THE 2015 SLIFR MOVIE TREEHOUSE #5: COMING TO YOUR EMOTIONAL RESCUE

I don’t really watch movies anymore. And the only writing I do is quippety quips on Facebook. Hell, I even gave up on Twitter. When I say I don’t really watch movies anymore, I should clarify that, yes, okay, I watch a hell of a lot more movies than most middle-aged mother-types. But the person I see myself as, the person who spent all day at the multiplex sneaking from theater to theater, who spent most of her young adult birthdays alone in movie theaters, who only went “shopping” if there was a movie theater in the mall, who pre-ordered the first Roku box and dove headlong into the joy of Netflix streaming… I dunno. I dunno where she went.

Okay, I kind of know. My movie-watching and movie-making got tangled up in my head with a marriage that ended. A series of crappy things in the early twenty-teens estranged me from the filmmaking and filmwriting communities. It all became fraught. And being a full-time working nearly full-time parenting human is kind of exhausting. But I have time. Man, I have plenty of time. And every freaking time I go inside an actual movie theater, I slip down in my seat, Coca-Cola fizzing next to me, the house lights go down and the screen flutters and I’m ecstatic. And I think, “Why am I not always in a movie theater?”

I can’t watch movies at home anymore. I mean, I can, but it’s an effort. I have to stop myself from jumping up to start a load of laundry or check my damned phone or let the neighbor’s cat in or let the neighbor’s cat out or play Simpsons Tapped Out on the iPad or maybe do a jigsaw puzzle or chat with five people on Facebook or take a bath which turns into a nap. I can watch TV shows. Episode after episode after episode. 22-44 minutes at a shot. Endless loop. But movies, man. That’s a commitment.
Shoot, I just realized what it is. It’s the same thing that happens if I drive more than 30 minutes. I start thinking. And feeling. And that’s just not acceptable. In the movie theater, where it’s a wholly absorbing experience, I can fall into it completely. At home… it’s dangerous. Feeling and thinking are the enemies of sanity for me these days.

See? This is why I can’t write either. I start thinking and feeling. Goddamn it. Excuse me while I do a jigsaw puzzle while listening to an audio book for the next 48 hours.

To this I’ll add that there are certain movies I can’t watch. I started Beats of No Nation, having heard very good things, and stopped it after 16 minutes. I have to protect my fragile psyche. I can’t see Room. Can I? You can tell me. Be honest. I can’t, can I? I didn’t think so. Then there’s horror! I sneaked into The Visit a few months back. From what I saw, old M. Night was in fine form. But then that grandmother popped up in front of the hidden camera, and I screamed a blood-curdling scream, causing neighboring patrons to cover their ears, and I fled. Crimson Peak was a no, unless I could persuade someone over the age of eight to come with me and hold my hand. I seem to get increasingly sensitive with age. And I was way too damned sensitive to begin with.

Okay, okay, okay. You humans like lists.

Some movies I dug in 2015 (in no particular order):

1. Love and Mercy
2. Inside Out
3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
4. Spotlight
5. Creed
6. The Big Short
7. The Martian
8. Ex Machina
9. The Mend
10. Brooklyn

Some movies I really or kind of or sort of want to see:

1. Anomalisa
2. Concussion
3. The Revenant
4. The Hateful Eight
5. Chi-Raq
6. Joy
7. Bridge of Spies
8. Trumbo
9. Youth
10. Straight Outta Compton
11. Mr. Holmes
12. Ricki and the Flash
13. Mistress America
14. The Stanford Prison Experiment
15. Experimenter
(TWO social psych movies this year for this social psych major! HEADY TIMES)
16. 45 Years
17. The End of the Tour
18. Woman in Gold
19. Shaun the Sheep Movie

Others I may comment upon:

1. Welcome to Happiness – frothy and charming and shamelessly upbeat
2. Carol – goooorgeous. But I felt… nothing.
3. Mad Max: I Heart Furiosa (or whatever) – a wild ride, super fun, but a feminist statement? Dudes, seriously? We’re going to applaud the revolutionary idea that women are not things? I did love the old lady shootout. And I’ll totally watch a Furiosa movie.
4. Trainwreck – Amy Schumer is magic. I laughed very, very hard at parts of this, but I was also surprisingly moved
5. Cinderella – that young lady was born to be Cinderella. Oooh, the loveliest and most goodest.
6. Aloha – I can’t even. Just stop it.

I know too much about movies to be able to talk to civilians about them. But I don’t see enough current releases, let alone festival fare, to be able to talk to the real film people either. Plus I’m a reactor. I don’t watch a movie and have a thousand thoughts. I only have feelings. I don’t remember the plot particularly well, just how it made me feel. But if you start talking about a movie to me, that’ll get me going. So I suspect most of my contributions to this House o’ Tree will be reactions to y’all fine folks.

Love and Mercy: I was delighted to see this show up on a couple of lists, as I might have forgotten it otherwise. Paul Dano was exquisite. This is why I love movies. Watching people too sensitive to exist portrayed by people too sensitive to exist. (Reminder: Marya, being too sensitive to exist without making any art is really a waste of all that over-sensitivity. Patch up that broken little heart and create something. And clean your room.)

Inside Out: I asked my kids on the way home tonight if they had a favorite movie of 2015. The child hive mind did not hesitate. “Well, we really liked Star Wars...” “But Inside Out.” “Yeah, no question.” I think I agree. Pixar done outdone itself. I wept like a weeper.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Rey is indeed a drop of golden sun. A young feminine hero who is genuinely bad-ass, but also pure and sweet and lovely. The best I got in my youth were Dorothy types, unintentionally powerful, winning by winsomeness. Otherwise the Disney princesses, OMG, this post is getting tedious. I quit. Let me try something else.
Here are some impressions. Not like Rich Little. Mind you.

Brooklyn: My grandmother came to Boston from Ireland at 19, in maybe 1923? She was one of the quickest and funniest people I ever met. Could, in her nineties, quote poetry and songs from her childhood. Never resisted saying a mean thing about anyone, so long as it was funny. She was the favorite of 13 children (I might have made the number up), sent away to America to be a maid. She met a young man named Jack Murphy at a cèilidh dance and mocked him for having a dirty face. And so began a dynasty of Murphy babies and grandbabies and great grandbabies. Saoirse Ronan is a staggering talent. So fierce. I fell for her in Atonement and again in Hanna. And here, she’s, what? Twenty? So fierce and so tender. Such strength and intensity.

The Martian:: You know that part (always my favorite part) in the sci fi movie where all the really smart people get together and figure stuff out? That's the whole damned movie! Perfect. One of the rare examples of a film that’s much better than the source novel.

Spotlight: Marvelously acted and ridiculously fun considering the dark story being spotlighted. Solid movie. I’m a sucker for investigative reporting plots. Today the article/listicle would read, “Ten Shocking Things Only Priests Can Get Away With.” Yeah, they’d end that headline with a preposition. I was riveted, delighted and appalled.

The Mend: Positively Danish, this movie. I expected a Mads Mikkelsen cameo.

