You’ve seen the ubiquitous ads on TV, on buses, on bus kiosks and billboards, and you’ve more than likely read at least one movie magazine or blog article (perhaps on these very virtual pages) devoted to explaining the back story of how directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez conceived their latest opus, the self–contained trash horror double bill that is Grindhouse. And in the next two weeks, before the movie is actually released, if you watch TV or go to the movies you will undoubtedly be subject to much more of the same, albeit at an even more amped-up rate of exposure as the release date continues to creep one day closer.
But if you live in Los Angeles and are of a mind to appreciate it, there’s been a very unique promotion of Grindhouse going on every night at the New Beverly Cinema, an organic offshoot of the monthly Grindhouse Film Festival nights featured at the theater courtesy of exploitation experts Eric Caidin and Brian Quinn. For the months of March and April, Brian and Eric have joined forces with Tarantino to showcase a blistering blitz of exploitation double and triple bills, all culled from Tarantino’s own apparently vast collection of 35mm prints. The two-month long Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival, now near the halfway point of its run at the New Beverly, is designed both to promote and give context to the upcoming Tarantino/Rodriguez homage (after all, it wouldn’t be much of a jump to presume that a good percentage of Grindhouse’s intended demographic has little or no firsthand experience with the golden age of drive-in and downtown movie exploitation that the new movie glorifies), as well as give over one cinema for two solid months to celebrate the real deal, sticky floors, scratched prints, musty smells and all.
And if you do have firsthand experience with said exploitation fare, having seen a goodly amount of it during the ‘70s and early ‘80s, attending the New Beverly’s festival is likely to be a rush of sense memory that seems rare and, dare I say, somehow precious in this age of Moviefone, pristine digital restoration, cup holder-laden stadium seating and, however ominously, 60-inch flat-screen plasma TVs. After over ten years of denying myself the double features the New Beverly has routinely offered, I finally made it out to La Brea and Beverly Sunday night, March 11, for my first Grindhouse Fest double feature, John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder and Charles B. Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown. According to the calendar, the show was to begin at 7:30, and having no idea what to expect as far as crowds, I made sure I got there in plenty of time to find a parking spot somewhere in the surrounding neighborhood and get a place in line. I strolled up to the box office at about 6:15, and there were two other people already there. I bought my ticket, unrolled the magazine I’d brought along and began to read. It wasn’t long before others arrived in anticipation of the doors opening. And it wasn’t much longer again before the box office attendant came out and informed us devoted standees that the films were running behind schedule (the double feature played that Sunday afternoon as well) and that we wouldn’t actually even be admitted into the theater until about 7:45 p.m.
But I didn’t really much mind. I’ve always enjoyed keeping company with fellow fanatics in joint anticipation of something special, even if just to stand around and people-watch. Soon there was a bustling crowd in line behind me and milling loosely about the general area of the box office window. A bald, mustachioed gentleman and an older, distinguished-looking fella began animatedly talking with a couple of other folks, presumably theater management, who kept rushing in and out of the theater to check how close the afternoon program was to actually finishing. It finally did, at about 7:50, and the attendees of the afternoon show came pouring out, visibly glad to not have to blanch at direct sunlight (it was the first day of Daylight Savings Time, but even so the sun was by now well down), but otherwise looking rather worn, perhaps even bored. Hmm, thought I, not a good sign. They would have just seen The Town That Dreaded Sundown, a period thriller that I saw and enjoyed multiple times in high school, based on accounts of the Texarkana Phantom Killer. The case, and the movie, have superficial parallels with the Bay Area murders chronicled in David Fincher’s superb Zodiac, in that the apparently motiveless killer, who favored lovers’ lane-type locations, was never caught, an open-ended scenario based on case files that the movies (Fincher’s, anyway) explore and exploit for maximum tension. Yet these grindhouse-goers didn’t look wrung out with fear. Could it be that my memory of Sundown was far more generous that the movie deserved?
I found a sweet spot in the smallish auditorium on the right side, on the aisle, and settled in. It soon became apparent that one of the most endearing elements of the Grindhouse Festival experience-- and I can only imagine this holds true for the regular monthly Grindhouse nights at the New Beverly-- was the sense of kindred spirits that made its way rather nimbly through the crowd. Almost immediately, I ran into three people I knew, none of whom I was aware would be attending, and I made two other acquaintances who introduced themselves when they overheard me talking about my blog. And there was a generous vibe that was present in the crowd from the start that was markedly different from the usual hip L.A. scenester gathering that shows up at screenings of bad movies with the express purpose of making sure all around them know that they know enough to laugh at the piece of shit unspooling in front of them. No, these people seemed, for the most part, genuinely respectful, if that’s the right phrase, of the grimy roots of the experience, even if tonight’s double feature wasn’t composed of the usual specimens— both Rolling Thunder and Sundown seemed a little more respectable than the cookie-cutter chopsocky or badly-dubbed Italian gore-fests usually associated with the phrase “grindhouse.” (That particular fix would be addressed by the prodigious bill of trailers on tap that evening.)
I was able to corral Brian for a few minutes and introduce myself. He recognized me from the blog and admitted to posting a gently good-humored harangue in the comments column about my admitting not having been to the New Beverly in 10 years. We talked about mutual friends Haruka and Max, both regular Grindhouse Night attendees who have been trying to get me to come for months, and Brian expressed his excitement for how things had been going during the first week of the Tarantino collection. He also clued me in as to who the Bald Mustache and the Distinguished Gentleman outside the box office were—they were tonight’s special guests, Rolling Thunder director John Flynn (D.G.), and screenwriter Heywood Gould (B.M.) who apparently rewrote Paul Schrader’s original script and fashioned it into what made it onto film. My mind started tumbling— Heywood Gould… Why should I know that name? I didn’t remember at the time, but if I had, I might have actually introduced myself. For, as I discovered when I ran his name through IMDb when I got home, Heywood Gould was not only the director of the atrocious Michael Keaton-Rene Russo vehicle One Good Cop, he also wrote the screenplay for one of my holy texts, the sublimely absurd The Boys from Brazil.
Soon Brian and Eric took the stage in front of the screen to introduce the film, and Mssrs. Gould and Flynn, who spoke for about 15 minutes, telling tales of attempted censorship, threats of bodily harm after marketing screenings, and how the movie was dumped by Fox over its relentless violence and, after being picked up by Samuel Arkoff and American International Pictures, ended up the top-grossing independent picture of 1977. (Fox presumably licked their wounds with the gold-flaked drool generated by Star Wars.) Then 15 or so minutes of wild and wooly trailers for several of the movies coming up at the New Beverly, and finally, at about 8:30, the movie that was supposed to have started at 7:30, finally got underway.
Back to that sense memory of what it was like to see these pictures, in venues both seedy and somewhat more above ground—I’d forgotten what seeing a badly maintained 35mm print of a movie was really like, so obsessed are we these days with sprucing up original negatives and cleaning up visual and aural artifacts and making sure the DVD transfers are struck from the best possible prints and properly color-corrected, usually with the input of the cinematographer and/or director. So even though all those things are good things, I forgave myself the cheap thrill that ran up my spine when that familiar fuzz of the optical soundtrack running over the heads of the projector began popping and crackling and otherwise partying like it was 1977 all over again. There was a direct and immense and palpable pleasure to being able to feel the film the way one feels it while watching a run-down, worn-out, occasionally bleached-out print. It’s a natural phenomenon of age and dust and general disrepair that Tarantino and Rodriguez are reportedly going to great lengths to duplicate in the look and sound of Grindhouse, and if that theatrical trailer is any indication, they’re rumbling up the right alley. Suffice to say, the prints from Tarantino’s collection have not been hermetically sealed in a humidor vault to protect them from the onslaught of elements that lend themselves to the decay of celluloid. I realized, 10 or so minutes into Rolling Thunder, that I was glad for all the rumble and warble and popping and thumping and scratches on this print. As pro-restoration and preservation as I am, all of the prints I’ve seen so far in this festival feel like nothing so much as genuine surviving documents of a certain kind of theatrical distribution and exhibition that is almost as lost as this low-budget strain of B-movie is itself.
I’d never seen Rolling Thunder (1977), but I’d heard plenty of good about it, and it did not disappoint. William Devane is satisfyingly grim as the tortured Vietnam vet who loses his wife and son in a horrific home robbery gone wrong and recedes behind his aviator sunglasses into a private hell of repressed, yet reemerging, memories of wartime violence, and of seething desire to wreak protracted vengeance on the attackers. It’s a good, vicious thriller, directed with plenty of gusto by the undervalued Flynn, who was also responsible for the underrated mob drama The Outfit (1973) starring Robert Duvall, Karen Black, Joe Don Baker, Robert Ryan and my beloved Sheree North.
Alas, The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1977) was not the movie my memory had been telling me it was over the past 30 years. In his pre-show speech, Eric admitted it was always one of his favorites too and that, after seeing it at the early afternoon screening, even he had to admit it wasn’t very good. Eric was right. Directed by regional filmmaker Charles B. Pierce, who made his hay four-wallingThe Legend of Boggy Creek into a notable hit in 1972, Sundown may be based on an actual case, but Pierce’s touch as writer-director (and Barney Fife-esque supporting cast member) is so wobbly that the movie, hobbled from the get-go by portentous Encyclopedia Brittanica-style narration that fills in the holes where all the interesting storytelling should go, never finds a proper tone from which to build a true sense of fear. The movie veers wildly from ineptly staged murders, to long scenes of the police investigators, including an apparently legendary Texas Ranger played by Ben Johnson, standing around wondering what to do, to comic car chase set pieces that advance the story not a whit. By the time the familiar boots worn by the killer (who was never caught) are seen striding into a movie theater line in “modern-day” Texarkana for a screening of, yes, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, all common and narrative sense have been sucked into the black hole of Pierce’s incoherent point of view, and I was just glad to finally have one of my childhood boogeymen exorcised for good. My first night at the Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival finished around 12:30 a.m., just about an hour and a half behind schedule, and although one of the movies was a marked disappointment, the experience was anything but. I was already looking forward to my next chance at a juicy, vintage double feature. I’d done violence. Next up: sex.
Sunday, March 25. I was back in line for another double feature, one that promised another combination of relatively high quality and bottom of-the-barrel contact high that was the exclusive province of the mid-70s drive-in sex comedy. There I was, the only one in line at 6:30 p.m. for a double feature of Roger Vadim’s erotic high school satire Pretty Maids All in A Row (1971) and Richard Lerner’s Revenge of the Cheerleaders (1976). At first I worried that the bloom had worn off Tarantino’s stinking rose already, that the novelty of an all-grindhouse schedule had, after three weeks, started to seem less exciting to the general moviegoing public than it had when all this kicked off at the beginning of March. I shouldn’t have worried. By the time my pal Michael and I got our seats, the New Beverly was packed once again, and that same sense of eager, happy anticipation was in the air. Maybe it was because the audience was looking forward to pretty maids gamboling in various skimpy outfits under the tutelage of lecherous high school guidance counselor Rock Hudson instead of William Devane dispensing vigilante justice with a hook where his hand (sacrificed to a kitchen garbage disposal) once was, but the vibe was considerably lighter leading up to show time. (The fact that the screening was on time for 7:30 might have had something to do with it too.)
Brian took the pre-show stage again to talk about some upcoming features (it’s possible that Asian star Nancy Kwan may be in attendance for the upcoming screening of Wonder Women-- stay tuned!) and introduce two of Vadim’s original “pretty maids” who were in the New Beverly audience. Actress June Fairchild, dressed like a cross between Stevie Nicks and Susan Janet Ballion, and the considerably more conservative Margaret Markov bantered for four or five minutes and reminisced about Vadim’s talent as well as his lechery, and then Pretty Maids All In A Row got underway. This was one I was particularly looking forward to, as I’ve always liked Pretty Maids based on one viewing of an understandably cut-and-pasted TV version that I saw when I was 18 or so.
