It’s Friday, January 24, 2020, and here’s where we are…
I ended up tapping out on this week’s screening of The Gentlemen. I’m sure I’ll catch up with it at some point, but a return to Guy Ritchie’s world of arch, wise-cracking gangsters just wasn’t on the menu for me. This coming week, I’ll see a few new films. I feel like I’m always slow to get back into the groove at the start of each year.
That doesn’t mean I’ve been stuck in the house, though. Last Friday night’s Egyptian Theater screening of Freaked was special, and all of you who took the time to say hello, it was deeply appreciated. Directors Alex Winter and Tom Stern never really got to enjoy the original release of the film because it was produced at 20th Century Fox under Joe Roth, who was long gone by the time it was finished. Peter Cherin put the film out. Barely. And with great animosity. And it showed. It’s a sad, common story, one regime feeling like they have to kill the efforts of the previous regime just in case they left behind a hit, which would prove it was wrong to fire them.
They sold out the venue, which had to feel great, and Mondo Records was selling their long-in-the-works soundtrack album featuring both the music of Henry Rollins, Paul Leary, and Blind Idiot God and the score by Kevin Kiner, so the lobby was packed with people buying records. The fine folks at Beyond Fest put together a terrific panel, and all I had to do was stand up there and keep things moving. Catherine Hardwicke showed up after the panel had started, straight from her own set, to talk about her work as the film’s production designer, and Stern and Winter, along with their co-writer Tim Burns, seemed quite moved by the enthusiasm from not just her, but from everyone who showed up. My own kids were excited to see Kevin Kiner onstage, since they love his scores for The Clone Wars and Rebels, while I was out-of-my-mind excited about getting a few minutes with Paul Leary, guitarist for the Butthole Surfers, and the one and only Henry Rollins. The incredible make-up artists Bill Corso, Steve Johnson, and Tony Gardner joked about their own competitions and collaborations and cast members Megan Ward, Lee Arenberg, and John Hakwes all shared stories about how crazy the experience was, and their joy at finally being able to share all of this with an audience that was there because they loved the movie was so much fun to see. There was a Henry Rollins hologram that sang along with the opening credits title song, and then Paul Leary got up and played along with the film live at several points in the movie. There were even video messages from Bill Sadler and Bobcat Goldthwait wishing Alex and Tom and Tim well. It was a real honor to be part of it, and a great night out for my kids, who spent the entire weekend laughing about the hammer.
Seriously. The hammer is the best joke in that movie.
Disney owns Freaked now, and we ended the night with the entire theater videotaping a message to Disney to make an HD master of the film so it can live again on iTunes and other streaming platforms. It’s a long shot, but there’s money to be made there, and there’s nothing Der Maus likes better than money, so maybe they’ll see videos and pictures from that screening and realize there is an small but enthusiastic cult audience out there ready to throw money at them. Maybe.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
Meanwhile, by the time you guys read this, I’ll be driving my family to Ventura so we can be there for the opening night of the 35th-anniversary tour for Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, the 1985 film that brought Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, and Paul Reuben together in a perfect storm of comedy and creativity. Pee-Wee will be hosting the screening and there’s a Q&A afterward, and the chance to see Pee-Wee live again is irresistible. I find it amazing that Paul Reuben’s been playing the character since the late ‘70s, and during that entire time, there’s been an ageless quality to him. I met Paul for the first time in the early ‘90s when I first moved to LA, and I’ve ended up face to face with him many times over the years, including an interview with him in character to promote the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Live tour. Every time, it’s crazy how Pee-Wee manages to simply be Pee-Wee again. I have no idea how much longer he’ll be able to do this or how many more times we’ll see Pee-Wee, but right now, I’m treating this one like a gift, and I’ll be sure to report back next week about it.
Color Out Of Space
If nothing else, Color Out of Space amply proves that Richard Stanley can deliver you a finished, stylish, carefully-considered feature film, and he deserves to work on a regular basis. It’s been a wild ride through the wilderness for Stanley, and if you want that whole sordid story, it’s absolutely worth tracking down Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau, the documentary that details much of it. It doesn’t surprise me that XYZ Films and SpectreVision are partnered to support Stanley on his return to filmmaking, as I think both companies are active on the festival circuit, as is Stanley, and I know that they’ve spent time with him over the years. When you meet Richard, you immediately understand why he’s supposed to be making movies, and also why he’s had trouble getting them made. He is very much a “real artist,” with a nimble, unruly brain that is constantly drawing upon the vast ocean of art that he’s consumed as well as inventing wholesale. A conversation with him is a whirlpool, and I’m thrilled to see someone give him the support that made it possible for him to finally get back behind the camera.