Ex Machina: Brendan Gleeson’s kid has certainly found a niche, hasn’t he? Sci Fi dystopian weirdness. I’m embarrassed to be discovering Oscar Isaac so late. I’m more than a little in love with Alicia Vikander. Impressive directorial debut, Mr. Garland. I can’t put words around how this film affected me. I live in the Silicon Valley. To understand the Silicon Valley you need only watch HBO’s documentary series, Silicon Valley. The hubris of Ex Machina’s tech genius is similarly all too real to me. This guy exists. And no one is going to punch him in the face. Why will no one punch him in the face?

The Big Short: I’m boring myself again. I promised I’d write something. I wrote something. I’ll write more things, but not tonight. No coherence for the wicked. That’s a lovely hat you’re wearing.

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Marya Murphy has been called "a less-effeminate Oscar Wilde," and "a Twitter personality," neither of which has yet to lead to a lucrative job offering, though she has scored a free computer and opera tickets. She has produced several critically-acclaimed films (Canary, Around the Bay, Babnik and Amity) and continues to act, write, edit and generally film-make when her selfish eight- and 10-year-old aren’t demanding to be fed, clothed and educated. Marya hails from Redwood City, CA.

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PREVIOUS TREEHOUSE ENTRIES

#1: GREETINGS FROM ON HIGH! (Dennis Cozzalio)
#2: THE STATE OF LOVING CINEMA IN OHIO (Brian Doan)
#3: THIS CRITIC’S CREED, BIG SCREEN OR SMALL (Odie Henderson)
#4: PRIVATE OBSESSIONS AND CULTISH PASSIONS (Phil Dyess-Nugent)

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FOR CHARLIE: Baby Mine, Don't You Cry...

Baby mine, don't you cry
Baby mine, Dry your eyes
Rest your head close to my heart
Never to part, baby of mine

Little one, when you play
Don't you mind what they say
Let those eyes sparkle and shine
Never a tear, baby of mine

If they knew sweet little you
They'd end up loving you too
All those same people who scold you
What they'd give just for the
right to hold you

From your head down to your toes
You're not much, goodness knows
But you're so precious to me
Sweet as can be, baby of mine

All of those people who scold you
What they'd give just for the
Right to hold you

From your head down to your toes
You're not much, goodness knows
But you're so precious to me
Sweet as can be, baby of mine

Baby of mine


There is a picture of my son Charlie that I keep hidden away, in a box dedicated to his memory. I will never post it. I will never ask anyone to look at it. I may be the only person who ever again sees it. But I have it. I can see him now, just as he looks in the picture, just as he looked the one and only time I ever held him in my arms. And I can imagine how he might look if he were here today, on what might have been his eighth birthday.

I say "might" because his birthday was supposed to be one week later, on my birthday, as it happened. Of course, if he could have lived, we all would have gladly welcomed him seven days early. But when we arrived at the hospital on this day eight years ago our worst fears were realized, and our lives began a tailspin from which, I think it's safe to say, we have yet to fully recover. We ended up burying Charlie exactly one week later, on the day he should have been born.

For me, eight years later, there are no more sudden stabs of grief that seemed to descend upon me usually during private times, in the shower, for example, where no one else could see. And that blanket of pain that would suddenly cover me when I would happen upon some imagery or filmed situation at work that would trigger memories and the overwhelming desire to crumple into a heap-- that blanket hasn't been thrown over my head in quite a while. So I guess, to all appearances, I'm "moving on." Not surprisingly, however, my wife, though she's certainly better than she was eight years ago, has been so profoundly affected that her experience is often beyond my understanding, and certainly that of her closest friends and associates. Charlie was physically part of her; he was in her. She is the only one who knows that particular loss, but even she had no idea (and still doesn't) of its depth and endurance. Perhaps the most difficult thing I've had to do in the last eight years is not empathize with her pain-- it's too great even for me to know, and too easy for me to assume that my pain in any way resembles hers-- but instead to realize that she needs a strong hand and a strong heart to love her and help her heal at her own pace, a pace I can only respect and perhaps never understand.

I think of August 11, 1997 as probably the worst day of my life. And each day after, for months and years, was only better by the slimmest of degrees. I can remember sitting in a mall only a couple of weeks later, waiting for my wife to take care of some business, when a little girl, whom I'd never seen before, walked up to me, smiled and said, "Hi, Daddy," and then walked away. I've never been much of a believer in things supernatural, but that moment was so inexplicable, and so strangely relevant to what we were going through, that it has always given me pause, as well as chills, and a blindingly emotional rush of desire to see my boy alive.

And that following September we had tickets to see Alison Krauss and Union Station in concert, tickets we had purchased earlier in the summer, projecting that it would be our first opportunity to spend time together away from taking care of Charlie. Instead, the night became our first opportunity to try and function in public cloaked in the shadow of our desperate grief. The music was, of course, transcendent, but neither of us could have anticipated that one of the songs Alison Krauss would sing, in that haunted, piercing soprano with which she is so blessed, would be "Baby Mine," the song from the Disney film which is sung by Dumbo's mother to the son from whom she has been taken and locked away. Krauss' performance, sung only to the accompaniment of Dan Tyminski's guitar (played offstage), is a brilliant expression of the yearning and pain of isolation from the one(s) we love, and it blindsided my wife and I like simultaneous punches to the temple, the chest and the gut. The song, and her rendering of it, remains a cherished thing to me because it so readily connects me to all the feelings and hopes I had for my son and myself, but it is one that I can never again approach lightly. And Dumbo is a favorite film of my daughters, and rightly so-- it is about as wonderful a creation as has ever come forth from the Disney studios-- but that scene still hits me in my most tender spots. More than once one of my girls has asked me why I'm crying when we're watching it. I can only say, "Because it's sad, sweetheart," and I am not lying.

Charlie, I can see your face. I can remember what you felt like in my arms, wrapped in your swaddling blanket. I can remember trying to blink away the rush of tears so distorting my vision that I kept thinking you were waking up and that the horror of that afternoon eight years ago was some sort of sick flash-forward from which I, and all of us, would eventually wake. Instead, the summer was the dream, and the waking, like the fate of the Confederate soldier in Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, is bitter reality.

We love you, son.

A SCRIBBLE FROM THE UNDERGROUND

There is, or there can be, structure in the blogosphere. One of the bits of self-discipline that I try to honor in my own little enterprise here is to try not to let a full seven-day week go by without a post of some kind, and over the past nine months I've been pretty consistent with that. When I haven't, I've usually tried to prepare for the lull in advance and load you all up on verbiage before I take my little break. This past week, however, is the first time I've taken more than seven days between posts, for reasons related entirely to time and my commitments beyond this page, and considering that I don't have an editor or a sponsor nagging me to get more material out there now, now, now, the degree to which I am perturbed or otherwise disturbed by my recent inability to find that 25th and 26th hour in the day which to dedicate to my blog writing is kind of surprising.

