02.28.07
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 11:19 pm by Gregory
Today a massive grey cloud hovered overhead, and all around it one could see the blue of clear skies, and, depending upon one’s frame of reference, one could look up and see the ultimate symbol of depression, or a massive flying saucer set to annihilate everything and everyone within reach…
…or…
…a great big cloud.
Just as it was dispersing, of course, was when I finally got my act together enough to go take pictures of it. What I got were some silhouetted palm trees against tufts of grey accented with hot pink. I think you can imagine.
I was on the telephone the entire time I was taking these pictures, with a friend I have known since the fifth grade. I talked about the photo-session and he talked about his new divorce. Mortality entered our conversation a couple of times — not heavily or desperately, but naturally, provoked by events in our actual lives.
Now it’s incredibly clear (and SoCal cold!) out, and the stars are twinkling, and I have returned with cookies and an electrolite drink and some kiwis (the actual fruit).
I don’t feel sad, but actually reasonably strong (weather helps me to feel real), and yet I realise that this is a good moment to reflect upon some people I have lost over the past few years, specifically via L.A.
(I’ll only go with first names, but those who know them, know them.)
The most recent was a bit over a year ago. He died in his bed in Australia, which is the country where he was born and grew up. His name is Tim, and I’ll call him Timothy out of respect.
Timothy and I met because his girlfriend-then-fiancee-then-wife Andrea and I were friends, having met via the memorial service for her father. Andrea is an adventurer, and somewhere in ‘97 or ‘98 she packed up and flew off to go explore the antipodean lands taken over by white people of European descent. In the Blue Mountains of Australia (where one my all-time fave movies, Sirens, was made; oh, the heartache that caused!), Andrea and Timothy somehow found each other. They made a sweet couple, and adored having fun. Meanwhile, I was transitioning from being a Hollywood office-slave to being a nationally syndicated cinema critic. (They kept telling me to leave the no-name company and go work for the Times; I should have heeded their advice.) My world was very, very restless, but somehow I managed to see them fairly frequently.
They were married in Australia, but I got to attend a celebration for them here. They lived in Burbank, in her father’s humble former house, on one of those weird suburban streets that look like Illinois or whatever until you reach one of the main horror-streets and notice the killer smog.
I put up with a lot of smog, actually, to be with Timothy and Andrea. They were extremely nice to me (most of the time; except when they babysat my rabbits while I was in England, and I returned late, and finances got involved, and they already had enough stress in their lives). I felt fortunate to have such cool, easygoing friends. They were really fun!
Sometimes we would eat dinner together. Sometimes we would entertain Andrea’s super-trooper mother (who had given her daughter an ornamental pillow, reading, “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.”) A bit later, we would also entertain Timothy’s sweet mother, who flew up on occasion from Australia.
On Halloween, we would wander their Burbank neighborhood, where some crafty people in set design and other Hollywood magics would create the most astounding haunted houses and full-property dreamscapes. Timothy and Andrea had a somewhat iffy Hi-8 camera with an increasingly iffy battery, and they would video the zany scenarios. Somewhere on a tape in Australia there’s me in costume doing a really awkward and obnoxious Australian accent. Timothy was embarrassed by it, and thus I felt a bit of rare chagrin.
We played tennis, too — oh did we ever. This was great fun (despite the hideous smog of Burbank and sort of Los Feliz-Glendale). We really went to town at tennis. I grew up playing tennis, and considered it a great friendship ritual amongst my friends from youth, and thus took very naturally to Timothy’s enthusiasm for the game. We were fairly evenly matched: Timothy was a hard hitter, whereas I ran faster and worked on careful placement (particularly of serves). We tended to come out close to even most times.
Once in a while Andrea would also play, and they had one racquet known as “The Granny Racquet” — this made the experience funny as well as fun (we tended to trade off with the nearly useless thing).
As an indication of Timothy’s character, one time we were playing on the courts of a school in Burbank (which seemed — and seems! — vaguely dreamlike to me, like some acidic videogame planet; it’s such a weird place), and suddenly he got nailed by a green plastic soft-drink bottle: I believe it was Sprite, but it may have been Mountain Dew. The large, personal size. Some stupid kids thought throwing it at him, over the fence, while he was playing, would be “funny.”
Timothy spun. Timothy wielded his racquet — not menacingly, but authoritatively. Timothy spoke:
“Whoever threw that better watch himself,” he warned.
They didn’t throw another.
(Mind, this is in a megalopolis in which kids routinely carry firearms, particularly at the time. This made his levelheaded appraisal of the situation all the more impressive.)
When my life was totally fucking blown to hell by rotten people and I ended up having to move entirely by myself, guess who was the single, only, absolutely #1 person who helped?
Timothy. Yep. He helped me dislodge the filthy air-conditioners from the windows, and he and Andrea sold my old clothes-dryer at one of their neighborhood yard sales.
Incidentally, if I’m not speaking adequately here of Andrea, please consider the subject line. She is alive and starting over in Australia (as, I figure, are many). She’s a great woman with incredible energy. I certainly wish her well.
Andrea and Timothy first had one child together, a girl, whilst living in Burbank. Great kid. Later, in Australia, they had another child, a boy (whom I haven’t met, but figure with reasonable certainty is also a great kid). Both of their kids get to be called by all of their syllables. Lucky generation.
Both Timothy and Andrea fell ill sometime in the blur of my insane newspaper experience, and we increasingly lost track of one another. It was a wicked influenza-like experience for them, except Andrea recovered and Timothy never fully did, ever again. He was diagnosed with the unhappy c-word and spent the next few, brief years fighting it, fighting it, fighting it.
Andrea emailed reports. They’re on my old computer. It hurts even to think about re-reading them, even though she wrote almost everything with an optimistic and loving attitude. (Note what name one can find in the middle of the word “opTIMistic”!)
Timothy died in Australia, surrounded by his wife, children and mother, shortly after Christmas 2005. He had struggled a long time, and had been put through hell, and he held out — sometimes without even the use of his senses — to celebrate the holiday with his family.
And then he let go.
This was very, very strange for me, as I spent that particular holiday alone (I wasn’t asked to be anywhere) watching many Star Trek episodes. Suddenly my increasingly woebegotten friend was dead, in a place very far away, and I was helpless to do anything about it.
I wrote an intricate poem and emailed it. Definitely not good enough, but words are my business.
I reflect now upon the boy named Timothy who never knew his father, who grew up into the man called Timothy, and along the way had many adventures. He told me some of the funniest personal stories I have ever heard, too. I shan’t steal them for use here in my own space, but can say that they mostly involved unbelievable wipeouts on two-wheeled vehicles, plus one utter destruction of a kitchen floor.
Timothy also spoke of having to handle radioactive materials, during his stint in the Australian military.
When I think of him, it shall not be as a bedridden man gradually decaying far, far too young, but rather as a tall and sprightly fellow with curly locks and a natural sense of mischief and enjoyment of life, a fellow of Czech descent (which is not the first thing one thinks when one hears “Australia”) and most of all a true friend to me in a place where such entities are rarer than platinum-encrusted diamonds with ruby centres.
“How’s it going?” I would ask Timothy, when I called.
“Cruisin’ along, cruisin’ along!” he would happily reply.
*
A couple of years earlier, in 2003, I booked another flight to go to England to see someone I’ll always love, and a couple of days before I was scheduled to depart, I got a call from a crazy-ass former colleague who means well but excels at generating an uncomfortable vibe.
“Marnye’s dead!” he all but shouted through the telephone.
Frankly, I was already at wit’s end (or near it; I have more wit than most first-world nations). Although I kept working hard (harder than many could imagine; you are sooo full of shit if you think being a cinema critic is in any way “easy”), the rough hours, merciless deadlines and particularly my unbelievably horrid white-trash crackhead shitbag neighbors with their 24-7 shifts of legal-action-worthy noise were making it very difficult for me to keep my ducks in a row. (When I got to England, for instance, I slept for fourteen hours. My dear friend let me. “Sleep is sacred,” said she. I do so love her.)
I booked my flight, I started packing, and then Marnye dropped dead.
Dead!
At thirty-one!
Dead!
(Shit.)