Having said that, I thought Color Out Of Space was good, not great. It plays rough, which I respect, and there is a certain plodding inevitability to the way things unfold that does make the horror feel like a slow suffocation. It’s effective, and there are some remarkable images and moments. Lovecraft doesn’t work well on film unless you have a director who is capable of simply building atmosphere. Lots of directors think they can, but it’s not just shadows and smoke machines. Stanley makes it clear that everything’s wrong, from the water in the ground to the plants and the animals, and finally the family itself, and the film’s greatest strength is the way he lets that dread creep through his world. There’s one sequence in particular that is among the most unpleasant, repulsive ideas in any horror film I’ve ever seen, and I admire the way Stanley stages and executes the idea. It’s awful, but the right kind of awful. It’s very personal, as horror goes, and I like the way this film shows us a human-scale apocalypse. We don’t need to see the whole world end after we see this thing happen, because any world in which this is possible should end. This is an affront to everything we are as humans, and it just slowly happens, the rest of the family being driven mad by this awful thing that’s unfolding.
My biggest problem is that Nic Cage and Richard Stanley never quite seem to synchronize their crazy. I love Cage, and I am all for his Mega-Acting (copyright The Vern Corporation) when the film around it supports it, but Stanley is often pushing towards the real and the quiet in the way he stages certain scenes and certain ideas, and Cage is all third-act-of-Mandy all the time, and it doesn’t always work.
Still, I’ll take this kind of sober-minded and deeply-felt approach to Lovecraft over a cheap monster movie that really only uses the name. The best Lovecraft films are the ones where you can tell the filmmaker has been living with the work their whole lives, where they’ve really thought about what is frightening about it to them, and where they run their own ideas through the very rich foundation of Lovecraft’s text. Lovecraft, a man who was clearly riddled with fear and hatred for “the other,” left a body of work that still resonates because we are still living in a world very much defined by the way we hate and fear each other. I don’t share his fears or his hatred, but I’d be a liar to say they weren’t part of the culture that has raised and shaped me. Stanley’s take here is personal and wounded and sad, and I like that he’s unafraid to be weird and to really hurt the characters. This is a horror film, full-stop, and it doesn’t really leave you any safe way out. Lots of horror films are built like theme park rides, where you sort of drive by the horror but it’s safe and it never really touches the main characters. You get to be vicariously scared, but you know everyone’s getting out. Stanley drives his characters right off the map here, and he destroys them before the credits roll. He makes it feel like it matters, and it’s certainly worth your time if you’re even remotely interested.
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
Rob Garver’s documentary about Pauline Kael is perhaps too easy a target for me. I didn’t just read Pauline Kael’s work when I was growing up; I devoured it. I read her books again and again. I read her work cover to cover, even if I hadn’t seen the films she was writing about. I loved the way she wrote. It was that simple. I wanted to feel about things the way she felt about things. I wanted to understand art well enough that I could speak about it the way she did. I wanted to see the same things in films she did. She, more than Siskel and Ebert, taught me what a film review could be on the page, and what a film critic could be as a writer. So, yeah, I’m pretty much exactly the audience for this film.
And it’s fine. I thought it was a solid primer on who she was and what she wrote and what kind of place she held in pop culture. I didn’t learn much, but I guess I wouldn’t. I still read her work on a regular basis. I have For Keeps in my office, and often when I’m stuck on how to start working on something, I’ll just open the book randomly and read something she wrote.
I feel like many of the “breakthroughs” I had in my Jerry Maguire opening day piece (available here in the Substack archives, which you really should browse if this is your first time here) were simply statements of ideas that Pauline espoused many times in her work. She hated the notion of film critics participating in the selling of the films, and I find it comforting that she had to wrestle with it often over the course of her career. She had a home, though, a regular place to publish, and a culture that treated film criticism like it had value. I know what a benefit that can be, and when she retired, film criticism was starting to transmogrify into whatever it is right now. I have no idea what Kael thought of the Internet, and I am afraid to find out. But if you want to know who shaped me, maybe as much as any of other pop culture icons I cite like George Lucas or Jim Henson or Mr. Rogers, then What She Said paints a pretty solid picture of a dense and complex career.
Now I want a Pauline Kael Funko Pop. Someone make that happen, please.
THIS WEEK’S BOOKS: The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories, edited by Stephen Jones; Ninth House by Leigh Berdugo; Agency by William Gibson; The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny; Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary by Pablo Hildago
THIS WEEK’S COMICS: Batman #87; Basketful of Heads #2-#4; Batman/Superman #6; Superman #19; Amazing Spider-Man #38; Atlantis Attacks #1; Fantastic Four #18; Guardians of the Galaxy #1; Marauders #6
THIS WEEK’S TV: Succession S2 3-10, The Good Place S4 E11, E12; Harley Quinn S1E8; Avenue 5 S1E1; Curb Your Enthusiasm S10 E1; Review S2 E2, E3; Columbo S3E5
THIS WEEK’S GAMING: Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey; Untitled Goose Game
THIS WEEK’S MOVIES: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil; Dressed To Kill (1946); Has Anybody Seen My Gal?; The Glass Bottom Boat; Troop Zero; The Last Full Measure; The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock; Playing With Fire; The New Centurions; What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael; Dead End (1937); Mother, Jugs & Speed; Nightcrawler
(As always, titles in bold were particularly enjoyed.)
Image courtesy RLJE Films