And reassuring. It tells me that blogging, expressing myself however formally or informally, about films, baseball, life, and interacting with those of you kind enough to take precious time out of your days to read what I offer here, has actually become an important part of my life, something that I miss when I'm unable to tend to it. Outside interests relatively concurrent to my experience in blogging have cropped up that are time-consuming as well. I have been trying a little harder than usual lately to break through a self-imposed shell of antisocial tendencies that have calcified around me over the past eight years and remember how to step out with friends. My daughters are growing up, becoming independent little beings with their own curious thought processes and unshakable curiosities, yet still so dependent on the love and guidance and interactivity that my wife and I feel so honored to be able to provide, even when we're exhausted beyond reason. I am learning to recognize over and over again what my friend in the blogosphere, Preacher Beege, just today reminded me of-- how lucky my wife and I are to, as Beege put it, realize "how far we've come, how hard-won the comfort has been, and how good it is to fall asleep every night beside our best friend." I am struggling with the difficulty of balancing all these good things with keeping close with loved ones who are not so far away, geographically speaking, even as they might as well be on Jupiter when it comes to figuring out ways to spend time together. I've been learning to balance my natural thirst for cinema-- good, bad and indifferent-- with being more selective and seeking out the best in my choices, simply because I'm not a carefree bachelor no more, no more. I've been learning how not to live or die on the outcome of a Dodger game (nothing like a season like this one to drive that point home). And I've been trying to learn to live by that Bertrand Russell quote you can read at the top of this page, to balance that thought with the driving urge to gobble up as much work as I can in order to keep my family swimming in macaroni & cheese and basking under the glow of electric lights.

These are the things that are going on every day that I blog, and twice again on the days when I don't. No news to anyone who reads this page, I'm sure, given that I don't know too many honest-to-God slackers (malcontents, maybe, but they're hard-working malcontents). Most everyone's lives are as busy or busier than mine, to be sure. I'm not complaining, just 'splaining a little as I sit here at work late on a Monday evening, avoiding what looks to be a relatively compelling assignment for just a few minutes longer while I indulge in one of my relatively newfound loves. There will be better things to read than this in the coming week-- tonight, not Wednesday, is my hump night, and I have plenty of itches to scratch before the weekend arrives. I just wanted to check in, say hi, and, as Elvis Costello might have said, had he Internet access in 1977, welcome to my blogging week. Hey, the Dodgers can't take a home series from the worst team in baseball (Colorado), but they sure put the screws to Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt and, with tonight's 9-6 win at Wrigley, the Cubs. Will the Padres fold and allow the Dodgers to take the NL West with 80 wins, or less? I made it to another drive-in, and I managed to catch up on new Almodovar, new Herzog, new Craven and old Russ Meyer all in the past seven days. And maybe 2046 soon? I'm busy, but I guess I'm no hermit. Stay tuned. And what did you guys do last week?

FIVE + THREE THINGS YOU MAY KNOW ABOUT ME (plus a test afterwards!)

I’ve been tagged by Walter at Quiet Bubble and Lucas at 100 Films to provide eight random facts about myself. Here are the rules for this amusingly viral little exercise:



a) Must Post Rules First
b) Must Provide Facts
c) Must Tag Eight Other Unsuspecting Bloggers At End Of Exercise And Ensnare Them Into Ever-Widening Web Of Entertaining Minutiae

But I’ve decided, in order to spice things up a bit, to give you, Dear Reader, a chance to separate fact from fancy, fiction from foolishness. At the end of my eight facts, you will be provided with a simple test. If you choose to do so, leave the test, along with any smart remarks you will undoubtedly have, in the comments column. The test will be to see if you can tell the True Confessions from the True Lies.

Let’s begin.

1) I’ve kept a journal logging every movie I’ve seen for the past 30 years.
It started on September 17, 1977, the first night I spent at the University of Oregon on my own. I went to see The Spy Who Loved Me at a dumpy little duplex called the Valley River Twin Cinemas, which were at the time, incredibly enough, one of Eugene’s main first-run houses, the jewel in Portland movie theater impresario Larry Moyer’s local crown. (His brother Tom owned the Cinema World across the street.) I’d already seen the movie earlier in the summer and loved it (I gave it three-and-a-half out of a possible four stars, the hardy Leonard Maltin rating system), and when I came home to my dorm room that night for some reason I decided to write down the following bit of information in a three-ring, college-ruled binder notebook:

9-17 The Spy Who Loved Me ***1/2 Valley River Twin

That was it. The following Saturday night a group of friends and I shlepped out to a cracker-box cinema in the outlying Springfield area for a double bill of The Last Remake of Beau Geste (**) and Mel Brooks’ The Twelve Chairs (***). When I got home, I wrote the double feature down in the same format. With that entry, a routine was established that I have kept up for nearly 30 years.

In the summer of 1997, when she was pregnant with our son, Charlie, my wife, needing something to fill up the idle hours of maternity leave, took it upon herself to enter the entire journal (then “only” 20 years worth of films) into Word Perfect, print the entire shebang up on beautiful paper stock and bind it in a lovely leather book. As a bonus, I went through the latest copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, marked down every movie I’d seen released prior to September 1977, where I’d seen it (remarkably easy to remember, for some reason), and even made a reasonable attempt to estimate what year I’d seen it. By starting around 1963, with a screening of the cartoon feature Gay Purr-ee at the Marius Theater in Lakeview, Oregon (by my best guess, the first movie I ever saw on the big screen), we pieced together a reasonably accurate picture of every movie I’d seen before September 1977 and committed it to this refurbished version of my journal.

That was 10 years ago. With last night’s DVD screening of New York, New York, I’m one entry closer to 30 complete years of logging my movie-going history, a grand total of 43 years in the books. There’s a reason most people don’t know this about me. The reason is, when most people find out, they recoil in fear, or disgust, pelting me with heartless accusations: “Nerd!” “Geek!” “Creep!” “Weirdo!” I don’t much like that. And I’ve had to correct many a misguided assessment of my sanity. And now that you know, well, what do you think? Come closer… and be honest. What do you think?

2) I’d rather fight than switch
One early morning at Norm’s Diner, after an all-night triple feature of Robocop, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket at the long-gone Alameda Drive-in in Burbank, California, I threw a punch at a waiter who asked me “Is Diet Coke okay?” after I specifically asked for Diet Pepsi. There was no Diet Pepsi in the Burbank City Jail either.


3) I once addressed the student body of my elementary school dressed as a Christmas tree
There were some tears, some laughter, and at the end of it a few more boys were dusted with white flocking and skin abrasions than when the ceremony began. But no one ever called me Pine Nuts ever again. The horrifying aftermath was later adapted (fairly loosely) as an episode of Showtime’s Tales from the Crypt.

4) My best friend and I survived Delta Tau Chi
I met my best friend (known in the comments columns here as Blaaagh) on the Eugene, Oregon set of National Lampoon’s Animal House in the autumn of 1977. I had actually seen him and another actor several months earlier performing a scene from Of Mice and Men at a state Thespian conference. I guess the performance really impressed me because several months later, in the dingy, stale-beer-smelling basement of the Sigma Nu house on 13th Avenue that served as the interior of the Delta house, I spied Blaaagh sitting and waiting, as we extras tended to do, to be called for the next shot and remembered his shining moment as George. In a very atypically brazen moment for this shy boy, I introduced myself, told him I remembered his performance, and I think this shocked him just enough to inspire him to have a conversation with me. We kept bumping into each other that week (pretty hard not to on that cramped set), and by the weekend we were off to see our first movies together-- Star Wars, followed by a midnight double feature of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Jabberwocky. (See what that journal is good for?) We survived Jabberwocky and remain as bestest as best friends could be to this day. UPDATE JULY 7, 2007: During a recent trip to Oregon, I discovered this vintage 1977 photo booth strip of Blaaagh and I sporting our Animal House haircuts. Minus my glasses, this is a pretty good represntation of what we looked like in the movie, and, unfortunately, on campus for a couple of months, a full year before it was suddenly cool to be in the movie.