I decided to go anyway. The news came from Phoenix, which is not a place I like, and there were no updates about what would happen. Marnye certainly didn’t care anymore, and since I knew her pretty well, I knew pretty solidly that she would have told me to fuck off and go have a nice time. The shock was real, but muted by distance, so I decided to get on that plane.
The plane was an Air New Zealand beauty with Sam and Frodo painted on the side. It was amazing. During the flight, our hemisphere experienced a total eclipse of the full moon! I watched (and snapped away at) the entire thing as we crossed the barren tundra and eventually the North Atlantic.
There was a great sadness coming along with me, but I knew that stewing in that lousy apartment wouldn’t help anything. I wrote a review of Respiro, somehow managed to retype it on the metal keys of some dubious internet-phone at Heathrow, and eventually was collected (in many ways) by my friend, in whom I have faith no matter what.
My friend had dial-up email at the time, and like any guest I hogged it a bit, which involved stretching a seemingly impossibly long telephone line from a distant room downstairs up a winding staircase and into the almost-too-far-away office.
It was on that computer, across the Atlantic, that I discovered that Marnye would be given a memorial service in a couple of days.
Let me tell you a bit about Marnye (for it would fill the memory of this server to attempt to tell you all).
First of all, Marnye was my friend.
Marnye was also the liveliest person I have ever met in my life thus far.
(That’s quite a feat, considering some of the people I have met!)
Shithead “editors” don’t like it when you point out the irony of something, but that’s why they are shitheads; it is dreadfully — almost terrifyingly — ironic that someone as lively as Marnye could ever be dead. (Shithead “editors” also fear semicolons; ha-ha; fuck you; jackasses!)
When you boil it all down, Marnye is the reason I got my job as a cinema critic with that ultimately shit company.
I didn’t know her at the time; had never met her.
Apparently something like “a couple thousand” submissions came pouring in when said shit company placed an ad looking for movie reviewers. I responded, sent samples, and thought no more about it. I know how these things go.
Marnye, however, liked my funny prose, and I was told a few times that she told her “boyfriend” (or whatever he was) to choose me. I was also told that my first editor — who is a kindly and intelligent woman and with whom no head-butting ever caused any insult or damage — wasn’t so keen on me at first, and wanted some other candidate.
I won, though.
Thanks, Marnye.
That door opened, and I strode right on through. Marnye was there the night, the following year, that I won the award that dubbed me the very best entertainment/criticism writer in greater Southern California. I still feel proud of that; I earned it.
Warren Beatty was there that night, too. Pretty funny, huh? There we all were, sitting in some fancy hotel lounge after the ceremony, with a bunch of people with authority and money and a bunch of people starving for authority and money, and some woman in a ridiculous hat, and Warren “Bulworth” Beatty.
There’s that word: Fancy. That was Marnye’s fave adjective (if I had to call it). One could say to Marnye, “I am going to go get a sandwich now, do you want anything?” and Marnye would reply, “WELL, AREN’T YOU FANCY???”
I got used to it.
Marnye and I shared several urban and suburban adventures, and — as with Timothy — it really is very difficult for me, even now, to believe that I’ll never see her again.
I also don’t mind telling you that Marnye was smokin’ hot. Our personality types did not spark even a hint of romance (which was fine, and appropriate), but I think she’d smile (and many know that smile) at me telling you that she rode around in a chassis of outrageous greatness.
I touched her hand, after she was dead. It was like cold stone. Another guy who was very, very unfairly fired by the shit company after nearly working himself into cardiac arrest to build the L.A. branch — he kissed his fingers and planted one on her forever-sleeping forehead.
Speaking of physicality, Marnye sucker-punched me once. Fucking hard. I thought for several minutes that I was going to die. This was at one of those annual local music awards routinely conducted at El Rey (the “the” seems to me quite redundant) along the Miracle Mile. I think Black Eyed Peas were among the entertainers, before many people outside of L.A. had heard of them. I wore a jacket that I still wear, and Marnye made fun of the slight shoulder-enhancements. This was after, on the staircase, apropos of absolutely nothing and without anything resembling a how-do-you-do, Marnye slugged me in the sternum with all her might.
The momentum of an ornery girl’s fist can be quite astonishing, when it greets a relatively fragile structure of bone unadorned by artificially-enhanced pectoral muscles.
I deeply hated Marnye (please do not ever take that phrase out of context) for about an hour after that. People who cause random pain (to anyone) do not garner any respect from me. (Come to think of it, “random” may be omitted from that equation.)
Clearly not everything was roses for Marnye. I cannot in good conscience say she chose her “boyfriend” well. But he did seem to want to care for her, or for whatever sadnesses made her the mess she was well before I ever met her.
I don’t really know about those sadnesses, so I won’t discuss them here. Family things. You can probably guess at some of it.
Marnye had a wicked, wicked drinking problem. That’s part of what killed her, if it wasn’t the murder weapon itself. Or perhaps it was a suicide weapon. It’s hard to know for sure.
I barely touch alcohol, and when I do it’s almost always to make other people feel comfortable, so I should add that the level of alcoholism I was observing at the time was indeed shocking, to me. Talk of how one can get drunk faster if one simply mixes vodka with Gatorade. Marnye was known to bring a flask of tequila with her to work. I wish I had slapped that damned thing out of her hand and helped her get a job as a summer-camp counsellor for kids; she would have been amazing at that.
I asked her once, in the office, about the tequila. I asked her if she liked it. She told me that she hated it — but it got her drunk the fastest.
Such a pretty woman.
So vivacious.
I ate deep-fried mozzarella sticks with Marnye once, even though I had sworn off cheese (they were, frankly, terrible, and I hope I never encounter another one; but the MSG-spiked marinara was okay, as such). I helped her stuff envelopes for the L.A. Press Club more than once, at their offices in Hollywood. I imitated lines from popular movies, to make her laugh, and she raved on and on about Almost Famous, which was — like Say Anything — one of her top fave movies of all time (she also developed a mild obsession with Vanilla Sky; consistent girl). Marnye would call me up and talk shop, Marnye would call me up and talk slop, Marnye would call me hideous names at inopportune times. One time I showed her how to get to LAX on a bus. She hated it.
We were friends.
Marnye got the bad c-word, too — and sent it into remission…but kept drinking. She had a seizure in the office in Phoenix and made jokes about it, even though it clearly hurt her. Then she stayed up late one night — and I feel that the details are not mine to divulge — and she did not get up the next morning, or ever again.
To put this into perspective beyond my relationship with her, this was a woman who was flourishing — or, in my opinion, beginning to flourish. She took over the column called “Bite Me” and essentially made it her own. It was crass, offensive, sometimes downright horrid — and allegedly it had something to do with restaurant criticism. (Compared to the other sow of a restaurant critic, it was Pulitzer material.)
Her “boyfriend” promised me promotion toward a Pulitzer, incidentally. Pants on fire.
Never listen to anyone in either journalism or “journalism” — they are so full of shit it’s unfathomable.
I think that was one aspect of Marnye’s greatness, though: She was (or appeared to be) fearless. Put her out there, watch her go: She was a one-woman, tell-it-like-it-is army. And, unlike many, she hadn’t yet been corrupted into taking herself too seriously.
I got to go on two dinner-critiques with Marnye, to The Ivy On The Shore (or whatever) and that trendy WeHo place apparently owned by Elton John (whatever it’s called). I’ll tell ya, eating with a fun person in sickeningly expensive restaurants on someone else’s dime is A-OK.
We were in the latter restaurant when Marnye noticed some bozo from Boyz II Men sitting across the room. She got him. It was impressive to behold.
In the former restaurant, Marnye kept making fun of me for enjoying how good the olive oil was.
(A different gorgeous blonde friend of mine from the previous generation taught me the restorative miracles of olive oil. She too has been a glowing illustration of health and a great inspiration. She was diagnosed with some very bad c-word only two months ago. How does one talk about this?)
Marnye and I had many, many other laughs, and never really saw eye-to-eye on things (or, it seemed that we didn’t), and that was fine. We frequently saw each other amongst groups. She had hula-hoop skills beyond comprehension. She also went out of her way to make holidays special, both with the “boyfriend” and in her own fancy way. Her mother sent her recipe cards. She was learning to use them.
