06.08.07
Ms. Parker and the Broken Circle
As I type this, Morrissey is in the Hollywood Bowl, and Garrison Keillor is in the Greek Theatre.
L.A. Dweeb Nite!!!
Me, I would have mixed the shows: Petulant Songs of Sexual Confusion W/ Cloying Faux Commercials!
I should be a producer.
Anyway…
My wonderful eldest nephew rang up just as T-Rex’s “Truck On Tyke” began at the diner during Today’s Actual Meal. The song was enjoyable, but louder than my earpiece. We spoke a bit, and then I finished Veggie Burger, Creamy Broccoli Soup, Small Caesar and — Oh, Sweet Jesus It’s Friday! — Chocolate Cup-Cake!
Walking and talking afterward — the second big Earnest Mobile Male Tete-A-Tete of the day — many good and supportive notions were exchanged. He’s a good kiddo, going to be twenty-five this (Scorpio) year. Together we assembled a deeper understanding of family, popular culture, career options, geography and How Fucking Addictive Information Technology Really Is. We get on great. This time he tipped me off to a programme of which I was previously unaware. It was released in the year of his birth (1982), and is apparently quite the poignant holiday special. It’s called The Snowman. English boy builds snowman, which becomes his True Friend and takes him on an adventure to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus. Narration re-dubbed for American release by David “Bowie” Jones. This topic came about because I needed to know if my nephew still plays clarinet (I may have something nice for him in this regard). Turns out, in February, he picked it up again, in order to play the song from The Snowman: “Walking in the Air” — for which he had discovered the sheet music. How grand! He strongly recommends. I love to hear details such as these!
Dispersing swiftly with a couple of random details: Apparently my cousin-in-law’s father has departed the planet, and…
…(unrelated) a wanton exhibitionist (and demonstrator) has been stalking my old neighbourhood — scaring the ladies with his overall demonstrativeness. More sightings than the Yeti. That’s so strange: You’d think a positive I.D. would be pretty quick to follow. Perhaps I’ll write a novel about the departed gazing down from the gauzy firmament, helping the locals catch the wanker. If you’d like to option the rights, that’ll be ten million pounds (to hell with the American dollar already — thanks, Dubya — 590 days and counting).
With condolences to the bereaved.
Breath.
Last night — now, that was something! I go to a lot of Movie Things (the evening of Hot Fuzz was particularly enjoyable!!), and the experience of Broken English — w/Writer-Director & Star — proved to be one of the really good ones.
First, let us introduce the speakers:
There’s mighty writer F.X. Feeney on the left, Broken English writer-director Zoe Cassavetes in the middle, and the inimitable Parker Posey on the right.
Introductions thus established, let us say that it was A Rousing Evening For Smart Independent Cinema. Going in cold, I certainly didn’t know what to expect — other than having seen the trailer (good, not mind-blowingly great, just kinda female-angsty) and being aware that Another Movie-Family Daughter Had Taken Up The Lens.
Like Sofia, Zoe is indeed another somewhat strange-looking semi-nepotism case with plentiful Quirky Feelings and Hipster Soundtracks to unload. Also like Sofia, she has even gotten herself a French musician boyfriend (oh, life and its obvious patterns). However — unlike Sofia — Zoe has delivered here a remarkably unpretentious movie which firmly places Soul over Style — plus a project that the hopeless devotees of Sex and the City and I can probably enjoy equally — and friends, that is saying something.
This is Zoe. (She is very talented.)
What impressed me most about Zoe — apart from her terrific gifts with actors and dialogue (some of the best “chemistry” scenes I’ve seen in years) is her utter candour. She was very happy to discuss her hundreds of rejections (she even put a big ‘L’ for ‘Loser’ on her forehead, sorry I missed that) and the terrible difficulty of simply getting somebody to give her a million dollars. Male producers simply didn’t like her script. Eventually she succeeded, but at the top, when F.X. explained that there were many interested filmmakers in the house — and what artist really likes close competition? — she intoned, “Don’t do it!”