5) I am currently going back to school to become an elementary schoolteacher.
In pursuit of that goal, I’ve been substituting since January. And this is my inspiration:



6) One of the great unseen movies I have been in hot pursuit of ever since I first heard of it is Werner Herzog’s documentary about Dr. Gene Scott entitled God’s Angry Man.
Thanks, Tom, for another wonderful piece of writing.

7) One very dull night, while working the graveyard shift at a radio station in Grants Pass, Oregon, I played Paul Nicholas’ Top 40 hit “Heaven On The Seventh Floor” nearly 20 times in a row, over the course of a full hour, just to see if anyone, including my boss, was listening. Not one single phone call.


8) I often wish I could comport myself in the manner of Michael Chiklis in the role of Vic Mackey on FX’s hit TV drama The Shield. I’m not endorsing police corruption or anything. There’s just something about that swaggering dick-head that really speaks to the suppressed Freudian bogeyman in me. And I, like Chiklis, and Bruce Willis before him, look better bald than not.

Okay, now the test:

#1 T ( ) F ( )

#2 T ( ) F ( )

#3 T ( ) F ( )

#4 T ( ) F ( )

#5 T ( ) F ( )

#6 T ( ) F ( )

#7 T ( ) F ( )

#8 T ( ) F ( )

I tag Peet, David, Paul C., The Shamus, Kim, Damian, Campaspe and Andrew.

DIRECTOR EDGAR WRIGHT ON CINEMATIC SHORTCOMINGS, THE DIM FUTURE OF 35mm AND MEMORIES OF A BRITISH ICONOCLAST

"The Wright Stuff III: Movies Edgar Has Never Seen” is Edgar Wright’s third season of programming at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, which commences this coming Friday with a double feature of Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It and Allan Arkush’s Get Crazy (a triple, if you include the midnight screening of Wright’s own Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and concludes the following Friday night with Robert Culp’s Hickey and Boggs, Ivan Passer’s Cutter’s Way and a midnight encounter with W.D. Richter’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. I had the pleasure of a phone conversation with Wright this past week to talk about this latest gathering of cinematic goodies, the plight of 35mm, and even the recent passing of a titan of iconoclastic British cinema. Here’s what that conversation sounded like.

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DC: Congratulations on the new series of films coming up at the New Beverly this week. Whenever a series like this is announced, you hear things like, “Damn, I’m on the wrong coast!” Or in your case often I’ll see someone say something like, “When are you gonna do one of these in the U.K.?”

EW: I get that all the time. It always happens to me with the Scott Pilgrim midnight shows. Every time I tweet about there being a midnight show, people say, “Why can’t you bring it to New York? Why can’t you bring it to Oklahoma?” And I have to say, “Guys, I don’t arrange these screenings.” I just retweet them if I’ve seen them, and if I’m in town maybe I’ll stop by.

DC: It’s not Edgar Wright’s traveling Scott Pilgrim tent revival, with you taking the movie from town to town.

EW: Right! It’s not me organizing them. It’s up to the rep cinemas to decide to screen it. I did one at the New Beverly and then one up at the Castro. But for me, whether it’s Scott Pilgrim or any of the film series I’ve done, it’s kind of a hobby, the kind of thing I would do in the evening anyway—go and watch films at rep houses! The idea with this season, because I’d done two already comprised of my favorite films, it seemed right that I should do a kind of hostile takeover and program only ones that I’ve always wanted to see.

DC: I actually put my own list together of movies I’d never seen, and as I was doing it the first thing I thought about was inviting the chorus of disbelief—“What, you’ve never seen Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!?”


EW: Well, I don’t claim to be an encyclopedia of all cinema. I’m 37, and I’m still learning. When I was a kid, a teenager, I was trying to watch as much stuff as I could. And even when I started working in TV and then in film, I’d keep up with the current releases more than watching old classics. But the main thing was, there were a lot of films in the back of my mind that I’d thought to myself, “I’d like to see that on the big screen first.” And as such, a lot of the classic movies, especially westerns or big epics, whether it’s John Ford or Kurosawa, some of them I’d see on a small TV with classmates or friends and afterward I sometimes felt like I still hadn’t really seen them. I have a vivid memory of seeing My Darling Clementine on an 18-inch TV in art college and by the time the movie was finished the entire class had fallen asleep. Probably not the best way to be introduced to these types of films.

DC: So let’s take a look at the upcoming schedule. When I looked at it, it felt like it was a two-week program packed into one week.

EW: Well, I actually convinced the New Beverly to let me do one double feature a night . I released what my window of availability was, and their window as well, which was eight nights, four double bills, and I said, “Can we do eight nights, eight double bills?” (Laughs) I don’t know when I’m gonna do this again. It’s probably gonna be my last one for a while, so I was thinking, “I want to pack in as many movies as possible!” I thank the New Beverly for kind of changing their normal M.O.

DC: Again, this is a series built around movies that you have never seen. Your personal directing style, the way you use the camera with such agility to tell jokes visually, suggests a certain familiarity and affinity with the sort of visually oriented slapstick of early silent comedy as well as the inventive verbiage of screwball comedy. Yet there are three major comedies of these eras-- Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and the great W.C. Fields vehicle The Bank Dick-- in your lineup. Is silent or screwball comedy any more of a gap in your experience than the Ozu you cited on your blog?

EW: I have seen Tokyo Story! (Laughs) But that was one of those I remember being ruined when I watched it at art college. It was just the worst possible way to watch it. But what’s interesting is that I find, with a lot of classic silent comedy, I remember seeing it on TV when I was very young, but it was usually in the form of a compilation. I remember seeing lots of documentaries and compilations—classic Chaplin and Keaton clips, but never necessarily the whole movie. When I watched The Gold Rush, for example, I hadn’t seen the whole feature, but I’d certainly seen the most familiar excerpts. Same with Buster Keaton. I know I’ve seen that famous shot from Steamboat Bill, Jr., but I haven’t seen the whole feature. Very rarely have I seen any of them on the big screen. With each of those performers, I’ve seen other classic titles but not these particular ones. Growing up, the black-and-white comedy stars I was very familiar with were Harold Lloyd, who used to get shown a lot in the U.K., the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy. The Music Box is one of my earliest memories of watching any film.


But the same thing goes for Frank Tashlin, who is somebody who has been mentioned in reviews of my own films—I always thought, “Gosh, I have to see some of his movies!” And that influence gets into me regardless, probably because the people that I’ve been inspired by are fans of his, be it Joe Dante, Sam Raimi or Allan Arkush. Allan Arkush told me he was very pleased that The Girl Can’t Help It and Get Crazy were showing together, because he said The Girl Can’t Help It is one of his favorite movies. And I grew up, as we all did, with Woody Allen, and Woody Allen refers back to Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. So, really, I was inspired by the people who were inspired by the classic comedy pioneers.

DC: The Girl Can’t Help It and Get Crazy, followed by Scott Pilgrim, is in some ways a pretty zippy trip through the essence of rock and roll.

EW: Allan Arkush told me Scott Pilgrim reminded him of Get Crazy, so that seems like a perfect triple to me. Any hardened film geek is gonna watch all three in a row.