I didn’t get to say any of this at her memorial service in hideous Phoenix. I sat and couldn’t find a way to stand and walk to the front and start talking. Much about journalism and “journalism” is wretched and fake, and I just couldn’t, at the time, find a way to get up there and speak a bit of the truth about how I felt.
I felt that I had lost a friend with enormous, almost incalculable, potential.
Her body is in the ground in Michigan now.
(Fuck, why couldn’t that be Madonna?)
It’s not difficult for me to reflect upon the finite existence of the person called Marnye — I only knew her for a few short years, and recall it all pretty well — but rather it’s like having only random, scattered pieces of a very elaborate puzzle: They are suggestive of a wonderful picture, but they mostly don’t fit together.
I had a choice in England: To head west on the train, into the rain, to go exploring — or to get on the coach to Heathrow and to attend my friend’s memorial service in hideous Phoenix.
Marnye probably would have been of two minds about the choice: Her ego would have told me to go party with her other friends and associates (over what literally turned out to be her dead body, although we had been told otherwise and expected no such sight); and whatever she had in the sense of a superego (or whatever) most likely would have told me (or anyone) to go off and be happy.
I chose the sadness, out of respect.
A good friend also accidentally sucked into the shit company and I boarded the same Southwest flight out of Burbank — I barely made it — and we went off to hideous Phoenix to have some shared misery with the many people who also saw a life of great potential very unceremoniously snuffed.
A while later, at a crappy bar on La Cienega in Los Angeles, many of us gathered again, to express our affection for Marnye, this time in the company of her mother (the dear). One friend who knows how to keep the salary pumpin’ to pay a big mortgage suggested that a life-size standee of Marnye be created for the party, that we could all get our photo taken with it. Seriously!
That’s how insane things get. (I’m relieved that that stupid plan never came to pass.)
This was how miraculous Marnye was, though: One time I was hoofing it up the hill of that selfsame La Cienega on a dirty-hot night after some or other headache-inducing screening: And there on an outdoor tabletop of some cafe lay Marnye’s business card. It caught my attention, I went inside, and there she was. She had already closed down the place, but very cheerfully invited me to join her and the owner for a drink and some energetic chat.
That was Marnye.
*
There have been other deaths in my life — fortunately scattered and uncommon and mostly involving distant relatives — but there was a doozie a few years earlier in my L.A. existence.
Except…that it wasn’t.
I had moved out of state — basically to depressurise after the back-to-back nerve-shreddingness of film school plus Hollywood slavery — and I’m pretty sure it was 1993, Winter, anyway. I still had some ties with film-school friends but I was rather far away and not privy to local L.A. news. It was at this time that one of my friends, over the telephone to my charming apartment that was floored entirely with cracked linoleum, joked that a casual acquaintance and associate of ours had killed his wife and daughter and was on the lam.
Or, at least, I thought that my friend was joking. At first.
One of my friend’s primary default settings is paranoia, and so his joking turned dark in that fashion: “You’re hiding him in your garage, aren’t you?”
Not only did I not have a garage, I still didn’t believe the story.
The friend-turned-insane-criminal’s name was Aziz. Once again, if you know who he was, you know who he was. He was not a close friend, but he was my friend, technically speaking. I had Easter dinner with him and his family at his house once, even though he was from Saudi Arabia and did not traditionally celebrate Easter. We all had a nice time. He and his wife actually kept ducks in their backyard in West L.A. (an area, at the time, as alien to me as Mars), and we cheerfully hid eggs in the bushes for his daugher and elder son to go seek.
It was remarkably like life.
There were no blatant or latent hints of insanity there.
If you can believe this (or even if you can’t), both parents of Aziz were even there that day, visiting for a while from Saudi Arabia. They did not speak English, not really, but they beamed and helped out and behaved like proud grandparents.
Aziz, as I was telling you, was my friend. Not a super-close friend, not a confidant, not a mentor. But I worked with him in the film school’s cinema stockroom that bore his mark and reputation as manager for a decade (I arrived at around the halfway mark), and which now is washed, apparently, clean of any memory of him.
Aziz killed his daughter and his wife. Then he vanished for a while. Then he was found by hikers, in early 1994, having shot himself to death.
The mind reels.
I certainly didn’t know Aziz as well as many other people likely did, but I was a good employee in his stockroom (where now-director John Singleton “worked” for a couple of days, before bailing), and I learned the equipment and how to maintenance it and lend it out and check it back in again. I did inventories of bulbs. I charged batteries. I learned to refer to tripods as “sticks.”
We had some fun in there. Most of the other employees and assistant managers were great company. One guy from the South was a total asshole, but this isn’t about him.
One night, Ted Lange showed up to collect equipment for his class. Another night, Wes Craven showed up. It was that sort of place.
Somehow I got a job there, and through a work-study programme, managed to earn a little extra money through my first year at the university.
Of course, anybody who remembers Aziz also remembers that he was a bit of a hellion. He didn’t really want to be a stockroom manager at a film school — not any more than many professors at a film school wish to be professors at a film school (which becomes obvious pretty quickly, in some cases). What Aziz wanted was to be a successful movie producer.
To this end, Aziz basically produced two features. One of them, Zombie High (starring an almost-still-dewy Virginia Madsen) was lensed before I arrived, but I got to ride over to the pre-Cinematheque Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, with Aziz and family, for the premiere. I thought that was hot stuff, even though the movie…er…isn’t.
The other movie was called A Natural History of Parking Lots, and this was completed in 1990, and I seem to recall Morrissey’s “Disappointed” being involved in a montage sequence. This was made by Aziz’ then-friend Everett Lewis, who continues to make films sometimes. (An earlier film by him, the bizarre static-shot chicken-obsessed movie Lazarus, I found utterly bewildering when screened inside the soon-to-be “old” Lucas building in the late ’80s.)
Anyway, although Aziz and I were never close friends, and he yelled at me more than he spoke with me, his smile and his intentions — at the time (please note) — were friendly and even playful. We’d joke about this or that, he’d put on some Tom Waits, and eventually he suggested that we write a screenplay “together” — which we did. I still have it. I basically wrote the whole thing, from a vague idea from him. It’s a mess of an adventure film, a father-son struggle he had hoped would become a vehicle for Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. Nothing came of it.
I moved on, stopped working in the stockroom, only saw Aziz casually and occasionally. I watched his children (then three) growing up a bit, whenever he or Becky would bring them around. Then I graduated and moved away.
Then, a couple of years and change later, I got that phone-call. That friend isn’t much of a friend anymore, but I still feel like asking him sometimes, “You’re kidding, right?”
I cleaned some mag reels in Aziz and Becky’s garage. I entertained his kids when he would run off on an errand. And Easter dinner with the whole family — I mean, Jesus.
Aziz was working on adapting a book called The Brave into a movie when things became ugly. Eventually Johnny Depp and his brother ended up adapting the thing into a movie, which has not been released in the U.S.A.
I know nothing about where Aziz, his ex-wife and his daughter are buried (if they are buried), and nothing about where his sons have gone. They were good boys. I hope they’re coping and finding good reasons to do good things.
It’s all kind of far away now, to be honest with you — like the night that this stodgy feminist girl named Suzie and I walked right up to Burt Lancaster on campus and said hello.
The first two people considered here, however – thoughts of them bring sadness and acceptance. The third brings sadness and kind of a nightmarish feeling — which is probably why his entire reputation has been expunged from the film school (and rightfully so).
L.A. is a very, very strange and difficult place.
*
This entry is dedicated to the memory of the good things about these people, and to those who have survived them and continue to survive them.
And thank you, for letting me — this chilly, clear night — express these feelings and move on.
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Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 2:15 am by Gregory
Well, not really backlash-backlash…but you know how easy it is for internet skirmishes to intensify beyond reason.
The email is deadlier than the mail.
Anyway, let us answer just a little mail before delirium arrives:
Here, in response to That Darned Elf, is our trusty Sampaguita:
You know what always bothers me about messages that sound like that?– It doesn’t make sense to defend anyone’s acting ability by making personal attacks on someone who has a negative opinion of the performances given by the personality that inspires (and I use this term loosely) “defense.”
