ANSWERS TO O’BLIVION PART 1: MISSING DIRECTORS, SHOULD-BE STARS, MOVIES TO REVISIT and SEVERAL DIFFICULT-TO-IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES

So begins one of the great lengthy, recurring projects on this blog that cannot be blamed on my own uncontrollable logorrhea—it’s time once again to gather up in digest form my favorite answers from the most recent quiz, Professor Brian O’Blivion’s All-New Flesh for Memorial Day Movie (and TV) Quiz. This is the portion of our program where I get to highlight my favorite answers from you, Dear Readers, in the hopes that not too many of my own answers (hopefully coming this week) were trumped by your sharp and funny observations (It happened a couple of times, I can tell you.) There were so many great, detailed answers this time around, in fact, that I’ve divided the answers into three parts, so you’ll have three separate long posts to read and enjoy, rather than one gigantically looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong one to test your stamina and attention span. Everybody who participated is blurbed here at least once, some more than that, and the answers are posted here in roughly the order they were received. And all your answers were appreciated. I just think it’s fun to revisit them a little over a month later in a somewhat compressed format and remind you and me both of the great, thoughtful, funny readership this blog has. And why wouldn’t I want to share that? (Sometimes I couldn’t resist just a tiny comment of my own on your comments, though.) Here then are the first 12 questions followed by some of my favorite responses. Enjoy! And if you still have responses burning inside you and haven’t yet filled out the professor’s quiz for yourself yet, please don’t consider the thread dead and buried. There are still a few of the usual respondents who haven’t checked in this time. (You know who you are!) So please post ‘em, and I’ll respond to them as well! Here we go!

1) Best transition from movies to TV (actor, actress, producer/director, movie/show)


The transition is easy nowadays as TV writers, directors and actors go back and forth with no stigma attached. It was a lot harder in the seventies and before because TV was considered such an ugly stepchild. I personally can't stand him as an actor but I've always been impressed that John Travolta was able to go from playing a sweathog on Welcome Back Kotter to garnering an Oscar Nomination for Saturday Night Fever in less than a year. But that's TV to movies. Movies to TV? I'll say MASH or Buffy. Buffy in fact took a less than acclaimed movie and became a TV show that was much more acclaimed than the source. (Jonathan Lapper)

Director - John Brahm. See his Fox DVD set, and then, if you can, check out his work on the horror TV series, Thriller. (Peter Nellhaus)

Alfred Hitchcock with Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I kinda wish William Castle had tried that type of transition too. (Dave S.)

Candice (Day the Fish Came Out) Bergen and Cybill (Texasville) Shepherd fared far better after retreating to the tube. (Flickhead)

...and back again? How about David Lynch? Brilliant early in his film career and then went on to Twin Peaks. And although it's kind of a reversal, Mulholland Drive started as a television pickup ABC failed to capitalize on. (Chris)

House is the best thing Brian Singer has ever been involved with. (Krauthammer)

Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock. It’s like everything he’s done up to this point has been in service to this. (Mr. Middlebrow)

Though it actually started on stage, my vote is for The Odd Couple In the movie Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon are really too much actor for the roles, and Jack Lemmon is the wrong kind of neurotic -- anxious, not a fussbudget. On TV, Jack Klugman is just enough actor for Oscar and Tony Randall was just born to play Felix.
(Robert Fiore)

By any sort of objective professional standard, it has to be Lucille Ball. Pre-TV she was doing bad comedies for Columbia with guys like John Agar and heading back toward second-billing land. After a decade in TV she was able to buy RKO Studios. No other actor ever reached her level of success and power as a producer. (Along with Desi, of course, who qualifies for the best transition from Latin dance bands to TV.)
(Gerard Jones)

I guess I should say Alec Baldwin, but how about Jim Belushi? I love, love, love According to Jim, one of the most underrated comedies on TV. Who would have thought he’d survive Blues Brothers 2000 and Traces Of Red. (Larry Aydlette)

