You can still see the terrific episode, the "TruInside" story of The Jerk, showing online. The show covers the history, absurdist innovations and legacy of the Carl Reiner-directed, Steve Martin-starring comedy classic. I'm in this, discussing the film, along with Carl Reiner, Jackie Mason, Renn Woods, Carl Gottlieb, Michael Elias, Matt Zoller Seitz, Mark Harris, Judd Apatow, Peter Farrelly, Maya Rudolph, M. Emmet Walsh and more. Produced by the great Jack Lechner.

If you missed it on the tube, you can check it out here. Here's a little clip in which I discuss one of my favorite scenes. The can scene in the gas station. M. Emmet Walsh going after Navin Johnson after Navin excitedly feels like a somebody for being in the phone book, and then becoming one, a target, but a target for being a nothing, which makes him somebody, but in the end, a nobody, pretty much exemplifies the existential absurdity of life. That's how great The Jerk is.  

 

Who cares about Easter tomorrow? It's all about today. Today, Sterling Hayden, one of the greatest actors and screen presences in the history of cinema, would have turned 100-years old. Not surprisingly, I've compared Hayden to Jesus Christ.

"Hayden is so Hayden you feel like you’re watching, not just an icon, but some kind of loser Jesus Christ. As if Kubrick’s idol Weegee were God and Hayden were his son — J.C. as a deep-voiced, lumbering ex-con with too-short a tie and a pouty lower lip."

That's from my 2015 piece for Sight & Sound about one of his greatest roles with one of the most powerful endings in cinema and one of the great last lines, uttered by Hayden, as Johnny Clay in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. More on Jesus:

"Hayden and Grey are still on the go, lamely attempting a taxi outside the airport while the police inch through the double glass doors. So what’s Hayden’s famed response to this spectacular ruin? It’s the resigned, quiet and tough, “Eh, what’s the difference?” That last line is so many things at once – deeply sad, it’s an embracing of nihilism and, yet, weirdly Zen. You’ll never escape Kubrick’s fateful frames, no matter how much Hayden’s big-boned body shoves through doors. Hayden’s trapped but his acceptance is so cool, so calm, so perfect, he almost busts through Kubrick’s maddening maze via pure acknowledgment. If doom could be motivating, Hayden is downright inspirational. Maybe he is Jesus Christ."

Read my entire piece here.

But also, take in Elliott Gould's take on Hayden. From my extensive 3-part interview with Gould, George Segal and Joseph Walsh about Robert Altman’s California Split (and a lot more). They loved Sterling Hayden:

Kim Morgan: So you, George, and Elliott were both in movies with Sterling Hayden [Loving and The Long Goodbye].

Joseph Walsh: I loved Sterling in the movies, but I never met him personally. [To Segal and Gould] Did you love Sterling?

Elliott Gould: I loved him. Dan Blocker was supposed to play the part. He was a very good friend of Altman’s. Dan Blocker died and the picture almost went south. And so then we were talking about John Huston, who I loved. Bob cast Sterling Hayden. So Sterling had been in Ireland doing something with R. D. Laing, the poet and philosopher who wrote a book called Knots. And so I asked to spend a little time, a moment alone with Sterling in the house where we shot, where Kathryn and Bob lived, down in Malibu. So we spent that moment alone. And so I knew that Sterling knew that I knew that Sterling knew that I knew that Sterling knew that I understood him. So I just loved him.

KM: Did you ever read his book Wanderer?

EG: Yes. When he kidnapped his kids, right?

JW: I liked the way he wanted to live his life, Sterling Hayden.

EG: I visited him on his péniche, which is like a barge. He had it in France on the Seine and I saw him there. And then he had it sent to Northern California and I visited him there too. He was a great guy. I think he worked in the Yugoslavian Underground during World War II.

JW: Did he really? Wow. Okay

Read the entire discussion here.

 

Briefly, on Cul-de-sac. 50 years ago.

Roman Polanski emerged from the womb understanding the art of filmmaking. Or, perhaps, understanding the art of wombs — diseased, depraved, disordered and of course, provocative wombs. Cruelty, violence, twisted sexuality, madness, absurdity — many of Polanski's hallmark obsessions — are almost always confined to one space. The director loves nothing more than  trapping his characters in devil-worshiping apartment buildings, phallic, knife-wielding boat trips, sadomasochistic cruises and unhappy, unsound houses. And water frequently surrounds them.

Cul-de-sac (1966) is a batshit crazy precursor to themes he would continually study: tortured relationships, bizarre, often charming alarming blonde women, infidelity, cross-dressing, even a bit of film noir, aided by the stalwart, gravel-voiced Lionel Stander, Cul-de-sac is stunningly, at times, brilliantly unhinged with a Pinteresque touch while remaining pure Polanski. 

Donald Pleasence is the odd fellow living with a gorgeous, beguiling wife (the ever poignant Francoise Dorléac; sister to Catherine Deneuve, and an actress who left the world too soon), whom he keeps  in an enormous, isolated house on a tiny island off the northeast coast of Britain. Playing like an especially kinky Desperate Hours, the couple will be forced to host two escaped criminals (Stander and Jack MacGowran) after the thugs land at their nutty abode. And then things get…really interesting. But it's not just crime and entrapment that make the story compelling, it's all of the Polanski touches, particularly when he observes the idle activities of Dorléac. 

I love her character. Her feral nature mixed with mischief and intelligence and some other quality that might be deemed a bit crazy but, no, she's not crazy. She fascinating. A wonderfully weird, mysterious woman. Some may dismiss her as merely childish, but this is a woman — a woman who can revert to a girl (and what man hasn't reverted to bratty boy?) and a woman who is cheating on her cross-dressing husband. (Somehow, the cross-dressing isn't such a big deal, just curious and kinky, and not in the doubling, terrifying way Roman's tortured Tenant Trelkowski is). There's power dynamics going on in this relationship, but they are so muddy, that they seem more heightened versions of just how human we all are (but many of us keep hidden). We're all a blend of man, woman, cheater, sadist, masochist… makeup.