And it was a pleasure to see the eroticism that peeked through the rough seams of that censored broadcast patch job blossom into its fullness (sorry) uncut on the big screen. Pretty Maids is a surprisingly spry and funny submersion of unbridled male fantasy into a high school setting—tortured virgin Ponce de Leon Harper (played by John David Carson in his first movie, and no, I’m not kidding about that name) is taken under the wing of genially lecherous guidance counselor and football coach Michael “Tiger” McGrew (Rock Hudson), who enlists comely substitute teacher Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson, and no, I’m not kidding about that name) to help Ponce through what he terms a rough patch of ineptitude and sexual dysfunction. Of course, Ponce’s only dysfunction is that he hasn’t yet had actual sex, and darned if Betty, after spying his boner and proclaiming her work done, doesn't develop a little attraction to him that eventually leads to the solving of Ponce’s real problem. But Ponce has at the same time discovered the dead body of a cheerleader dumped in a men’s room stall (or cubicle, as he keeps inexplicably referring to it—only screenwriter Gene Roddenberry knew for sure why, and he’s not talking), a body homicide inspector Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas, and again, no, I’m not kidding about that name) begins to believe may have some connection to Tiger McGrew-- especially when the bodies of lovely naked ingénues (including June Fairchild’s) start piling up. If it weren’t so unapologetically goofy and genuinely sexy, Pretty Maids All in a Row might seem a tad on the tasteless side. But even so, its pedigree—Vadim, Roddenberry, a Lalo Schifrin score, and even a main title tune sung by the Osmonds-- and its cast, like Rolling Thunder’s, seems to lift it out of the purview of what would have been considered typical grindhouse fare of the time. It’s down and dirty, to be sure, but it was also a sizable hit upon its release, and it played in a lot nicer cinemas than most of the other movies on the 2007 Los Angeles Grindhouse Fest schedule.
Certainly nicer ones than the ones in 1976 that stooped to exhibit Revenge of the Cheerleaders. I don’t remember if I was ever near a theater that even played this ostensible sequel to the original 1972 comedy The Cheerleaders, and my own awareness of the movie remained vague at best until Tarantino’s festival schedule was announced a month or so ago. I’d already decided I’d see it, mainly because it was attached to Pretty Maids. Then I got an e-mail from Jim Emerson encouraging me to see Revenge-- apparently he’d seen it and vouched for its singularity amongst the spate of R-rated cheerleader comedies of the time. Jim also sent along the keen nontheatrical poster displayed here which, as you might notice, differs somewhat from the original release one-sheet on display at the New Beverly. I saw that poster and immediately began preparing myself for some sort of rally squad take on Caveman, complete with low-grade stop-motion animation, but alas, that brontosaurus ride was conjured up entirely by the marketing wizards at Corinth Pictures, who sustained the movie into the video age after its brief theatrical run.
But who needs rampaging brontosauruses in a movie when you’ve got these cheerleading babes? Revenge of the Cheerleaders roars out of the gate with an exuberant main title sequence chronicling the squad’s happy adventures in both cruising and changing out of their street duds and into their uniforms while driving. Nudity within the first minute of the movie, and scored to a pretty good rock tune too (“I Feel Good,” sung by Cathy Carlson)—so far, so good. Well, incredibly, ROTC sustains that exuberance for almost the entirety of its 88-minute running time. The movie consists of one outrageous, disarmingly funny, unapologetically ridiculous set of hi-jinks after another, with these sociopathic sexpots always placed front and center, and shedding their tops (and bottoms) at the drop of a hat. There is no narrative drive to be interrupted, so when the gang-- the cheerleaders and their basketball-playing boyfriends (one of whom is essayed by a lanky young actor by the name of David Hasselhoff, in the role of Boner) take time out for one of several hilariously choreographed dance sequences, well, it’s like the drive-in equivalent of a musical interlude from Chico and Harpo. (Only a cafeteria food fight in which stuffed shirt school board members, as well as unsuspecting students, are drugged into hysteria commits the capital sin of going on too long.) There is no curriculum at the "morally compromised" Aloha High School, only figures of authority to disregard or blatantly undermine— these cheerleaders and the rest of the Aloha student body make Riff Randall and her crowd look like straight-A honor society members. The girls and boys only want to have fun, which translates into a heady brew of screwing, playing basketball, cheering, robbing students at a thug-happy rival high school of their drugs (during class!) and riding around in a cherry red 1955 Buick convertible with the top down, and their tops off, of course. (The nudity is democratic too—there’s more than a flash of full frontal male twiggery on view here, including Hasselhoff, though his Boner status, based on this evidence, is overinflated.) It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered such a relentlessly likable feel-good-at-all-costs vibe in any movie, let alone one as low-rent as this one. Tarantino said in a recent interview, referring to discovering treasures in the world of exploitation movies, that not only do you have to drink a lot of milk to get to the cream, with exploitation fare you have to drink a lot of curdled milk to get to the milk. And that’s what Revenge of the Cheerleaders felt like to me Sunday night—the reward for having slogged through a lot of similar comedies that had the sex and nudity but none of the zip and tang and spirit this one has in buckets.
The spirit at work in Revenge of the Cheerleaders is best illustrated by the participation of Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith as one of the main pepsters, known as Heather. Smith, an exploitation queen familiar to fans of films such as The Swinging Cheerleaders, Caged Heat, The Pom Pom Girls, Massacre at Central High, Slumber Party ‘57 and Vice Squad, as well as appearances in above-ground titles like Phantom of the Paradise, Farewell, My Lovely, Up in Smoke and Melvin and Howard, was a natural for this movie, and apparently the director and probably everyone else, wanted pretty badly for her to be in it. Because it’s quite apparent, from that opening credit sequence on, that Rainbeaux Smith is about six months pregnant while playing a high school cheerleader in this film. Her being in the family way just happens to fit perfectly with the movie’s theme of a high school under siege by developers who want to justify razing the property and building a mall on it by publicly condemning the student body as amoral hooligans. But one of the marvels of Revenge of the Cheerleaders is how matter-of-fact everyone is about her pregnancy. They’re so matter-of-fact, it’s never even mentioned until the movie’s epilogue, when someone pats her belly and comments on how nicely that little bun in the oven is coming along. But before that, Smith has romped nude in a wild group shower scene (protruding belly and engorged breasts in full view, obscured only by some soap bubbles), and she’s right in there smoking J’s and hanging out (albeit sometimes in nice, roomy frocks) with the rest of the gang, smack in the middle of all the chaotic comedy.
Right up through that epilogue, which has as much gratuitous nudity, silly laughs and salacious dancing in it as any other section of the picture, I remained giddy over how much I liked this movie. After the end credits, the movie jumps ahead (“Three Months Later” says the title card) and treats us to one last cheer from the titular (sorry) rally squad, who finishes off with a wave to an off-screen observer. The camera then cuts to a shot of a suddenly slender-again Rainbeaux Smith holding her baby in her arms, waving back at the girls and smiling with the shimmer of a real rainbow. It was at that point that Revenge of the Cheerleaders did something no other sex comedy of its kind has ever done—it genuinely moved me.
What a tribute to this plainly beautiful young actress. These nickel-and-dime filmmakers thought so much of her that wanted her in their cheerleader movie no matter how bulbous her belly, and felt so little needed to be made, thanks to her genuinely likable personality, of her condition during the film, that they gave her this touching moment to end their B-movie shenanigans. Earlier I turned to my pal Michael and remarked I was enjoying the movie so much that I was kind of shocked—I told him I was in awe of Revenge of the Cheerleaders. After seeing Rainbeaux Smith, who died in 2002 from complications with hepatitis, cradling her newborn baby at the end of what film historians will never recognize as anything but a crass piece of junk, an artifact from a generally worthless trend in American movies in the ‘70s, I embraced that awe as something genuine-- genuinely unexpected, genuinely touching. Revenge of the Cheerleaders, and the raucously appreciative crowd I saw it with at the New Beverly (whose enthusiasm spilled out onto the street audibly afterward), provided me with more fun than I’ve had at the movies in a long time. How could a comedy this funny, this saucy, this genuinely wild not have a big fat cult following it around and proclaiming its special joys?
UPDATE March 29, 12:04 p.m.: The link to the story of Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith’s life, as written by Chris Barbour, who was close to Smith for a time, and spoke to her shortly before her death, features excerpts from a short letter written by Smith to a friend during the summer of 1985. In it she recounts her favorite film experiences, among them Revenge of the Cheerleaders. Here’s what she wrote to her friend (spelling are grammar are as Smith wrote in the letter):
“REVENGE OF THE CHEERLEADERS: This is my absolute favorite of it's kind. Actually the other one's I'd personally like to forget. And if ever I become a millionaire--there will be a couple of the other ones (we know which!) missing off the shelves forever! Ha. REVENGE is a unique, musical comedy. To get the record straight: The guys--Richard Lerner, great guy. Did the original film (I'm not in it) X rated THE CHEERLEADERS. He did it for 1 reason, $. Which he made & used for his real love REVENGE. This was his joy. I must tell you about the casting. While doing my unfavorite of all times STAND UP & HOLLER I get a call from my agent. After the days shooting I'm to go on this interview. I find out its about CHEERLEADERS. Shit. "You want to see a cheer? I know a bunch!" I say, while I'm thinking this must be what I get for staying out of school to become a working actress. Several days after my appointment, not quite, finished w/ the other picture. I discover I'm pregnate w/ my 1st son, to my 1st husband, ('till this day the last). Anyway when I get called back to see Lerner again, I find his more than serious about me for his film. So I told him of my condition. He was very saddened. I was shocked when my agent called & said they wanted to see me again. Honestly, I couldn't understand why. I went on [word illegible]. Boy was I in for a shocker...Lerner had discussed w/ his partnerrs & writers & decided to write in a pregnate cheerleader! They thought it would be funny--& as it turned out it was a crazy twist. They tried to get a zebra as a mascot & have me ride it, until I told they weren't timable. I worked up until my 9th month w/ an excellent group of gals. Here are these beautiful girls w/ all this energy & me waddelin 'round like a fat duck. One day actually we're doing a night shoot in a giant, closed furniture mall. We're in overtime. The dir. is goin nuts & want to rap the entire thing. He wasn't in the best of moods thats for certain. With our budget overtime wasn't his favorite time! We were, us cheerleader's, in a good mood. The more the dir. yelled, the more outta hand we became & for the life of us couldn't stop laughing. "Shut up!" Lerner yelled. "Now when I say action I want you girls to run down this hallway after the guard as fast as you can!" Then "action!" And we were off runnin as fast as we could. I'm waddling down the way & start to laugh, back to the camera. "Wait! wait you guys, You guys..." 10 feet ahead of me, "please! wait up." Finally I'm laughing so hard i fall to the ground! The girls turn around & see me way back there & they point at me, look at each other, unable to speak. I'm hysterical laughter, fall down on their knees as well. Lerner goes "Thats a take!" Laughing. "Print it!" “
More from the Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival 2007 coming soon! A peek through the New Beverly box office window reveals a gruesome triple feature coming this weekend-- The Blood-Spattered Bride, Asylum of Blood and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary. Stay tuned.
I didn’t want to let any more time go without acknowledging the passing of the great cinematographer Freddie Francis, master of wide-screen cinematography, and in particular a master of silvery, evocative black and white wide-screen cinematography—Jack Cardiff’s adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, the haunted Victorian back-alleys of David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, and for me the most understated and brilliant of all, Jack Clayton’s rendering of Henry James’ Turn of the Screw, the altogether unnerving The Innocents. Francis took an extended sabbatical from cinematography after shooting 1964’s Night Must Fall, then made an auspicious return with The Elephant Man, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Executioner’s Song, Dune and Glory. His last film, Lynch’s The Straight Story, was some of his most sensitive, perceptive and unadorned work, and a beautiful way to end a career visualizing the films of others.
But during that post-Night Must Fall sabbatical, Francis began making his own movies, working mostly as a journeyman for Hammer Films and their chief rival, Amicus Films. It was through his credits during this period that many film fans of my generation and particular taste first became familiar with the name of Freddie Francis. He went uncredited on his first directorial assignment, The Day for the Triffids, but soon made a name for himself in the horror genre with such titles as Paranoiac, The Evil of Frankenstein, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Torture Garden, The Deadly Bees, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (an above-average Christopher Lee-Dracula entry), Trog (Joan Crawford’s swan song), The Creeping Flesh, Tales That Witness Madness and my personal favorite, his E.C. Comics anthology film Tales from the Crypt. Francis’s final feature was The Doctor and the Devils (1985) starring Jonathan Pryce and Timothy Dalton, from a script by Dylan Thomas. It isn’t officially one, but it is in every significant way— tone, rich, lurid visual scheme, and ripeness of the performances—a soul mate of the Hammer films Francis was so central to in the 1960s and 1970s.
David Hudson has gathered up a wonderful list of tributes to Francis here at GreenCine Daily, my favorite of which, from writer Robert Cashill, also looks at Francis’s horror films from a personal perspective.