(Geez, that was awkwardly written, but since I’m short on time, I’ll assume you understood what I said, anyway.)
I happen to like Cate Blanchett as a performer (and, if I’m being perfectly honest, I greatly admire Kate Winslet too)… they happen to do things with their performances that bring me catharsis– and I like that. But that I find them convincing is completely beside the point.
For me to personally attack people for having an opposite opinion would be completely pointless. Firstly, calling someone an idiot for disliking a performer that I happen to like doesn’t relate at all to the examination of a performance. Secondly, as you say, the things that move people happen to be completely subjective. Thirdly, making personal attacks on people rather than making substantive points tends to make one sound rather unintelligent.
[Comments here lightly edited to avoid catfight; pardon.]
But maybe I’m just saying this because it bothers me when my own negative opinions as regards certain so-called actresses are always being “countered” (if that’s what you can call it) with comments about how I MUST be jealous, how *obviously* unintelligent I am, or how I must be some bitter and ugly girl who can’t appreciate ANY other woman’s success. And goodness how that irks me. I happen to LOVE the fact that I have a baccalaureate degree, I like (for the most part) the way that I look, AND as evidenced by my fannishness as regards the aforementioned, that last thing doesn’t hold water either.
More on topic, however, despite the fact that I happen to like Blanchett, I see your point about her performance in LOTR. I found her to be inaccessible in a way that didn’t really serve the film all that well… and her presence in the cast was a little wasted. While she does have the ability to be very regal, I don’t want to see her as something that feels completely impervious to everything. A little more vulnerability in that role would have better served the film— particularly when her character was meant to be experiencing an ultimate temptation.
But that’s just my opinion. (I could weigh in on the other things you brought up, but that would take more time than is available to me.)
Okay, good good, and I withhold my comments until also offering, from Algonquinel, this:
Smackdown! A gratifyingly public smackdown, too!
I WAS (why can I use italics in reply mode but not compose? stupid) trying to goad you into a reply because, frankly, I would rather read that entire post than the pissy little comment about her looks and her well-paid agents who are good at their jobs, although I probably would have just rolled my eyes if you hadn’t mentioned LotR in the same paragraph.True, you needn’t have clarified on your own blog, but since you did, I will attempt to do likewise.
First of all, I was aware of your opinions about the ending of the movie, which I totally agree with, and Elijah Wood as Frodo, which I totally don’t. Have you noticed that people either LOVE him or HATE him in that role? You say “a lousy little, whiny nothing in the middle” and I get instantly steamed. I say “a perfect picture of innocence, corruption, redemption” and you want to puke or whatever. And, truly, never the twain shall meet.
Cate as Galadriel: I’m of two minds about that–and yes that’s possible! You mock when you say she gets zero points for her oh-so-mystifying fake-language-whispering at the beginning. Well, I don’t think it was JUST her performance but also the mesmerizing QUALITY of her voice, along with a concise script and perfect imagery, of course, that made the prologue of the movie truly magical. One of my favorite parts and it would not have been the same without that voice and the way she used it.
I didn’t mind her in Lothlorien, considering the way THIS movie role was written, but I do agree she is not the ethereal Galadriel I imagined from the book. Annoying is one way to put it. Smug is how I think of her. Annoyingly smug is not an ideal description for the queen of the elves. Nevertheless, I think she’s okay in this particular movie. But, if I could keep Cate’s voice in the beginning, I would concede to a different Galadriel!
Karma is engendered by everything. Not liking someone for no good reason–or even for a good reason, in my experience–has ended up working against me in circumstances startlingly literal. Perhaps it has to be a part of one’s belief system before it works, though. And you laid out your reasons, which is what I really wanted!
I’m writing this as an email because I was afraid you wouldn’t receive the comment on your post again but feel free to consider it a public comment, if you like. If you don’t like, since nobody knows me on your blog, I won’t care if they all think I was too chicken to respond!!
algonquinel
PS “Plus everything may come crashing down very fast and kill me. We’ll see…” Hmm
And now, while celebrities with unconscionable amounts of money are busily getting arrested for human growth hormones in Sydney, or getting their tender bits pierced in Tarzana, or whatever-else-that-doesn’t-really-matter-much, I shall attempt to harmonise the dissonance I clearly created by bagging on Blanchett.
First, Algonquinel has some small reason to feel irritation toward me, as over two months ago I promised a prize for naming my goldfish (who are fine, thanks) and have not renegged…but haven’t exactly hastened to complete that mission, either. There are two reasons for this, both of them boring: 1. Ain’t no boosterism going on for the Gregory cause (which means some days I wear yesterday’s socks; yes, it’s horrifying to me, too); and 2. When I’m muddleheaded, nothing material ever seems “good enough” or at least appropriate (ask the gift-pile awaiting the friends I never see).
Thus, when I use Lothlorien as a lavatory, it’s a little spark to a very small but existing fuse.
Dear Sampaguita, whose comments tend to enlighten, I say to thee thank you, and agree that personal attacks don’t generally evolve the process of intelligent criticism. And…this forum, limited though it may be, is exactly (as with the “blogs” of many others) the sort of place where one (or more) should let off steam. The only reason I monitor comments is that I know that a few people in the world hate me — and I know this because otherwise I would be waking up happy instead of feeling like I’m that girl from The Ring.
Now there’s a chick with an image problem!
Anyway, thank you for looking out, and of course we’re talking about opinions! — which, I believe, should be aired! Intelligently! Sometimes! And sometimes name-calling is incredibly fun, too!
(Incidentally…oh, I’ll get to that, below…)
On opinions, a waitress with a good mind recently told me that she viewed Children of Men. “I didn’t like it,” she said, “particularly the ending.” We then discussed the ending, and she essentially explained that she felt it was inadequate, too sketchy, and she wanted more details. An argument against this is easy, but good on her for telling it like it is (for her).
On How Life Is: I have for years thought that Macy Gray sounds like a bad Tina Turner imitator choking on a peach pit.
But I digress (she’s a fellow ‘SC alum, too; I better be careful…).
See? I try to walk away…and I stumble. Blanchett, Blanchett, Blanchett: What hell hath thou wrought?
Responding to both of this hot-button issue’s responses, I would like to state plainly that my argument with Blanchett is not so much with Blanchett (whom I don’t know, and who is apparently so haughty that she couldn’t even attend the RotK junket), but with her handlers. When they basically shout at me, “CATE BLANCHETT IS THE FACE OF FEMALE ACTING FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE SO GET USED TO IT!” I reply, fangul.
I thought she was mediocre in Little Fish. Rather lame, really, in the slight and peculiarly overhyped Notes on a Scandal. But at the very least I did not assail her as a person way back in The Shipping News (although, I note with great amusement and dawning self-awareness, I did liken her crude character to “an aspiring actress”!)
The main reason I think I put that worm on the hook is to catch the same sorts of mentalities who used to piss me off as a kid, when they would lazily say, “Yeah, that’s a good song” without any mention of why or what they like about it or what makes it better than other songs. Lazy acceptance of marketed product bothers me; there it is.
As songs go, Cate Blanchett has not particularly caught my ear, but I accede that people have good reasons for liking her and respecting her work.
And I thank you both for allowing terms such as “inaccessible” and “impervious” and even “annoyingly smug” to enter the lexicon of Galadriel criticism. It’s a big world, and this is a very petty point, but I appreciate the assistance with focusing this or that thought as I too am sometimes inarticulate.
(When confronted, a week and a half ago I suppose, with Actress #3 — who runs an organisation for women in entertainment, incidentally — I found myself so bored with having to form complete sentences in a ghastly “Chicago-style” restaurant to counter the incredibly presumptuous sentiments of the woman sitting across from me, that I flat-out explained that I was not in the mood to converse and would have preferred grunting and squeaking. This was when she suggested immediate sex on the table. I learnt my lesson.)
But yeah, that oogy look in Blanchett’s elven eyes bugs me. It’s too much, and I speak from experience.
As for Wood, I have encountered him socially and he seems like a nice enough little jerkoff. It’s very unlikely that I would stuff him into a carry-on bag and chuck him in the river. So you ladies can have your fantasy of “innocence lost and redeemed” or whatever. He chain-smokes.