We're also often bored, no matter how crazy our relationship is. And Dorléac is expert at showing how perpetually bored she is, stuck in the house like a more spirited, extra primal Virgin Suicide sister, she engages in childlike activities to amuse herself. It's unhealthy for women to be stuck in the house all the time in Polanski pictures (Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby) and Dorléac knows it. She tears around the house barefoot, applies exaggerated eyeliner (or helps her husband with his), messes with rifles and, the best, and most hilarious, lights a sleeping Stander's feet on fire with burning pieces of newspaper between his toes ("It's called a bicycle" she taunts). Oh…you just don't do that to Lionel Stander. Or perhaps, you do. Between these two mismatched misfits, it's disarmingly sexy. Stander with a belt. She bolts. Polanski so expertly builds up to it, taking his time for us to observe, listen, laugh and flinch. And laugh again. And then feel a little sexually unnerved (in a good or bad way — or both) while laughing. Polanski's good at that.

These characters don't establish things like "safe" words nor do they understand the concept of such a thing, so the perversity, stark beauty, the isolation, the bleakness, the menacing sexuality and the insanity make the whole experience oppressive and ominous, yes, but also a black-humored good/bad time.

And, yes, you can have a good/bad time, especially with Francoise Dorléac.  

If you haven't already, go get yourself a beautiful copy of Cul-de-sac from Criterion.

 

Bette Davis defines Oscar. After all, wasn't it the divine Ms. Davis who coined the Academy's golden boy as "Oscar?" The story goes that the little man's rear-end reminded the actress of her then-husband, Oscar, and clever Bette anointed it so. Whether or not this story is true (and it's more than likely, not) it doesn't matter to me.  Bette named the Oscar. Fact. No need to check. Print the legend. As Werner Herzog would say, it's ecstatically true. She was also, the Academy's first female president (and resigned in frustration). Bette, in performance and in real life, she's all Oscar –  the role, the telecast, the speech and the ensuing behavior after winning (or not winning) swirled into one nice circular motion of her ever-present cigarette.

Because, as I've stated before, Bette Davis is every woman (and some men) wrapped into one: ugly and beautiful, sweet and biting, honest and deceitful, classy and vulgar. There isn't a side of Bette that every woman (and perhaps men) doesn't see in herself. Her face — those buggy eyes flickering with near-homeliness and yet an odd, sometimes exquisite beauty (never forget how uniquely gorgeous Bette was as a young starlet), sadness, insanity, malevolence, rage and finally, strength. And her little body — coiled up and ready to strike (as in Another Man's Poison) or sloppy and cruelly casual (like in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?: "Here's your lunch" she announces to Joan before promptly serving her a rat) or lovely and wary (as in All This, and Heaven Too) or brassy and swishy (as in Jezebel) or an elegant liar (as in The Letter) or mousy turned gorgeous (as in Now, Voyager) or just plain gloriously melodramatic, then vulnerable (as in All About Eve) or bitchy, vain and heart-breaking, so desperate (as in The Star). 

The Star. Where Bette possesses her coveted golden boy but no one cares. Well, no one cares except the audience, Natalie Wood and Sterling Hayden (pretty damn good company). I always wished Bette had won another one for The Star (directed by Stuart Heisler). Bette's transformation in the picture is, to use that overused word, brave. But it is. Specifically because she didn't go emaciated, fat, ugly or crazy, she simply did … dumpy and, bitter, and down and out. She hit close to the bone and had to be thinking of her own life as an actress. Like Bette on a bad day with bad hair and bad frocks and a bad hangover and that kind of brutally honest insecurity actresses dare not discuss while looking blousy. They are older. They are vain. They are sensitive. The industry's harsh. They can't handle it.

In real life Bette could handle it, which is exactly why she could take on the tough material of The Star. How many actresses, in a wonderfully meta-moment, would look at their actual Academy Award and say: "Come on, Oscar, let's you and me get drunk!" before embarking on a dipsomaniacal star tour of jealousy and pity that results in an arrest — all with their statuette in tow? Perhaps in a comedy, but aside from real life  – and I'm sure plenty of washed-up winners have driven through Beverly Hills, their Oscar propped on the dash like a gilded GPS system, cursing the career of Jennifer Lawrence — not many would take it that far.

But, again, in the under-appreciated The Star, Bette takes it that far with her Margaret Elliot, a forty-something (looking more fifty-something, and still fantastic to me because she's Bette fucking Davis) ex-goddess — a part played with a believable amount of sympathetic sadness and unlikable self-absorption. And she holds up beautifully, feeling as relevant today as she did then. We know this woman has never lost her star power, even if studio's don't want her anymore (it's Bette Davis for chrissakes) and so the movie, while showcasing her unwillingness to let go (rather unfairly) does through virtue of Davis's powerful performance, blame both the cruelty of Hollywood and those living in a land of delusion.

You'll wince when you see her prospective boyfriend (a strapping Hayden) suggest she get a job at Saks Fifth Avenue, not because it's a bad job (she's broke after all), but because she'll later lose her mind working there, and… she's a talented actress. She should be acting. But you'll positively squirm when you watch her potentially triumphant screen test, something that turns disastrous when she can't accept that her washerwoman role isn't … sexy. Her realization of blowing it based on her own vanity doesn't punish her, however, you just feel for her. She sees what she did wrong. She cries. She accepts it. And, by film end, there's a freedom in returning to Hayden and embarking on a potentially easier life with him, aging out of the spotlight, but there's also a loss and sadness there. This woman should still be working. She's not Bette Davis in The Star, she's Margaret Elliot, but, really, she's Bette Davis. Thank goodness Bette never retired.

Because two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis was always the star and actress — her finest roles, her later spirited talk show appearances, bad TV, good TV, Burnt Offerings and all.