Incidentally, this isn’t really a review of Broken English (which I’ll post elsewhere on the site, as time allows) — plus, to be honest, I’m already getting tired of that “reporting on what other creative people are doing” thing (though I’ll non-soldier on). If you want to know the whole truth of it, although my Mojo is indeed back after an extended holiday in The Pre-Dawn Zone, I am nonetheless feeling those Friday Nite Blues, exacerbated by a really outrageous and hasn’t-gone-away sense of Finding Happiness and then — not really losing it — but having Astoundingly Aggressive And Uncompromising Forces Tear It Away From Me — Utterly Sans Plausible Or Respectful Explantion. Surely there is plenty of happiness elsewhere (or, in Empowered French Femmespeak via the movie: “‘a penis?” — er, got one, thanks anyway), but this is one of the reasons I so relate to Parker Posey’s Nora in this movie — not the pills, not the desperate attraction to a simpleminded significantly younger partner, and definitely not the pasted-on ‘appy ending — but the depth and sincerity of her heartache.
Back to the fun, though…
…oh, here’s a proper photo of Parker Posey, who, it turns out, is a Water Sign.
This photo is significant, in that it marks one of the very first times I have ever observed a Guest (or, for that matter, a Host) actually drinking the bottled water provided for them onstage!
It is also significant in that Ms. Posey set a second (and related) record by blatantly announcing, mid-interview, that she needed to go “to the bathroom.” Not only was this honesty refreshing (she did indeed up and go and return), but also revealed that Ms. Posey was not technically born into the Industry — particularly into Hollywood — where it has been my experience since Day One back at Paramount that Born’n'Bred Industry People — for some reason defying all logic and social grace — feel it is incredibly necessary to SHOUT to all within a wide circumference that they are “GOING TO GO PEE!!!!!”
(Ms. Posey, thankfully, was not so specific.)
It may bear noting, however, that Ms. Posey’s initials are, after all, “P.P.” — and, more disturbingly, “P.C.P.” — if one includes the middle one.
Oh, right — but what was actually said?
Well, allow me to say that it was actually one of the liveliest and most spirited Interviews/Q&As I have ever attended. I have even hosted a few, including one for Keith Gordon’s criminally overlooked The Chocolate War, wherein the volume of guests on the stage (eight) threatened to outnumber the audience. And lively it was, not simply because “Women Uniting Are Always Exciting” or some such Lezbo bumper-sticker sentiment, or because F.X. is really a genius of Cinema (the man wrote Frankenstein Unbound!), or even because the movie was good. It was just a magical blend of all the elements — possibly combined with the notion that I am walking around pretending I am happy when I am not — but only with a sprinkle of that last ingredient. It was simply a fine time.
Oh, and another thing: Maybe I’m a bit fascinated by this particular evening because A Transition is afoot. Not only does this otherwise fine script kinda give its male characters short shrift (they’re all “types” — either cads or wimps or, in the lead, an emotional fantasy chainsmoker with a really bad forehead and without much real Soul), but there was a distinct sense of reverse sexism in the mix, a bit of (*yawn*) It’s Our Turn, Boys! Tee-Hee! What saved it for me is that Posey’s performance really transcends gender and arrives squarely at Human.
A lot of things were ac–oh, heck, another photo to keep the visually-obsessed plugging along with me:
What happened here was a woman near the back of the theatre dared to get up somewhere in the middle of the discussion. Posey immediately jumped on her case, offering a sarcastic Goodbye! The woman subsequently returned, announcing, “I’m back!” (All of which may have liberated Posey’s psyche to allow herself her own bathroom break.)
Anyway…
Have I mentioned that F.X. is really cool? He is. I’m not just saying that. He and I share a height. For a while, we also shared a career.
I have observed F.X. (whose actual names even I do not know!) interviewing lots of Greats — but never have I seen him having such fun as he was with Zoe and Parker. “Was that great, or what?” was how he started the evening. Nobody took him to task about it.
