As I’ve been talking of the mid-life crisis which apparently, for me at least, won’t have me buying a snazzy red sports car and becoming sexually ambiguous/predatory (how about that for a cliche and stereotype) as I don’t have the money for the first and the stamina for the second. But I did do something this weekend (had some minor real-life work things to do) that helped and then I threw myself into a long, apathetic stare at the television.
I do that on occasion.
I watched “The Exorcist” on Saturday which still creeps me out over 30 years later, and, I don’t know if enjoyed is the word I would use, but I stared blindly at the television to watch a marathon of Celebrity Fit Club. Squirrel Queen loves reality television more than a dog enjoys cleaning themselves in front of company so there I was, staring at Cledus T. Judd slim down and get hair plugs.
And, quite honestly although I wasn’t familiar with Cledus, he looked pretty darned good.
I also want to add that it took a great deal of balls courage to be as transparent as he was on a reality television show. As for, and I mentioned this last night, Dustin Diamond, blech. There is nothing wrong with being, I don’t know, nice to others. I don’t know, it was like watching a train wreck for the most part and he’s just mean. But isn’t it weird that reality television (and, yes, I do watch Big Brother in a stupor most summers) is on about 24/7 now. The days of three channels are truly over, campers.
Back to “The Exorcist.”
When I was about eight years old, I begged my parents to take me to see “The Exorcist.” As a good little Presbyterian girl, I was always a bit wigged out about THE DEVIL. And I begged. And I pleaded. And I whined. What did The Devil look like? Was this movie really making people barf at the moviehouse? And the parental units denied me time and time again but I kept asking.
And they said No, but I’m a tenacious person and after about a year, they gave in.
Bad mistake.
I slept with my parents for about a month after I saw the movie (I was a kid, give me a break. I also spent the night in my parents room after seeing Psycho. Go ahead, sue me.) But watching it again over the weekend, I could really appreciate it and it hit me that in the early 70’s, movie makers were a bit more open-minded about adding politics and social commentary to movies in a way that didn’t have a big sign that screamed “HEY, THIS MOVIE HAS UNDERLYING SUB PLOTS THAT ARE COMMENTING ON RELIGION, POLITICS AND SEX.”
Now just stop it. Seriously.
I get it. But back then, and as I am a child of the 70’s, some movies really resonated with me. And “The Exorcist” was one of them.
And sometimes that’s what I think is going on with American films now. I miss the “All the President’s Men” “High Plains Drifter” and “Shampoo” mentality of that time frame and I think now that’s why I like foreign films a lot. I don’t need a two-by-four upside my cranium to tell me what is going on with a movie.
But “The Exorcist” was just damned creepy as a kid and did hit those buttons of my Protestant upbringing. And it always has just given me a case of the wiggums. Still sort of does.
I’ve never been a fan of slasher movies (We get it, everyone is going to be killed in a wild and bloody fashion and you will have a heroine in skimpy shorts and a partially torn T-shirt survive and it’s still up in the air is she will make it.)
So, as my weekend included celebrities getting all trim and Linda Blair’s head spinning quicker than a Tilt ‘O Whirl, I found myself somewhat at peace with the fact that as I am getting older. I’m also revisiting things that I can ponder now. Man, being a kid in the 70’s was some weird stuff. Richie “Opie” Cunningham, we were not. Sorry, but he was in the 50’s and a made up television character.
The sister, Homer, reminded me that we were also creeped out about the segment of the Trilogy of Terror called Amelia where the doll chases Karen Black around. I concur, that did rock our world.
***shiver***
And don’t even get me started on “Night of the Living Dead” because, I’m sorry, zombies just plum rule and that was a GREAT movie.
So off to another week of non-virtual reality. Hopefully I won’t be creeping around doorways at home and the office.
You know, just to make sure there aren’t in spookies spinning their heads or a big scary doll with big teeth and a knife waiting for me in a darkened bedroom.
Okay, let’s pretend I’m going to make a horror movie. Of course Bruce Campbell and The Editor would be in it and I would have to pay Aunt B. something like $50 dollars to do all the rewrites on it. (It’s a low budget horror movie, it’s all I got.)
Anyway, we would film in Bulgaria for a variety of reasons but the largest being that it’s pretty cheap and we could just piddle around doing set location searches for at least three months before filming. We could also ride Vespas all day. I would speak in my most Southern accent because while I was in Europe, I got a lot of dates doing that. I realize that Bulgaria is, well, Bulgaria, but I figure the vodka is cheap and all of my buddies could go. Is there such a think as Bulgaria Air?