The auteur who prompted Norma Desmond to instinctively ready herself for her closeup, Mr. DeMille, has an award named after him (a Golden Globe). I think it's about time Ms. Davis did too. As she said of herself, "In this business until you're known as a monster you're not a star." She also said, "I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived." Indeed. Enjoy (or don't enjoy) the Oscars. And, really, do take Fountain. 

The new Sight & Sound features my ten-page interview with its February cover star, Quentin Tarantino, and they have graciously allowed me to excerpt a portion of the extensive Q&A here. This is a nice chunk of it, but there's so much more in the magazine, from getting to know his characters, to the Roadshow appeal of The Hateful Eight and themes in the movie, to movie violence, to Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Django, to shooting on Ultra Panavision, to his own theater in Los Angeles, The New Beverly (shout out to Clu Gulager in the issue), to his love of old film prints, to interesting thoughts and facts about his past movies, and much, much more. Dig in and read it all via the magazine (buy a copy here). For now, check out these choice moments from the interview.

“There was a whole lot of speculation from some people about this whole 70mm thing, as in, that’s really great, but it’s just this set-bound parlor piece, so isn’t it just a big old fucking waste of time and money? And, I think that’s a shallow view of how 70mm can be employed. It’s not just to shoot the Seven Wonders of the World, the Sahara desert and mountain ranges. You can do more than just shoot weather…. I’ve shot a lot of movies with Sam Jackson but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten the close-ups of him that I’ve got in this. You drink in the chocolate of his skin, you swim in those eyes… And also, it becomes about the dialogue.”  – Quentin Tarantino

KM: The Hateful Eight: This is another western and, in many ways, like Django [2012] a political one. You’ve said that you originally didn’t think of it politically in terms of current times and, yet, the movie has become that. The western genre is often an effective way to explore psychological, political and cultural themes, and through the history of cinema… would you agree?

QT: I’ve always felt that actually. I’ve always felt, and, especially if you read any of the really interesting subtextual criticism on westerns, especially leading into the late 60s and into the 70s, westerns have always done a pretty good job reflecting the decade in which they were made without seemingly trying to. When westerns were probably at their most popular, during the 50s, they definitely put forth an Eisenhower-esque America. And it was also an America and an American west that was flush with American exceptionalism — having just won World War II and the advent of the suburbs. That was very important to westerns back them. And even, in an interesting way, while they weren’t bold enough in the 50s to deal with the race problem in America … they actually tried to somewhat deal with black and white issues via Indian and white issues… like [Delmer Daves’s] Broken Arrow [1950] … 

And, that followed suit with the first half of the 60s, which was basically the 50s part II. But in 1966 on, things started changing and spaghetti westerns went a long way toward doing that: the stylization, the use of music, but also the counterculture. So by '68, '69, '70 and '71, you had the hippie westerns, the counterculture westerns, whether they be Kid Blue [1973] or The Hired Hand [1971] or Zachariah [1971], things like that. The 70s, particularly in America, was one of the best times for the western. And the changes went further into the 70s; it increased as the decade went on, [in terms of] the true “anti-western.” Because so many of the different westerns at that time dealt with the Vietnam War, in one way or another.

KM: Like Robert Aldrich’s Ulzana's Raid [1972]…

QT: Yes. Ulzana's Raid is the perfect example. Most of the Vietnam metaphor movies don’t work quite as well any more because you’re thinking, “Well, why didn’t you just make a movie about Vietnam?” Ulzana's Raid actually still completely works as a Vietnam metaphor, because that was underneath it, and what was on top of it was a war movie about the American Indian wars, about the calvary fighting a nomad army, about how warfare like that is done. So it was legitimately a war movie about those times and taken seriously as a war movie in a way that most movies dealing with that subject didn’t do. But you had a situation during that era, of, 'We can’t trust our government for getting us into this war, they said it was this; it wasn’t, we don’t trust them …' all the different hypocrisies that kept rearing their ugly heads leading to Watergate.

And so one of the things that was so interesting about that new Hollywood time period, and particularly reflected from 69-74, not only did the happy ending go away, it was the vogue to have the cynical ending — the cynical, hypocritical, tragic ending. We were cynical about America and these movies just confirmed our cynicism about the subjects. And because we were cynical about America, you see movies that rip down the statues that we had built. So you see Frank Perry’s Doc [1971], which skewers the Wyatt Earp legend. And then, after everyone from Roy Rogers to almost everybody else playing Jesse James, you have Robert Duvall playing Jesse James in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972) where he’s a homicidal maniac; it’s completely horrifying. And then Michael J. Pollard in Dirty Little Billy [1971]… 

KM: Billy "was a punk”

QT: [Laughs] Exactly, right. And Michael J. Pollard looking like that one famous photos of William H. Bonney, more than Robert Taylor ever did. [Laughs]. The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (is miles away from the Tyrone Power Jesse James movie. And leading to the most overt Watergate Western, Posse [1975], directed by Kirk Douglas, starring Douglas and Bruce Dern; written by William Roberts, who wrote the screenplay for The Magnificent Seven [1960]. 

KM: And in terms of The Hateful Eight, recently, in your real life politically, it’s interesting because you’ve had all of this…

QT: Brouhaha [Laughs]

KM: Yes. Brouhaha with the police, which became ridiculous. No one with any sense can be on board with their statements and methods towards protesting you — the intimidation.

