family wanted her to look pretty and presentable. You can only imagine what Julia's parents think when they behold their beautiful daughter lost in a maze of madness.

But I couldn't help but think that had Julia discovered some Swinging London or New York scene or kept the company of an Edie Sedgwick, she might not have seemed so nuts. You get the feeling Syd Barrett could have walked into the place (she does talk delicately of having a guitar and singing) and swept her out of there (I want to see Julia, like Emily, play). But then I remember how Edie and Syd ended up. But then, for their short brilliant, trailblazing moments, they lived. And created. Is Julia better off? Is she really experiencing life? A life that might become "normal?" And should she ever even have to live a "normal" life? Why should she? Since we tend to mythologize crazy people, especially from the late 60s early 70s counter-culture, it's a good question.

But looking at our current overly medicated society, in which people pop Prozac and Lexapro and Wellbutrin or whatever is readily available instead of simply enduring some hardship and perhaps, learning from them, or even fueling creativity from it, I champion these people. These people endure real mental illness. Mental illness is hard. And it's tough, if not impossible to find your way out of that Shining-esque topiary maze. But that beautifully scary place can often provide insight. And maybe you need a human hand, even a "crazy" hand, to guide you through, at least some kind of understanding -- or remain lost forever.   

Which leads me to another compelling, heartbreaking moment -- when a young tenant's father arrives to fetch him for indefinite time away. Talking to the film's resident therapist and rent collector, he admits to hiring his son a girlfriend (not a very pretty one, he points out) with the hope that she'll give him the extra confidence to "hold his chin up" and feel like a man. Fearing his son will go the other way without some female companionship and clearly, failing to understand the depth of his son's problems, we watch the suited-up son leave after he's shyly informed others his desire to stay. He's too afraid to tell his father.

Watching the personalities emerge as they work chores, prepare food or...write on the walls creates the film's "characters" within its loose structure. Omitting any opinion concerning Laing's procedures, the film demands that you study it yourself, deciding if you think this kind of living is actually helping these people. 

With my modern entertainment mind thinking toward banal to addictive Reality TV, I couldn't help but consider how much more interesting these people were than the generic faced dolts on shows like Big Brother or the sad exploited celebs being exploited (and exploiting themselves) on shows like Sober House (Tom Sizemore could not face off with with David -- and I mean that as a compliment to David), and wished the picture were an actual series. As the people of Archway are "crazy" they are not constantly acting up to the camera and often appear oblivious to the two-man crew. If focused on, they appear to be talking as they probably always do and often give the impression of bemusement. With that, there’s never a feeling of exploitation -- if they don’t want to talk to the cameras, they simply walk on by. They're not seeking their 15 minutes. You certainly won’t see that on Reality TV.

And sticking in the thoughts of Reality television, there's even a Survivor-like moment when the group has a meeting to, essentially, vote David off. But unlike the tricks of television, there’s no closure and David stays (maybe) with an end discussion of his past jobs in computers and the military. Speaking, for once, in a lucid manner, you'll mull over the truth of his statements and, suddenly he doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. In fact, after this mind expanding experience, the world seems crazy and sane all at once.

An important, affecting and masterful document, Asylum is a re-discovered treasure that demands viewing. Direct and powerful yet obtuse and mystifying, the film and its people remain etched in your mind. You’ll watch them again, hoping to glean more and only to become frustrated when you cannot. Fittingly, the film’s so good that it becomes...maddening.

And once more with the brilliant Mr. Barrett:

Ike and Tina Turner and Phil Spector make me wonder...who is ever in control? Of anything? And who wants to be? Oh sweet mystery of life at last I've not found you.

"River Deep Mountain High," and in particular, through this enigmatic clip, shines a noirish spotlight on those mysteries that make life and most especially, love, so beautiful, frustrating, compelling, magical, dysfunctional, painful and crazy. And love should be a little crazy. And it is painful. If anyone understands that, it is the brilliant Ike and Tina Turner. And Phil Spector.

But who shot this? I'm imagining a little boy Guy Maddin who just happened across Ike, Tina and the Ikettes performing on some Winnipeg subway platform (if there is such a thing there), while beating the freezing cold on his way home from school. I wonder, did he have a puppy, that always followed him around?

My god, this is so powerful it makes my heart hurt. And yearn. And as John Donne wrote, "break, blow, burn." One should feel like this, even if it leads to ruin -- at least once in life.