As for the opening narration, I love it. It’s fab. Thousands upon thousands of people could do it just as well, but I recall sitting at a special advance screening in the Pacific Design Center, watching that New Line logo float up, and then, suddenly, really feeling that world as those images wowed off my then-fresh socks. (This was after I had already interviewed Christopher Lee and Philippa Boyens, among others, so I was primed, but it still got me.) The voice is fine. Truce.
Again, not all criticisms come from the heart. Some come from the mind, and are designed to provoke others to think and feel their own responses and counter-responses and so on.
This is why I am so much better than Richard Roeper that he’s going to have to make an appointment to wash my socks.
Anyway, as for pissy little comments, I intend to make many millions more before I become ashes on the wind.
As for karma, I think you bull’s-eyed that one, Algonquinel: Sometimes I believe in it, sometimes I don’t, and although that’s an awesome and all-too-rare use of “engendered” (most people probably think that has something to do with separate restrooms), I’ll also spend all my time prior to being ashes on the wind doing my best to keep undesired spiritual beliefs and practices at bay. If I say there’s no karma, then for me there is no karma. Paris Hilton is a useless piece of shit. Ooh, what’s gonna happen now? See?
Goodness doesn’t always pay off, and badness doesn’t always pay off, either. One of the reasons I have taken to rambling (often quite negatively) here in this artificial context is that, in the world — which I believe is a very highly morally relativistic world — I simply do my best, each day and night, to bring a bit more goodness than I take away.
“Indian Red” by Daniel Lanois is an excellent song to illustrate my feelings in this regard (which is one reason why I like it; the other being that when I heard it over the CBC whilst sitting in my car overlooking the waters of the Pacific Northwest, I totally put some groove into that car-seat).
And this brings up another, related topic: Personal revelation. When you read the “blogs” of allegedly “average” people (in this really rather new form of mass-communication), they tend to give away a lot of personal information. Then, when you read the “blogs” of more famous and influential people, they generally do not (or they very carefully veil it). Me, I’m sort of in between: Inhabiting a very, very low echelon (absolutely no pun intended) of public figures, but also struggling as a frequently unhappy private individual with no qualms about making pissy comments whenever and wherever (a habit that would put a big dent in the profits of people selling a specific, limited image and its attendant “mystique”). On the up-side, I feel that this approach gives me an edge over pundits who espouse one belief and live another: The difference between the voice of my criticism (which is but one aspect of my writing, and a small one at that) and my individual voice is only that the criticism is more carefully and intentionally formed — whereas here, words flap and fly and sometimes flounder. On the down-side, my freeness with my feelings tends to give the impression that it may be okay to crawl up my ass with a flashlight — which it isn’t.
Still, it’s an intriguing new world, and I’m feeling fortunate to be able to play in it.
I do believe, however, that computers simply aren’t good enough. For this spiritual epiphany, please open your hymnals to Jonathan Richman’s “Parties in the U.S.A.” from his excellent I, Jonathan L.P., which is a good song because JoJo invites us to sing:
So people are staying home more, not having fun,
A cold, cold era has begun, has begun,
Now things were bad before, there was lots of loneliness,
But in 1965 things were not like this.
and continues…
Well could there be block parties of which I know not?
Wild beach parties around some open flame?
I know there’s got to be parties, I bet there’s a lot,
But the USA has changed somehow that I can’t name.
and brilliantly concludes…
People are moving to California who hate the beach and things,
I think they’d rather watch TV than hear a real person sing,
Of course nowadays at parties you got louder stereo equipment,
So now if the party’s too loud it’s like a radioactive shipment,
I say nowadays at parties for example you got louder stereo bass,
So now if the thing’s too loud it’s like a toxic clean-up case.
Well nowadays at parties well, they’ve got louder stereos, right?
So now if it’s too loud it’s like a noxious chemical site.
And now let’s return to one last little correspondence from Sampaguita, regarding Damn it, Jim!:
No… Just no…
Every time this tid-bit pops up on my blogroll, I go into convulsions.
(I happen to actually like Gary Sinise… but I’m hoping that someone will save him from this mistake.)
I momentarily forgot that you’ve re-dubbed Brody “The Mosquito” and so my appreciative guffaws filled my room with much-needed mirth. That’s genius.
This whole “Star Trek XI” topic is of less concern to me, I am sure, than it is to many, many, many other people. But I do really hate to see millions upon millions spent to do something fucking wrong. Tim Burton’s Batman, for instance: Pretty great, overall…but Jack Nicholson as “The Joker”: WRONG. BUZZ. FAIL. TRAP-DOOR.
Similarly, it just makes me sad that “name” actors (who are, in my estimation, “names” due to marketing spin much, much more than Blanchett is) get pulled into some utterly, completely, absolutely, unquestionably unnecessary prequel movie to play roles made iconic by very specific human beings who now happen to be old.
Wicked-annoying.
I have seen Brody around, once driving a tiny-penis-compensation HUGE SUV on the 10 heading east, and once dining with a trophy-blonde at Real Food Daily on La Cienega. So I know he’s a real person (albeit with pathetic social crutches), and as such I wish him well. As an actor, however, I cannot abide having to look at that terrifyingly grotesque schnozzola, and thus, yes, he is “the Mosquito” (breaking, maybe, my “The” rule as he doesn’t even seem to merit the distinction, but no grammatical conclusions in this regard have yet been reached).
It does make me laugh too, however, to call him that.
Thank you.
As for Mongoloid-boy, I used to have a friend who’s an L.A.-based writer, and she’s a total freak, really, but she once called Matt Damon something like “the Mongoloid” and I could not help but concur. I know that, like “faggot,” this is now a more highly offensive term than ever, but the term is in no way intended to offend those challenged by Down’s Syndrome, their parents, nor Genghis Khan. Rather, I choose to call Matt Damon “the Mongoloid” because his fucking face annoys me.
Amen.
Since this post is going for a new record in vital information expressed, I’d like to continue by adding that, indeed, Gary Sinise is a real actor, and would probably even make as good an unreal-McCoy as one could find — however, yeah, unless his creditors are after him, I’d say someone should talk some sense into him before contracts get inked.
About that Scottish kid (or, in movie terms, $cotti$h kid), I have no strong opinions — except that his inclusion to play “Scotty” is utterly absurd. James Doohan was Canadian!
Which leads us to a couple of things Sampaguita said, but about which you don’t know. First, I’d like to state that, indeed, when she’s not overdoing the “Look at me naked!” thing, I like Kate Winslett, too (Heavenly Creatures rules, and Little Children is better than people are telling you). And in terms of “catharsis”-actresses, I would include Halle among the esteemed crowd of Cate and Charlize and Kate and Naomi (and probably, next week, Christina) because — particularly in Monster’s Ball — she really seemed bent on giving us the explosive reality of her sexuality. (I don’t understand — as with Elisabeth Shue and Penelope Cruz and others showing us their toilet efforts on camera — why such exposure of self seems to be a rite-of-passage in order for a woman to be taken seriously as an actress — particularly in America — but there it inescapably is.)
Speaking of which, yes, I am mildly annoyed by this “creative choice” by Daniel Radcliffe and his parents and handlers.
Why?
Erm, without being even the slightest bit puritanical, I really don’t think it is necessary for a boy in his teens — not even a monumentally famous boy in his teens — to show off his willie to a bunch of probably rather pervy strangers in order to be taken seriously as an actor.
What, is there a shortage of solid plays not involving nudity, simulated sex and Richard Griffiths?
(Two words: Go Ron.)
A fine correspondent also included less-than-flattering comments about the single-monikered star known as “Ellen” — and these comments and the genuine irony they reveal seemed to me to touch upon a very intriguing characteristic of popular media and its consumers, but as it was asked of me not to run the comments, I shan’t.
Lastly (this time), as for things “coming crashing down” and the dread I feel these days (and the pondering of this), I would like to clarify that my life presently sucks and I am very unhappy. This is not the same as self-destructive, a state of mind with which I had a brief intellectual dalliance a few years ago (shall be covered here soon) and then left sitting forever in the dust. Rather, what kind of eligible male sits up all night alone in an apartment he hates in a neighborhood full of total assholes (give or take a few, and pardon), typing and typing and typing into a receptacle like this one (pun intended) when he very, very much should be living and loving?