QT: Oh, yeah I know. It’s been an interesting four weeks as far as that was concerned [Laughs]. The first week, everyone was piling on me. And then, the second week, I react to it and that was kind of interesting because all of a sudden, everyone on TV ended up having some sort of say about it, so I thought, “Wow, this is good that this much about police brutality is being dealt with and is in the news so much.” And then the cops do themselves no favors by issuing genuine threats. The funny part about it is, people ask, “Well, are you worried?” And of course I’m not worried. At the end of the day I don’t feel that the police are some sort of sinister Black Hand organization that singles out private citizens to fuck over. Nevertheless, a civil service entity shouldn’t even be putting out threats, even in a rhetorical nature, towards private citizens and the fact that they’re using language that makes them sounds like bad guys in an 80s action movie doesn’t help their cause any. In fact, it almost makes my cause. Almost sounds as if they’re out of touch. [Laughs] 

KM: About [Jennifer Jason Leigh's Daisy Domergue] character: It might be a bit controversial for some because she gets smacked around a lot; she’s taking it as tough as anyone else and that she’s endured this before is part of who she is…

QT: There’s an interesting aspect to that. No one’s yet to nail me personally or in person about that aspect: that she takes so much abuse in the course of the movie and I’m almost looking forward to it because I’m curious exactly where they’re coming from. You feel it ripple through the audience the first few times she gets the shit beat out of her. And you feel it in old movies too, you know, when the girl is hysterical and the guy just smacks the shit out of her: “I’m sorry honey I hated to do that but you’re off your nut.” [Laughs] But that’s different. When Daisy is really hit the first time, she’s saying rude shit: “You’re not going to let that ni**** in here?” And he cracks her skull.

KM: And the first time he hits her it follows with such a powerful close-up. Her slightly vulnerable and then, angry face. You have a lot of mixed feelings when you see that shot. You do feel for her. You’ve just met her. How despicable is she?

QT: Oh, I think it’s one of the best shots. And, yes, yes, all of those questions are left to be answered. She’s definitely a rude, hateful bitch, that’s for damn sure, but his response is so brutal. He didn’t just punch her; he takes the butt of his gun and cracks her in the skull really hard. And that close-up, yes, she’s fantastic in the close-up. And you realize just how bad he hit her when the blood starts dripping down her face. But you have this feeling of, “Ohhh… this is going to be that kind of movie” and it’s just starting off. And nobody’s not going to be on Daisy’s side after that, in some way or another, because you’ll think, John Ruth is a brutal, brutal man. And you’re right: John Ruth is a brutal, brutal man. If the movie were on John Ruth’s side at that point well, then, maybe somebody might have a more righteous pen, writing a subtextual article about it. But the movie is obviously not on John Ruth’s side at that point. And especially in the stagecoach… But then things change as they go on. It’s part of the way the story works; anything can happen to any one of these eight characters. The idea that I would give a female character some blanket coat of invincibility in that regard is just a ridiculous concept; it would be detrimental to her and to the sex of her character if I played any favorites.

KM: One thing I find interesting about the old western shows and that time in television in general, was that it was this period in television during which some seasoned, interesting directors like Joseph H. Lewis, were directing episodes of The Rifleman while newer guys coming in, like Robert Altman, was directing Bonanza.

QT: Yep. Bonanza, Combat!…

KM: And then you had John Cassavetes starring in Johnny Staccato [1959-60] and Ben Gazzara in Run For Your Life [1965-68] and then an old movie star like Barbara Stanwyck leading The Big Valley [1965-69]. And, on top of that, you’d see all these unique, particular talents with guest stars like Warren Oates, Warren Oates doing all kinds of things…

QT: Him and Bruce Dern were sidekicks in Stoney Burke [1962-63] the Jack Lord rodeo show.

KM: Yes. A show with great cold openings!  And then The Virginian [1962-71]…

QT: [Laughs] Yeah. I’m a huge fan of, in particular the William Whitney episodes of The Virginian. His episodes are really terrific because he actually had the budget that he didn’t quite have while at Republic. They were like 90-minute movies and were actually released as movies overseas. But. Sam Fuller did a magnificent episode of The Virginian ["It Tolls For Thee," 1962], which he wrote and directed. It’s a Sam Fuller episode in every way. It stars Lee Marvin as the bad guy who kidnaps Lee J. Cobb and the episode is all about that kidnapping. Marvin and Fuller wouldn’t work together again until The Big Red One. It’s Sam Fuller dialogue from beginning to end. And, I have to say; I took one line from it for The Hateful Eight. I won’t say the line in my movie but I’ll say the line from The Virginian: Lee Marvin runs an outlaw gang and then another guy in the gang, a guy named Sharkey, starts talking to the gang to try to get them to forget about Lee Marvin and Lee Marvin just shoots him in the back. Lee Marvin says, “One measly bullet and there goes the problem of Sharkey.” [Laughs]

KM: The Hateful Eight, it’s not timeless, but because there’s a sometimes-modern subtext to the characters, and timeless issues we’re contending with today, it doesn’t feel simply rooted in the past. Looking at people from the past, they often are more radical looking than we think, in terms of appearance, especially people in the west…

QT: There definitely is that. There is a spaghetti western-ish patina to the characters, for lack of a better adjective. Most of the really interesting characters in the Spaghetti Western have a comic-book feel, as if they were drawn. And the costumes themselves have this comic-book artist kind of fetishistic quality to them. Then you think of all of Leone’s films and most of Sergio Corbucci westerns were done by Carol Sini, who was the costumer designer and the production designer, and he did the props. Can you imagine the guy who came up with the Django costume and Angel Eyes’ costume and the Man with No Name costume he, also, like, found the circular graveyard in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly [1966] or that fucking rope bridge over the quicksand or the fucking muddy town in Django? I mean, what a genius! That level of work is almost unfathomable. I did show Courtney Hoffman, my costume designer, a bunch of Carlo Sini movies and she got it. The character’s costumes have to pop before the characters. With Sam Jackson that’s easy because he comes with a big personality on his own. He fills out that batwing, yellow underlining just perfect [Laughs].