And for some reason I’m finding it particularly difficult to think about the passing of Calvert DeForest, known to fans of Late Night with David Letterman as Larry “Bud” Melman. I was lucky enough to see Letterman, and DeForest (as Melman), at a live taping of Late Night’s eighth anniversary, which was taped here in Los Angeles at the Universal Amphitheater in 1990. I was never any closer to him than that, but I felt like I was, and hearing that he’s no longer around hurts in an almost absurd way. I can’t really articulate it, yet I have to acknowledge it. In my stead, I refer you to an exceptional piece on DeForest and the passing not only of a beloved Late Night stock player, but the passing of the final hours in the existence of TV land, "a mythical place where people exhibit behavior that has no equivalent in life -- a world of agreed-on fiction, a place that only exists in flashes of light." Here's an excerpt:
“By the time the little man known as Larry ‘Bud’ Melman (a.k.a. actor Calvert DeForest) wobbled and fumbled his way onto the American cultural stage via NBC's Late Night with David Letterman, the invented eccentric had long been a tired recurring device, used and over-used on situation comedies and variety shows since TV land's earliest days…. Americans wanted something familiar but different; Letterman filled that order and then some, introducing a garden gnome in horn-rimmed glasses known as Larry ‘Bud’ Melman -- a TV land simpleton with a male/female voice that -- either way -- sounded as if it was under the influence of hormone shots. The pairing was as perfect as it was bizarre. Even as Letterman delighted in his creation in those early days, we were baffled. Here was a man so untalented, so utterly devoid of performing skills, you just had to stare at him in wonder.”
And then, just when they’re needed most, in swoopeth the skinny Jewish guy and the portly Catholic guy to save the day and serve up the laughs like a veteran comedy team straight off the vaudeville boards. At first things don’t look too rosy on the set of Siskel and Ebert and the Movies-- the pair are desultorily making their way through a series on promos to be sent out to their syndicated stations for some upcoming shows. Roger speeds through the copy too quickly, and Gene gets prickly. Gene flubs the name of the show, and Roger’s stack gets ready to blow. And then, as if by magic, the (probably) real tension gives way to ribald, good-natured (and, again, eye-poppingly profane) trash talk, a wild Ping-Pong match of F-bombs and religious insults that breezily illustrates just how these two, whose legendary prickliness toward each other was reportedly not entirely an act, managed to learn to get along with each other while introducing a form of film criticism to a generation of TV-watching movie geeks. (It’ll also make you believe without a shadow of a doubt that Ebert is indeed the man who wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls!) Forgive me if you've seen this before, but after the whole Huckabees explosion it seemed like a good time to see some on-set sparring that was meant to be funny... Just think what Ray Harryhausen could have done with this clash!
It’s been a couple of months since Jim Emerson passed along an update on Roger Ebert’s condition, but the most recent word is that he is recovering, although through “a staged, multi-phased approach” that is taking longer, clearly, than Mr. Ebert would like. But as he put it in his letter, “To borrow from the Chicago Bears, we tried for the long pass, but now we're going for a series of shorter passes until we score a touchdown… Let me just say that I hope to return soon. As Faulkner says: ‘We shall not merely prevail, we shall endure.’” Speaking for all of us who watched his show from its earliest days and now eagerly await his return, we wish you well, Mr. Ebert.
(Hey, Kim, any tape like this of you and Roeper we can look forward to?)
If there be devils, would I were a devil, To live and burn in everlasting fire, So I might have your company in hell, But to torment you with my bitter tongue! -- William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, V:1.
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity. -- George Bernard Shaw.
The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts: the less you know the hotter you get. -- Bertrand Russell.
We’re going to go someplace ugly today, so fasten your hip waders…
In writer-director David O. Russell’s idiosyncratic comedy I Heart Huckabees, Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman play a pair of “existential detectives” who are hired by a slacker environmentalist (Jason Schwarzman) to follow their client around and solve the conundrum of his perpetual malaise. The movie is a high-wire act unlike just about any other I can think of, practically daring its audience to throw up its collective hands in frustration over its exhausting pace and the buzzing (droning) bee-hive of philosophical quandaries that have been woven into the farcical fabric of its script. It’s one of those movies that audiences (and there weren’t many counted in that number when the movie was released theatrically in October 2004) either immediately love, jumping on its train of dizzying thought and grooving to the disorientation experienced by the ever-thinning oxygen of its headiest concepts, or immediately hate, repulsed by its apparent disregard for easing viewers into its world or making them feel comfortable (or even wanted) once they get there. Huckabees is practically the definition of a movie fashioned by its auteur without serious consideration of the marketplace, and by this standard one would have to consider it some sort of miracle (or perhaps an aberration escaping like hot steam from a fissure in the Hollywood infrastructure) that it was made, marketed and distributed at all in this timid age of endless research and quirky projects that turn around in perpetuity, in arrested development, like orphaned carousels.
One might expect anyone who could create a project that flirts so precariously with disaster for two solid hours to be, well, a tumultuous personality. And Russell’s reputation certainly did precede him. Here’s an excerpt from a Playboy interview with George Clooney in which the star recounts an incident when his relationship with Russell came to a violent head on the set of Three Kings:
“CLOONEY: David is in many ways a genius, though I learned that he's not a genius when it comes to people skills.
PLAYBOY: Did you learn about that the hard way?
CLOONEY: I did. He yelled and screamed at people all day, from day one.
PLAYBOY: Did he yell at you?
CLOONEY: At me often — and at someone daily. He'd throw off his headset and scream, 'Today the sound department fucked me!' For me, it came to a head a couple of times. Once, he went after a camera-car driver who I knew from high school. I had nothing to do with his getting his job, but David began yelling and screaming at him and embarrassing him in front of everybody. I told him, 'You can yell and scream and even fire him, but what you can't do is humiliate him in front of people. Not on my set, if I have any say about it.'
Another time he screamed at the script supervisor and made her cry. I wrote him a letter and said, 'Look, I don't know why you do this. You've written a brilliant script, and I think you're a good director. Let's not have a set like this. I don't like it and I don't work well like this.' I'm not one of those actors who likes things in disarray. He read the letter and we started all over again.
But later, we were three weeks behind schedule, which puts some pressure on you, and he was in a bad mood. These army kids, who were working as extras, were supposed to tackle us. David wanted one of the extras to grab me and throw me down. This kid was a little nervous about it, and David walked up to him and grabbed him. He pushed him onto the ground.
He kicked him and screamed, 'Do you want to be in this fucking movie? Then throw him to the fucking ground!' The second assistant director came up and said, 'You don't do that, David. You want them to do something, you tell me.' David grabbed his walkie-talkie and threw it on the ground. He screamed, 'Shut the fuck up! Fuck you, and the AD goes, 'Fuck you! I quit.' He walked off.
It was a dangerous time. I'd sent him this letter. I was trying to make things work, so I went over and put my arm around him. I said, 'David, it's a big day. But you can't shove, push, or humiliate people who aren't allowed to defend themselves.' He turned on me and said, 'Why don't you just worry about your fucked-up act? You're being a dick. You want to hit me? You want to hit me? Come on, pussy, hit me.' I'm looking at him like he's out of his mind. Then he started banging me on the head with his head. He goes, 'Hit me, you pussy. Hit me.' Then he got me by the throat and I went nuts. I had him by the throat. I was going to kill him. Kill him. Finally, he apologized, but I walked away. By then, the Warner Bros. guys were freaking out. David sort of pouted through the rest of the shoot and we finished the movie, but it was truly, without exception, the worst experience of my life."
There were intimations of conflicts on the set of I Heart Huckabees as well, and the chaotic, anything-goes style of the movie raises questions as to just what director would be confident enough in shaping this material and bringing it to the screen without having some major neuroses and potential nervous breakdowns over it.
Now comes the rather shocking evidence that, indeed, the I Heart Huckabees set was anything but a happy one, at least as it involved dealings between actress Lily Tomlin and director Russell. Tomlin, apparently unconvinced that Russell had anything resembling a hold over the tone of the movie or even the way he wanted his actors to approach the film scene-by-scene, became increasingly vocal in her displeasure regarding the director.
It’s not clear where the following scene took place in the chronology of Tomlin’s relationship with Russell, but even so it raises a couple of interesting questions, and it certainly seems to prove that Clooney, while an engaging raconteur who is well known for using humor and exaggeration in interviews, on awards shows and, one assumes, in everyday conversation, was telling the story of his own contretemps ith Russell pretty straight. Behold, if you can bear it, Tomlin vs. Russell (and turn down the volume if you’re at work):
What are we to make of this spectacle? I’ve seen arguments on movie sets before, and though they seemed like a big deal to those involved, and certainly to me, at the time, they’re nothing compared to this. And it would be naïve to assume that this was the one and only time something like happened on the set of I Heart Huckabees. Perhaps, from what we know of Russell’s volatile temperament, and what we now seem to know about the temperament of at least one of the actors he hired, this isn’t so much an apocalyptic explosion as it is a relative ripple on the surface of a generally chaotic production.
(Dustin Hoffman can be seen milling around in the background here, keeping fairly quiet, but in the first clip he takes a more active role in trying to either mediate between Tomlin and Russell or simply encouraging her to just get on with business. Jason Schwarzman, for his part, stays passively slumped in the chair opposite Tomlin’s desk for the duration of the tirade.)
I’d be curious to hear from those who have film production experience, be they actors, directors, crew members, whoever—How do actors and directors involved in something this grotesque and public get themselves back on the rails, creatively and interpersonally? Clooney suggests that Russell walked away and, upon his return, pouted for the rest of the shoot in, I would assume, relative silence. But recounting the aftermath in such a sketchy way doesn’t indicate just how awful it must really have been, and it doesn’t seem much of a jump to think that the creative juices that Tomlin felt were oozing rather than flowing at the time of the blow-up must have dried up completely, at least for a while. And while I’m fishing for answers, I’ll fish for an opinion or two as well: Can working with a volcanic director actually be good for the creative process? If not, why (besides the money) would actors and crew members tolerate such behavior? Is this kind of threatening, off-the-rails, abusive behavior somehow actionable? And if not, why would anyone want to work with Russell again? Huckabees may be brilliant, it may be a mess, but one could hardly call it complacent—it’s in there scrapping for slivers of enlightenment and understanding right along with the people who made it and the audiences who choose to see it and run with it, and perhaps some of this striving, searching, reckless clashing of tones and spirits that are vital to the movie can be directly traced to this kind of passion, however misplaced it might seem. These are the questions. I have no answers.
By sheer coincidence, I ran across I Heart Huckabees a few nights ago on IFC and was sucked right into it. I was enraptured by the sense that the movie is constantly finding new patches of thin ice to skate on, and I felt as I did when I saw it theatrically that it always felt just on the verge of imploding, or falling apart like those pixilated boxes that frequently fragment its wide-screen frames. But I have no idea what seeing the movie now, in light of this three-minute piece of video purloined from the movie’s set (three minutes obviously never intended to be seen by the public), will be like, or how direct observation of the conflict at the heart of the relationship between Tomlin and Russell will color my thoughts about the movie as a whole. I look forward to finding out, even as I feel, in the aftermath of seeing this clip, that I’ve just witnessed a car crash. Rumors of clashes on movie sets are the stock in trade of entertainment reportage, and they have been ever since Hedda and Louella plied the wagging tongues of their gossipy wares. But seeing it for one’s self is like watching a page from Hollywood Babylon come to life and then, at least for me, wishing that there was at least this much still left to my imagination.
(In light of this jaw-dropping piece, take a look at the innocuous spin put on the movie, and the director, by stars Tomlin and Hoffman on this CBS Morning Show interview when the movie was being released.)
It’s Open Forum time. What are your reactions to this video? How do creative artists recover from a blow-torching like this one? Would you work for David O. Russell? Are his movies worth this kind of behavior? And how much of this do you think can be laid at Tomlin’s feet?
UPDATE 3/23/07 9:29 a.m.: The second video is now back up, but who knows how long it'll be there. And speaking of Tomlin, here's her reaction to the whole nasty affair. (Thanks, Ju-osh, for the link.)
Those of you who are old enough to have whiled away after-school afternoons with The Mike Douglas Show won’t have any trouble remembering the latest professor to join the esteemed staff here at SLIFR U—the foremost authority on just about any subject, Professor Irwin Corey. Corey’s comedy career stretches back a good deal further than an afternoon talk show from the ‘60s, however—he started in the ‘30s, and his marks can be found at the roots of what is now known as improvisational comedy. According to writer Jim Kniepel,
“Professor Irwin Corey may not be a familiar name to the young people of today, but he’s a landmark. Beginning in the 30s, he singlehandedly, I dare say, invented improvisational comedy as we know it. Corey doesn’t script his act–he just goes onstage and riffs. But he more than riffs. As ‘The World’s Foremost Authority,’ he lectures in a rambling mishmash of important-sounding double-talk (injected with wise one-liners) that at least seems to be about something very important.
He can ad lib Shakespeare, scrutinize the Bible or explain, eventually, why people wear shoes. He’s also, over the years, added a number of aphorisms to the American lexicon (though he rarely gets proper credit). ‘Wherever you go, there you are,’ was not first uttered by Buckaroo Banzai. And it wasn’t Al Capone who instructed, ‘You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.’ I’m not real sure who ‘If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going’ has been attributed to, but that’s Corey’s as well.
Forgive me for going on here, but in Corey, you could say, you find not only a history of entertainment in the 20th century, but a history of the 20th century, period.”