Oh, Frances Farmer. She died 40 years ago today and for those of us who love cinema, the power of performance and brave, talented, intelligent "bad girls" who do not go gentle into that good night -- we should feel a pang of sadness. And frustration. Deep frustration. And we should be frustrated by the movie version of her life -- Frances. Based on how many times I've watched the picture, I'm beginning to believe I harbor some kind of frustration fetish. I've viewed the movie more than necessary, in spite of its flaws and, finally had to concede that, even with Jessica Lange's genius, kick-out-the-jams-motherfuckers performance, the movie is not going to change through time. I'm never going to be happy with how it fully depicts Frances Farmer, I'm never going to accept its romantic side story, and I'm never going to know the truth anyway (whatever that is), so why be frustrated? See, the frustration turns into questioning frustration. Which is...frustrating. 

But my god, how I love when Jessica Lange loses her composure and understandably smacks that bitchy hairdresser ('Your hair's so thin, you're gonna lose it if you're not careful.") in the face. And the intense power and pain I feel when she screams "You got no fucking right!" as the police break into her room, wake her up naked, and drag her out of the Knickerbocker Hotel. That hotel isn't far from my apartment and every time I pass by, I not only think of Frances, but of Jessica spitting out her rightful invective. That moment comes to me with such immediacy that I've uttered "You got no fucking right!" spontaneously, perhaps disturbingly, under my breath. But this is my instinctive duty as a fellow native Seattleite. For some of us hailing from the soggy, boggy PNW, Frances is our girl, and not just our original riot girl who will one day get her revenge (god bless you Kurt Cobain), but our patron saint of "don't fuck with me fellas!"  -- and the tragic aftermath that kind of behavior creates. Alas, no Pepsi for her.

And Jessica Lange gets this. Her ferocious, fearless beauty saved what could have been yet another studio mangling of the life and legend of a notorious woman. Miss Lange reminds viewers that once upon a time there was this actress named Frances Farmer, a gifted but troubled actress from the 1930s who was not just crazy, but superb. And was she even crazy? Certainly no more, and probably a lot less, than many a young, intelligent woman struggling in the often alienating business of show. Frances Farmer had a soul, natural born talent, a real, thinking, searching brain, an outspoken temper, inner demons and pure beauty. You're not allowed to have all of those things at once.

And these elements are presented, though not as skillfully or as layered as they should have been. A chance to really tell her story, a tale straight from Nathaniel West or Horace McCoy, was clearly at hand when the film was conceived (read Farmer's autobiography "Will There Really Be a Morning?"--  never mind its questionable veracity, read it -- and you can see why), but through script problems, studio requests, and one strange association with the conspiracy-obsessed ex-convict and probable liar Stewart Jacobson (played in the film as "Harry York" by Sam Shepard), Frances veers into fantasy -- a fantasy Frances Farmer would not have appreciated.

Many fine films based on real lives or events stray from facts, add characters, or reinvent history (JFK and Nixon are supreme examples. Inglourious Basterds, brilliantly creates its own insane, inspired, collage mixed tape), but that's not what makes Frances suffer. It's more that the movie, though lovely period detail and certainly good, isn't entirely focused, and so never creates a strong case about just why Farmer had to endure such torment -- Harry York is an easy character to throw in. And as harrowing as many scenes play out, it also soft-pedals the core story -- about one woman's fight against both the indignities of Hollywood and the abuse of the mental profession. What happened to Frances Farmer is an abomination, and not because we'd never see her again shine as an actress but because her life was perversely and hideously stolen from her.

But in the hands of Lange, Frances is thoroughly watchable even when becoming an almost traumatizing experience. Lange not only looks like Farmer, but also embodies everything we've ever read about the talented star: The understandable drinking (who didn't tear it up in Hollywood?), the rage (how many stars were under studio control? Farmer was just too strong-willed to take it), and the desperation to find freedom. But the powers that be -- Mother, Hollywood, and the Mental Institution -- helped keep this intelligent woman from getting healthy and furthering her art -- and she had so much to give. Though much of Frances Farmer's biography is speculative (including the book "Shadowland"), I'm not with those who believe she deserved to be incarcerated. She was a drunk, she was hard to work with, she was, to some, really crazy. So what? Some even think her stay in the mental ward has been over-dramatized. I'm not certain.  My unique, beautiful great-grandmother was sent to the literal Cuckoo's Nest (the State Institution in Salem, Oregon) as a young woman, and she died there. She should have never been in that awful, stinking, soul sucking place. Even sadder, she was stuck in that snake pit for so long, that when anyone realized she was fine to leave, she chose to stay. The past was over and she knew no other life.