KM: In terms of actors, I know that two of your favorite actors are Aldo Ray and Ralph Meeker. Is there anything about an actor, or those two guys in particular, that informs a cinematic aesthetic? Just an actor and a style, the world around them…

QT: Well, actually, literally in the case of Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction [1994] it did. What I liked about Bruce Willis is that he reminded me a 50s leading man. He still has that quality now. He reminded me of a Ralph Meeker, Aldo Ray, and Brian Keith kind of man. I went to his house and we did actually watch one print of an Aldo Ray movie, we watched Nightfall [1957].

KM: A great movie. And with an evil Brian Keith too. They have great banter in that movie.

QT: They have fantastic banter. And Brian Keith is excellent. I’m a big fan of Brian Keith in all of his Phil Karlson movies too. With the rise of the great 70s leading man, with the rise of Elliott Gould, Jack Nicholson, Donald Sutherland, Dustin Hoffman and George Segal, the one thing that took a hit were people like that Brian Keith leading man.

KM: Who are the actors you’ve most have wanted to work with?

QT: Obviously, Ralph Meeker and Aldo Ray are two of them. Michael Parks, in his day. I worked with him but in his day would have been nice. Robert Blake in his day. I would work with Robert Blake tomorrow, now would be nice too. I would have loved to work with Bette Davis in her day or out of her day. In the early 60s, in the 40s, 30s to Burnt Offerings [1976] time. All good. TV movie time. All good. I’d love to work with Al Pacino now, I just saw him in the new Mamet play and he was terrific. I might even want to work with him now more, even more than his Serpico [1973] days. I would love to have Al Pacino rip snorting through my dialogue.

KM: We’ve talked about 70s movies; where you feel like movies like that aren’t made anymore. That it really feels like it takes place in 1970. One movie from the 70s that I always find amazing that it did so well, given one famous, disturbing sequence, is Deliverance [1972] … Could anyone make that film today? Like that?

QT: Oh, I know. I saw Deliverance in 1972 in a double feature with The Wild Bunch [1969] at the Tarzana Movies, the Tarzana Six, back when it was a big deal that six theaters were in one place. And recently I’ve been writing a piece of film writing, just for my own edification, and I’ve been going through some of the films and imagery that I saw in 1970 and 71. So, in 1970, I saw, at the counterculture Tiffany Theater, at age 8, a double feature of Joe and Where’s Poppa? That same year I saw a double feature of The Owl and the Pussycat and The Diary of a Mad Housewife. In 1970 I saw Richard Harris be hoisted by his nipples in A Man Called Horse. In 1970, I didn’t see Women in Love but I saw the trailer for Women in Love that had the naked wresting match between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. And in 1972, forget about all the things I saw in The French Connection, I saw the slow motion bullet kills in The Wild Bunch only to see Ned Beatty fucked in the ass in Deliverance.

KM: Wow.

QT: That movie, rocked my world as a kid. When I saw the butt-fucking scene in Deliverance, I didn’t know what sodomy was, as a kid. What I did know was that he was being humiliated. And I did know those guys were fucking scary. That’s what I knew. Well, I was right. He was being humiliated, he was being subjugated by really scary people who were imposing their will over him. That is what it was about. It wasn’t about the sex. The one part that would freak adults out went over my head but I actually got it [what it meant]. And that made me not want to go camping. [Laughs] But then the other part of the movie that blew my mind was that, in every way shape or form, Burt Reynolds is set up to be the hero in the first 45 minutes, and he does fit that function during that encounter. But then shortly thereafter he’s fucked up and that’s it [claps hands together]. He’s completely useless.

KM: And then it’s all up to Jon Voight…

QT: It’s all up to Jon Voight. That’s still one of the best movies ever made about, for lack of a better word, masculinity.

KM: … I can’t really compare you to any director…

QT: But if you could, who would you compare to me to? In the last twenty years?

KM: I can’t think of anyone contemporary. The one director I see a brotherhood with, though, is Robert Aldrich because he could do tight smaller picture like Kiss Me Deadly [1955] and then he’d do an epic, irreverent movie like The Dirty Dozen [1967]. Like Reservoir Dogs [1992] to your Basterds [2009]…

QT: Well, I’m a student of Aldrich.

KM: You need to do a woman’s picture then [I consider Jackie Brown a woman's picture, actually] ! Like his Autumn Leaves [1956].

QT: The Killing of Sister George [1968] for me! [Laughs]

KM: What about the The Legend of Lylah Clare [1968]?

QT: Oh, I don’t like that one! That’s awful. Even I can’t get through that one and I love Aldrich. I’ve tried! I keep trying! Every time it’s on TCM I record it and I give it another attempt. [Laughs] But The Killing of Sister George I do love.

KM: When I saw the live read [my piece here], I thought about old confinement movies, like Felix Feist’s The Threat [1949] — the live read and the movie have also been compared to Ten Little Indians [1965] or The Petrified Forest [1936] which was originally a play, did those influence any of this?

QT: I didn’t watch The Petrified Forest again and I didn’t rewatch Key Largo [1948]. But, frankly, to tell you the truth, I did watch some B movies that could be considered plays. I watched Shack Out on 101 [1955],  which plays like twisted Eugene O’ Neil.

KM: These would make great stage plays. Why not remake some of these pictures at plays? Like Detour [1945] on stage?

QT: Absolutely they would make great stage plays. I watched a lot of the movies that would be terrific plays. For instance, one spaghetti western could be done on stage. It takes place at a weird middle ground between a place like Minnie’s Haberdashery and the place where they all hang out at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West [1968]. It’s called Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead [1971] with Klaus Kinksi… Or something like The Outcast of Poker Flats… But then also, as we discussed, it was very much influenced by 60s TV westerns. I also watched a lot of the TV westerns that had a home invasion kind of vibe. There’s a Virginian episode where Darren McGavin and David Carradine take over the Shiloh Ranch and hold everybody hostage… There was one line in that Virginian episode that was so fucking good. And there was no way I could have made [that line] work, but I wanted to. Darren McGavin shows up at the Shiloh Ranch, he ends up shooting a couple of people just to make his point, but one of them is the cook. And then he makes Betsy, Roberta Shore, make him some dinner. So he’s at Lee J. Cobb's table and he’s eating his food and he’s talking shit, and then he finishes and he goes, “Wow. That meal was really unmemorable. Always remember: Don’t shoot the cook.” [Laughs] That’s a great line!