Ernest Dickerson. As director of photography for Spike Lee’s first few features, he brought a highly stylized color palette, beautiful compositions, crisp lighting, and a seamy and sweaty undercurrent to everything from Do the Right Thing to Jungle Fever. His own directorial efforts—including Juice and the truly awful Bulletproof (I paid money for this one, on a date, and I’ve still got an axe to grind a decade later)—are dicier propositions. Lately, though, he’s been on a roll, directing stellar episodes of superb shows—six or seven for The Wire, a couple for Weeds, a few hothouse episodes of ER, and Heroes apiece. So, his choice in TV shows is generally better than that of full-length screenplays. Perhaps he’s found his niche. (Walter Biggins)

I think I'll go with Carroll O'Connor. He was in some pretty decent movie fare (Point Blank, Kelly's Heroes), but it wasn't until he became Archie Bunker that his talents were truly allowed to flower. (Patrick)

Kathryn Harrold. She made several rather forgettable films in the 80s, but became a regular, and regularly wonderful, on TV, if usually only in small roles. I’ll Fly Away was one of my favorite shows in the early 90s, in part because of her role as the district attorney. She also had a great but small role in the short-lived Mister Sterling with Josh Brolin. (Weigard)

Krzystzof Kieslowski. Regardless of what medium we’re talking, The Decalogue is one of the defining works of the twentieth century. (Paul Clark)

This isn't easy - I don't watch much TV anymore - what I've seen in the last 20 years I've caught up with after the fact... since it should be someone I've actually seen - I'm tempted to say Fred MacMurray - a fine film career, and then a big TV career - though he's bland on TV. William Demerast then? though I'm tempted to go to something more basic - Edward Everett Horton, whose voice is utterly engrained in my head... (Weeping Sam)

Everyone who knows me knows I'm going to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so just to be different I'll say Eiji Tsuburaya. His rubber suits probably work better on the small screen in Ultraman than on the big screen in most Godzilla movies. (Chris Oliver)

Chevy Chase. That talk show was the most awesome thing I've ever seen. (The Bandit)

2) Living film director you most missing seeing on the cultural landscape regularly


Martin Brest. Seriously. Gigli was bad, but not that bad. (Peter Nellhaus)

Ken Russell. (Dave S.)

Hrm. That’s a good one. Oh, wait, I know. Peter Weir. Master and Commander is one of the most underrated films of the past couple of decades, as far as I’m concerned, and I think he’s only made a couple of movies that can be ignored outright. Everything else seems to me, to range between “interesting” and “phenomenal”. (Bill)

Richard Lester (Flower)

Samuel Fuller (I wish he could get the years back that were wasted trying to convince people he wasn't crazy or evil). Also, Alison Anders. (Erin)

Francis Ford Coppola. I think Youth Without Youth is a messy burst of exuberance and passion, and he needs to take that and run with it. Preferably more often than once a decade. (Chris)

This one stumped me for a couple of days, as I pondered the questions Dennis had offered up this time, and while I was tempted to list Francis Ford Coppola, I finally settled on Whit Stillman. Stillman has made two perfect comedies (Metropolitan and Barcelona) and one mixed success (Last Days of Disco, but in Stilman's defense, it's hard to make a good movie when Chloe Sevigny plays your heroine). And then he's disappeared for the last decade. The recent Criterion disc reveals a man still in full command of his verbal gifts and still passionately interested in the mechanics of cinematic storytelling-- so what gives? In an age of Ashton Kutcher, Stillman's graceful, Austen-like observations make him a crucial national resource, one which should be tapped far more often. (Brian Doan)

Francis Coppola, even if many of his movies admittedly fail, they fail in interesting ways. (Steven Santos)

I keep hoping that Peter Greenaway would seem more relevant to the greater public so that more of his films would be released either theatrically or on DVD around here. (Brian)

I wish that Stanley Tucci was more prominent and I was a fan of Whit Stillman, who seems to have dropped off the map. But mostly, I wish Michael Cimino’s career had not tanked so early. I see on Imdb that he has a film in production for 2009. To be honest, I would also welcome another Penny Marshall film. (John P.)