DC: One of the things that’s fun about anticipating a series like this is recognizing the connections that you make between movies that we might never have thought about. I looked at The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and Kwaidan and at first I didn’t get it. Then I started thinking about the fact that both movies have a deliberately nightmarish quality to them that makes them an unlikely but inspired combination. Did it take you a while to come up with the best pairings? And how long did it take you to cull down your possible selections to eight double features?


EW: How it started was, at first I e-mailed a bunch of directors, actors and writers, told them what I was doing and said, give me your top-10 must-sees. Some of those people gave me lists that were enormous. Bill Hader’s list and Daniel Waters’ list were in the hundreds. Quentin Tarantino and Judd Apatow and Joss Whedon all gave me top 10s. So did John Landis and Joe Dante—actually, Joe’s was longer than 10. Then I threw it open to people on my blog, and that produced another thousand suggestions. Then I started looking for little links between films. I had to leave so many out. There were some that were so close to being scheduled that didn’t make it, which was disappointing, but some were left off because they do play a lot. I wanted to go for films that don’t get as much exposure.

DC: Did the availability of prints play a part in the way the program ultimately shaped up?

EW: Yeah, it did. It’s definitely getting to be a kind of dark time. I was surprised to discover that some films didn’t even have a decent print to be found, which is alarming. Julia Marchese at the New Beverly is circulating that online “Save 35mm” petition because what’s happening is-- Obviously digital projection is going to become the norm, but I for one, and I know Quentin Tarantino agrees, feel that 35mm should never go away. It’s historically important. But some of the studios are actually shutting down their 35mm archival departments. I think Warner Brothers, beginning next year, are planning on not sending out any more 35mm prints of their films.

DC: Yeah. Fox has announced similar plans.

EW: It’s a very bittersweet thing to discover that your chances to see some of these films on 35mm are kind of dwindling very fast. It’s one of the main reasons I like doing these seasons at the New Beverly—sharing the experience. There is nothing better than watching the movies with a crowd. As home theater gets better, people don’t necessarily think about going out to see them. When I first announced the schedule, one person on my blog commented, “But a lot of these are on DVD or Netflix Instant!” And I had to think, yeah, you kind of missed the point. I know that. I own a lot of them myself. But that’s not necessarily the way I want to see them, especially for the first time.

DC: And maybe some people who wouldn’t necessarily come out for a revival program will get reminded about the difference between seeing them in a theater and making the movies something more than a commodity to store on a bookshelf.

EW: Absolutely. People sing the praises of Netflix Instant, but at the moment the quality of some of the copies of some older films they have available is really bad. There are some noir films in public domain that are just unwatchable. I can watch Detour or D.O.A., but I’m not exactly watching them in anything approximating a decent version. That’s why labels like Criterion are to be applauded. In many cases they’re not just restoring these films, they’re actually saving them. Thanks to them there’s now a definitive version of Blast of Silence out there, a movie which many people may not have even known about before.

DC: What’s the double feature in the Wright Stuff III you’re looking forward to the most?

EW: All of them, Dennis! Come on! (Laughs)

DC: (Laughs) I’m not gonna pin you down on just one? I mean, I could pick one!

EW: No, I’m looking forward to all of them. One thing I want people to do is come out for the older movies.

DC: Yeah, I think it’s important to encourage people who might be all in for some of the more recent pictures to take a chance on some of the stuff that might not necessarily be in their wheelhouse of nostalgia or whatever. If you like stuff from the ‘80s, don’t be afraid of movies from the ‘30s or the ‘20s!

EW: Yeah, in a lot of rep houses you’ll get full houses for stuff from the ‘80s, but it’s important for people to come and see the black and white comedies as well. I’ve got good guests every night too. (A complete rundown can be found at Edgar Wright Here-- DC.) Unlike my previous seasons, where I had people who made the movies coming along, for this one it’s just for the most part other directors and writers and comedians to do it with me, so it’s more like an intervention. My first question to them will be, “Why haven’t I seen this movie before?” (Laughs)

DC: And sometimes the people who actually made the movies are not as articulate about the actual thing as the movie’s fans are.

EW: My proudest achievements with the two seasons I’ve done before has been the couple of times I’ve got filmmakers to come out, sometimes reluctantly, because maybe the film I’m showing of theirs was not a success, and get them to end up feeling differently about a movie they’ve made, and for them to see it with a packed house, or at least an appreciative audience. David Zucker and Jim Abrahams thought they might not even come to our screening of Top Secret. He said, “Top Secret was a disaster and I haven’t seen it since 1984.” And I convinced him to come out by saying, “This is gonna be the most partisan Top Secret crowd you’re ever gonna see!” (Laughs) The first thing he said after it was finished was, “Yeah, that’s a good movie! It’s a funny movie!” But Walter Hill was reluctant as well to come out for The Driver, which staggered me, because that’s probably my favorite film of his. So when he came out and saw the crowd he actually said, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen a full house for The Driver.” He was genuinely touched by the response. I told him, “You realize this is a really influential film, for me and for other people.”

DC: Did he believe you?

EW: Yeah, I think so. The Q&A was so enthusiastic that I think he had to realize that there was a lot of love for The Driver. Especially in the year that Drive comes out, it’s important that more eyes see Hill’s film on the big screen. The D.N.A. of that film is definitely in Drive.

DC: That was the one screening last year that I missed, and it still pains me to think about it.

EW: Well, what can I say, Dennis? It was great!

DC: Thanks a lot!

EW: Every time I do one of these screenings, someone always says, “Why don’t you record the Q&As or upload the video of it?” And my answer is always that I don’t because I’m a big believer in the importance of actually being there. That’s one of the things that creates excitement about it.

DC: Yep. You can’t get this stuff anywhere else.

EW: If you were there, it’s something you’ll remember. That’s what I like about the New Beverly—it’s relaxed and people tend to get a lot more candid in the Q&As there because it feels like you’re just kind of hanging out in somebody’s living room.


DC: The one double feature I’ll be very interested to hear your reaction to, as the director of Hot Fuzz, is Hickey and Boggs and Cutter’s Way. That’s a very interesting combination of movies about male bonding through a specifically anti-establishment prism.

EW: Hickey and Boggs is actually quite a difficult movie to track down. I’ve always wanted to see that.

DC: Again, it’s at the root of what’s at the root of a movie like Hot Fuzz.

EW: Yeah, and as far as Cutter’s Way-- One of the things that helped inspire the series is Danny Peary’s Cult Movies book. I never actually had a copy of it, and recently Larry Karaszewski gave me a copy. I started looking through the book and thinking, “Wow! Still, 20 years later there’s a bunch of these I haven’t seen! I gotta get on this!” So much of this season is straight from Danny Peary. Cutter’s Way is in Cult Movies and so is The Girl Can’t Help it and Ride the High Country.


DC: Right after your series ends, the New Beverly has programmed a double feature of Women in Love and The Music Lovers in honor of the late, great Ken Russell. In America, especially for filmmakers of your generation, Ken Russell’s influence is probably more secondhand, more felt as ripples through the sensibilities of other filmmakers than by much direct contact. But as a young Brit, how aware were you of his legacy growing up? Was he an influence on you? Or do you think young directors were thinking about other filmmakers at that point?