Corey’s record with movies is somewhat spottier. He appeared with Candice Rialson in Chatterbox and briefly in Woody Allen’s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. But Professor Irwin Corey’s best-known film appearance was probably as himself (basically), a rumpled, disheveled, half-demented customer who is mistaken for a mad bomber by the hysterical employees at the Car Wash.
But if movie stardom always evaded the Professor (and if he never pursued it), there is always comedy, and at 87 years old he is still mining laughs and making money doing it. Which I why he has decided to grace us with his presence here this spring and introduce a brand-new movie quiz for the dedicated quiz-takers at SLIFR-- because he can. So sit back, relax, bring along a few sharpened pencils, your sharpest wit and your sincerest desire to do well, and plunge in to Professor Irwin Corey’s Foremostly Authoritative Spring Break Movie Quiz.
Please remember to include the questions when submitting your answers in the comments column. And remember also, eyes on your own papers, because wherever you go, the Professor will be watching, and there you and he will be! Ready? Begin.
1) What movie did you have to see multiple times before deciding whether you liked or disliked it?
2) Inaugural entry into the Academy of the Overrated
3) Favorite sly or not-so-sly reference to another film or bit of pop culture within another film.
4) Favorite Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger movie
5) Your favorite Oscar moment
6) Hugo Weaving or Guy Pearce?
7) Movie that you feel gave you the greatest insight into a world/culture/person/place/event that you had no understanding of before seeing it
8) Favorite Samuel Fuller movie
9) Monica Bellucci or Maria Grazia Cucinotta?
10) What movie can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
11) Conversely, what movie can destroy a day’s worth of good humor just by catching a glimpse of it while channel surfing?
12) Favorite John Boorman movie
13) Warren Oates or Bruce Dern?
14) Your favorite aspect ratio
15) Before he died in 1984, Francois Truffaut once said: “The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it.” Is there any evidence that Truffaut was right? Is it Truffaut’s tomorrow yet?
16) Favorite Werner Herzog movie
17) Favorite movie featuring a rampaging, oversized or otherwise mutated beast, or beasts
18) Sandra Bernhard or Sarah Silverman?
19) Your favorite, or most despised, movie cliché
20) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom-- yes or no?
21) Favorite Nicholas Ray movie
22) Inaugural entry into the Academy of the Underrated
23) Your favorite movie dealing with the subject of television
24) Bruno Ganz or Patrick Bauchau?
25) Your favorite documentary, or non-fiction, film
26) According to Orson Welles, the director’s job is to “preside over accidents.” Name a favorite moment from a movie that seems like an accident, or a unintended, privileged moment. How did it enhance or distract from the total experience of the movie?
30) As a reader, filmgoer, or film critic, what do you want from a film critic, or from film criticism? And where do you see film criticism in general headed?
In anticipation of the newest movie quiz (featuring a faculty member who will date those who recognize him quite assuredly), which is scheduled to be posted tomorrow, I just wanted to revisit some of my favorite answers from Professor Jennings' Milton-Free Holiday Midterm which, for my money, featured more wonderful, inspiring, provocative and downright hilarious answers than any quiz of the past. If the following lengthy post can be considered a digest in any way, then please enjoy this condensed version of the glorious list of answers that followed the Jennings quiz in the comments section. And sharpen your wits and our pencils, boys and girls, because the next test is just around the corner!
4) Name a moment from a movie that made you gasp (in horror, surprise, revelation…) Jack Nicholson at the typewriter, flanked by the burning Marlboro, in The Shining, barking ultimatums at Wendy. All I could think was, “Oh god, that’s me!”
26) Name the single most important book about the movies for you personally. I use David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film to lull myself to sleep at nights.
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. Seeing little Mike (Twin Peaks) Anderson walk down a Manhattan street, smoking a cigar bigger than his head, and holding hands with a gorgeous Amazon princess who must’ve been at least six feet tall.
(Flickhead)
10) Favorite appearance by an athlete in an acting role.
Bruce Jenner in Can't Stop the Music.
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter.
Getting Herschell Gordon Lewis's autograph. i asked him where Connie Mason was now (star of Gordon's Blood Feast and 2000 Maniacs) and he answered, "Back under the rock she crawled out from under."
(Dave S.)
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. The movies in general, or making movies? In answer to both, I'll go for two recent films that maybe aren't as predictable, and maybe, upon further thought, aren't my favorites, but which I think of often. The Dreamers, for equating cinephilia for teenage passion, and also for its elucidation of the lusty thrill of watching a film in the front row of the theater (so that the light hits your eyes first); and Tristram Shandy for conveying the surreal, chaotic magic of an all night film shoot.
8) Carole Bouquet or Angela Molina? Uh oh. I could hop over to IMDB, find out who both of these women are and then come back here with a straight faced lie - but I won't.
19) Fay Wray or Naomi Watts? Naomi Watts - not because I'm an ignorant young turk with no appreciation for the past, but because at this point in my life, the excitement of new possibilities takes slight precedence over the comfort of old joys.
(David Lowery)
13) What’s the name of your revival theater? I Can't Believe You Haven't Seen This Movie Before
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? Bio-Dome
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. Danny DeVito once picked lint off my sweater.
(Edward Copeland)
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity.
What was the name of that movie where the academic sophist gets a chainsaw through his nads?
(Melvum Peebly)
3) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson? Mitchell!
(Handsome Dan)
3) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson? JDB. Why? One word. Mitchell.
10) Favorite appearance by an athlete in an acting role. Rosey Grier, The Thing With Two Heads.
23) What is it that you think movies do better than any other art form? Surf the zeitgeist.
26) Name the single most important book about the movies for you personally. Hollywood Babylon.
(Filmbrain)
7) Describe the first time you ever recognized yourself in a movie. The basketball against the boy's head in THE GREAT SANTINI. I was the head.
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. This is why I hated college and couldn't wait to get into the real world.
13) What’s the name of your revival theater? THE DEMAREST. In honor of my favorite underappreciated character actor, otherwise known to most as Uncle Charley.
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? No, we gotta get past this kind of thinking. People are different; they're going to have different reactions to everything, including films.
21) Pick a new category for the Oscars and its first deserving winner. Jeffrey Wells had a great idea. An honorary Oscar each year to a classic movie and its makers and stars. Bring them all together again on stage, show clips, have them reminisce for a moment. That would, uh, redeem nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity.
(That Little Round-headed Boy)
2) Name the cinematographer whose work you most look forward to seeing, and an example of one of his/her finest achievements. I try to take any chance I can to watch a Gabriel Figueroa film with English subtitles. Sometimes I'll watch part of one without them. I got hooked on his images watching Buñuel films, but one of my favorites he lensed is La Perla.
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. Duck Amuck.
8) Carole Bouquet or Angela Molina? These head-to-heads are sometimes frustrating. If only there was a way to get two actors to play the same role, guided by the same director, we might get somewhere in the vicinity of being able to properly judge.
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. Opening night should be all about entertainment, so I'd start with the original version of Star Wars alongside The Hidden Fortress. Later on I'd get to bills like The Awful Truth with Make Way For Tomorrow and La Perdición de los Hombres with Weekend at Bernie's II.
18) Your favorite movie soundtrack score. How can I justify picking just one? Maybe by picking something different from when you last asked this question, and assuming it'll come up again in a future quiz too. This time around, Toru Takemitsu's score to Woman in the Dunes.
25) Favorite movie studio logo, as it appears before a theatrical feature. The Shaw Brothers shield
(Brian Darr)
1) What was the last movie you saw, either in a theater or on DVD, and why? I went to see Old Joy at the local arthouse with a friend, who asked me to go. It surprised me because lately we've been going there about once a week (obligatory plug: the Loft Cinema in Tucson) and I wanted to see it, but I didn't think it would be her cup of tea. But apparently she had been looking at what was playing there and reading the reviews and brought it up on her own. Before that, we watched The Rules of the Game on DVD, so this question caught me at just the right time not to embarrass myself and ruin my cinematic street cred.
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. There are several ways to approach the question as worded: the movie that one has nostalgic feelings for and that redeems those feelings by actually living up to one's mature expectations, and the movie that explores nostalgic material in a way that is not cloying and perhaps even profound. The first type I will have to think more about; Amarcord is a perfect example of the second type that I need to see many more times to explicate fully (by the way, it is on my Amazon wish list if anyone is...)
16) Describe your favorite moment in a movie that is memorable because of its use of sound. No sound as Frank Poole tumbles off dead into infinite space in 2001.
26) Name the single most important book about the movies for you personally. Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese, with Fellini On Fellini a close second.
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. WTF? I'm from Central Illinois!
(herecreepwretch)
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. Once Upon a Time in the West and Forty Guns.
13) What’s the name of your revival theater? Nellhaus Filmhaus
16) Describe your favorite moment in a movie that is memorable because of its use of sound. The sound of the car radios drifting in and out in American Graffiti.
23) What is it that you think movies do better than any other art form? Disintegrate
31) When did you first realize that films were directed? I can't remember exactly although it may have been when reading about a guy named Fritz Lang in a copy of Famous Monsters of Filmland.
(Peter Nellhaus)
4) Name a moment from a movie that made you gasp (in horror, surprise, revelation…) Our protagonist, head over heels in love with a younger woman, impulsively decides to telephone her at home. The telephone rings. Cut to her apartment. His lady love kneels serenely near the telephone, as it rings again. And again, half a dozen or so times in all. Suddenly, a cloth bag on the floor in the background of the shot lurches, an unnatural sound emerging from within. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? The movie: Audition.
8) Carole Bouquet or Angela Molina? If Fernando Rey can have both, why can’t I?
14) Humphrey Bogart or Elliot Gould? Smartass answer: Dick Powell.
Serious answer: Gould was only cool when he was working with Altman, whereas Bogart could be cool for anybody. So Bogey.
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. About five years ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of Allison Anders’ Things Behind The Sun, introduced by the director. I had never really been a fan of hers in the past, but autobiography suited her well, and seeing it with her in the audience just drove the whole thing home. It’s rare to see a film in which the director gives of herself so generously. Anyway, after the performance, people milled around Anders for autographs and congratulations, and when she looked at me, I simply said, “that was just stunning. Thank you.” Then, surprisingly, she asked me my name. When I told her, she responded, “Paul. Like Paul McCartney.” And she gave me a hug and said, “this means so much to me.” And I finally saw where the generosity I found in the film came from.
(Paul C.)
15) Favorite Robert Stevenson movie. You can't really fuck with Mary Poppins.
17) Pink Flamingoes-- yes or no? Yes, but never again.
(Ryland Walker Knight)
2) Name the cinematographer whose work you most look forward to seeing, and an example of one of his/her finest achievements. Boris Kaufman immediately comes to mind - because of the entire mood of On the Waterfront - that last unbelievable shot. It's not about being flashy, or showing your stuff - it's about being a top-notch storyteller.
But also I think my favorite shot in any movie is the long slow panning up in High Noon- when he walks out into the deserted town, by himself. It just gives me goosebumps and - you watch it and go: "That is a famous shot. It was born to be a famous shot. It has lived its life as a famous shot. It's just famous." Again - not just because it pulls back so far and so high ... but because it tells the story of that moment SO PERFECTLY. Gary Cooper suddenly looks teeny. Fabulous. So that's Floyd Crosby so I'll give him the props too.
7) Describe the first time you ever recognized yourself in a movie. Probably something like Tia in Witch Mountain.
22) Favorite Paul Verhoeven movie. In general, I can't stand the guy, although: I LOVED Total Recall - what a fun movie that was - and I LOVED Sharon Stone's performance in the first Basic Instinct, although I think that that was mostly HER doing and Verhoeven had nothing to do with it. Yes, I know the lesbians were mad about that movie - and I can see why - it was a ridiculous movie, with a ridiculous plot -and if you took that film seriously, you would be in HUGE trouble, because it was ludicrous, and I'm sick of Michael Douglas playing roles where he is victimized by female sexuality ("ooooh, she's so .... SEXY ... I might have to ... throw my whole life away ... because she's so ... SEXY ... i'm so SCARED of how sexy she is ..." etc. ad nauseum) - but I thought Stone gave one of the campiest (in the best way) most specific and fantastic performances of that entire decade. I look at it not as reality - or like she was trying to play a real person - I saw it as high camp - a nod to Jane Geer and Barbara Stanwyck and all the devious film-noir femme fatales. No wonder she became a star. Well-deserved.
