Low-Effort Blog Post
I start the post off lazily co-opting the script technique of the videos below. I mention how uproariously funny they are and use the word “fantastic” about three times before going to Thesarurus.com to find some synonyms. I note a comparison to some piece of high-art or cite some philosophical piece which regards itself with the concept of “meta” and of which I have read five pages, tops. I link the the first video which is slightly shorter. As it is news-related, I make an offhand crack at Jon Stewart or the Daily Show.
Now I link the longer video. It is film related and I have enough opinions on film and technique to fill an ale cask, so I go on and on. You probably lose interest at this point and begin watching the video. Hopefully. I may mention something resembling this that I saw in my youth and describe the circumstances in an equally detached and nostalgic manner. I finish the post, advertise it on every social network I subscribe to and go eat a hamburger.
So Mysterious
While context would help you to identify with one of the characters in this scene, the complete lack thereof is the perfect way to identify with the other:
You’re Putting Me Through Hell-a
Image co. Wikipedia
As far as looks of all-consuming and self-immolating lust go, you will never beat Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter) responding to Stanley Kowalski's (Marlon Brando) drunken screaming in the 1951 version of A Streetcar Named Desire. This scene takes place, if I am recalling the plot correctly, after he has been kicked out of the house after, yet again, beating his pregnant wife Stella.
Chicken or Sausage?
Considering it was on while I was supposed to be at school, I'm not exactly sure how I've watched as much Kids in the Hall as I believe I did. Perhaps it is the fault of the speeding-up of time due to aging. What was a few sick days from school here or a weekend-long Comedy Central marathon there all gets lumped in together as a quasi-false memory of spending my formative years watching the show regularly. The KITH memory that stands loud-and-proud in my mind is first encountering the “Sausages” sketch.
I can actually pinpoint when I first saw this. It must have been around my junior year of high school as that was time when I received a bootleg copy of Eraserhead off eBay. This was before broadband and filesharing was a Thing, so I had to pay upwards of $30 for a copy of a VHS copy of the Japanese LaserDisc. Anyhow, the point is that I saw “Sausages” and immediately connected it with David Lynch (or, rather, Eraserhead, which was the only Lynch film I had seen at that point.) Something about the pitch-black almost-humor, the collapsing industrial setting, the dreaminess of it all screamed of Lynch's intentional obscurity. When I discovered the plethora of KITH videos on YouTube and informed my Eraserhead-loving best friend, she immediately demanded to watch “Sausages,” affirming my connection. If you've never seen Eraserhead here's a trailer so you can compare.:
Comparing the two side-by-side, I've noticed a few direct references. There is definitely an overlap in the scoring of the two; most of the background noise is composed of industrial drones raised to foreground volume levels. Both films contain unconsummated love affairs, and both feature infirm older characters. Finally, there's the overlap between these two shots, which I refuse to believe is any sort of coincidence.
You can actually watch the entirety of Eraserhead on YouTube if you so desire. I suggest against it, but I realize not everyone has access to Netflix or indie theaters. So, this user seems to have the entire film in even better quality than I first witnessed it. But I urge you, if it is ever playing at a midnight showing at the local college or revival house, go see it. It's one of the best experimental films to have ever come out of the United States. And always remember what David Lynch has to say:
The Illusion of Permanence
I just watched Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry for the first time and I have to say that I was really, pleasantly surprised by how much of a “film” it was. I’m usually used to his films being shot like, well, just a regular film, although with plenty of artful shots. As far as “artful” I’m specifically I’m thinking of the stage-framed planetarium scene in Manhattan and the “who the hell is talking?” long shot in Annie Hall.
Deconstructing Harry is cut very, very strangely. Individual shots are cut in such a way as to collapse time. Like a Hemingway story, everything that isn’t exactly necessary to the vision is cut with no respect for jarring the viewer. These quick cuts happen in mid dialogue and occasionally giving Harry just enough time to say “uh,” scratch his head and then, bam, another cut. You can see it in this clip wherein Harry solicits a prostitute. The first time I saw these cuts happening I honestly thought there was something wrong with the stream I was watching.
One thing of note is that Woody Allen’s trademark neurotic character is a genuinely dirty old man in this film. Even in Manhattan, wherein he played a 40something divorcee dating a seventeen year old, there was a certain amount of pathos to the relationship. The film used her age to force you to concentrate on her unnatural precocity and emotional strength. In Deconstructing Harry he cheats remorselessly, solicits prostitutes and tries to convince a woman to love him when it is really in her best interest to flee as far as possible from his advances. He closes in on Humbert Humbert territory in the way he elicits pity and identification for/with a character who, in retrospect, is just a terrible person.