The movie would be filled with roaming dogs attacking the townsfolk as well as a plethora of Bigfoot sightings although that would have nothing to do with the actual plot of the movie. Actually, thus far, there is no plot but that’s just pesky details. I would like the evil demon dogs to be chihuahas because that would make me laugh although I don’t really think it would create any tension or a sense of suspended disbelief. In our movie, we would ask Rep. John Tanner to play the president as he has been in a movie before. (ST, I kid, I kid.) But Tanner would be president as I sort of know him and because he could also do some NATO negotiations on the side and could pay for his own airline ticket. Steve Cohen, of course, would be vice-president as I don’t know him as well and he got to do Steven Colbert already. BUT, he might could tap Colbert for a cameo.
So much to think about. Cohen or Tanner? You guys choose.
The movie, would of course, have sexy boy vampires with long unkept hair that swirls around them (talking to you to be the lead girl vamp) in it who would give the leading ladies withering, smoldering looks so dripping with sex that we would have to stop production to get towels to dry off from the heat they would generate which these folks would tell us how to keep clean.
We must have tidy towels.
This could cut into production costs but what the hell, the executive producer in charge of finding the financing the picture would be Kathy T., CeeElCee and John. I think they would be good at it and they all could help Aunt B. with rewrites and plot structure. Sarcastro and Kat Coble would be the security team because we probably need Libertarians to be involved to kick some ass and I think Sarcastro knows how to dismantle a gun.
There would have to be at least five zombies (I think we can get these guys.) And, I would have a trailer and the only internet access so I could give the cast and crew continual updates about Paris Hilton, Brittney Spears and Bigfoot to keep up with the Newscoma feel of things.
We would ban Dick Cheney’s name from being mentioned and he would go by “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” to give it that Voldemort sort of creepy feel.
We would have to, of course, have a car chase, sexy scenes and destroy a castle with something really big and loud. And to give it a balance, Fred Thompson would make a cameo appearance as Fred Thompson, because he plays the same guy in every movie/television show he’s cast in anyway, so that would be pretty groovy. We would also run off anyone who is a fun vampire that sucks the fun out of our project.
Knuck can cater the drunken cast. Ginger can sing and Kate O’ would serve as musical directer of our score and of course, Lynn would just come over to get a well needed three month nap. Squirrel Queen can create the special effects. Slarti can come with us as our moral compass and Abramson can be our legal counsel.
Yeah, this could be fun. Bored on a Sunday afternoon, but wouldn’t it be swell.
“Rebel Without A Cause” is on the television and it reminds me of my family when I was growing up. Back in the day of three channels on the tube (yeah, I walked up hill 22 miles in the snow to get to school. Just hush, there is a point.) it was an event for my mom who loved this movie. She told stories of how after James Dean died how she wore black for months.
My mom the Emo goth. Who knew.
She told me all the guys wanted one of Dean’s red jackets to wear around the school to make them cool because James Dean was the epitome of the cool hipster and everyone wanted to be him. And sometimes she’d get this dreamy look on her face when we’d watch the film. There was just something about this film she identified with. Now, I have no idea what it was like to grow up in the era of Elvis’ in-your -face-sexuality with his hips swerving around making girls pass out from delightful innocent lust or what it was like to see James Dean’s portrayal of Jim Stark play the misguided youth who is only seeking love and value in a world that doesn’t accept him who cried on the film because life and his parents were letting him down. Or Sal Mineo’s Plato, who the movie never says is gay, but you know he is (and of course he dies due to a sad misunderstanding because gay people never used to survive in the movies. It must have been a rule or something.) The look Plato gives Jim when he is given the infamous red jacket is one of the most amazing gazes ever given on celluloid. It says so much without a word. Good stuff.
And of course, Natalie Wood’s Judy. The bad girl who really isn’t bad at all but isn’t that the way this movie goes. How these young people seek value and need to feel welcome in a world that doesn’t want to understand them.
The movie was revolutionary in 1955 and when I watch it, I feel this bit of nostalgia about things that came before my time that I sorta got through osmosis of watching it with my mother, who loved the movie, and for some reason, I think it changed her way of thinking. Just imagine growing up in the late ’50’s when the world stood on the brink of so many things.
I sometimes watch the nieces who are knee-deep in “High School Musical” and “The Suite Life of Drake And Zack” and wonder if they will ever experience something like my mother did fifty years ago, growing up in rural America and seeing images played on a screen that resonated within her that life was bigger than what she saw on the dusty roads around her in northwest Tennessee. The feelings that she had were validated by the pretty face of James Dean twenty feet high on the screen provied to her that her feelings of needing something more than what was in her line of vision was important.