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. Running into Drew Barrymore on an empty street in Soho at 8 a.m. one morning. I was on my way home ... but it was a beautiful morning, and NOBODY was out - I was on a cobblestone street, and there was a girl standing in front of a cafe - talking to a guy through the window - I think she was asking when they would be open - and it's hard to explian, something funny happened - there was an optical illusion that she and I both saw at the same time - of the "Specials" chalkboard literally flying through the air ... We looked thru the window, both happening to glance at the same time, and we saw a flying chalkboard - and I started to laugh at the same moment that this girl did - we both guffawed at the same time. She hadn't realized I was there, and turned to look at me, and it was Drew Barrymore. She had long red hair, no makeup on, and looked fresh-faced ... we both shared a laugh, like: "did you see that floating chalkboard ... that looked so hysterical ..." and then I was on my way. For some reason, I love that moment.
31) When did you first realize that films were directed? I love this question. Probably when I saw Dog Day Afternoon. I was young - way too young to see it or get it- 12 or 13 years old - but that movie was such an assault on my senses - my emotions - I immediately started doing research on who was responsible for it, how it came about ... The name "Sidney Lumet" has always had that weird resonance for me- because he was really the first guy where I realized: Okay ... how did he get all those people on the sidewalk? And was it REALLY that hot in the bank? And how did he get the helicopters to come down so close? How ... how did he do it??
(Sheila)
15) Favorite Robert Stevenson movie. I Married A Communist? This is a trick question.
(Seth)
6) Your Favorite Fritz Lang movie. You Only Live Once, a movie I encountered purely by chance when I rented it from my college library thinking that it was, yes, a Bond movie.
(Jimmy)
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. This has always been a tossup between Sunset Boulevard (the traditional answer) and The Player (a less traditional answer) My answer has shifter between these two movies eer since I saw them. But after Altman’s death, I’ve been on Player mode, with it’s well aimed satire of Hollywood and human frailties. Of course there are the in-jokes (the opening shot, the plethora of cameos) but I also find intresting how in some moments I felt myself rooting for the character to get off, this character who had not done a single good thing in the entire movie. These bursts of sympathies lasted only a few seconds, but they raise interesting questions about how people respond to film. Plus, the scene where they finally reveal the movie they’ve been working on was one of the funniest I’ve ever seen.
24) Peter Ustinov or Albert Finney? Finney, for the sheer fact that he was in Miller’s Crossing and Ustinov wasn’t.
26) Name the single most important book about the movies for you personally. This is one I can answer, the single most important book about film to me is The American Cinema by Andrew Sarris. When I was first directed to the book I flipped through it and chuckled at how this guy could possibly brush aside the great achievements of directors like Kubrick and Wilder. As I began to read more in depth however, I began to appreciate the distinct way he writes, and how the times he got it “right” far outweighed the times he got it “wrong”, and even when he disagrees with me I find that he is able to distinctively back up his opinion. I find myself quoting Sarris an awful lot, and reading his book over and over again, each time I read It I’ve become a bit more familiar with film history and theory, and there’s always some new information I can squeeze out of a book I must have read 10 or more times.
(Cerb Chaos)
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. Porky's
(twosctrjns)
26) Name the single most important book about the movies for you personally. Hitchcock/Truffaut, because I read it at just the right time to open my eyes and make me a lifetime movie fan.
(Tina)
1) What was the last movie you saw, either in a theater or on DVD, and why? To Live & Die In L.A. (DVD): My wife loves CSI and I thought she’d like to see William Peterson’s most impressive performance in one of Friedkin’s sharpest directorial efforts -one of the 10 best films of the eighties. It’s the Dirty Harry myth taken to its logical conclusion; the maverick lawman waging a losing battle with his own ego.
3) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson? Well, JOE DON, of course… the only leading man ever named Joe Don anything. (Director Joe Don Tay doesn’t count.) Funniest JDB moment: Robert Clouse’s Enter the Dragon follow-up Golden Needles, where a reclining Elisabeth Ashley admires JDB as he struts across the bedroom in all his bare-assed & barrel-chested glory. Who else do you know that takes it all off & the movie gets slapped with a PG rating?
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. The Oscar (1966)… Hollywood finally gets the bio it deserves. Our tour guides: Stephen Boyd &Tony Bennett, scaling “that glass mountain called success.”
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. Gordon Parks’ The Learning Tree. Along with his Leadbelly, that film introduced me as a kid to the idea that the past (of our parents & grandparents) wasn’t so distant. And reminded me that even during the most difficult of lives there were moments of triumph.
11) Favorite Hal Ashby movie. The one he didn’t get to make… 8 Million Ways To Die, his take on the crime genre which was eviscerated by its producers. I recall Andy Garcia in a later interview recounting with pride the improvisatory atmosphere on the set & the career best work of star Jeff Bridges as an alcoholic cop. He then bitterly described how Ashby’s cut was deemed too long, and the foremost editor in Hollywood was left with a bare skeleton of the film he shot.
16) Describe your favorite moment in a movie that is memorable because of its use of sound. I saw Apocalypse Now the first day it opened at the Ziegfeld when I was seventeen… and I fell asleep halfway through it! The sound that woke me up was a roar of a tiger. Why didn’t somebody tell me there’d be tigers in the movie… I would’ve drank some coffee first.
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? Crash has already done that several times over. If there were such a thing as truth in advertising it would’ve said ‘from the creator of Walker: Texas Ranger’ on every poster. It was the most disingenuous film about race since White Man’s Burden.
25) Favorite movie studio logo, as it appears before a theatrical feature. The very simple AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL stencil over cycling clouds always guaranteed something outrageous to follow.
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. About 15 years ago I was walking to work in Manhattan when a limo pulls up. A short man with an obvious hangover stumbles out and begins throwing up on the pavement. As I passed him I realized it was comedian JACKIE MASON. “Hey, Jackie…” I tossed at him, “…comin’ up with new material?” Lucky for me he smiled back.
(Lance Tooks)
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. Renaldo and Clara - because that's the only chance I'll get to see it - and something good.
22) Favorite Paul Verhoeven movie. Starship Troopers, which I don't like much. I just like Showgirls less.
28) Favorite Francois Truffaut movie. Shoot the Piano Player. But I really liked his last one - Confidentially Yours. I prefer his wacky comedies.
(Dustin DeWind)
8) Carole Bouquet or Angela Molina? Molina was pretty hot in Spider-Man 2.
23) What is it that you think movies do better than any other art form? Um…they make history…come alive! Through science!
(Bill)
16) Describe your favorite moment in a movie that is memorable because of its use of sound. Whenever the press appears in The Right Stuff, there’s the sound of swarming locusts intermingled with the cameras flashing and the reporters shouting. Kaufman kinda spoils it with Yeager’s line that calls the reporters “root weevils,” but it’s still a great use of sound as a storytelling tool.
17) Pink Flamingoes-- yes or no? I’m a big fan of applying the mathematical axiom of “the extremes define the means” to non-math subjects, especially pop culture: the stuff on the fringes makes the middle more interesting. So, yes.
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? Showgirls (kidding!)
(Mr. Middlebrow)
4) Name a moment from a movie that made you gasp (in horror, surprise, revelation…) I don't tend to gasp all that much, seeing as I'm a cold-hearted bastard. The one that comes immediately to mind is the Italian epic La Meglio gioventù (2003). There's a moment (**spoiler warning**) after a New Year's Eve party when a melancholy Matteo opens the door to his balcony where the fireworks are going off in the distance. In one motion, he walks out on the balcony and goes over the rail. It's such a breathtaking moment, even though you can see it coming. If you could reach through the screen to stop him, you would.
7) Describe the first time you ever recognized yourself in a movie. I'm sure there were some kids movies, and probably I saw a lot of myself in sports movies, back when I was an athlete, but the one that comes to mind is Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. I was just coming out of a relationship that felt like that and had been doing a lot of writing. I saw the film and my first thought was, "wow, I've been stealing from this film for months."
16) Describe your favorite moment in a movie that is memorable because of its use of sound. I love how in City Lights (1931), his first film of the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin teases us by having the city officials speak gibberish in the beginning of the film. It's like he's saying, "sure, I can use dialogue if I want to, but I don't want to, so there."
27) Name the movie that features the best twist ending. (Please note the use of any “spoilers” in your answer.) To me, the twist works so much better in a film that isn't setting up the expectation of the twist. A film like The Usual Suspects (1995) is nice and everything, but tell me there's going to be a twist, and I'll find it. But a film like Fight Club (1999), where the story doesn't necessarily depend on a twist ending for resolution, is all the more gratifying to me personally. In retrospect, sure, it isn't so surprising, but at the time I was pulled into a story, a worldview, that's compelling all by itself. The twist is just a nice bonus.
(Lucas)
1) What was the last movie you saw, either in a theater or on DVD, and why? A Prairie Home Companion, on DVD. I knew that the film would have to be watched in a completely different way after Altman's death, and it really made a big impression on me watching it again in this context. I also wanted to hear the commentary track with Altman and Kevin Kline, which I'd heard was great (and it was).
(Sam Smith)
2) Name the cinematographer whose work you most look forward to seeing, and an example of one of his/her finest achievements. Ubaldo Terzano and Bava'’s photography makes Blood And Black Lace my favorite looking motion picture of all time. The primary colors will sear your brain, and the pools of pastel will cool them off again. It's a perfect marriage of form and material, as the movie needs to look like a fashion magazine photo spread in and convincingly lurid.
But right now, I'm all about Jeong-hun Jeong, Park Chan-Wook'’s cinematographer for Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady vengeance. Not always the most sumptuous, but his pictures look tired, sad, rained-upon, and beautiful.
3) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson? Baker in Charley Varrick sleeps in his clothes, sweats a lot, says stuff like "I didn't travel six-hundred miles for the amusement of morons. Izzat clear, ladies?," threatens guys with pliers and blowtorches, and his name is Molly. Now that's a heavy. And he played Winona Ryder's dad once. And yeah, he's the better B-Puss, too.
14) Humphrey Bogart or Elliot Gould? If this is a question of who is the better screen Marlowe, I refuse to dignify it with a response. That thing Elliot Gould is doing is not Philip Marlowe.
15) Favorite Robert Stevenson movie. Yikes, don't ask me to pit Mary Poppins against That Darn Cat! Just don't... Poppins has more sheer, universal pop culture iconography, Walt's personal quality-control, and great songs, it's still funny and magical no matter what age you are... and Julie Andr--... Okay, That Darn Cat! I love TDC! so much it's repulsive. And there goes all my credibility. In all areas of life. Somebody take me inside and make me a big weird sandwich!
17) Pink Flamingos-- yes or no? Yes, it is the funniest comedy in the history of motion pictures. Yes, if it were made today the entire cast and crew would be arrested for terrorism. Yes, the movie celebrates the spirit of America by tearing apart everything it stands for.
No, I'm not overstating the case for Pink Flamingos. Anyone who says otherwise will be executed for assholeism!
(Chris Stangl)
3) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson? Joe Don Baker is burned into my memory as Buford Pusser in Walking Tall. Bo Svenson as Jo Bob Priddy in North Dallas Forty tickled me and frightened me at the same time. A great performance. I have to go with Bo Svenson.
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. My acting class attended a taping of One Day at a Time and they shamed Valerie Bertinelli into giving me a kiss on the cheek. I've never been the same since. She's divorced now, right?
(Sal Gomez)
2) Name the cinematographer whose work you most look forward to seeing, and an example of one of his/her finest achievements. Old School: Mario Bava, while not credited with the cinematography on his own films, had a brilliant utilization of composition and color. Personal favorite: Planet of the Vampires.
New School: Christopher Doyle for the luminosity in his frames. Personal favorite: Chungking Express
(Rhatfink)
25) Favorite movie studio logo, as it appears before a theatrical feature. I love the late 70’s/early 80’s tri-color Avco Embassy logo that appears before movies like The Fog and The Howling.
(Andrew Bemis)
2) Name the cinematographer whose work you most look forward to seeing, and an example of one of his/her finest achievements. From what I've seen, I love the work of Peter Suschitzky. In particular, I'd like to single out his work on Lisztomania, a movie that wouldn't be nearly as wonderfully surreal if it weren't for Suschitzky's angles.
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. Sunset Boulevard is the ultimate Hollywood movie. Because if you're not William Holden, then you're Joe Gillis. And if you are William Holden, it won't be too long until you're Norma Desmond.
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. Rose-tinted glasses are a dangerous thing in films. I blame them for Grease. But there are a pair that strike me as working both in spite of and because of their nostalgia. And they are the prefect analogues for their generations. American Graffiti relives the notion of America before Kennedy, of that unspoiled time of life when kids could while away their time by driving down Main St. without feeling like the world could do them any harm.
Dazed and Confused looks at the world after the fall. Kennedy (both of them), MLK, Vietnam, Watergate, this is a time when hope is beginning to spring anew. There's a certain hope in those Aerosmith tickets. Maybe the 80's won't be so bad.
17) Pink Flamingos-- yes or no? Umm . . .I believe that dog shit is for the next table, thank you.