I leave you with that question (but I do not really leave you).
Bonne chance avec tout.
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02.27.07
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 2:06 pm by Gregory
…and — literally — “double dumb-ass on you!”
This officially saddens me.
(It’s petty, but it saddens me nonetheless.)
(Except for the “Dr. Spock” part, which is funny: “Benjamin, please tell us more about this Pon Farr…”)
(Plus nice use of “respectively” — I used to have to work under “editors” who didn’t know what that word means but nonetheless collected paychecks.)
Copied text for those superstitious souls who fear links:
Cast Set for Next ‘Star Trek’ Movie?
On the heels of Paramount’s confirmation that J.J. Abrams (Mission: Impossible III, Lost) had been selected to direct the next Star Trek feature, reports began circulating on several movie and sci-fi websites that the studio was in talks with Matt Damon, Adrien Brody and Gary Sinise to play the roles of Capt. Kirk, Dr. Spock and Dr. McCoy respectively. First reported by IGN movies, a unit of Fox Interactive, and attributed to unnamed studio sources, the stories also indicated that James McAvoy, who costarred in The Last King of Scotland, was “in the mix” to play the role of Enterprise engineer, Scotty.
(Yuck. Two show-biz darlings I loathe — the Mongoloid and the Mosquito – snatching up a couple of modern popular culture’s most iconic and highly personal roles. Won’t view it. No way. Adios, Trek. Ye may live on in my VHS dreams.)
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02.26.07
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 9:29 pm by Gregory
The day started out (for me) sickeningly early (why is there “early”? — what useful purpose could it possibly serve?), and although many interweave their personal lives with the outcome of alleged “awards” shows, I was already on the next beat, on the street, and feeling reasonably neat.
Man Observation #1: I passed a construction site (L.A. is a damned construction site) and watched as a guy inside, behind the chain-link fence, moved a portion of the fence and intentionally shoved out an errant shopping cart — knowing full well (if he possessed even the vaguest instinct for physics) that the cart (or “trolley” in civilised countries) would pick up momentum across the sidewalk (or “pavement” in civilised countries) and head straight out into thick morning traffic in the street.
This, it did.
The guy merely watched. He was an employee of the construction team, and apparently just for a giggle, he shoved the cart out amongst moving cars.
I was far enough away that I could not immediately solve this problem, but as I drew nearer I heard a pedestrian chastising the worker. Spake the worker, “It ain’t my cart! I shouldn’t have to deal with it!”
Good. So you obstruct traffic with it, and possibly cause an accident. Good man.
Ain’t that America.
I plucked the cart from amongst the cars, and the worker simply watched me do it. We didn’t say anything to one another. What would we say?
Man Observation #2: I enjoy seeing how things really work, and thus found myself nearly consumed with joy when I noticed I was walking behind one of those guys who empty all the coins out of the parking meters. He was dressed somewhat like a Postal Delivery Person, and looked about as if slightly embarrassed by his occupation.
We didn’t speak either, but the technique of coin-collection proved intriguing to me. Within each meter is a cylindrical receptacle, which is accessible via a key. The worker inserts the key, twists out the cylindrical receptacle, and then connects the latter to a port on his (or I’m sure in some cases, her) rolling bank apparatus (which resembles, to an extent, highly industrialised carry-on luggage). The cylindrical receptacle is then twisted into the port, which opens it somehow, spilling the coins into the rolling bank apparatus.
What fascinated me about this is that, given this system, there is no way that the employee ever sees or touches the coins.
Isn’t that amazing? Even with fucking nickels and dimes in service of legalised civic extortion, there is no trust, none.
(How would I change things? Simple. NO PARKING FEES OR FINES OF ANY KIND, ANYWHERE, EVER AGAIN, AMEN.)
(So how does one prevent hogging of precious curbside — also known in civilised countries as “kerbside”? That’s simple, too: An eight-hour limit. This gives a bare minimum of three different people the opportunity to use that space each day. How is it enforced? There is a very generous grace-period of two hours — meaning that any individual may leave their vehicle in that spot for a maximum of ten hours, including the two grace-hours, completely free of charge and with glad tidings. After that, at exactly the ten-hour mark, their vehicle is blown to smithereens by professional explosives experts.)
Man Observation #3: Some dork went whizzing past me on a skateboard. This is actually very common here, as snow is almost an impossibility, much like proper parenting. The thing about this dork, however, was that, unlike other dorks, he did not use his skateboard as a weapon against society, slamming it against everything in sight in order to generate as much jarring noise pollution as possible. This dork would never do that. Rather, this dork had somehow attached a motor to his skateboard, which was in turn connected to a velocity-altering device, which he clutched in his hand. This dork skimmed along smoothly and rapidly without having to contribute any personal torque. He was the closest thing in reality that I’ve ever seen to The Silver Surfer (a movie, incidentally, which I’ll review for you right now without having seen it: “Playful Shrug!”).
Oh, I saw some women today, too. Most of them checked me out as they do Bond when he’s checking into a hotel. Who can blame them. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Nah, I mention this because it was a day full of “Hmmm?” and “Welllll…..” Not quite Spring’s lustful glory or anything like that…but nice.
Actress #1 came into play late in the day. Not much to say, though. I am Comfort Claus. And I’m certainly not. Whatever. I’m still proud that it only took me a few weeks to learn never again to enter that exhausting obstacle course. She’s been abducted by Suitor #2 for the evening. Whatever floats her boat.
Here’s the funny, though: I was shopping for lunch, and encountered Actress Zero. Remember her? No? I don’t particularly either, but I did write mildly nasty things about our first disappointing encounter, during which she did the obligatory salivating for Daniel Craig and I quickly grew sad. Yep, her again.
I’ll call her Actress Zero, but let it be known that this is to designate her only within this particular wave of actresses. I have known about, oh, thirty waves.
Actress Zero was significantly more flirty this time. Then, weirdly, I went into another establishment for different food products, and she was already in there, too. Awkward! But it was good, frankly, to see her this time and feel just about nothing. I was courteous.
Much better, earlier in the day I encountered Beauty again. This brings me great joy for reasons defying convenient definition. It’s possible (probable; L.A.!) that it may not even lead anywhere. But I’ll tell you what: In the presence of Beauty, I feel incredibly relaxed and happy — because nothing in those moments is fake.
Other women got involved later in the day. I share DNA with these women.
My mother is visiting one of my sisters, and was taken by her to the library, where she decided to visit my website. Lucky me that the one time my own mother decides to visit my greatest claim to fame in the Universe, my version of a “blog” happens to be topped by a Juggs joke. Thanks.
I know that she “visited,” incidentally, because she used the “Contact” option to send me some brief comments. It’s weird when the comments arrive — and sometimes they are far from pleasant — and one opens them and they’re from one’s mother.
(*Addendum: Apparently she wrote me a very nice and intricate letter via said means, which was promptly swallowed by the trap of the “Reset” button. She says her wrist bumped it. Life goes on.)
I spoke with her daughter — my alleged “sister” who is vaguely acting like it again after years of not (my siblings, for the record, know nothing whatsoever of supportive behaviour and/or discourse, but do know how to be knee-jerk critical and perpetually mildly insulting) — in the evening. The conversational mode of our “family” — speaking of momentum – is all about momentum. Elegance is irrelevant. Relevance is nearly irrelevant. Whatever the topic is, when one person has to stop to breathe, the next person says whatever they can that connects in any way whatsoever (but usually for highly personal reasons) to what the previous person had said (and which will be utterly forgotten in milliseconds). Conversationally, it’s like kudzu. It’s tiring, frankly.
Then there was a nice bit at the outer end of the day, involving a friend inviting me to dinner, a couple of people I really like happening to be going into the same place at the same time, knowing and liking everybody who works there, plus having some or other member of Paul McCartney’s band chowing down nearby as The Police rocked the stereo. “Spirits in the Material World,” indeed.
These have been intense and often very lonesome years, so to feel a friendly matrix like that (I’m stealing back that word) sends me into this post with a somewhat surprisingly friendly feeling — which I hereby extend to you.