EW: When I was growing up a lot of his films would be on TV, so I saw a lot of them—even some of the craziest ones. I was definitely aware of him, and I was a big fan of his composer biopics, which were unique and idiosyncratic. I remember watching The Music Lovers and Mahler when I was 12 or 13. And Tommy, of course, is a huge film in the U.K. Only very recently I saw Lisztomania for the first time. (Both laugh) It completely bowled me over. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. I immediately went out and bought the soundtrack! Russell was also a larger-than-life personality, so he was very visible in the British press and on talk shows—an amazing character. I don’t know how much of an influence he was on me because I think he’s such a unique voice. You know what’s really sad, though? About four weeks ago I was talking with a fellow British director, Ben Wheatley, about people like Nicolas Roeg, John Boorman, Richard Lester and, in particular, Ken Russell, and we were saying how some of these people don’t get the contemporary love that they should in terms of their status as masters and their amazing bodies of work. We were talking about the fact that somebody should do a podcast series with these directors before they’re no longer with us. You know, somebody should sit down and talk to Ken Russell about his work. And then just a few days ago I e-mailed Ben and said, “Well, I guess we should have done that Ken Russell podcast, eh?”

DC: I’m reminded of an appearance Russell made here in Los Angeles a couple of years ago for the digital restoration of Tommy. He got on stage with the documentarian Murray Lerner, and no matter how hard Lerner tried to get him to talk about the movie and his process of working, Russell played the dotty imp who would not give Lerner what he wanted at all.

EW: Yeah, I don’t know how much of that was an act! (Laughs) He was genuinely one of the great British eccentrics, and I say that as a compliment, not as a negative.

DC: Well, he never toed the line in his movies, so if you’re familiar at all with his personality it shouldn’t be too unexpected that he wouldn’t do it in public either.


EW: There’s a particular breed of directors who all began working around the same time, like many of the ones I just mentioned, who all have a specific vision but also are, in some respects, similar. So many of those films had sort of avant-garde tendencies that were then filtered into studio films, and that they could manage that is fascinating. Completely coincidental to his death, the BFI announced that they would be re-releasing The Devils next year. I had a copy of the film on VHS, and when DVDs came in I think I gave it to a charity shop—one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done—thinking surely it’ll turn up on DVD soon, and of course it never did! That film is a juggernaut. It’s my favorite of his.

DC: There is some controversy over the fact that the re-release is of the X-rated theatrical version and not the uncut version Russell made, which includes the famous “Rape of Christ” sequence.

EW: Yeah, I’ve heard about that. But the fact of the matter is, the one that got released is still pretty strong! (Laughs) I don’t think people will be disappointed that it’s only the theatrical version! Ultimately it’s better to have a version rather than no version.

DC: Any final thoughts about the Wright Stuff III?

EW: Oh, yeah, there’s gonna be a whole bunch of vintage trailers as well that Marc Heuck from the Nuart has put together. Usually I pick them myself, but he’s come up with an amazing selection of stuff to see that I think will surprise and delight everyone who comes out. I do this for fun, really. I don’t get paid to do it. I don’t get a cut of the box office. It’s literally just about that I like watching movies and I like to share that with audiences. Especially now more than ever it’s important to keep rep cinemas going, to be able to do stuff at the New Bev to remind people what it means to see these kinds of classic and cult movies with an audience. On 35mm.

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FIVE MOVIE QUESTIONS FOR YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD BLOGGER FROM PREACHER BEEGE

I’ve been writing on this blog for about eight months now, and it’s gotten to be a real addiction. The biggest challenge that I face is making sure that what I write to feed that addiction isn’t just verbiage for verbiage’s sake, but intelligent thoughts about whatever it is I’m writing about written in an intelligent style (whatever forms that thought and style ends up taking). Honestly, I started writing this thing for an audience of one—me—as a way of flexing my muscles and creating a sense of discipline for myself regarding the craft, not simply as an online journal, and I had no reasonable expectation that anyone outside of my wife and my best friend would have any interest in reading it, and reading it regularly. But one of the unexpected bonuses of writing SLIFR has been not only developing a small but fairly regular readership, but also connecting with people who I didn’t even know existed eight months ago. It’s been a real pleasure writing back and forth with some of those people, not only on this blog, but on ones written by these new friends and others. One of those new friends, Preacher Beege, a cheerfully profane and delightful writer whose blog on motherhood and ministry could go a long way toward changing any preconceived notions you may have about being a mommy or a pastor, has posted five questions for me, which I promised I would answer on my site. So, Beege, thank you for the inquiry, and here I go:

1)Your blog is titled Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. I like it, but have no idea what in the hell it means. What in the hell does it mean?

In November of 2005, I decided to try my hand at writing a blog and wanted it to somehow combine regular passages on baseball and the Dodgers, a relatively new obsession of mine (born, ironically enough, during the players’ strike of 1994 through exposure to Ken Burns’ massive historical documentary Baseball), with my lifelong love for the movies (and writing about them). So I sought to come up with a title that adequately conveyed both interests in an appealing and eye/ear-catching way. The first title that came off the top of my head was The Good, the Bad and the Dodgers, which rather uneloquently combined the title of one of my favorite movies with the name of my favorite team. But, as I kept turning it over in my head, a couple of things began nagging at me. Is the reference to the spaghetti western classic overt enough? Perhaps too overt? And when combined with “the Dodgers,” does it sound like I’m implying that the Dodgers themselves occupy some space located between “good” and “bad”? (The land of mediocrity being one many folks have already proclaimed for this team). Finally, by using simply “the Dodgers” to represent the baseball aspect of the site, was that in some way too limiting? What if I wanted to write about other teams, other aspects of the game? Would I be violating my own protocol? And perhaps most importantly, was I overthinking this whole thing? (What are the odds, huh?)
So I scrapped that title and my wife and I began trying to think of different combinations, and the best one we came up with was the title of the blog as it is today—Sergio Leone being one of my favorite directors (the man who directed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and “the infield fly rule,” a not-so-direct reference to baseball that sounded good combined with “Sergio Leone.” (FYI, the infield rule is the one that states that a batter who hits an infield fly, as called by the umpire, is automatically out if there are less than two outs and runners are on first and second base, or the bases are loaded. It serves to prevent an infielder from dropping the ball on purpose to create a double play.)

2) What was the best movie you've ever seen, and what made it the best? Was it the company, the location, the movie itself, some aspect of the film's production, the smell of stale popcorn in the air, or the way your feet stuck to the floor?

I like the way your question evokes the atmosphere of the movie theater, which is, I think, always been an underrated, or overlooked, aspect of film appreciation. There’s a whole article to be written (and God knows, I’m feeling logorrheic enough these days to give it a shot) about the best movie theaters of my moviegoing life, and the attendant smells, the feel of the wrecked-up seats, the sense that you get from a single-screen palace, one you don’t get in a stadium-seat multiplex (at least in the same way), of something special, almost mystical in the making. One of my most vivid memories of seeing movies when I was a kid was the stark terror I would be thrown into every time the lights would start to go down and the projectionist started the cartoon before the curtain opened. The Warner Brothers logo would be thrown onto that flowing, tattered red velvet, which gave the image a surreal, unstable, sinister quality and made me think, in my twisted child’s imagination, that something terrible and wonderful was about to be unleashed, that the curtains would draw back and Porky Pig would come raging off the screen and, I don’t know, stutter at me real loud until I went mad or something. It’s an indelible memory of seeing movies as a kid and being overwhelmed by the oversized grandeur that even our run-down old hometown movie house could lend to everything from The Greatest Story Ever Told to the cheesy blue-screen dynamism of the Elvis Presley race-car musical Speedway. How could I not end up a film freak?