I would love to have seen more from Paul Brickman. (Mr. Middlebrow)

This will seem strange for someone who never seems to go away, but Quentin Tarantino. I think it's a shame that he takes so long to make a picture, and a shame that he lost his nerve after Jackie Brown tanked.(Robert Fiore)


Bill Forsyth most of all. Gregory's Girl, Local Hero and Comfort and Joy helped make the 1980s worthwhile. Bill, come back! Also Victor Erice, although he has never been a very public figure. I also agree with Bubblegum Cinephile about Whit Stillman. (Campaspe)

John Landis, he hasn't helmed a real movie since Blues Brothers 2000. Come on John, let's not have that be your coda. (Adam Ross)

Clare Peploe. She’s made three gems—High Season, Rough Magic, and Triumph of Love—over 18 years. Each one is radically different in time period, and they’re equally unclassifiable beyond that they’re all comic to some degree. She’s created her own genre—fancy-free, languid, gently sliding from one genre convention to the next without us being able to clearly identify the transition, and very, very sexy. (Walter Biggins)

Whatever happened to Lawrence Kasdan? Did he lose it? Or are we missing something wonderful? (Anne Thompson)

Elaine May, surely one of the prickliest and most original voices in American comedy. None of her films is easy to take, which probably explains why they’re not as popular as they really should be, but few directors have a more acerbic sensibility when it comes to portraying relationships onscreen, be they marriage or platonic friendship. May’s ramshackle style works perfectly in her seventies work- you can see the boom in several shots of Mikey and Nicky, fer chrissakes- but didn’t mesh nearly so well with the larger scope of Ishtar. But really, Hollywood bigwigs, it’s been twenty years. I don’t care how difficult May is or how big a flop Ishtar supposedly was, the world is better off with more May films than without them. (Paul Clark) (Paul, I love A New Leaf too!—Dennis)

I already miss Sydney Pollack...and yes, he's no longer living, but he was when you posted the quiz, so that's my answer...There's a part of me that has such a great affinity for his acting over his directing. He commanded the screen so well. And that cell phone ad of his that plays in cinemas was awesome. That might be how I always remember him. (Lucas McNelly)

Maybe he's not someone I "miss seeing on the cultural landscape," but I'm certainly looking forward to whatever Edgar Wright has to offer next, and particularly his next collaboration with Simon Pegg. (Stennie)

He's made some lousy films, but I can't believe that there's no room on the cultural landscape for Ralph Bakshi today. (Chris Oliver)

John Carpenter; sure, he still phones in some TV work now, but he hasn't directed a movie in seven long years; He still seems so cynical and funny and anarchic in interviews... but his MIA streak on the big screen and the seeming lack of inspiration in his post-1995 work suggests maybe he doesn't care anymore. (The Bandit)

3) Eugene Pallette or Charles Coburn


Pallette because of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington… though Coburn worked with Hitchcock. (Dave S.)

Eugene Pallette has a great face and an even better voice. (Schuyler Chapman)

"Let us be crooked, Jane, but never common." (Brian Doan)

Wow, that's a long time ago. (Brian)

Pallette purely on the strength of his addled patriarch in My Man Godfrey. (Mr. Middlebrow)

Eugene Pallette. Coburn always plays his particular type of character effectively, but you truly relish Pallette's performances. (Robert Fiore)

I want to say Coburn just to see how Karen reacts (and he was so great in The Lady Eve, The More the Merrier and The Green Years). But it's Pallette, for his voice, Friar Tuck and because he wins the Heaven Can Wait smackdown with that scene over the funny papers. Plus, he has me howling with laughter every time I see My Man Godfrey: "Take a look at the dizzy old gal with the goat." "I've had to look at her for 20 years. That's MRS. Bullock." "I'm terribly sorry!" "How do you think I feel?" (Campaspe)

Oh, Pallette for sure. I like Charles Coburn--no one has ever been better at being Charles Coburn, in fact. But Eugene is just so goofy. The final sequence of Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here includes one of the most surreal images in cinema history: the disembodied, luridly greenish head of Eugene Pallette flying toward us, singing. Beats the hell out of that slashed eyeball in Un Chien Andalou (Gerard Jones)