Slainte.
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Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 1:51 am by Gregory
Why is Pete Hammond of Maxim suddenly getting his raves splashed all over a bunch of shitty-to-middling movies (23, Hogs, Starter, etc.)?
Since when is Maxim in any way representative of intelligent cinematic taste?
I demand equal time for the critic from Juggs!
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02.25.07
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 10:58 pm by Gregory
Well, like a massive dump, the Academy Awards have dropped for another year, and I admit to a certain feeling of relief. I viewed almost all of the contenders (and many more) and have had them riding around in my already overcluttered RAM-drive for the past few months. Now…fwoosh…and away they go to pre-printed OWN-IT-NOW! accolade-splattered DVD cases while their money-mad makers quietly slip back to the Palisades, the Hamptons and/or France. Meanwhile, the cinemas will foist upon us approximately nine months of mostly utter crap and a few hyper-lucrative Event Pictures in anticipation of next year’s pre-programmed “winners.”
I wandered into a dining establishment with a bitchin’ monitor (the dining establishment already had the monitor; I didn’t bring it with me) and was almost more fascinated that every face in there was turned blankly toward it, mesmerised. I caught something like the last twenty minutes. I thought I snapped a picture of “The Original Three Amigos” (those fast-aging movie guys whose combined works played a major role in seducing me in this direction — their best efforts all completed by 1981 – and who know full well on which side their future tortillas will be buttered), but I guess my battered camera jammed or something. Oh, well: Old, silver-haired, rich as all hell; you get the picture.
I loved that George Lucas called out the name of Stephen “Fears” — I wonder if that’s another alias of Count D’oh!-ku?
Overall, the utter incestuousness of the event seemed more prevalent to me this year than ever before. Why not just ask Spielberg to lie back onstage while everyone lines up to fellate him? Think that’s harsh? Why then, I ask, would the most prominent closing theme be from 1982’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial? Gee…that’s topical.
Let’s also not forget how Oprah got her job.
I really am happy for the humanitarian and cultural efforts put forth by the motion picture industry — the world really is a better place for the openness and communication cultivated by intelligent media – and also when I watch even a little bit of these saccharine-rich awards, I would strongly prefer if everyone onstage just dropped their panties and shoved their tongues straight up each other’s rectums.
“Brad!” Blabble-labble-labble-labble!
“Reese!” Blabble-labble-labble-labble!
“Jack!” er…um…how’s about we just shake hands?
Meanwhile, I note for the umpteenth time that Martin Scorsese is not actually a human, but really The Unknown Muppet. Marty, underneath the stammering, is basically “Bad Attitude Muppet”: “Oh yeah? Oh yeah? You don’t like my picture? Well, I’ll bust your ass!” (And then his eyebrows grab you.)
Haven’t seen The Departed. Don’t care.
I’m glad that the overhyped Breslin kid didn’t win. If Whale Rider kid didn’t win, Sunshine kid shouldn’t win either (although those commercial contracts certainly constitute some form of winning).
Hey, Blanchett didn’t win either, did she? That’s right — this was Racial Equality Year. Whatever. Okay choices, no problem — but when any presentation is intentionally designed as a Benetton ad, I immediately have my doubts. I also totally don’t buy that the winners are kept secure until announced. (When I won my journalism award, people knew ahead of time.) And the vacuuming wasn’t funny.
Whitaker good, but all he really did was play Lord Humungous in a fast-food hat. Speech: Heartwarmingly unbearable. To me, the guy was validated as an actor and human being a quarter-century ago (!), when he played Jefferson in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (likewise Sean Penn, who is forever Spicoli in my book, awards-schmawards).
Mirren: I’d still like to venture back to 1981 (or even 1969) and partake of some of that! Lucky, lucky Taylor!
Arkin: But of course, and the man’s a genius of his craft. But Little Miss Sunshine? Let’s not get carried away. Cute little dirty-minded version of National Lampoon’s Vacation, without as much fun or the Lindsey Buckingham song. The Second Coming it is not, and Arkin could sleepwalk through a part so easy (you want to see him act? Get The Russians Are Coming…) Jackie Earle Haley should have won among these contenders for these roles — except that his performance is utterly yucky and hardly anyone saw it.
Samuel L. Jackson put out — by far — last year’s best dramatic performance, in the virtually unseen Home of the Brave. No crazy fireworks; just the best slow burn around.
I felt bad for Peter O’Toole — in that apparently he’s not in the best of health and was in some doubt about attending. To make such a journey only to lose is unfortunate indeed (note how the live TV director only showed his disappointed face once, very briefly as if by accident, then, among all the other nominees, never cut back to him). Of course, the role he played — pathetic old foul-mouthed lech (which, peculiarly, proved golden for Arkin) — is far from a sympathetic one — but then again, look who beat him. I think the lesson there is bifold: 1. Don’t forget to pay dues to huge local show-biz-infested cult; and 2. Evil trumps pervy.
A little treat for me, though: A lovely employee of the place where I dined and watched the end of the show informed me that Mr. O’Toole had come in the previous morning. This evening, I was literally sitting in the afterglow of Cinema’s immortal Lawrence. Not bad!
One rainy afternoon while I was living in England, I went to the cinemarrr and watched Neil Jordan’s High Spirits. It’s no masterpiece, but Mr. O’Toole represents.
Anyway, I have no further thoughts on the matter of these particular awards (which are not as cool as mine), except to say that I was happy to see good guy F.X. Feeney’s name blow past in the credits (for what, I didn’t quite see, but good on him!), pleased to see that a People’s Geek like Guillermo gets to take home some “We Like You; Keep Trying” consolation prizes, and very happy indeed to note that George Miller and his fine team took home a bonus trophy for the excellent and sure to be enduring Happy Feet.
Potential Update for This Week:
“My” L.A.
The Cranky George Trio
The State of My Union Address.
Plus everything may come crashing down very fast and kill me. We’ll see…
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Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 8:17 pm by Gregory
When the whole world is paying attention to one thing is a GREAT time to sleep! I just woke up, and now I think I’ll go foraging.
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Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 1:13 pm by Gregory
Some correspondence has gotten through, but plainly some hasn’t, and once I was notified of the existence of this smackback (below), I decided to post it in here for the gratification of its writer, Algonquinel, who has yet to receive her prize because wrong things keep happening here to prevent the flow. Anyway, dig:
You, Gregory, are a Hard Case. How you can like Fellowship and then not wish Cate Blanchett well for her beginning-voiceover value alone in that movie–at least until proven unworthy of those well-wishes, even if only in your eyes–is just asking for bad karma. So, is she unworthy in your eyes? How so? Surely not simply because you think she’s unpretty. And no-big-deal-except-to-agents-etc., would be par for the course. Even in Incredibly Stupid Oscar World (you’re right, FOTR should have won) they at least pretend to base their awards on talent. Do you think she’s a lousy actress? Really? Has she done something somewhere that you find reprehensible or personally offensive? Do you think somebody else should win and you suspect she will instead and it irritates the hell out of you? Do you think that beginning-voiceover sucked? A genuine yes to any of those? Fine. No? Bad karma. With actresses. Hmm. Is this a typical thought pattern with other actresses? Hmm. Right or wrong I rest my case.
I speak with many women. Like programmed robots, they always go, “OhmygodCateBlanchettILOVEHER!!!!” They never express this “opinion” with any depth, nor do they clarify why this product-placement has affected them so severely — so I really shouldn’t have to, either.
But I shall. Because I do make it a point to think at least a little bit more than people who simply buy what they are told to buy.
The thing is, I don’t hate Cate Blanchett, nor do I hate a lot of actresses (it is an occupation, like “villain,” that makes a person significantly harder to like, based on the mindset required for that occupation, but that should be obvious).
I am sick of Cate Blanchett, though; get her the hell out of my face already.
Is she a “good” actress? Subjective. Ultimately unanswerable. I have seen several of the movies in which she is the product being sold — and my opinion is that I’m not impressed by her really annoyingly self-conscious turns in things like Notes on a Scandal (Ooh! I’m All Freaked Out in London!) and Little Fish (Ooh! I’m All Freaked Out in Sydney!). Perhaps some women look to her as a role model or something (which is sad). I see bad, self-conscious acting from the industry’s appointed successor to Meryl Streep, and this annoys me.