Harry is an author whose stories constantly intrude on his life. Occasionally he will simply tell one, and they almost always feature a Harry Block stand-in. On of the tales he spins involves the first time he hired a prostitute – his love of hookers being a running theme – and he is played, fantastically, by a young Tobey Maguire. Another is the film’s cold open, which is then taken apart - deconstructed if you were - by his homicidally furious former mistress, furious at Harry’s co-opting of their failed affair for his hit novel. My personal favorite is the darkly hilarious and very, very Jewish “Max’s Dark Secret,” which is brought up by his brother in law as an example of Harry’s self-loathing anti-Semitism. The Star Wars Bar Mitzvah alone is worth it.
Anyhow, it is one of the current selections on Netflix’ Instant Watch feature, so gamble your time and give it a whirl. It really redeems the rest of his 1990s output.
Never Did No Wanderin’
I've always loved the the incredibly varied musical performances in Christopher Guest's films. As an example, here is a scene from Guest and Rob Reiner's 80s metal film Spinal Tap; the titular band – played by Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Guest himself – plays “Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight”.
What's really special is how Guest and Reiner run down the history of music between the inception of modern rock and roll from blues, country and R&B in the 50s, to the "present", which at that point was the glammy, technically proficient heavy metal of the 1980s. And now here's a scene from earlier in the movie showcasing the Thamesmen, the skiffle band which would eventually become Spinal Tap. Skiffle was a style of American country music which became very popular in the UK during the 50s. Notably, the Beatles were born from the Quarrymen, John Lennon's skiffle band - Guest takes this fact to heart, as you can see.
Later on, the film encounters Spinal Tap, now carrying their name, in a different configuration. Most likely this is directly referencing the psychedelic/blues group Earth, which eventually became the seminal heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Of course, it is also a great parody/pastiche of the popularity and subsequent de-weirdening of 60s psychedelic music.
Roughly 20 years later,Chrristopher Guest directed a folk music mockumentary entitled A Mighty Wind. One of the featured groups, The Folksmen, bore a striking similarity to Spinal Tap.
Yep. That is, once again, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest, reunited in a wholly different style. In fact, during Spinal Tap's reunion tour, the Folksmen would play as the opening band.
The Language of the Unheard
"When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the national recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Ten years ago it stopped being the impotently-named “Civil Rights Day” in Utah and “Lee-Jackson-King” day – wherein General Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson got top billing over MLK – in Virginia. As a nation we get closer and closer to readily acknowledging that we have and continue to be terrible not just to blacks, but to everyone. Martin Luther King Jr.'s efforts, the efforts which eventually won him a bullet in the head, worked toward dismantling the mindset of a nation which emancipated its slaves only to treat their newly-fellow citizens with as much vitriol and derision as it could muster. A nation where the poor took up arms against the poor on the basis on the basis of tradition. The same “tradition” which prevented them from ever seeing past these artificial divisions long enough to rise out of the shit they were born into, lived in and died surrounded by.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a dangerous subversive at a time when the country desperately, desperately needed dangerous subversion. It is important to remember the need if only because it is easy to imagine the '50s were Leave it to Beaver and the '60s were long hair and free love. These years were a peak of institutionalized hate; a time when giving your fellow citizen the shit end of the stick on principle was status-fuck-quo. I'm not saying we live in some sort of post-racial wonderland right now. I'd like to think things are a bit easier for blacks, but we still have sundown towns, and constituencies which would elect Strom Thurmond's desiccated corpse were they allowed to. And we still institutionally (that is: without openly acknowledging it even to our individual selves) maltreat fellow citizens on account of race, class, creed, gender and orientation. I can't even acknowledge that I or anyone I know are totally free from the prejudice of even a single one of those concepts.
This country, by the very laws which make it free, needs its revolutionaries. We shouldn't be remembering Martin Luther King Jr. as an individual who was honored as an assassinated orator. We should remember him as a man who a malformed social system resisted at every turn. A man who inspired right-minded individuals of all walks to brave police, hoses and dogs to tell the world that society had internalized a disease, and they would put their very lives on the line to expunge it from the body politic. An idealized perspective, definitely, but sometimes idealism is exactly what we need to fight for a day which it is necessary to fight for, but may sadly never come.
I think everyone who is reading this ought to take some time out and watch Spike Lee's Bamboozled (trailer). Spike Lee is a director of eminent skill and has the unblinking fearlessness needed to create a film about a black man bringing back blackface minstrelsy to the people. Black face minstrelsy, you ask? Didn't that go away with vaudeville and penny-farthings? I wish. In 1978, 1978, the British could turn on their televisions and tune into this (the actual clip is from a 1960s episode):
That's the Black and White Minstrel Show. A huge BBC hit up until the year before All In The Family was canceled. (Aside: I am aware that that All in the Family, one of the first sitcoms to deal head-on with social ills, was based upon a British show, but my point stands.) This show wasn't satire or anything but what it looks like. In fact, the show lost audience when they stopped doing it in blackface. And for those of you who are enjoying the entertainment value of this, which it has in a sugary and mindless fashion, Lee addresses that in his film. You will laugh because it is funny and you will feel uncomfortable because … it is funny. Bamboozled is probably the best exploration of the African-American in media I've ever seen, and an amazing (and highly expressionist) film to boot.