So I wrote this long missive on how wonderful James Coburn was – and then I reread the question. Dang. No comment. (Weigard) (You and the guy who used to do the marquee for my hometown movie theater! It was routine to see up there every so often something like “Charles Coburn in The President’s Analyst” or “Charles Coburn in Cross of Iron.” Of course, this is how I found out who Charles Coburn was!—Dennis)

Coburn was a serious talent, capable of a wide variety of roles, but just seeing Pallette (or especially hearing that croak of a voice) is enough to guarantee that “tonight, I’ll merry, merry be.” So Pallette by a nose. Sorry, Piggy. (Paul Clark)

4) Fill in the blank: “I pray that no one ever turns _____________ into a movie.”


Catcher in the Rye (Jonathan Lapper)

My life (Peter Nellhaus)

Pong (Dave S.)

If we’re talking about books, or something like that, then I’m open to somebody taking a shot at just about anything. The books are still the books, so even if the movie really chews on it hard, there’s really no harm done. Outside of that, I guess I would say “whatever new horseshit idea Ashton Kutcher just came up with”. (Bill)

The Family Guy because I f*****g hate that show and the publicity campaign accompanying the film version would probably give me fits. (Schuyler Chapman)

Any Salinger story (I just re-read Franny & Zooey) (Ryland Walker Knight)

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. "Who is John Galt?" Freddie Prinze Jr. (Chris)

The Catcher in the Rye, Aquaman, another Stephen King short story, My Mother the Car, Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, Lost, or anything that George Lucas might be tempted to write and/or direct. (all for different reasons) (John P.)

If I were a praying man (and I'm not), I would pray that Ridley Scott never turns Blood Meridian into a movie, unless he were able to completely reinvent himself as a filmmaker. But I guess this is why I don't pray. (W. Australopithecus)

Star Wars, ever again. (Robert Fiore)

Gravity's Rainbow. (Anthony)

Spamalot, the musical version of Young Frankenstein, or any other Broadway shows based on classic films. It’s bad enough the Broadway draws on old movies to bring in the tourist crowd, but turning them back into movies again is just bizarre. Honestly, how many times will do they think they can get lucky like they did with Hairspray? (Paul Clark)

My deep, dark secrets? My sex life? Oh, who am I kidding? I'll probably do that myself. (Lucas McNelly)

Eh, I'm usually pretty down with anything, so nothing's too sacred to make or remake... though I do dread most boomer musical biopics. So I'll say The Gordon Lightfoot Story. (The Bandit)

5) Jane Greer or Veronica Lake

Veronica. She's responsible for 10% of my hits daily. People always want to see her naked. (Jonathan Lapper)

I like them both, but am more partial to taking Veronica out for a cup of joe. (Peter Nellhaus)

Lake, by a bang over an eye. (Dave S.)

Ooh, that's a tough choice-- how can one decide between Sullivan's Travels and Out of the Past? I'm giving the edge to Greer, but only because her introductory walk through that Mexican bar is so alluring, and the single shot I would choose if I had to define film noir. (Brian Doan)

Veronica Lake. To quote Greil Marcus (as well as I can remember), "Raymond Chandler called her 'Moronica' but who cares?" (Robert Fiore)

Oh, please! Jane Greer was an actress. Veronica Lake was a hairstyle. Greer in Out of the Past is the great Bad Girl in Hollywood history. But I will say that Veronica did not hurt Sullivan's Travels one little bit. In fact, her very blankness probably worked better for the character than any actress with personality could have. (Gerard Jones)

Lake left me so woozy in Sullivan’s Travels that I couldn’t think straight even when I was desperately trying to stay focused and catch all the jokes. Greer never left me punch-drunk, not even in Out of the Past. So, Lake. (Walter Biggins)

Greer. God, I hate Veronica Lake. (Stennie)

6) What was the last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD? And why?


I saw Opera Jawa in a theater, because films like that need to be supported. I saw Day of Wrath, not the Dreyer film, on DVD, because I was curious, and an incurable smartass. (Peter Nellhaus)

In the theatre, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, because a friend wanted to go, and on DVD, Two-Lane Blacktop. I rented it because I liked what I’d read about it. It’s now one of my favourite movies. (Dave S.)