That said, I don’t know if I could ever say what the best movie I’ve ever seen actually is. One of the great things about movies is that, despite their being set in celluloid for all time (if we’re lucky), they are remarkably fluid objets d’art. That is, our responses to them are. The degrees to which those responses can vary because of the circumstances of the viewing (was the AC in the theater functioning properly?), the viewer’s mood going in, or the simple passage of time that allows a viewer the necessary experience to be open to a movie that was closed down to them before, can make a single movie seem like a completely different entity depending on any or all of those conditions. Such fluidity makes absolutism in qualifying bests in cinema (or in any art form) a squirrely proposition at best, which is why year-end best lists or all-Time 100 lists should be taken with a grain of salt and a spirit of fun, and not as some inroad to true film scholarship or appreciation.

I can tell you about my experience with the movie I’ve considered my personal favorite since about 1981, however. I was probably not yet 16 years old when I first saw Robert Altman’s Nashville at my hometown theater in Lakeview, Oregon, and my friends and I couldn’t have hated it more. It was everything that we didn’t want from a movie—we found its rambling structure maddening and its attempts to simulate the textures of life pointless. Why would anyone want to see a scene of Ronee Blakely cutting her toenails, or of Keith Carradine disaffectedly bedding woman after woman with no dramatic payoff? And of course a 16-year-old kid from a one-horse town in Southeastern Oregon is probably not going to have too much to bring to Altman’s party anyway (I disccovered later that you do have to bring something)—my friends and I were flush from the thrills of Jaws and were still pretty sure that if Forrest J. Ackerman didn’t talk about a movie within the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, why, then it just wasn’t worth discussing.



But back then, in the days before VCRs, revival theaters were still in full swing, and seeing old and new films on the University of Oregon campus was no difficult task—Eugene had one dedicated revival theater, two or three art houses and several campus organization-sponsored screenings every weekend. So, my voracious viewing habits being turned loose on a new and fertile environment, I saw as much as my brain (and my feeble checking account) would permit me to see, and eventually my best friend Bruce encouraged me to go check out Nashville with him. In that tiny little revival house (50 seats at the most) on the third floor of a tiny shopping atrium, I saw Nashville for the second time, and the auditorium was small enough that I’m sure others in attendance could hear something in my brain go “click.” All of the sudden I could understand that there was something going on here that was worth digging into, that it wasn’t just random fly-on-the-wall filmmaking, that there was a design, a purpose, an intelligence (both political and artistic) dwelling within its frames. That screening was as much of a cinematic revelation to me as any I ever had in my college days, and it spurred me on to investigate Altman’s films further.



Of course, in the course of the following year, this director, who inspired much eye-rolling on my part, especially when fellow film students would insist on referring to something as “Altmanesque,” became one of my favorites as well. So much so that by the time my senior year rolled around and the head of the film department offered a comprehensive semester on Altman, somehow, around halfway though the course, my mania for the director had gotten back to my professor, who ended up dubbing me some sort of Altman expert, a point of view bolstered by his enthusiasm for my papers on the subject of the films, and a distinction I wore proudly. (If only he knew how much I disdained Altman a mere two years previous!) When the class got around to Nashville, I made sure I saw all three screenings available to the students on the day it was presented—7:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and the main screening for the whole class at 7:00 p.m. I’d never before, and have never since, seen one movie three times in one day, particularly one as dense and detailed as Nashville, and by the time I got home that night I was exhausted, but buzzing with all the connections that were firing in my head as a result. Needless to say, I got a very good grade that semester.

I’ve seen the movie probably another 10 or so times since then, and it remains, depending on what day you catch me, either at the top, or within the top two or three, on my favorites list. And when the Nashville DVD was finally released in the year 2000, it was a special day for me not only because I could finally have a widescreen copy of the movie in my library, but also because I created the closed-caption and the English-language subtitles for that DVD. Doing that job was a mixture of pure pleasure and agony for me, because the film’s much-noted multi-layered dialogue soundtrack made discerning what dialogue was important and following a through-line that could make sense to deaf viewers, as well as those who wanted to partake in the option of following the dialogue in English in order to better catch important lines that were casually tossed into the mix, a particular challenge. But I lobbied for the job when the project came through our office and ended up doing the entire two and a half-hour movie by myself. It was a grueling, thrilling assignment to view the movie again in probably more detail than I ever had before. It was also especially gratifying when the subtitles were actually mentioned in Premiere magazine’s review of the DVD, which said that one of the best reasons to buy the DVD were the subtitles, which cast a new light and clarity on Altman’s famous overlapping dialogue.


3) Are you drawn to more big-budget studio films, or do you prefer the smaller independent films?

As Bill Murray said in that quintessential independent film from 1979, it just doesn’t matter. I’m drawn to films, whatever their size, budget or point of origin. A fair portion of the worst movies ever made are cynical Hollywood blockbusters and high-gloss Oscar bait, but, at the same time, I don’t think anyone could convince me that Jaws isn’t among the very best thrillers ever made, and you can’t get much more Hollywood blockbuster than that. Nor could you get away with describing Jaws as cynical, even though it was financed and made by a Hollywood studio that, at the time of its production, wasn’t exactly renowned for its commitment to the art of cinema.

On the other hand, the American independent film movement has not exactly panned out as a pure phenomenon sparked solely by creativity. While independent film has produced some significant works in the past 20 years, like Do the Right Thing, Reservoir Dogs, Fargo and Down by Law (and movies I think far more highly of, such as The Big Lebowski, Donnie Darko, 25th Hour and Jackie Brown), it has also given birth to its own set of cliches. These usually involve overly moist coming-of-age stories (see the career of Sundance Film Festival prize-winner Edward Burns) or stories of familial reconciliation garnished with hipster signifiers and ungainly quirkiness (Pieces of April, et al.), endless cannibalization of what has come before (including, but not limited to, excessive bowing at the altar of Quentin Tarantino, quite the fine young cannibal himself), fatal self-awareness (see the career of self-made Sundance legend Robert Rodriguez) and the birth of the Miramax monster.

If Sundance ever stood for the opportunity for a filmmaker’s self-expression, it stands twice as much now simply as a high profile event at which Young Hollywood falls all over itself to be seen, as well as for that old standard, a springboard to a high-paying career in which nine out of 10 “winners” subsume whatever unique voice they and their work had in the beginning in order to get the chance to work in Hollywood and churn out the same kind of crap they ostensibly were resisting by participating in Sundance in the first place. And judging by a large percentage of recent Sundance offerings, the independent sensibility and the Hollywood sensibility aren’t that far removed from each other anymore anyway.