19) Fay Wray or Naomi Watts? I seem to be the only one who thinks that Fay Wray is the most overrated part of the original King Kong. I much prefer Robert Armstrong's lovably charismatic Carl Denham.
I fell asleep during the new King Kong, but that's not Watts' fault. It's Peter Jackson's fault. And Watts was simply great in Mulholland Drive. Point: Watts.
(Dan E.)
1) What was the last movie you saw, either in a theater or on DVD, and why? Just finished watching Eddie Cantor's two silent vehicles, Kid Boots (1926) and Special Delivery, this a.m. (I'd link to a review I wrote, but that would cheapen the moment.) I watched both simply because I was curious how Cantor--a showman I associate with talkies and radio--coped with the silent movie medium.
7) Describe the first time you ever recognized yourself in a movie. I'll let you know when it happens.
10) Favorite appearance by an athlete in an acting role. Babe Ruth in Speedy.
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? Absolutely. Fight Club.
(Ivan G.)
7) Describe the first time you ever recognized yourself in a movie. I was going through some bad things (relatively speaking, I was probably 15 or 16 at the time) when I first saw Chasing Amy , which was one of my favorite movies for years and is the only Kevin Smith movie I still really like. I saw how hopeless Holden's obsession was and how despite being the hero in the movie, he was at fault the whole time. It really resonated, though now to be honest I could only guess which infatuation it was that I was dealing with at the time.
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. I just read One Hundred Years of Solitude again, and that would be an excellent movie about nostalgia, among other things. The Best of Youth or The Straight Story are movies about the hold the past has over us.
10) Favorite appearance by an athlete in an acting role. Wilt Chamberlain in Conan the Destroyer is the funniest, with Lew Alcindor (or was he Kareem already) in Airplane! a close second.
18) Your favorite movie soundtrack score. Hard to go wrong with Easy Rider or Dazed and Confused, but those are just a little too in my wheelhouse. How about L'Avventura, since it always makes me want to cry at the end.
31) When did you first realize that films were directed? Films are directed? I guess I am still trying to figure that out. I still have trouble with auteur theory, especially when directors repeat the mantra over and over again: "All my movies are one big movie." Fine when Altman says it, but it gets under my skin to hear Jesse Dylan or Michael Bay say something like that. This is tangential at best, but I guess my point is that I am still struggling with the idea of a single person as the originator of a movie. Perhaps it because I read William Goldman's Adventures in Screenwriting before I took any film classes, and so I still can't get past his point that a director is just one of several key people (editor, D.P. screenwriter) who make a movie and that the French New Wave placed undue importance on that role. I don't really agree with that either, but it has prevented me from buying completely into auteur theory.
(Benaiah)
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. Mulholland Drive. I realize it takes place during a live theatre performance and not a movie screening, but no one has ever captured the inexplicable magic of cinema better than David Lynch did in the Club Silencio/“There is no band!” sequence. Just as we forget over and over again that the singers and the musicians in Club Silencio are only miming to a prerecorded tape and succumb to the illusion that they’re actually playing music, so too do we start out watching movies fully aware that all we’re seeing are actors performing in front of sets and cameras, only to fall helplessly into a dream state where everything that happens to them seems absolutely real. The effect is so powerful that it even happens in bad movies!
6) Your Favorite Fritz Lang movie. I like the one-two punch of Scarlet Street and The Woman in the Window.
7) Describe the first time you ever recognized yourself in a movie. Jeff Goldblum in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. Don’t ask.
8) Carole Bouquet or Angela Molina? Carole Bouquet. Rare is the woman who can be a Bond girl and a Buñuel girl over the course of a single career.
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. Steamboat Bill, Jr. and A Chinese Ghost Story. An unlikely combination, but seeing these movies with a live audience constituted two of the most joyous moviegoing nights of my life. It makes me sad to think that the success of the DVD format as a medium for watching old movies means these kinds of communal cinematic experiences have become virtually extinct.
13) What’s the name of your revival theater? The Fitzcarraldo. Thinking you can make money with a revival theatre these days is as crazy as thinking you can haul a ship over a mountain.
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? As I walked out of the movie theatre, I thought Sin City was a completely empty, repellent film and couldn’t imagine any serious film critic endorsing it. But plenty of critics I admire had positive things to say about it. Since then, I’ve come around to the notion that it’s absurd to reject a critic because of their opinion on a single film.
(Paul Matwychuk)
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. What else? Hollywood Boulevard, the best picture in which the lovely B-starlet Candice Rialson ever starred. It was co-directed by Allan Arkush and Joe Dante, editors of New World trailers who convinced boss Roger Corman they could direct a feature in ten days for $50,000. It’s a very funny and fast-paced comedy that uses stock footage from Corman pictures like Death Race 2000 and The Big Doll House while simultaneously spoofing them. Rialson stars as Candy Hope, a beautiful wannabe actress just in from Indiana trying to make it big in Hollywood by appearing in low-budget features for Miracle Pictures ("If it's a good movie, it's a Miracle."). A psycho who's systematically killing off Miracle's stars makes her task even more difficult. The plot is less important than the agreeable performances and the anarchic style of the film. Rialson is funny, sweet and sexy, although some scenes appear to hit a little too close to home. Her best moment is probably the scene in which she attends the premiere of her first movie at a sleazy drive-in and gets drunk while bemoaning her fate to appear in such crappy pictures. No doubt Candice drew from her own personal experience for that scene. If you’ve never seen Candice Rialson perform, Hollywood Boulevard is the one movie to watch. Plus, it’s a terrific showcase for resident Corman players such as Paul Bartel, Mary Woronov, Tara Strohmeier and Dick Miller.
22) Favorite Paul Verhoeven movie. Robocop. And I don’t understand people who claim Showgirls is actually a good movie or that it’s purposely camp. No, it isn’t. It’s terrible. And terribly entertaining.
(Marty McKee)
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. I like The Player. It actually changed the way I look at movies--after seeing that, I could see the hand of idiot decision makers in mainstream movies as I was watching them. But my answer is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), a movie about people who find themselves in a movie-plot-like situation, and react to it in ways they've learned from watching the movies, with disastrous results (the same description could apply to The Big Lebowski).
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. My first instinct is to say Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Switchblade Sisters, but I think I'd like to mix it up a little and pair BVD with something like La Dolce Vita.
13) What’s the name of your revival theater? Monster Island, rendered in day-glo cartoon font on the marquee. And the lobby is a cartoon-colored tropical jungle, and the concession stand is a tiki bar, and there are psychedelic murals on the ceiling, and it's in the old Eagle Theatre (Eagle Rock Blvd. and Yosemite Boulevard, 2 blocks from my house) as soon as we can get the cult that's set up residence there out.
15) Favorite Robert Stevenson movie. Back in the bicentennial, Johnny Tremain was a big one. I think we watched that in school a couple times. "What are we fighting for?" "The rights of Englishmen!"
17) Pink Flamingos-- yes or no? Yes. Huge movie in my life, anyway. When I first saw it, I loved it because it was so offensive, but now I love it even more because it's just so demented, and there's a difference. See, there's intentionally offensive humor all over the place nowadays, and it doesn't take much imagination to come up with offensive things. But no matter how hard you tried to come up with offensive gags, nobody but John Waters could possibly come up with some of the stuff in Pink Flamingos. Like licking your enemy's furniture as revenge. Or that causing the furniture to reject them. That's the unfakable brilliance of a demented mind.
26) Name the single most important book about the movies for you personally. Cult Movies 2 by Dan Peary. When I was about 14, I started getting curious about "cult movies," these films that I'd read a brief reference to in Creem magazine articles, stuff like Eraserhead and Pink Flamingos and Rocky Horror (that one was especially puzzling...was it a movie, a band, a play?). And Creem published a review of Cult Movies, so I went to the bookstore to try and find a copy. Couldn't find it, but did get Cult Movies 2 (which has a list in the back of the 100 movies included in the first volume). This became my guide over the next (at least) 5 years, at about the time that video rental stores started opening. Just a few years ago, I finally got a used copy of Cult Movies 1 (and earlier this year, replaced my long-lost copy of 2), so I can finally read what Peary had to say about these movies (hated Beyond the Valley, the putz! But still an excellent writer).
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. Well, what SHOULD be the answer is when my wife and I saw Quentin Tarantino at The Egyptian (double feature of Blind Beast and Jigoku (Hell)) on Halloween, I dressed as Bill and she as Beatrix. We walked right past him, and it would be such a great story if he said "Aw, those costumes fuckin' rock dude!" But he just walked past us, so FUCK QUENTIN TARANTINO! Instead, I'll pick the night we met James Karen at a party. Best line: "I play a colonel in most science fiction movies." Great guy.
(Chris Oliver)
1) What was the last movie you saw, either in a theater or on DVD, and why? I've seen, I think… at least 12 or 13 films since you posted this quiz, Professor Jennings, including classics like The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953), strikingly original avant-garde films like Barbara Rudin's Christmas on Earth (1962) and Louis Hock's Still Lives (1975), and enjoyable new releases like The Fountain (2006) and Flushed Away (2006). But, of course, when I finally sit down to respond to this quiz, the last film I saw was Beerfest (2006). For the second time. Why? Because, my good man, I was drunk…
6) Your Favorite Fritz Lang movie. The Big Heat (1953) is Lang at his most sadistic. He tenderly builds his protagonist Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) an idyllic cinematic paradise, and then just as tenderly tears it completely apart in one shocking moment that is definitely worth a gasp…
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. "Bad memories! I welcome you anyway--you are my long-lost youth." This epigraph begins the film that is my answer to this question, Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (1969). It also explains why I believe this is a valid response.
14) Humphrey Bogart or Elliot Gould? The other day I got to explain to someone what "Here's looking at you, kid" meant...
23) What is it that you think movies do better than any other art form? When I leave a movie theater I find that I'm more attentive to the world than at any other time--to the sounds that my shoes make, to the scents that linger on the breeze, to the streetlights and the people and the pavement, shining like silver. Movies transport me away from this world better than any other art form, and thus allow for a more complete feeling of return.
25) Favorite movie studio logo, as it appears before a theatrical feature. I can't believe that no one has said the Rank Gong Man!
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. You know, I don't really have much of a sense of "celebrity," so this is a tricky one for me to answer. Fame? Fortune? They interest me not!
But the other day I got an e-mail from David Bordwell about my blog. He told me to "keep up the good work." And I must admit, I haven't stopped smiling since then...
(Andy Horbal)
2) Name the cinematographer whose work you most look forward to seeing, and an example of one of his/her finest achievements. There are a number of tempting choices, but since Dean Cundey seems to have gotten plenty of props, I'll go with Vilmos Zsigmond, mostly because I'm so in love with the look of The Long Goodbye at this moment.
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? I've learned to respect that people have all kinds reasons to like all kinds of movies, so I can't think there's any one movie that would drive me off, but if a person likes too many of the kinds of movies that have been winning Oscars the last 10 years or so, like Forrest Gump, Braveheart or A Beautiful Mind, I'd be reserved in trusting their judgment on other things.
Speaking of which, if someone said, "Man, is that Ron Howard capable of making a bad movie?", I'd look at them pretty funny from then on.
(Neil)
4) Name a moment from a movie that made you gasp (in horror, surprise, revelation…) When Harry Caul walks into the hotel room next door and finds what he finds in The Conversation, that pretty much defined the *gasp!* moment for me. More recently, the celebrated 'final cut' scene in Cache marks the first time I've heard an entire audience, as a single unit, erupt in shock and horror since watching Un Chien Andalou in an auditorium full of unsuspecting squeamish first-year film students.
8) Carole Bouquet or Angela Molina? Bunuel, Bunuel, oh God a Bunuel question! *collapses in film-geek ecstasy* (Seriously, though, I think I have to pick Bouquet, because she was both a Bunuel siren and a Bond girl. What else can an actress aspire to after those twin peaks?)
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. Anyone who didn't say Dazed and Confused wasn't paying attention.
10) Favorite appearance by an athlete in an acting role. Does it ruin any perception of taste to reveal that I thought Dennis Rodman, in the completely insane Double Team, showed the kind of easy charisma that eludes many superior actors? The correct answer, of course, is Jim Brown in anything. But I thought the Rodman thing was worth mentioning/getting off my chest. (Runner-up: The six football players who comprise The Black Six. Don't know about the film, but the trailer is a riot, identifying each guy by name and team.)
21) Pick a new category for the Oscars and its first deserving winner. Best Scene Involving Vomit, if only because I know Jackass Number Two would have to win, and that film deserves all the Oscars we can throw at it without looking foolish.
23) What is it that you think movies do better than any other art form? Provide us with visuals to enrich our dreams and thoughts as well as teach us how to understand and use myriad forms of non-verbal communication.
Also, movies provides us with the best pornographic material.