There's much more to read, so check out the entire interview at Sight & Sound and buy the issue here. 

And, for further reading, my 2009 interview with Tarantino, talking Basterds, George Sanders, Meeker and more.

Pick up the February edition of Sight & Sound and read my ten page interview with its cover star, Quentin Tarantino. We get into it: The Hateful Eight, old TV westerns ("The Virginian" especially), movie violence, police brutality, Snoop Dogg's resemblance to Lee Van Cleef and a whole helluva lot more. Quentin gives good interview. From Sight & Sound:

"As The Hateful Eight hits UK cinemas and a retrospective season of Tarantino’s other movies starts at BFI Southbank, Kim Morgan visited the director at his Los Angeles home, where they sat down for a long, lively conversation that ranged over Tarantino’s career from Reservoir Dogs to today, delved deep into his love of westerns, the joys of seeing films in original format prints, the impact of seeing Deliverance as a boy, race and policing in America today and a whole lot more besides."

 

 

Shane Black makes a good cup of coffee. It’s December 21st, 2015, the holiday season, a perfect time to meet Shane Black. I’m watching Black work his coffee maker in his kitchen. He finds me cream. I find it disarmingly sweet, charming that we’re in his enormous, beautiful 1920's-era mansion, and he’s making me coffee. He’s wearing socks, no shoes. His two handsome dogs are running all over the kitchen. They jump on me, and he nicely tells them to stop. He loves his dogs and we watch one dive into the pool. Later we’ll walk around his house, check out a secret room with a delicious past and look at his libraries which includes lots of great vintage pulps with fantastic covers and countless original issues of “Doc Savage” and “The Shadow” as well as modern and classic mysteries and thrillers (some he calls “shitty” but likes reading them anyway, which is refreshing) and more and more. We talk for a long time about numerous topics and he's candid and unexpected. Endlessly fascinating, the boyish, but wise Black is honest, opinionated, pensive, incredibly intelligent, funny and self-effacing in a unique way. He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met.

My interview with Black is for a much larger piece I will publish later. But, for now, I’m only sharing an excerpt, one that befits the holiday. Because there’s a consistent, the singular and often brilliant screenwriter and director (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man Three, the Amazon pilot Edge, and the upcoming and The Nice Guys, as well as the recently announced Doc Savage and Predator), is famous for: setting his movies during Christmas. I've written about Black's Christmas before and asked, within the piece, for him to further illuminate his Christmas fixation. When I finally met him during this holiday season, he did. And he did so beautifully.

Kim Morgan: I am going to ask you a question that everyone asks you because all of your movies take place during Christmas. What happened? Are you obsessed with Christmas?

Shane Black: I’m not obsessed with Christmas, I’m only obsessed with Christmas in movies. It grounds me, it makes me comfortable and happy to escape wherever I am into a movie that’s set at Christmas because you recognize that the hush that comes and the sort of rarified arena that it provides at that time of year [is good] for drama to take place. And also I think, the isolation people feel at Christmas is important (and also being in a blizzard is wonderful). The homecoming feel of people striving to come back to something at Christmas is important and also, just in Los Angeles, the way you have to dig for it. How, just tiny bits of Christmas exist here but they are things you have to unearth. Like, I remember walking at Christmas and seeing a little Mexican lunch truck with a broken Madonna and a candle in it. And I thought, that is as much, that is as powerful, as talismanic a bit of Christmas as the 40-foot tree at the White House. It’s like little guiding beacons to something we all recognize as a time to put things aside and focus momentarily on the retrospective of our lives; a spiritual kind of reckoning where we’ve been and where we’re all going to. All these things, I just love it in movies.

KM: And again, it can also be so incredibly lonely…

SB: Don’t make me cry [Laughs] Look around. I’ve got two dogs and a big house.

KM: Christmas in Los Angeles is very strange. When it’s absurdly hot, the decorations on Hollywood Blvd. are just sagging there, all depressed and dejected looking. It seems cliché, but it’s like all those with sagging hope and dreams, trudging around the city, trying to keep it cheery. It can be so depressing and touching. And so dark, in the light.

SB: If you like noir — the idea of little glowy bits, striving for some kind of attention in the middle of a non-snowy downtown L.A. landscape, the iconic nature of Christmas, that’s sort of blotted-out or hidden, but that still informs everything around it. Noir is about awakening from paranoia, hatred and depression to latch onto the one true thing that you have and inkling of. And that inkling sustains your faith throughout. And by the end, hopefully by the end: “I believe that one thing; everything else is falling apart, I’m shot and I’m dying but it’s for a reason because I believe one thing.” And so, to embody that as Christmas in L.A. I don’t know that it means any specific thing to believe in but it just means something.

KM: And that trying to believe, and during Christmas in Los Angeles… I mean, there’s that Scientology Santa siting there, adding to the surrealism and even darkness. That feels noir and almost Lynchian. You can feel so lost…

SB: Yes.

KM: But, then, in my neighborhood Koreatown, I’ll hear Mexican families singing and holding candles. It’s so haunting and lovely and far more beautiful than pristine decorations in Beverly Hills.