This Spring I was regaled with actressy tales of a wannabe director claiming that she’s “too pretty” to take the lead in his “movie” — and even attempting to “write” another “movie” around her particular ”obsession” — with bonus Lesbian smooching, of course — just to keep her hooked. Sickening.
Quite the opposite here. F.X. launched in with Parker to find out what draws her to an independent director. Turns out she read the script three years ago and loved it, but thought she’d be playing kinda-married sidekick Audrey (which went to Drea de Matteo — who is funny and a bit yucky in her nigh-unfaithful role). Nope. Lead. Posey ain’t The Queen of the Independents for nothing (and, as I discovered, it’s not just the Pat Benatar jaw).
Admittedly, F.X. did his share of gushing, but to good ends, as Zoe explained of her writing, “Ugh! Ugh! I don’t wanna be this person…but I am!” And therein lies so much of the wonder of this particular movie. It turned out much funnier than she intended…
…and Parker explained why: that she gets loads of scripts full of cutesy humour, “but when people are actually hurting — that’s funny!”
(Right now, incidentally, I’m god-damned hilarious.)
Anyway, here:
.JPG)
This is Parker soothingly crooning to me her siren song of Independence. (Looks a bit like Marie Osmond doing “I’m a Little Bit Country,” non??)
Oh, and…
Here is Parker either almost-sneezing or making some sort of strange “monster” sound.
This is the thing: Parker Posey is a new discovery for me. Odd that it took so long and even that a friend’s brother directed her a decade ago — but there it is. I thought she was great in the Christopher Guest movies, but outright missed a lot of her other ones, plus (you knew it was coming) she is an actress — and for me, generally, actresses may briefly summon faux-lust or faux-longing — but because they are actresses, and I worked in a talent agency for a damned long-enough time, I instinctively know that, at heart, they are horrible. So I barely notice them, most of the time — regardless of how many movies they make or how popular they are or how much of their anatomy they are willing to sell in order to gain — whatever the hell it is they are trying to gain.
That’s why last night was so great. Parker Posey was mildly obnoxious and definitely strange — but because her performance in Broken English was so obviously heartfelt, sincere, wrenching and beautiful (even fat old Kevin Thomas, who makes Fred Schneider look straight, announced as he passed me on the way out, “That was a really terrific picture!” — no kidding) — I was somehow primed to accept her, also, as a human being.
Something, I don’t know, something about her previously…kind of drove me away. I’ll admit that I didn’t actually enjoy watching her tongue-kiss the asshole actor creep in the otherwise hilarious-nasty early fuckup in Broken English (who would want to see their significant other — whoever hers may be — doing that on a huge public screen with some other person?) — but I was also genuinely won over by her character Nora’s plight: She wants to love, she earnestly does the right things — and she gets screwed over (and merely screwed) for it.
I was touched.
When the woman herself sat down, tucked her legs up on the chair and proceeded to heckle the audience, I thought: Hm…actress. Nervier than most, but still an actress.
There are always “gushers” — people in the audience who don’t really have a question but feel desperate to lavish highly emotional praise upon the people on the stage who are actually much better off than they are — but one of them provoked something in Parker I found provocative: He asked about how she changes in every movie.
“I change all the time, yeah,” she replied, frankly and without attitude. “I feel like I’m constantly changing.”
Emerging recently from my own recent personal hell, I figured: Oh she has got to be a damned Gemini.
Well…I looked.
Scorpio!
Born only a week away from myself!
Hey, tribeswoman!