These things happen to "different" women. And like the young ones who exhibit their so-called "eccentric" free-thinking thoughts, Frances would both be ostracized and praised for her precociousness. The picture begins in 1931 when a 16-year-old Farmer writes a high school essay entitled "God Dies" (At 16? In 1931? How fucking great is that?). This is just the first of many cases where she enrages Seattle's moral majority, who later branded her a communist (her trip to Russia doesn't help). A talented stage actress in college, Farmer lands in Hollywood, where she declares "I'm not a glamour girl." Nevertheless, she marries a young actor and makes movies (mostly to her chagrin), including Howard Hawks' Come and Get It (a film she was proud of, despite what this movie wants us to believe).

Exasperated with Hollywood, Farmer ventures to New York and finds a home in the Group Theater, where she displayed great gifts, but (to her downfall) has a torrid affair with the married playwright Clifford Odets. After he harshly ditches her, she returns to Hollywood and falls into the legendary trouble that would slam her in horrifying mental institutions -- where she underwent experimental medication, shock treatments, rape, disgusting facilities, and finally (and this is speculative) a lobotomy until her release in 1950.

Lange carries us through this hell with brilliance, but Frances decides to shift the focus of the relationship with Farmer's deranged mother (perfectly played by Kim Stanley) to the more romantic overtures of Harry York. Lange and Shepard have wonderful chemistry, and he's charming, but the poetic license here bothers me. According to the film, York tried to reach out to Farmer after her inconceivably unfair and colorful court appearance (well-documented in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon in which we learn Farmer wrote her profession down as "cocksucker" -- thankfully we see that in the movie as well). 

Nice thought, but I'd rather see the entire courtroom dramas played out in their ball-busting, gory detail. Frances kicking and screaming in her sensible, disheveled suit is as iconic to me as Marilyn Monroe standing on the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. The hair, the cigarette, the smirk -- this is some woman, goddammit. I want more of her. Not some guy attempting to save the damsel in distress. But according to Frances, York was responsible for Farmer's first escape from the sanitarium and the reason she was presentable for a hearing that excused from her first asylum (the film contends Harry sneaks into her ward and convinces a doctor to inject her with a drug that would make her more lucid). He also, allegedly, asked for her hand in marriage when she was under the legal guardianship of her mother, and he loved her until the end of her days.

Oh, life is but a dream but... bitch, please. I would burn down every rotten, abusive, mismanaged mental institution to bust Frances Farmer out of the loony bin. I understand the romantic impulse. But the idea that, despite everything written to the contrary -- Farmer may have had a chance at a decent life had she just ran away with this Prince Charming is an ill-conceived cinematic fantasy, and an insult to Farmer's memory.

It's the ultimate irony that the story of "the bad girl of West Seattle," the troubled non-conformist, the short lived Hollywood star who rarely censored her thoughts, was, even after death, under the control of a major studio who deemed her real life too depressing. As director Graeme Clifford states in the commentary on the DVD, you don't want to "nickel and dime the audience with facts." Pity. Farmer's "facts" were never boring. And the movie isn't either thanks to Miss Lange. Had she been given a little more control, or maybe had she been allowed to smack Stewart Jacobson in the mouth, hell even the hairdresser (without getting arrested) she could have directed this film -- she's the picture's real auteur. St. Frances would have approved.

He rightfully declared her imminent revenge on Seattle, but Kurt got Frances with this one too...

Porter Wagoner shakes me up. He sings of the cold hard facts, the promise of murder, lock-downs in rubber rooms, and the power of the lord, sometimes alongside beatific, brilliant Dolly Parton and her sweet face, her gorgeous peroxide hair and her plentiful bosom and I just think...there's something so profound going on here.

Subterranean. Fathomless. American, but far beyond that. Dance of the Spirits. Or, to quote Mr. Young, "Aurora borealis, the icy sky at night." Cries and whispers.

If only Wagoner had worked with Ingmar Bergman. He's the Antonius Block of country music.