SB: Well, to me, when I was a kid it’s something that had a heavy impact, I was walking downtown Pittsburgh on a street, and it was late at night, the wind was blowing, and it was very dark, and all of a sudden down the street, for some reason the streetlight went out and there was just a woman, a fat woman, who was just sort of standing in the window looking out and there was just this one little thing of light, it was chiaroscuro, everything else was dark, and the idea of beacons, and the candles in the woods. I talk about the Robert Frost poem, being lost in a dark wood, and the idea of the secret light in the window, also seeing a light in a window and knowing that there’s a destination that’s vaguely seen or even sensed but not quite seen, and just so far off the path you can go to, and the lights that could steer you back onto the path; it’s vague and if you put those images in a movie one in a thousand people will say “Yeah, it was about being taken off the path and finding your beacon.”  But, there is that element of me that’s just… the magic underneath Christmas we are briefly, almost fleetingly, aware of a magic that could be there. If we just stopped long enough to pay attention. And the perfect expression of this, more than anything else I could ever tell you is, "The Cricket in Time’s Square." Christmas in Time’s Square with that little cricket, that’s what we’re talking about. That’s noir.

Merry Christmas. Now go watch some Shane Black. Or read The Cricket in Time's Square. And stay tuned for my longer interview with Black.

By the Sea Angelina Jolie doesn’t care if you like her. But it’s not out of snobbery, some kind of looking down on the little people; she’s too focused, too mysterious, too fascinatingly complicated for that. It’s from a yearning to express herself, to say something about her experience, about being a movie star, about marriage, about women, about the oddity that is she (or, us, by extension), and she does so by curious means: long silences, monosyllabic responses, beautifully held frames of a life so glamorous it hurts. And it does hurt — her body beautifully in repose, a beguiling mixture of painfully thin hunger and vulnerability and yet a powerful body, a center of strength that carries itself along the ocean, pushing forward this exquisite head and face, eyes and lips so full and wide it almost seems impossible. Bardot was this beautiful, Vitti was this beautiful, Hayworth, Dietrich, Lamar, but none (though they held their own uniqueness, specific to their depth and character) were as aggressively "odd" as Angelina. Her beauty is sometimes so extreme it becomes peculiar, and she acknowledges her oddity with gorgeous, pained, perplexing expressions. Unafraid of being weird, at times even creepy, she’s the bizarre, beautiful woman next door (or, rather, next door at the French seaside villa), an exquisite, wonderfully weird woman who could transform into Catherine Deneuve’s mad Carol Repulsion — possibly. Or not. She doesn’t, not that far, but at times the movie flirts with the idea that Angelina is dangerous. To whom, we’re not sure. Herself? Innocent bystanders? Well, yes. Of course she is. And by being so strangely powerful, so in touch with her own mixture of destruction and fragility, we begin to admire her. Some of us (myself, anyway) even like her, we like her very much. And I loved By the Sea. I loved it totally, tenderly, tragically

I should say that Angelina plays Vanessa, a former dancer ("I got old," she says) who is by the sea with her novelist husband, Roland Bertrand, played by her real-life husband Brad Pitt. But her playing Vanessa and Pitt playing Roland is a concoction of pointed real life, swoony fantasy and clear nostalgia. It takes place in the 70s, back when people used words like “barren” and tapped on red typewriters. Vanessa revels in her sadness and glamour, lounging all day in gorgeous satin nightwear in their stunningly golden French Mediterranean hotel room, donning a pair of YSL sunglasses that are always adjusted at the right angle when removed (routine? An obsessive adjustment by Roland when he can't adjust his wife? Should he?), pills endlessly popped and easier to obtain. And here’s an intriguing detail: Jolie’s mother’s father's name was Roland Bertrand.

In real life Angelina Jolie misses her mother just as the sweet French innkeeper, Michel (Niels Arestrup) who pours Roland’s drinks, misses his wife. Jolie-Pitt (who wrote and directed the hauntingly melancholic, almost painfully beautiful By The Sea, lest anyone has forgotten) wants people to know that one never gets over that loss. The loss of a wife, of a mother, of a good woman. And, yet, interestingly, Angelina doesn’t play her Vanessa as a “good woman” even if Roland, at the start, tells her she’s a good woman. By the end Vanessa even asks if she’s a bad person. Roland answers, "sometimes." What a refreshing response to hear in a movie —  no one is that simple, no one is that likable, and in the process of showing a woman in distress, a woman who manipulates and hurts, but one who is hurting herself most — she turns the “crazy wife” narrative into something forgivable and human.

How Jolie does this through all of this insane glamour and out-of-reach beauty is testament to her power as a filmmaker. She knows how to shoot herself and her husband, she knows what we want to look at (them, the beautiful furnishings, the clothes, the cars, the ocean, the French touches) and she knows how a languid moment and patiently-held shot can make a viewer imbue a scene with their own feelings and thoughts. The more you look at Vanessa, and her unhappy marriage with Roland, the more your mind wanders toward wondering many things, even things about your own life. In pacing, style and much of the look, Jolie appears to have studied Antonioni, Godard (Contempt, especially) and Wertmüller with By the Sea. There’s even a touch of Polanski’s Bitter Moon in here. With cinematography by Christian Berger, DP for numerous Michael Haneke pictures, and a lush score by Gabriel Yared that, at times, spikes the movie with menace (perfect for Jolie) and the music by the likes of Jacques Dutronc and Serge Gainsbourg, the picture places these American movie stars in a decidedly European art-house milieu. But to Jolie’s credit, it’s not mimicking; this is a movie all her own. Truly, you’ve never seen anything like this.

And looking is key to By the Sea. The movie rolls along: Vanessa and Roland barely speaking to one another, Vanessa staying in all day in a haze of Benzos and narcotics, Roland off to the bar to write, and never writing, Vanessa sitting on the bed crying, alone, Roland bemoaning the life of a now failed writer, with a drink, Vanessa laboring to talk to the newlyweds next door who fuck all day, Roland bonding with Michel and never fucking his wife, Vanessa walking by the water in her white skirt and enormous hat, Roland trying to touch his wife, Vanessa rejecting him… what is going on with these two? What is their sad secret? We’ll find out through more looking, but, chiefly, when they are looking.