She’s still an actress, and this isn’t a crush, but when she spoke of her character (following the line: “I’m so desperate! I can’t stand the sight of my own desperation!”):
“She’s in a bad place. And, you know, we’ve all been in bad places, and, you know, that, when you start feeling like that, you want people around to help you get out of the bad places that you’ve found yourself in, and those places can be really seductive — and warm and depressing and cozy, if you’re a depressive type — which a lot of people are…um…including myself. And what do we learn from that? How do we get ourselves out of that? And Nora doesn’t quite know where she’s at, she doesn’t have the courage to take herself out of it. Um, the cringe-factor: That makes you be a bitch; and that makes you not fun to be around; and rude and all sorts of things…which I loved, you know, portraying, and I like that because, underneath people who behave like that…uh…I think it’s funny.”
…I was kind of wowed. And kind of healed. It was good to hear someone clarify such a thing.
F.X. then added that, “It’s like she’s hiding from herself. There’s something comical about somebody hiding from something that everybody else sees.”
At that point, the woman got up, and Parker interrogated her, concluding: “She hates me.”
Again, Zoe added, “I didn’t really mean for the movie to be that funny.” (She then referenced one of my fave movies, The Big Picture: “I love movies about movies that are so real like that.”)
Me, I rarely ask questions from the audience, but in this case I was intrigued.
SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING.
“Was there ever a point in the screenwriting process when Nora did not miraculously encounter Julian on the Metro at the end?”
Frankly, given not only that the kicker is so farfetched as to push the movie into Science Fiction, it just bugged me that some real, earnest men tried to be with Nora and she turned them down, but she was willing to search thousands of miles for a little dipshit chainsmoker several years younger just because he seemed “novel” and they didn’t do it on their first date.
Zoe’s rambling response started with writing a couple of drafts very different from the finished movie, wrapped in some anecdotal material about finding an amicable producer, etc., etc., then…
“…and I was in Paris one day, and I was standing on the Seine with my script, like this…” (held aloft) “…and I’m going, I’m going in with it, I’m not making this, I hate everyone, I hate myself, I hate life…but…I put a lot of effort into this…so I kept writing and I kept writing, and I wrote this last script, and at the very end I took my very first script and my very last script…because the very first script is always the most, kind of, genuine feeling that you want out of something, and the very last one is like the most work you ever did on something, and I thought, well, we’ll do…you know, it’s a skeleton, for something…and, you know: She goes through a lot of stuff in this movie; she’s tortured, a lot — so it was nice to have her, you know, have something good happen in her life…and…my friends were pushing for a happy ending.”
Eh. I’m not convinced. I loved the movie’s awkward brilliance until the last few minutes, but I would have preferred for Nora to depart Paris bereft, and to build her strength until a simple little balm is inadequate for her, until she’s ready for something real. But that’s me.
Anyway, this was when the diabolical Space Symbiote suddenly attached itself to Parker Posey:
The Space Symbiote attaches itself to Parker Posey.
Oh, and here’s when Zoe was forced to play “psychic” in order to probe the deranged psyche of “Black Suit Parker”:
Zoe mind-probes Black Suit Parker.
And so on.
And here’s to the American actress whose impressive work only became identifiable to me by name last night:
Parker Christian Posey.
(Thank you for giving me exactly the distraction I needed.)
Post Script: Remember my dead friend, Marnye? Her fave movie of all time was Mark Waters’ The House of Yes. Took me quite a while to see it, and I only really have the fuzzy memory of struggling to stay awake through it too late/early in the night/morning. But that was a circle broken…and broken it needn’t be anymore. Thanks again.
Okay, well, that took entirely too long, but I hope it had some value for you, Dear Reader.
I was in a natural foods market this evening, and found myself well and truly chuffed by the sudden P.A.-blasting of the original Van Halen’s “Beautiful Girls,” followed promptly by Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Fine. I’m recently crushed but get the fuck out of my way anyway; I want to have some fun. (Never mind that both lead singers of those groups soon enough became gay caricatures of themselves.)
Real Girlfriend:Too much to ask?
Song of the Night: “Come Home, Billy Bird” by The Divine Comedy (actually, anything by The Divine Comedy — but that’s one of the best).
Bon Week-End, Mes Amis!
counter