The best movies I’ve seen so far this year have been a three-hour documentary shot on video and comprised entirely of a narrator speaking over movie clips dubbed off of VHS tapes of highly varying quality, a thrillingly elastic action comedy that serves as a raucous Cuisinart-style summing-up of a popular genre, another low-budget video documentary that has a lot to say about greed and self-interest in American sports and pop culture. Yet the mainstream comedy Wedding Crashers and the none-too-inexpensive Batman Begins are both likely to be near the top of my list too, come end of the year. I don’t see how I could take film and film appreciation seriously and not have interests that were all over the map. Imagine learning to read and then deciding to limit yourself to Barbara Cartland novels, or Tolstoy, or Emeril Lagasse cookbooks, or Betty and Veronica; imagine honing your craft as an fisherman and throwing back everything that wasn’t a 30-pound steelhead. Pauline Kael once wrote that a varied background of interests served seeing, really seeing films well, because that varied background inevitably reflected and informed the very nature of film itself as a conglomeration and intensification of all the popular arts—literature, performance, painting, photography, even journalism. So I cherish the fact that as I get older my fields of interest in film, writing, sports, seem to be expanding, both forward toward the new (lots of Asian and Middle Eastern cinema that I have yet to really plow into) and back into the past (Turner Classic Movies on cable TV, and the Criterion Collection and Warner Home Video DVD box sets from their classics library have been a constantly renewing film school and have helped me fill in a lot of the holes in my ever-evolving film education).

4) Oscars: good judge of Hollywood's talent, or just a night to sit and make fun of people's clothes?

Every year at my house a small group of friends get together to follow the Academy Awards and tabulate the office Oscar pool, which I coordinate. After 18 years of getting this contest together, I finally won it myself last year, a sweet victory for me in a rare year when my own pick for best picture of the year, Million Dollar Baby, happily coincided with Oscar’s. But the Academy’s track record as an indicator of good taste and lasting quality in films and performances is pretty shoddy—not too many film buffs, critics, or everyday viewers will tell you that they hold up films like Gandhi, Braveheart or Ordinary People as enduring classics or even movies that have the power to remain close to their hearts. However, some of the movies those titles bested for the Oscar crown—Steven Spielberg’s E.T.- The Extra-terrestrial, George Miller’s transcendent Babe, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (a movie I’m not exactly in love with) and David Lynch’s powerful adaptation of The Elephant Man-- are exactly the kinds of films that audiences and critics have turned into classics.

The Oscars, no matter how much they scream and shout otherwise, are a popular election, and as we’ve seen in recent years popular elections are no guarantor that the quality will rise to the top. Actors and directors routinely win awards for political reasons, or because they’ve amassed a body of work that truly was award-worthy and the voting body, to make up for lost opportunities, eventually coalesces and awards them for late-career performances (see Paul Newman and Al Pacino) that aren’t a sliver as good as the good stuff. And the Academy doesn’t even release the numbers on the actual voting, so it’s entirely possible that Sir Richard Attenborough’s terrifically dull biography of the great advocate of nonviolent resistance could have won the award for Best Picture because one more vote was cast for facile consciousness-raising rather than support for a universally admired, and hugely popular, sentimental science fiction story about a little lost alien and the boy who finds him. At least we know that it really only takes about 30% of eligible voters in this country to elect a president.

There’s so much wrong with thinking about Oscar as an arbiter of taste that it’s embarrassing on those not-so-rare occasions when I find myself getting caught up in the drama and suspense and the righteous indignation over a favorite movie’s losses. Oscar night is loads of fun, though, as a people-watching exercise, and the past two years have highlighted some stunning appearances by Kate Winslet, Sophie Okonedo, Sandra Oh and Shoreh Aghdashloo that have kept the males at our party riveted. And it’s also fascinating to listen to Joan Rivers botch simple facts about the people she’s interviewing on the red carpet, and sometimes even admit that she has no idea who they are or what they’re there for. These are the sideshows that make Oscar night as much of a rich tradition in my house as anything else. But I don’t take Oscar’s word for anything when it comes to whether or not a movie is really any good.

5) When you are feeling just all depleted and wiped out, where do you go to renew and refresh and recreate yourself?

I feel depleted and wiped out a lot these days— being a working husband and father of two daughters, ages five and three, has taxed my energies, physical, creative and emphathetic, in ways that I find amazing with the passing of each new day. But therein also lies my renewal. I’ve been really running myself out on a very thin string over the last few months, especially as I try to take advantage of the creative spark this blog has provided and keep up on the heavy workload at the place where I actually get paid to type. So keeping myself fresh and alive and engaged for my girls (all three of them) is a very important goal for me. And my oldest, once very Daddy-centric, has in the past year or so shifted very emphatically to the Mom side of the equation, a development that has affected me more than I ever thought it would. So it really surprised me when the five-year-old asked if she could go grocery shopping with me this past Saturday. Of course I said yes, and for two hours we roamed the aisles, laughed, talked in ways that I’ve always dreamed of talking with a child of mine, and she gladly helped me in any way she could, pulling items off the shelves and putting them in our cart, and offering helpful suggestions regarding potential purchases (most of which she was very understanding about when I politely declined). I realized about halfway through our chore that I was having the most unexpected good time with her at Vons, of all places, and I was so impressed with how helpful she was being that I finally just stopped the cart, picked her up in my arms and told her very sincerely how I’d always wanted to be able to speak to my child and know that she was really hearing me, that she had something to offer in return, and that she really wanted to be with me. There I was, in the frozen pizza aisle, getting all blubbery with my beautiful daughter, and all of the sudden I felt that rush of renewal, of energy that I could be turned right back around and given to her and her sister in ways which I might not even be aware. I finally collected myself and we resumed our shopping. And as we rounded the corner and headed toward Dairy, my little girl walked up beside me, casually put her arm around my waist and continued walking, silently taking in the bounty of cottage cheese and eggs and 2% milk. If there could ever be a claim for heaven in a supermarket, I found it that day. That’s the best kind of rejuvenation for me, knowing that I’m doing the best I can and that somehow it seems to be working for those I love the most.

On perhaps a more superficial level, I find that arriving a couple hours early for an evening baseball game at Dodger Stadium and just drinking in the atmosphere does wonders for my spirit. (It doesn’t hurt if the Dodgers win either). I commented earlier this season to a friend who was with me at one such game that I felt, at moments like this, Dodger Stadium was maybe the best place on Earth. He laughed, but I wasn’t kidding.

And I can always find the comfort, challenge and stimulation, both intellectual and emotional, that I need by watching a really good movie, either in a theater or, more frequently these days, on DVD. Movies, sometimes even ones that aren’t necessarily all that good, can be transportive for me in ways that are clear and obvious, but also sometimes intangible and difficult to articulate. There is still mystery in them to me, and navigating within the mystery, and excitement and wonder, and frustration and contradictory emotions, of those images and sounds all butted up together in fascinating and often revealing ways is a way of relaxing and “shutting down” for me that, if all works well, really isn’t shutting down at all. It’s a form of reengaging when I might feel like doing the exact opposite. I feel lucky that movies can do that for me.

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Beege, thanks for the great questions. I’m so sorry for not being concise and economical in my answers, but that’s usually not my style anyway, as much as some have suggested that it should be. I only hope that I didn’t drive you or anyone else to boredom, or distraction, or to a video game or a porn site, anything that’s more interesting than listening to me blather on, and I thank you for the opportunity to engage the subjects and, in the process, find something worth writing about. Here’s another question for you, a movie question for the self–confessed Entertainment Weekly subscriber (I am too, and I’m not too happy about it— but that’s another longwinded story):

What have you seen lately? Anything really good?