Now that the trivial hoopla of the Oscars has finally been put to bed, it’s time to cap off the past year in movies with the awards that really matter. Named for award founder Paul Clark’s late, beloved guinea pig, the annual Muriel Awards, the current edition being the ninth, brings together an eclectic roster of Internet-based film writers whose passion for writing about film and films runs strong, even when the year’s offerings run relatively weak. It’s been my honor to have participated in the Muriels voting, and the subsequent writing about the winners, since their inception waaaaaay back in 2006, and hopefully we’ll all be here celebrating the Muriel’s 10th birthday next year, and in 2026 their 20th...
But enough projecting into the future. What of the here and now (and, where our anniversary awards are concerned, the then)? Paul has been assembling and announcing the winners of this year’s awards, and he’s been inching ever closer to the big one. I’ll play catch-up today and keep you posted on further announcements of winners and runners-up (yes, Oscar, we do second and third place), including a couple of pieces written by Yours Truly which will be showing up over the next few days. Here’s what Muriel has served up so far. *
* All those pictured above-- Tom Cross (Whiplash), Crimes and Misdemeanors, Scarlet Johansson, Only Lovers Left Alive, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Ava DuVernay, Tilda Swinton (Snowpiercer) and Ethan Hawke (Boyhood) placed either second or third in the voting. To find out the winners, you'll just have to click.
And stay tuned. There are more Muriel Awards coming through the weekend and into next week!
Gunnar Hansen's book chronicling the making of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, called Chainsaw Confidential,is essential reading for fans of Tobe Hooper's film, and I take a close look at it in my new "Fear of the Velvet Curtain" column over at Trailers from Hell. Hansen's book begins by conflating the mythology behind the making of the film-- out-of-control set, disastrous shoot, drug-addled actors, psychological damage suffered by the guy playing Leatherface (that'd be Hansen, of course)-- and then proceeds to gently deflate that mythology with the clarity and intelligence of first-person observation. Here's but a taste of what you'll get when the curtain parts this week:
"The book is beautifully organized with chapter headings derived from the movie’s dialogue (“If I Have Any More Fun, I Don’t Think I Can Take It,” “There’s Them That Laughs And Knows Better,” “It’s a Good Picture—You Can Pay Me Now”) that cleverly reflect or connect to the author’s focus. And Hansen makes the wise decision early on to assemble his anecdotal approach to reflect the chronology of the movie’s story rather than the order in which the film’s scenes were actually shot. It’s a move made, as Hansen puts it, “for the sake of clarity and my own sanity,” but it also lends Chain Saw Confidential, for readers intimately familiar with the movie at least, something of the buildup of tension and anticipation that informs the movie." There's also an Oscar postscript in which I apologize for my lame Oscar predictions and make some snarky comments about the show itself. My last words of any kind on Oscar 2014, I promise!
See you at Trailers from Hell for this week's Fear of the Velvet Curtain! *****************************************
Let me invoke the catch phrase of Futurama’s Professor Farnsworth and say, good news, friends!
In a development unforeseen by me until a few weeks ago, it seems Yours Truly will be branching out and taking up some pretty exciting company. If you know this blog, you undoubtedly know about the two-and-a-half minute film school known as Trailers from Hell, the brainchild of one of my favorite filmmakers, Joe Dante. Well, starting today, Yours Truly will have his own little corner of that prestigiously pulpy site! The good folks at TFH have offered me a weekly column (every Thursday), a soap box from which to pontificate upon all matters regarding the movies—reviews, appreciations, general musings and whatever else strikes my twisted fancy. So naturally, I said, naaaah…
Not really.
The column is called Fear of the Velvet Curtain, and here’s a little clue as to why, taken from my inaugural post:
"As every show started, the projectionist always fired up the machine before the screen was fully revealed, and the first flickers, usually the logo for the movie studio releasing it, or perhaps the opening images of the pre-show cartoon, always ended up splayed upon the surface of the curtain, warped and misshapen by the natural folds of the material and its movement as it slowly pulled open. There was something lurking there, and that something was coming out, couldn’t be stopped. It didn’t matter whether or not the movie was innocuous family fare, like Blackbeard’s Ghost or The Sound of Music, or horrors like Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed or The House That Screamed. The creepy ritual itself, those images projected onto the slowly retracting curtain, quite honestly terrified me, filled me with so much fear, excitement and anticipation that I often had to look away. And of course once the curtain came to rest at the edges of the screen and the movie commenced, looking away was the last thing I could do."
While life at SLIFR will continue on (a new quiz is a-brewin’ as I type), for me today begins an association with one of my favorite sites that I hope will be a long and exciting one. My most sincere thanks goes to Joe Dante, of course, and also to TFH’s art director, the eye-bogglingly talented Charlie Largent for this wonderful opportunity. You need only click here to see that inaugural post, plus my first extended column, all about (what else?) the Oscars, now playing at Trailers from Hell. Coming soon? Nope! It’s here!
(Also, check out critic Michael Sragow’s great new interview with Joe Dante conducted for Film Comment—click here for parts one and two.)
Helen Gibson, a rodeo
star in the early days of the 20th century, moved to Hollywood to become
a “cowboy extra” and ended up becoming one of the very first paid stunt
women/actresses in the history of the movies when she was hired to perform
stunts and emote in the lead role of The
Hazards of Helen (1914). She eventually opened her own production company
in 1921 and continued in stunt work until the age of 69, when she performed in
her last movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance (1962).
Similarly, Polly Burson
grew up on an Oregon ranch in the 1920’s
and, like Gibson, was a rodeo performer until 1945, where she began stunt-doubling
stars like Betty Hutton (The Perils of
Pauline), Lucille Ball (Fancy Pants),
Julie Adams (The Creature from the Black
Lagoon) and Kim Novak (Vertigo).