Robert’s Rules of Death
I watched Ingmar Bergman's 1957 classic The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) last night. For those of you who have never seen it, the mark the film left on media is absolutely indelible. Its imagery persists through time, especially in the films of Woody Allen, who loudly and proudly carries Bergman's influence on his cinematic sleeve. One of my favorite Allen films, Love and Death, references it repeatedly, as does Bananas (which, in an irrelevant aside, also takes credit for being one of Sylvester Stallone's first feature film appearances.) This is the film that loosed the robed-and-accented-Death-as-the-Grim-Reaper archetype into pop culture, although the figure eventually evolved into a skeleton in a robe, rather than a pale man. Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, for instance, took Bergman's character wholesale, barely bothering to modify it.
The iconic chess match between the wittily morbid Death incarnate and the unfearing Knight has also been repeatedly referenced. I've spotted it most recently opening Grant Morrison's loving comics-medium paean Seaguy.
My personal favorite (and first witnessed) homage the film was an episode of Animaniacs entitled “Meatballs or Consequences.” On location in Sweden (birtplace and lifelong home of Ingmar Bergman and the setting of The Seventh Seal) for a meatball eating contest, Wakko Warner imbibes one too many and dies, to be escorted into the afterlife by a Swedish-accented Death. The cartoon goes on to parody not just the plot and setting of Seventh Seal, but also the classic lipline-match scene from Bergman's 1966 film Persona. Fun fact: it's one of Bergman's better known pieces of imagery outside of Seventh Seal and was also parodied in Love and Death (roughly 2:20 in. Spoiler alert: Final scene of the film.) Unfortunately, I can't track down the original scene from Persona. Anyway, here's the cartoon. Enjoy!
In unrelated news, my friend Nathan a.k.a. Renegade Accordion (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) was profiled by Thirteen. He busks around the city, playing accordion in his trademark Boba Fett helmet. If you see him, say hello! (He plays parties too, folks.)
New York on the Clock: Nathan Stodola, Renegade Accordion from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.
We Put Our Faith In Blast Hardcheese.
My favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 has to be the South African abomination Space Mutiny. For the two or three of you unaware of the of MST3K, you can read up on it here. It's high-concept to the max: a guy and his two robot buddies sit around and ridicule bad science fiction/horror/etc. movies. Generally, I'm not a fan of ironic consumption and it is rare that I encounter a so-bad-its-good film worth watching. I'm this guy long before my time. Space Mutiny is an exemption by a galactic margin. I mean, even the poster is something else:
Image co. MST3K Temple
Every convention of a deep-space-voyage science fiction film is rendered so poorly that it actually works as a cohesive whole. Half of the film takes place in an honest-to-god warehouse. It's supposed to be on the generation ship Southern Sun but, no, it's just a warehouse. Combine that lazy staging with ham-fisted acting, external scenes literally rented from Battlestar Galactica and omnipresent 1980s computers (wall mounted keyboards!) and you've got the recipe for what is, apparently, one of my favorite films. I've never seen it sans Mike, Tom Servo and Crow's wisecracks, but considering it is impossible to watch the movie without joining in, I doubt it would lose much.
Speaking of wisecracks, there's a running gag in the MST3K version of the film. Protagonist David Ryder's on-screen appearances are consistently barraged with absurd action hero names – “Gristle McThornbody!” “Crunch Buttsteak!” “Smoke Manmuscle!” Considering the show's fanbase, I wasn't at all surprised when a compilation of these turned up on YouTube (unnecessary spoiler alert):
Well, that's all I have to say about Space Mutiny. Oh, hey, did you actually want to, I don't know, watch it? Well, you're in luck! The whole thing is on YouTube, in strikingly good quality (make sure to turn HD on.) I hope you enjoy it as much as I regularly do, friends.
Oh, Fudge
A generation removed from the unplumbable depths that brought Ate My Balls to the nascent Internet, a phenomenon known as “The Fucking Short Version” popped up on YouTube a few years back. Thanks to the proliferation of digital media, cheap processors and user-friendly editing software, a certain damaged few took it upon themselves to edit movies down to occurrences of the word “fuck” within the shooting script. Here is a modest (and inherently spoiler-laden) example from the Coen Brothers classic The Big Lebowski. You can find more here:
Wonderful, isn't it? Like good old-fashioned moonshine, the entirety of the film is distilled into several minutes linked only by an almost arbitrary choice of a word. Of course, “fuck” isn't arbitrary. Lewis Black may claim his use of the word as punctuation, but it rings out, clear as a bell, every time. Maybe it is the fact that it is contextualized with a movie I've seen often enough to perform, maybe not. There is something to be said for driving a meme into pure absurdity, however. So here's every single swear word on the Sopranos (spoiler alert, once again,) in eighteen minutes:
Okay, had enough? Rinse your brain and ears out with something a little more family friendly from a more innocent time:
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