31) When did you first realize that films were directed? I knew who directors were from an early age, being a devotee of the Sunday Calendar section in the Los Angeles Times. Still, I don't think the impact of a great director ever hit me until, after reading about it in various reference resources, I finally uncovered a copy of Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel. That revelatory experience resulted in Bunuel becoming my first cinephile obsession, and it's one of the main reasons that he's still my favorite director of all time.
(Steve Carlson)
3) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson? Bo can’t do a thing without his big stick. Without it, he’s just somebody’s crusty, cranky old uncle. Joe Don Baker is frightening– in a hotheaded overweight alcoholic way. I won’t go near either.
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. I can’t NOT say “Singing in the Rain,” maybe the most perfect movie ever made. Though I’m not sure it’s really about movies– more about the fantasy of making movies. I also like “The Stunt Man”and “Day for Night.”
6) Your Favorite Fritz Lang movie. I hate to admit this, and probably someone like the Mysterious Adrian Betamax will kill me for it, but I’ve never seen a Fritz Lang movie all the way through. Yes, and Dennis somehow remains married to me.
10) Favorite appearance by an athlete in an acting role. In The Greatest, Muhammad Ali is kind of fascinating because he plays himself in a way that somehow rings totally false. The actor who portrayed him as a teenager was actually more believable in the role. So, I’d go with that real bowler who played The Jesus’s bowling partner in The Big Lebowski.
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. Dennis and I were talking about this nightmare double feature– Life Is Beautiful and The Day the Clown Cried.
13) What’s the name of your revival theater? Suicide Odeon.
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? Yes. Many movies. But I get over it, don’t I, honey?
21) Pick a new category for the Oscars and its first deserving winner. Most ego-free performance. Past winners would include Woody Harrelson in “Kingpin” and Felicity Huffman in “Transamerica.” I mean, just look at them!
25) Favorite movie studio logo, as it appears before a theatrical feature. I’m sorry. I am an admitted geek. And not ashamed. But I can’t do this.
(Thom McGregor)
2) Name the cinematographer whose work you most look forward to seeing, and an example of one of his/her finest achievements. James Wong Howe. I would love him if he had done nothing more than Sweet Smell of Success, which manages to capture the grime and mercilessness of New York without dimming an iota of its allure.
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. The Bad and the Beautiful. "Picture's over, Georgia. You're business. I'm company."
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? It doesn't bother me if someone loves something I don't (though loving, say, Hostel might make me reconsider walking down a dark alley with the person). It bothers me more if they hate something I love.
(Campaspe)
6) Your Favorite Fritz Lang movie. Anyone who says Moonfleet is trying to win snobbish points for obscurity and to show how hip they are by naming a Lang movie very few people have seen. So... I’ll say... Moonfleet! Ha, ha, ha. It is a very good and very unusual Lang movie, but it’s not my favorite. That was a lie. I’m extremely fond of Rancho Notorious, and who couldn’t be with that infectious “Chuck-a-Luck” theme song? (Chuck-a-Luck was also the catchy original title I believe.) I really love Die Nibelungen and I might say that’s the favorite, but I think I’ve got to go into Dr. Mabuse territory. So, which Mabuse?!? The 1922 4-hour silent original? The incredible 1933 action film Testament of Dr. Mabuse, which seems elevated by the lavish treatment it gets on the Criterion DVD? Or the stupendous 1960 final Lang film, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse? Or I could throw in Spies which features diabolical supercriminals not unlike Mabuse. I’m going to go with current fave Testament of Dr. Mabuse which is just the most satisfying action film I’ve practically ever seen.
8) Carole Bouquet or Angela Molina? Bouquet sounds kind of ancient, and I don’t know who Angela Molina is, even though the name sounds familiar. Let me go IMDB her. Okay, that was no help. I guess I’ll go with Carole Bouquet since I think she was the star of For Your Eyes Only, which is the best Bond film ever made. (kidding)
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? There are always some now and then. Can’t think of one now. Well, apart from the King Kong remake and an inordinate interest in Showgirls.
29) Olivia Hussey or Claire Danes? What, for breakfast? On a date? To get married to? Who’s the better actress? Who’s more attractive? Since Claire Danes can’t act, I’m not sure what this question is about. If you are suffering under the delusion that Danes is some sort of actress and this is the reason for this question, then Olivia Hussey by default, even though I can’t think of anything with her I’ve seen. As I look up Hussey on IMDB it seems I don’t even know who she is. What is the import of this question to the problems of the world?
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. Robert Stack. I’m waiting for my friend and his girlfriend to meet me at a screening at UCLA. If I remember correctly the screening was of Seven Men From Now (probably about its first or second screening after its restoration), followed by Bullfighter and the Lady, starring Robert Stack. As I see my friends walking toward me, I see they’ve brought this old man with them-- their uncle or grandfather? As they get closer, I realize it’s Robert Stack! So, my friend says, “Hey, Adrian. This is Robert Stack,” with a big smirk on his face. Turns out they met in the parking garage elevator. My friend notices it’s Robert Stack in the elevator and says, “Hey, you’re Robert Stack, aren’t you? We’re going in to see your movie.” And Stack says something like “Bet you thought I was dead, didn’t you?” That cracks me up. But now he is dead.
(The Mysterious Adrian Betamax)
28) Favorite Francois Truffaut movie. To my shame, I have only seen one, but I loved it, so I'll go with The Bride Wore Black.
(Weigard)
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. Generally I HATE insider-Hollywood movies: Too smug, too inside, too wink-wink, nudge-nudge. For that reason, I'm usually down on media satires and political wonk insider tales, all of which seem too, too... Kenneth Turan for me. So I'll go absurdist and plug Pet Sematary Two for its electrocuted-actress prologue.
26) Name the single most important book about the movies for you personally. I absolutely hated it in college, but Robin Wood's commie classic Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan still gets a lot of mileage. After all, he appreciates Cruising AND Last House on the Left.
(Bandit)
2) Name the cinematographer whose work you most look forward to seeing, and an example of one of his/her finest achievements. I perk up whenever I see something photographed by Owen Roizman, whom I first noticed as a teenager obsessed with The Exorcist, because of his wonderful use of light, not so much in The Exorcist, but, for example, in Network in the scene with William Holden and Faye Dunaway out in the crisp, autumn air in New York: it somehow seems real, unfiltered, but both the people and the surroundings look stunningly beautiful. But look at The French Connection, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, even The Electric Horseman. I dunno what happened to him lately, but I love the way his stuff looks.
When I first read this question, though, I first thought “who shot Casablanca?”, and when I looked him up I realized it was Arthur Edeson, who also shot The Maltese Flacon, Red Dust, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Old Dark House and All Quiet on the Western Front. Jeez…why don’t I know—and look for—this name?
4) Name a moment from a movie that made you gasp (in horror, surprise, revelation…) I think I gasped in revelation and awe when I saw Sarah Miles’s bare boob in Ryan’s Daughter when I was 11 or so. I felt like the luckiest, most blessed kid in the universe.
16) Describe your favorite moment in a movie that is memorable because of its use of sound. My FAVORITE moment? Hmph. I’ll go with the moment when Jessica Tandy discovered Farmer Dan’s corpse in his farmhouse in The Birds, because there’s no sound, or very little. The fact that there’s no music to hype the scene makes it so much scarier. I can still see that movie today, and find that scene horrifying.
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? Pulp Fiction, though most friends/critics/bloggers I like seem to like and/or respect it, so I wouldn’t hold it against them…just question their judgment.
30) Your most memorable celebrity encounter. I already told my Sheree North story on your blog…OK, I have a lot of boring tales of celebrity encounters, but I guess…OK, here’s one. I was at a booksellers’ conference in L.A. several years ago, and I had sat down in an outdoor courtyard to eat my meager lunch. As you know, I have a strict policy not to show any sign of interest or excitement at meeting someone famous, even if I might feel it internally. My usual policy is to treat them as if I don’t recognize them, and I behave like my usual polite self. Some love this, as they’re tired of being fawned over, and I can tell that others are searching my eyes for some sign that I recognize them and that I’m thrilled. Anyway, I was sitting there starting my lunch, when a door opened from inside, a cane appeared, then a very dapper, ruddy-cheeked older gentleman walked out in a crisp black suit and a bowler hat. Something about him was familiar from his gait, and my eyes traveled to his face. I was completely off-guard when I recognized him, and without thinking about it, as my eyes met his, I said aloud, smiling, “Mr. Steed?” A familiar chuckle bubbled up from the man who returned my smile: Patrick Macnee, whom I’d watched and idolized on The Avengers as a kid, and he said, “How are you?” I was ridiculously thrilled to see him, and could say only, “Fine, thank you.” I sensed an opening for more conversation as he paused politely, awaiting my next scintillating comment, but, faced with my silence, he turned away politely and found his own table. In that moment, my usual blasé attitude toward famous people failed me completely, and I was completely starstruck.
(Blaaagh)
9) Name a movie that redeems the notion of nostalgia as something more than a bankable commodity. Pixar’s Cars was refreshingly, even subversively nostalgic for gasoline-fuelled automobiles. Does that disqualify it? The movie itself was quite bankable as well…
11) Favorite Hal Ashby movie. I like the films he edited for Norman Jewison — The Cincinnati Kid, The Russians Are Coming, In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair — more than his own movies.
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. If it’s a double feature it would have to feature doubles, so: A Zed & Two Noughts / Dead Ringers or Mulholland Dr. / Femme Fatale
I would also have a Double-Double Feature on Saturday // Sunday, in which each double feature is its own unit, but the fourth film synchretizes the first three: Vertigo / Obsession // Rear Window / Body Double Psycho / Dressed to Kill // Tenebrae / Raising Cain
13) What’s the name of your revival theater? The Cinecure. (groan!)
(Nobody)
7) Describe the first time you ever recognized yourself in a movie. Literally? It's in David Mamet's House of Games. I play a student in Leila Kadrova's classroom. Way over at the right in the back of the classroom...
10) Favorite appearance by an athlete in an acting role. Bruce Jenner, Can't Stop the Music! Or Kurt Thomas in Gymkata.
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. Sherlock, Jr. and Stop Making Sense. With Duck Amuck as the cartoon and Un Chien Andalou as the short.
13) What’s the name of your revival theater? The CinePad.
17) Pink Flamingos-- yes or no? Unequivocally yes! "Someone has sent me a bowel movement!"
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning and/or Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. Both pretend to be about something, but their ham-fisted stylistic approaches undermine any serious intentions and turn the movies into patronizing spectacles.
25) Favorite movie studio logo, as it appears before a theatrical feature. The old b&w Universal logo with the model plane circling the globe.
26) Name the single most important book about the movies for you personally.Two: Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films -- and, later, Pauline Kael's Reeling.
31) When did you first realize that films were directed? I wish I could remember. I do recall going to a double-bill at the Edgemont Theater in the waterside burgh of Edmonds, WA, when I was in my mid-teens and starting to watch the second feature, something called The Long Goodbye, which had barely been released the year before. I remember seeing the name "Robert Altman" on the screen and turning to my friend to whisper: "I've read about this guy. He's supposed to be good...."
(Jim Emerson)
5) Your favorite movie about the movies. Instead of picking my favorite, I’ll give a nod to a very good one only recently made available: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm just released this month by Criterion.
12) Name the first double feature you’d program for opening night of your own revival theater. Barry Lyndon and Pink Flamingos. Two masterpieces at the opposite ends of the creative spectrum. I want to meet people who appreciate them both, and have them come back to my theater as often as possible. They will be the future of cinephilia.
(Christopher Long)
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? Yes, there is.
(Sean)
4) Name a moment from a movie that made you gasp (in horror, surprise, revelation) Richard Dysart suddenly getting his hands chewed off at the wrists while applying the defibrillator paddles in The Thing.
16) Describe your favorite moment in a movie that is memorable because of its use of sound. As a precursor to the first McClane vs. terrorist fight in Die Hard, McClane has just watched the firetrucks that he summoned to Nakatomi Plaza turn around and leave. He's feeling angry and frustrated when the elevator arrives at his floor.
It's a simple, otherwise innocuous sound; we hear it every day: *ding!* But in this case it means that someone knows he's there and is coming to kill him.
25) Favorite movie studio logo, as it appears before a theatrical feature. There is absolutely something about the 20th Century Fox logo that I find thrilling and transporting. The building music, the sweeping, swooping move of the camera - it all tells me that I'm in for a good time.
(Burbanked)
28) Favorite Francois Truffaut movie. I have only seen Les quatres cents coups (The 400 Blows), which I could see being my favourite no matter how many of his films I see.
(Afraid)
20) Is there a movie that would make you question the judgment and/or taste of a film critic, blogger or friend if you found out they were an advocate of it? No, I love the wild rationales good film writers come up with to defend maligned films.