Vanessa discovers a peephole in their hotel room and begins spying on the young couple (Mélanie Laurent and Melvil Poupaud) next door, freshly married, freshly in love, sweet, but, if anyone has been married or in a union for long enough, exhausting. Even annoying. Vanessa and Roland don’t seem to like them very much. Once Roland takes up looking with her, a kinky pursuit that turns them on, it’s easy to load their voyeurism with meaning: Jolie and Pitt are turning the tables on the public constantly staring at them. And then, to take it further, Jolie and Pitt want you to know that they might be beautiful but they aren’t perfect; they don’t get it on like the newlyweds next door, not anymore, not like they used to. Or maybe they just want you to wonder about it. Or not. Jolie writes and directs from both an intensely personal standpoint, and mystery – which is a large part of her own public persona. She is outspoken about causes and real issues personal to her, to her body, she doesn’t shield her children from the world, and yet, she maintains an enigma that we’ll never truly know her. That balancing act is her own brilliance and it’s fascinating to see her utilize it through her own direction making By the Sea her best film as a director.

But back to looking… Jolie directs by their looking and how they look. Vanessa and Roland look as, presumably, Angelina and Brad, mixing their real life, their movie star personas and their characters into this prying little kick. A life seen through a hole, a portal into another relationship, one at its most idyllic state, and one vulnerable to ruin from those who continue gawking. And, as they look, they do so with the knowledge of how we perceive them looking, their charisma ever-present while we look at them, looking. It’s a clever twist and an unexpected detail that takes the picture to another level.

And this is where Angelina is sly and even funny, for as dead serious as some think this movie is, Jolie also knows when the picture turns humorous. She jumps on the moment, almost anticipating the audiences breaking into a chuckle after a languorous sequence of near silence. Once Vanessa and Roland invite the couple out for drinks, with the intent of inebriation and more peeping, the picture treats us with shots of the two beauties preparing: Pitt brushing his hair, Angelina applying her lipstick, lit ciggie dangling out of her mouth, sweeping her hair into a perfect updo.

It’s swiftly edited to amuse us, and it does. They are dressed for battle, to pursue their perverse pleasure, and marching together hand-in-hand, we finally feel how together they are. And it’s funny. It’s funny in a few other moments too: Pitt stumbling on Jolie on the floor, looking guilty, pretending not to peep. It’s funny watching the two sitting side by side, eating dinner, laughing to themselves, the peephole between them. But then, that peephole is also opening up their own lives for examination, and the more they invade the couple’s privacy, the more we are privy to their personal pain, the sadness that lies underneath their marriage.

What’s fascinating is how Jolie addresses Vanessa handling her sadness. She doesn’t do it by simply breaking down with a speech (though that does happen, in some way, through a dramatic declaration Roland nearly slaps out of her; you wonder about how nice, long-suffering Roland is during that moment) it happens by committing an act that, in many movies, would be deemed unforgivable, the work of a femme fatale, a terrible woman. But when Vanessa moves to the side of destroyer, you feel yourself pained for her. I won’t reveal what she does, but it’s akin to Kirsten Dunst in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, fornicating with a guest on her wedding day (not to say Vanessa does the same). But the “betrayal” feels less simplistic, it feels of desperation, even a bit spaced-out, a-sexual, clinical, something to invite a release (in this case, it’s the release of Roland’s anger and making her face her anguish). Because Jolie loads up the moment with sorrow and dysfunction, there’s too much more going on here to simply demonize the woman. On screen, that feels almost radical; the act of being understanding a complicated woman. 

A bit like Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (and there’s been no shortage of comparing this movie to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and their on-screen pairings, as I did immediately upon seeing the picture’s trailer, from Woolf, to The V.I.P.s to Boom!) Vanessa is the quieter, less braying and more beautiful Martha, the childless wife who considers herself a lousy partner. But who wants to just be a wife? The verbal dexterity of Martha reveals a highly intelligent mind and wit; simply watching Jolie lounge and pose on the terrace reveals a dancer who was surely brilliant, her bitterness also belies a sharp intellect, even how disgusted she is by bad literature. She wants more out of life, she at one time, had more out of life, and now in exasperation, she lies around, beautiful and stoned. Her sweeter counterpoint (Mélanie Laurent, like Sandy Dennis in Woolf) should be careful lest she be chewed up and spit out. But, to be fair, Vanessa chews away at herself, worse than anyone.

Its exciting watching Jolie tear into it here, albeit with an abstruse, effectively strung-out touch. It harkened back to vintage Jolie, the unafraid-of-being-unlikable, crazy, brilliant and frequently funny Lisa of Girl Interrupted, though a Lisa subdued by the Seconal Vanessa pulls out of her Louis Vuitton toiletry bag. Vanessa even wears the lighter-haired wig like Lisa and smokes with the style of both a goddamn movie star and a patient demanding her smokes – the female Randle P. McMurphy skulking around the all-girl cuckoo's nest.

That dangerous charm of a Lisa ("take one fucking step closer and I'll jam this in my aorta") is still there, and all of that feral intensity and wit, just tamped down and mature. This is Jolie’s Cuckoo’s Nest Nicholson drifting into The Passenger and it’s exciting to watch, even at a valium-addled pace. What actress ever does that? What actress is ever allowed to do that? Angelina Jolie allows it, and she had to write and direct herself to do so. And if that’s considered a vanity project (as some critics have decried, some with a sexist tone to their dismissals) well, I want more of these so-called “vanity projects.”

Given how little women are allowed to be complicated and interesting, fragile and strong, smart and fucked up and not always good people on film, this is a strange type of “vanity” Jolie is basking in. She’s a filmmaker, she’s a writer, she’s an actress, she’s going to make a film that is personal and a piece of herself. That’s not mere vanity, that’s expression and creation. And yet, of course there’s vanity. Most everyone possesses vanity; certainly almost all artists possess vanity. And, as By the Sea further proves, Angelina Jolie is an artist.