(I’ll give her points for raving up Siouxsie, though; I wonder if that was her idea?)
As for LotR, there are only three major things that annoy me about these films:
1. Elijah Wood
2. Cate Blanchett
3. They fucked up the ending something royal.
Then there’s this: Whispering in a fake language is not difficult. Listen:
“A-whsh-whsh-whsh-wooka-wooka-wooka-shmrisssss!”
See?
Aren’t you just mystified by my incredible performance?
Thus, Cate gets zero points for that.
When she finally shows up for her main Galadriel bits – yep — she annoys me. Perhaps I have known too many New Agey women, but that glassy, sickie-beatific, mine-shite-stinketh-not stare (you know the one; also assumed by that other weird-looking Texan chick throughout Miss Potter) is not, to me, Middle Earth-friendly. (Or perhaps there’s some tedious familiarity to Blanchett; imagine if your uncle kept running around going, “I’m Gandalf! I’m magical! Check me out! Wheeeee!“) I sincerely wish that they had hired a real actress to do the role (for instance, Miranda Otto and Liv Tyler, both terrific in their respective roles), someone I would have bought in the character — someone exotic, possibly even someone unknown, someone truly elegant, anyway – rather than someone playing very clumsily at being magical.
If it would have had to be a star, I would have gone for Daryl Hannah overdubbed by Tilda Swinton or something like that (yes, I knew who she was before Narnia, via her arthouse-hardly-anybody-saw-it movies; even met her at a party once, and dig it: I like her).
Elijah Wood, also, I would completely edit out of The Sacred Trilogy. (Gasps of horror round the world.) The rest of the cast are stellar, and then there’s this lousy little sub-Hayden Christensen whiny nothing in the middle. (Gollum! Shelob! Try harder!!) But I have written enough elsewhere in this regard.
As for the third act, the author himself spoke from beyond the grave (and well before the grave) to alert the filmmakers that they were screwing up — and now they have permanently screwed up. The work is still very enjoyable, and more often than not miraculous – but narratively it remains an aching example of wasted potential.
Incidentally, karma and criticism have absolutely nothing to do with one another.
BTW, I don’t care much for Ellen, either, – good on her for waving her freak flag, but that stupid little dance can go straight to hell.
At least they didn’t cast her as Galadriel (though I’m not ruling out a surprise cameo in The Hobbit in 2009).
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Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 3:15 am by Gregory
I did actually make a march out to see the Independent Spirit Awards (or whatever they’re called now), but didn’t try very hard, plus I think their tent must have been set up much further down the beach this time. No biggie.
Instead, I browsed some books and wandered amongst what appeared to be much of humanity, whilst simultaneously and very blatantly eating cookies (vegan chocolate chip) and potato chips (honey-mustard). It was kind of an interesting game — to see if I could keep from doubling the calories going in, as opposed to the calories being burned.
I heard lots of people muttering weirdly to themselves, and one wizened old woman sat alone in the park, crudely tearing out coupons from a wet newspaper; she looked as if she and water had not otherwise encountered one another in at least a year.
In the evening, I attended a screening of L.A. Plays Itself, the rather lengthy documentary about all the weird ways L.A. has been represented in movies, pretty much from Laurel & Hardy through War of the Worlds and Chinatown and Blade Runner to L.A. Confidential and lots (I mean, nearly incomprehensible lots!) of really fucking bad cop movies. The thing’s narrator desperately needs a diction coach, and his endless unsolicited philosophies rival those of lovable windbag Jim Ladd (though Ladd at least has two notes; this guy has one, and barely) — but the laughs are great (take James Dean or Stallone out of context, and it’s instantly amusing), the architectural research seems sound, and when he goes in for struggles of class and race, the thing actually becomes moving. It’s not available on DVD yet (the countless clearances may take years), but in case you haven’t seen it yet: Try. It is infinitely more important viewing than the “Oscars.”
Speaking of that: Shrug.
Speaking of actresses, brief convo. w/ #1 today. She saw Children of Men and hated it. I didn’t like it much either (consider it a failure, actually), but my reasons were that all the seams show, the dialogue is unbelievably stilted, it’s mostly boring, and the direction, frankly, sucks. The movie flows with the grace of a broken wheelbarrow filled with irritable smashed lamp-posts. In two words: It’s crap.
But she hated it for other reasons: Mainly that, “Who would want to tell a story like that? It totally depressed me, and made want to not have a baby!”
When I pointed out that the movie is based on a successful novel by a well-respected professor, her response:
“Well, that figures! Because professors are pathetic, screwed-up people! They’re all thinking, thinking, thinking…it’s all…intellectual…to them, and they know nothing about real emotions and…real…things…”
I told her that Pan’s Labyrinth (nearly her choice, alas) is even more disturbingly violent (if in concentrated bursts), and really about equally nihilistic — however, by comparison, it is very elegantly directed.
I tried to make a case for Happy Feet, but this did not bring any response.
I managed to slip in some unkind words for The Number 23, saying that Children of Men is “a much better movie” — however by that point the vagueness of comparisons brought it all to a halt.
She asked if I’d like to come see her new furniture, and I said I was on my way in the other direction (which was true).
Such fun, my life here.
I took a night walk for some cool air, and encountered a young African-American guy who essentially rushed me and assured me over and over again that he is not a crazy person. I agreed: “Okay, you’re not a crazy person.” He told me I am a fellow artist, and grabbed my hand and shook it, and all but demanded that I examine his art right then and there. I gently declined — not out of judgment but because I have already given this or that person $5 for a colour photocopy of their art or $5 or $7 or even $10 for their CD, or whatever, and I simply don’t feel like doing that right now, nor is it in any way economical until I’m in any way surviving again. So I told him no, thank you, and his response was:
“Hey, man, do you sniff?” (finger to nose) “You know: Sniff?”
I gave a definitive negative, thanked him for saying hello, and moved on.
A bit later on the walk, I encountered a completely full package of a popular brand of cigarettes.
I unloaded the entire pack of popular cigarettes onto the pavement and did a Riverdance on them until they were completely shredded.
That felt terrific.
I fucking hate smoke.
After having to put up with smoke all these years, I sincerely hope all smokers are entirely forced into embarrassing and uncomfortable little quarantine zones to practice their disgusting “craft.”
No offense to them in any other way.
I simply like air.
Funny place I picked to “live,” eh?
(Oh, and you may in turn hate my writing; also notice that it’s not in your eyes unless you choose for it to be.)
Say, since I’m being bothersome, here:
Hey ladies, still love your kitties?
Cheers.
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02.24.07
Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 7:18 am by Gregory
That’s me, baby.
Heh.
Actually, it’s kind of funny, how formerly working for an allegedly “alternative” company ended in catastrophe via my insistence on actually being alternative.
The lesson I took away from that wreckage (the lesson emerging from my own synthesis of the experience, not from them) is that just because something is lousy and lowbrow doesn’t mean it has any “underdog” integrity.
Similarly, just because something is successful does not mean it’s bad.
To this end, I think there are some elements with actual value involved in the “Oscars” (ever notice how stupid that term is?) this year.
And, on the “flip-side” of that HUGE coin, the Spirit of Independent Independence in Independently Independent Spirit Awards (Independent Spirit Awards? Name-change?) are occurring today.
Every year I say I’m going to go to these, and then I always arrive too late or don’t even bother. This year, I may actually go.
Meanwhile, many miles away, an Italian train crashes in the U.K. and an octogenarian woman dies.
And the piglike motherfucker upstairs is already stomping and coughing up his lungs (this happens, purely for my delight, every morning). Guy looks like a Gary Larson character and hates shirts.
Yuck.
I have figured out what Awards Season is really all about, though.
Do you want to know?
Awards Season — all of ‘em, but culminating with the “Oscars” — is really about screaming to the world:
“HA-HA, WE’RE SPECIAL, AND YOU’RE NOT! NYAH-NYAH-NYAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!”
Depending on one’s definition of “special,” I am apt to agree with them.
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