She was also the first female to be hired as the stunt coordinator overseeing
an entire film, Westward the Women
(1951), and performed her last stunt work on a movie at the age of 73, for 1992’s
Hero.
And in addition to stunt-doubling actresses like Vivien Leigh
(Gone with the Wind), Donna Reed (It’s a Wonderful Life) and Paulette
Goddard (Unconquered), Lila Finn was the founding president of
the Stunt Women's Association. She performed her
last movie stunts on the set of Folks!
(1992) at the age of 85.
Each of these names may ring only the vaguest of bells in the memory
of most film buffs, if they are remembered at all, but each was a groundbreaker
in the world of women performing stunts on film. They embody the spirit of
history and tribute of a new and upcoming film festival, The Artemis Women In Action Film Festival, which aims not only to
shed light on the history of the pioneering female spirit of this branch of the
industry, celebrating lesser-known names like Gibson, Burson and Finn alongside
more visible cinema icons like Pam
Grier, Raquel Welch, Angelina Jolie, Zoe Bell and Michelle Yeoh, but also to help spotlight on-the-rise filmmakers
looking to make their mark in the field of female-driven action cinema.
Melanie
Wise,
an actress, athlete, aspiring filmmaker and one of the founding members of Artemis
Motion Pictures, the group behind the festival, remembers her days auditioning
for countless roles in TV and movies that amounted essentially to helpless
women in peril. But being six feet tall herself, often towering over the people
making the casting decisions, she often found herself losing out on jobs
because she was taller than her lead actors. On one audition for the Nash Bridges TV series, she found
herself in an imaginative quandary which led to an epiphany of sorts. “I can’t sell
this,” she said about pretending to be in quaking fear of the bad guy, and set
out upon focusing on methods, including making her own films, to impress upon
disbelieving producers that women in strong action roles would be something
audiences would flock to see.
She says she and her partners, fellow filmmakers Sean Newcombe
and Zack Baldwin, hit upon the idea of a female-oriented action film festival as
a way to make just such an impression, and to give actresses who have been
essential in making credible inroads into what has typically been seen a
male-centric endeavor their due spotlight. “These are women who have skipped
way past the confines of the roles we typically see them in,” Wise says, recognizing
that for many females, actresses as well as viewers, broadening that scope can
be an eye-opening experience. “Women can have a very narrow view of themselves
and the possibilities they see open for themselves,” noting that when seeing women
in roles traditionally assumed suitable only for men, they may see new
dimensions and lifestyles they’ll find appealing. “Their whole worldview can
change,” Wise notes, not without a glint of hope in her voice. Thusly, the Artemis Women In Action Film Festival hopes to
introduce to an audience already familiar with the great leading ladies
of physical filmmaking to some of the long and fascinating history behind their
favorite stars, but also to get that audience a peek into what might be just
ahead in terms of the international talent that will be cresting the next wave
of female action films. Wise and her team have already fielded submissions from
all over the world, including Iran, South America and the United Kingdom,
including one unlikely specimen of women in action produced by Stephen Fry and
Derek Jacobi (“It has their customary dry wit, but asses are also kicked,” Wise
assures), and movies about skateboarders, big mountain skiers and female movie
stunt pilots are among the documentary submissions already in the hands of the
Artemis team. (The festival is named after Artemis, the Greek goddess of the
hunt, perhaps the first true female action star.)
But due reverence is also scheduled to be doled out to the
likes of pioneering blaxploitation action star Pam Grier (Foxy Brown, Coffy,
Sheba Baby); stuntwoman Jeannie
Epper, seen below, whose earliest jobs included work on a string of ‘70s disaster epics
like The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake
and The Towering Inferno, as well as
stints on Grier’s Foxy Brown and Coffy and doubling for Linda Carter
as Wonder Woman; Angelina Jolie (Salt, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft: Tomb
Raider); Raquel Welch (Fathom, Kansas City Bomber); Zoe Bell (Xena: Warrior Princess, Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2, Death Proof); Scarlet Johannson(Lucy, Under the Skin, The Avengers); and Michelle Yeoh (Supercop,
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Wing Chun, Tai Chi Master), who Wise
believes best epitomizes the ideal behind the peak achievements of female
actor/stunt performers the festival hopes to suitably honor.
Wise emphasizes that submissions to the festival in the feature, documentary and shorts categories are currently open and will be through March 6, 2015, and can be made directly to the festival through the Artemis Women In Action Film Festival Web site as well as through the Without A Box, Film Freeway and Film Festival Lifesites. The panels of judges will be announced shortly as well, to be followed by the full slate of programming that will comprise the festival, which runs April 24-26, 2015.
Additionally, you can directly contribute financially to the
festival by accessing the Women Kick Ass project which is currently accepting donations to ensure
the first year of the festival will kick off with the sort of excitement and range
of viewing selections that should accompany the honoring of these great and talented
performers. “The whole festival will be worth it just for the opportunity to
get these women and their work on a stage or on a screen and say, ‘Applaud
this! They deserve it!’” says Wise, who will undoubtedly be in the front row,
leading the cheers. One can imagine Gibson, Burson, Finn, and the countless
other women in the movie and TV stunt field who led relatively uncelebrated
careers, cheering right alongside her. Artemis herself might even fire an arrow
to the stars in approval.
(For more information, visit the Web sites linked above as well
as the Web site for Artemis Motion Pictures. You can
also visit the Facebook page
for the Artemis Film Festival for the most current updated information.)
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