But if you live in Los Angeles and are of a mind to appreciate it, there’s been a very unique promotion of Grindhouse going on every night at the New Beverly Cinema, an organic offshoot of the monthly Grindhouse Film Festival nights featured at the theater courtesy of exploitation experts Eric Caidin and Brian Quinn. For the months of March and April, Brian and Eric have joined forces with Tarantino to showcase a blistering blitz of exploitation double and triple bills, all culled from Tarantino’s own apparently vast collection of 35mm prints. The two-month long Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival, now near the halfway point of its run at the New Beverly, is designed both to promote and give context to the upcoming Tarantino/Rodriguez homage (after all, it wouldn’t be much of a jump to presume that a good percentage of Grindhouse’s intended demographic has little or no firsthand experience with the golden age of drive-in and downtown movie exploitation that the new movie glorifies), as well as give over one cinema for two solid months to celebrate the real deal, sticky floors, scratched prints, musty smells and all.
And if you do have firsthand experience with said exploitation fare, having seen a goodly amount of it during the ‘70s and early ‘80s, attending the New Beverly’s festival is likely to be a rush of sense memory that seems rare and, dare I say, somehow precious in this age of Moviefone, pristine digital restoration, cup holder-laden stadium seating and, however ominously, 60-inch flat-screen plasma TVs. After over ten years of denying myself the double features the New Beverly has routinely offered, I finally made it out to La Brea and Beverly Sunday night, March 11, for my first Grindhouse Fest double feature, John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder and Charles B. Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown. According to the calendar, the show was to begin at 7:30, and having no idea what to expect as far as crowds, I made sure I got there in plenty of time to find a parking spot somewhere in the surrounding neighborhood and get a place in line. I strolled up to the box office at about 6:15, and there were two other people already there. I bought my ticket, unrolled the magazine I’d brought along and began to read. It wasn’t long before others arrived in anticipation of the doors opening. And it wasn’t much longer again before the box office attendant came out and informed us devoted standees that the films were running behind schedule (the double feature played that Sunday afternoon as well) and that we wouldn’t actually even be admitted into the theater until about 7:45 p.m.
But I didn’t really much mind. I’ve always enjoyed keeping company with fellow fanatics in joint anticipation of something special, even if just to stand around and people-watch. Soon there was a bustling crowd in line behind me and milling loosely about the general area of the box office window. A bald, mustachioed gentleman and an older, distinguished-looking fella began animatedly talking with a couple of other folks, presumably theater management, who kept rushing in and out of the theater to check how close the afternoon program was to actually finishing. It finally did, at about 7:50, and the attendees of the afternoon show came pouring out, visibly glad to not have to blanch at direct sunlight (it was the first day of Daylight Savings Time, but even so the sun was by now well down), but otherwise looking rather worn, perhaps even bored. Hmm, thought I, not a good sign. They would have just seen The Town That Dreaded Sundown, a period thriller that I saw and enjoyed multiple times in high school, based on accounts of the Texarkana Phantom Killer. The case, and the movie, have superficial parallels with the Bay Area murders chronicled in David Fincher’s superb Zodiac, in that the apparently motiveless killer, who favored lovers’ lane-type locations, was never caught, an open-ended scenario based on case files that the movies (Fincher’s, anyway) explore and exploit for maximum tension. Yet these grindhouse-goers didn’t look wrung out with fear. Could it be that my memory of Sundown was far more generous that the movie deserved?
Back to that sense memory of what it was like to see these pictures, in venues both seedy and somewhat more above ground—I’d forgotten what seeing a badly maintained 35mm print of a movie was really like, so obsessed are we these days with sprucing up original negatives and cleaning up visual and aural artifacts and making sure the DVD transfers are struck from the best possible prints and properly color-corrected, usually with the input of the cinematographer and/or director. So even though all those things are good things, I forgave myself the cheap thrill that ran up my spine when that familiar fuzz of the optical soundtrack running over the heads of the projector began popping and crackling and otherwise partying like it was 1977 all over again. There was a direct and immense and palpable pleasure to being able to feel the film the way one feels it while watching a run-down, worn-out, occasionally bleached-out print. It’s a natural phenomenon of age and dust and general disrepair that Tarantino and Rodriguez are reportedly going to great lengths to duplicate in the look and sound of Grindhouse, and if that theatrical trailer is any indication, they’re rumbling up the right alley. Suffice to say, the prints from Tarantino’s collection have not been hermetically sealed in a humidor vault to protect them from the onslaught of elements that lend themselves to the decay of celluloid. I realized, 10 or so minutes into Rolling Thunder, that I was glad for all the rumble and warble and popping and thumping and scratches on this print. As pro-restoration and preservation as I am, all of the prints I’ve seen so far in this festival feel like nothing so much as genuine surviving documents of a certain kind of theatrical distribution and exhibition that is almost as lost as this low-budget strain of B-movie is itself. 
Alas, The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1977) was not the movie my memory had been telling me it was over the past 30 years. In his pre-show speech, Eric admitted it was always one of his favorites too and that, after seeing it at the early afternoon screening, even he had to admit it wasn’t very good. Eric was right. Directed by regional filmmaker Charles B. Pierce, who made his hay four-walling The Legend of Boggy Creek into a notable hit in 1972, Sundown may be based on an actual case, but Pierce’s touch as writer-director (and Barney Fife-esque supporting cast member) is so wobbly that the movie, hobbled from the get-go by portentous Encyclopedia Brittanica-style narration that fills in the holes where all the interesting storytelling should go, never finds a proper tone from which to build a true sense of fear.
The movie veers wildly from ineptly staged murders, to long scenes of the police investigators, including an apparently legendary Texas Ranger played by Ben Johnson, standing around wondering what to do, to comic car chase set pieces that advance the story not a whit. By the time the familiar boots worn by the killer (who was never caught) are seen striding into a movie theater line in “modern-day” Texarkana for a screening of, yes, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, all common and narrative sense have been sucked into the black hole of Pierce’s incoherent point of view, and I was just glad to finally have one of my childhood boogeymen exorcised for good. My first night at the Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival finished around 12:30 a.m., just about an hour and a half behind schedule, and although one of the movies was a marked disappointment, the experience was anything but. I was already looking forward to my next chance at a juicy, vintage double feature. I’d done violence. Next up: sex.
I shouldn’t have worried. By the time my pal Michael and I got our seats, the New Beverly was packed once again, and that same sense of eager, happy anticipation was in the air. Maybe it was because the audience was looking forward to pretty maids gamboling in various skimpy outfits under the tutelage of lecherous high school guidance counselor Rock Hudson instead of William Devane dispensing vigilante justice with a hook where his hand (sacrificed to a kitchen garbage disposal) once was, but the vibe was considerably lighter leading up to show time. (The fact that the screening was on time for 7:30 might have had something to do with it too.)
Brian took the pre-show stage again to talk about some upcoming features (it’s possible that Asian star Nancy Kwan may be in attendance for the upcoming screening of Wonder Women-- stay tuned!) and introduce two of Vadim’s original “pretty maids” who were in the New Beverly audience. Actress June Fairchild, dressed like a cross between Stevie Nicks and Susan Janet Ballion, and the considerably more conservative Margaret Markov bantered for four or five minutes and reminisced about Vadim’s talent as well as his lechery, and then Pretty Maids All In A Row got underway. This was one I was particularly looking forward to, as I’ve always liked Pretty Maids based on one viewing of an understandably cut-and-pasted TV version that I saw when I was 18 or so. 
And it was a pleasure to see the eroticism that peeked through the rough seams of that censored broadcast patch job blossom into its fullness (sorry) uncut on the big screen. Pretty Maids is a surprisingly spry and funny submersion of unbridled male fantasy into a high school setting—tortured virgin Ponce de Leon Harper (played by John David Carson in his first movie, and no, I’m not kidding about that name) is taken under the wing of genially lecherous guidance counselor and football coach Michael “Tiger” McGrew (Rock Hudson), who enlists comely substitute teacher Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson, and no, I’m not kidding about that name) to help Ponce through what he terms a rough patch of ineptitude and sexual dysfunction. Of course, Ponce’s only dysfunction is that he hasn’t yet had actual sex, and darned if Betty, after spying his boner and proclaiming her work done, doesn't develop a little attraction to him that eventually leads to the solving of Ponce’s real problem. 
But Ponce has at the same time discovered the dead body of a cheerleader dumped in a men’s room stall (or cubicle, as he keeps inexplicably referring to it—only screenwriter Gene Roddenberry knew for sure why, and he’s not talking), a body homicide inspector Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas, and again, no, I’m not kidding about that name) begins to believe may have some connection to Tiger McGrew-- especially when the bodies of lovely naked ingénues (including June Fairchild’s) start piling up. If it weren’t so unapologetically goofy and genuinely sexy, Pretty Maids All in a Row might seem a tad on the tasteless side. But even so, its pedigree—Vadim, Roddenberry, a Lalo Schifrin score, and even a main title tune sung by the Osmonds-- and its cast, like Rolling Thunder’s, seems to lift it out of the purview of what would have been considered typical grindhouse fare of the time. It’s down and dirty, to be sure, but it was also a sizable hit upon its release, and it played in a lot nicer cinemas than most of the other movies on the 2007 Los Angeles Grindhouse Fest schedule.
But who needs rampaging brontosauruses in a movie when you’ve got these cheerleading babes? Revenge of the Cheerleaders roars out of the gate with an exuberant main title sequence chronicling the squad’s happy adventures in both cruising and changing out of their street duds and into their uniforms while driving. Nudity within the first minute of the movie, and scored to a pretty good rock tune too (“I Feel Good,” sung by Cathy Carlson)—so far, so good. Well, incredibly, ROTC sustains that exuberance for almost the entirety of its 88-minute running time. The movie consists of one outrageous, disarmingly funny, unapologetically ridiculous set of hi-jinks after another, with these sociopathic sexpots always placed front and center, and shedding their tops (and bottoms) at the drop of a hat. There is no narrative drive to be interrupted, so when the gang-- the cheerleaders and their basketball-playing boyfriends (one of whom is essayed by a lanky young actor by the name of David Hasselhoff, in the role of Boner) take time out for one of several hilariously choreographed dance sequences, well, it’s like the drive-in equivalent of a musical interlude from Chico and Harpo. (Only a cafeteria food fight in which stuffed shirt school board members, as well as unsuspecting students, are drugged into hysteria commits the capital sin of going on too long.)
There is no curriculum at the "morally compromised" Aloha High School, only figures of authority to disregard or blatantly undermine— these cheerleaders and the rest of the Aloha student body make Riff Randall and her crowd look like straight-A honor society members. The girls and boys only want to have fun, which translates into a heady brew of screwing, playing basketball, cheering, robbing students at a thug-happy rival high school of their drugs (during class!) and riding around in a cherry red 1955 Buick convertible with the top down, and their tops off, of course. (The nudity is democratic too—there’s more than a flash of full frontal male twiggery on view here, including Hasselhoff, though his Boner status, based on this evidence, is overinflated.) 
It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered such a relentlessly likable feel-good-at-all-costs vibe in any movie, let alone one as low-rent as this one. Tarantino said in a recent interview, referring to discovering treasures in the world of exploitation movies, that not only do you have to drink a lot of milk to get to the cream, with exploitation fare you have to drink a lot of curdled milk to get to the milk. And that’s what Revenge of the Cheerleaders felt like to me Sunday night—the reward for having slogged through a lot of similar comedies that had the sex and nudity but none of the zip and tang and spirit this one has in buckets. 
The spirit at work in Revenge of the Cheerleaders is best illustrated by the participation of Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith as one of the main pepsters, known as Heather. Smith, an exploitation queen familiar to fans of films such as The Swinging Cheerleaders, Caged Heat, The Pom Pom Girls, Massacre at Central High, Slumber Party ‘57 and Vice Squad, as well as appearances in above-ground titles like Phantom of the Paradise, Farewell, My Lovely, Up in Smoke and Melvin and Howard, was a natural for this movie, and apparently the director and probably everyone else, wanted pretty badly for her to be in it. Because it’s quite apparent, from that opening credit sequence on, that Rainbeaux Smith is about six months pregnant while playing a high school cheerleader in this film. Her being in the family way just happens to fit perfectly with the movie’s theme of a high school under siege by developers who want to justify razing the property and building a mall on it by publicly condemning the student body as amoral hooligans. But one of the marvels of Revenge of the Cheerleaders is how matter-of-fact everyone is about her pregnancy. They’re so matter-of-fact, it’s never even mentioned until the movie’s epilogue, when someone pats her belly and comments on how nicely that little bun in the oven is coming along. But before that, Smith has romped nude in a wild group shower scene (protruding belly and engorged breasts in full view, obscured only by some soap bubbles), and she’s right in there smoking J’s and hanging out (albeit sometimes in nice, roomy frocks) with the rest of the gang, smack in the middle of all the chaotic comedy.