I remember her face and wondered as a child what I was missing that she was reliving in her mind.
That’s what I think about when I see “Rebel Without A Cause.”
Waiting for Lost to come on because it was better last week and I have regained some hope.
Watching the stinky dog, Duff (not my literal duff as mentioned earlier) lick the blind dog’s, Kirby, eyes.
Watching Blue Planet.
Wondering if Mike Williams switching from a Republican to an Independent is some back room deal made weeks before.
Squinting at the television, because those who come here know of the stink eye.
Things Newscoma should be doing:
Returning several e-mails, including my buddy Sabrina, who is in Germany and sent me a wonderful letter from Germany which I’m going to answer very soon when I can sound somewhat coherent.
Housework.
Laundry.
Catching up on some writing that I need to do.
Probably should be doing some work, but I don’t wanna.
As I know this is probably the most compelling thing you will ever read, all I can do is apologize ahead of time for wasting 22 seconds of your life.
Alas, here is a movie I want to see so bad that I will drive to the nearest city to just revel in it’s coolness. Damn, I love horror movies.
Last week, I talked about my affection for two things: High Plains Drifter and Kurosawa movies. Yesterday was my day in the sun as Rashomom was playing on the Independent Film Channel in the morning and High Plains Drifter played late last night.
As it had been awhile since I had seen both films, I had to tell you, it was weird that I had just written about both things and that I got to wallow myself in their utter brilliance.
Rashomom is a compelling, wonderfully detailed film that relies on the new modern age of cinema combined with components of the opening techniques of silent film. According to Wikipedia, it was the first film made in direct sunlight, and when you watch Kurosawa’s work, you realize that there are only three sets in the whole movie. Doesn’t matter. The movie is inspiring, telling the story of a rape and a murder from four different perspectives, it is a classic tale of that everyone’s perspective is different even when witnessing different events and creating discussing those events. Except for the bandit, played by Toshiro Mifune, whose story is tainted with something of animalistic madness, each story told about the events on an afternoon in the woods is guided by the narrator at the moment’s own agenda.
Is the movie dated? No, not really. Good storytelling transcends time. You might be a person who doesn’t like foreign films, but the bottom line is that this movie set the standard for film-making. And keep in mind, this movie is nearly 60 years old.
And read about the Rashomom Effect. Perspectives always offer contradiction because each human is different with their own scheme and plan.
High Plains Drifter. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways? A western that is a ghost story. A western that delves into the horror of man’s actions and the spiritual consequences that come from those actions. A western that shows the cowardice of certain men and women, and an entity who seeks vengeance because of this town’s self-righteousness and hypocrisy.
But you see, High Plains Drifter doesn’t play it’s cards where it tells you the story. You have to figure all this out for yourself, and that’s what makes it so delicious.
My God, this movie is so good that I just can’t stand it.
The Stranger who enters Lago, Arizona is sadistic, unsympathetic and, at times, so evil that it’s hard to have any sort of emotion for him because of his lack of emotion. The parallels of him riding the pale horse of death as one of the four horseman of the Apocalypse is just juicy stuff. Clint Eastwood’s homage to Don Siegel and Sergio Leone and then making their movies into one of his own is just stunning.
There are clues all through this movie that tells you that not all is what it seems. After he rapes the town Harpy (told you his character wasn’t sympathetic AT ALL) she shoots him in the washtub at close point range, and he isn’t hurt is a small clue. After the town Harpy comes back for more after he takes over the town due to the community “leaders” living in fear and willing to offer their souls for his assistance (and then decide to kill him after she throws down with him, our eyes are always on the door. So how the hell did the Stranger get on the roof. We were watching the door the whole time (or were we?)
I could go on, and this is probably just too long to read, but I can’t help but be smitten by the sparse, yet patient (oh so patient) direction of Eastwood.
On a side-note, I saw this movie when it came out when I was about eight years old at the theater. I didn’t get it and it always freaked me out. When I watched it again as an adult, I understood why I didn’t get it.
Because it’s pretty damned complex, and once again, is another film about perspective, but this time, it is us as the audience, which is left to determine what we just witnessed. Who the hell is The Stranger? Well, we know, deep in our hearts we know, but The Stranger says on his grey horse at the end of the movie in the last damned line to Mordecai as his small ally marks the unmarked grave. He tells us but because the movie is such a weird roller coaster ride, it’s hard to grasp what we have just seen.
And then The Stranger disappears in the heat as he rides away.
So, I am no Cuppa with the Cinema Obscura, but these two movies are so tasty that I had to share. So pleasing to the palate, and yet so violent and disturbing, that I could not take my eyes away from them.