In the theater, it was Iron Man, and I saw it for the same reason everybody else saw it: Robert Downey, Jr. in a flying metal suit blowing up bad guys. And I loved it. On DVD, it was Ball of Fire. I saw that one because of how much good press it gets on this here website, and because of my growing love of Barbara Stanwyck, fostered in no small part, again, by this here website. And it’s a curious thing: I didn’t know before I saw the movie that it was co-written by Billy Wilder, and I’m starting to come to the conclusion that I don’t actually find Billy Wilder comedies very funny. I love his dramas, but not his comedies. However, while Ball of Fire didn’t make me laugh very often, I did SMILE an awful lot. And my love for Barbara Stanwyck ever increases. AND, out of the blue, the movie gives me one of the most genuinely and honestly touching moments I’ve ever seen. “Sweet Genevieve.” You didn’t ask about cable, but I also recently watched Count Yorga, Vampire, which I enjoyed immensely for all the wrong reasons. (Bill) (Let’s talk Count Yorga, Vampire sometime, Bill!—Dennis)

Thanks to a tip-off by Peter Nellhaus, 19-year-old Sophia Loren, smiling, singing, braless, bouncy and generally magnificent in the otherwise forgettable Too Bad She’s Bad (1954). Blowing Marilyn off the map, even her armpit hair was sexy. (Flickhead)

Theater - Speed Racer DVD - House of Games. Watched both in direct response to this blog's “Days of Speed Racer” post and comments thread. I loved Speed Racer and thought House of Games, which I last saw maybe eight or nine years ago, held up just fine, thanks. (Flower)

I think the last movie I saw in a theater was Southland Tales. I hated Donnie Darko, and everyone who liked that movie hated this one, so I figured that maybe I would like Southland. I was wrong. I watched The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant last night on DVD because, well, Fassbinder's amazing and I'd not seen that one yet. (Schuyler Chapman)

In theaters: Then She Found Me. On DVD: Daisy Miller (the 1974 Peter Bogdanovich version). Why? Two weeks ago, my girlfriend and I were supposed to go see Radney Foster in concert. We drove into Cleveland on a sunny afternoon and arrived at the Beachland Theater (the newspaper article said tickets would be available at the door). It was still a few hours until the show, but we thought we could get our tix early and then maybe grab a bite to eat. There was no one at the box office, so we decided to head to the basement record store that was also housed in the club. It was a very cool atmosphere, with stacks of vinyl, lots of vintage t-shirts, and a new wave/hipster ambience that felt inviting, rather than closed off. We asked the young man behind the counter how we might get tickets, and found out that the show had been cancelled, due to the sudden death of Foster's father. Shaken by the news, we decided to stay in the Cleveland area for the night, anyway, and maybe catch a movie. The Cedar Lee, Cleveland Heights' fabulous old (circa 1926) theater, which now shows indie and foreign films, was only about 20 minutes away, so we headed over to see what was playing. A number of good films were there, and we finally settled on Then She Found Me as one to see. It's very good, by the way, especially if you like your romcoms to be a bit prickly and uncertain.


As for Daisy Miller...That had been sitting on my TV table for a couple of months (thank god Netflix doesn't have late fees!), and I finally got around to it the other day. The film has a bad reputation, since it was a commercial flop, and since some folks can't imagine Cybill Shepherd in the title role. But I love Bogdanovich's 70s/early 80s work (They All Laughed is a lost masterpiece), and have been fascinated by Henry James ever since I read Rachel Cohen's brilliant anecdotal study A Chance Meeting (in which James plays a central role) and I was curious. It's not bad, actually-- it's full of beautiful long takes and lush location work in Switzerland and Italy, and Shepherd isn't terrible in the role, although I think she's miscast. The rest of the cast is excellent, especially the quietly controlling Eileen Brennan. (Brian Doan)

In the theatre: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because it was inevitable. On DVD: Spartan, because I went to see Redbelt in the theatre and it was good, but I wanted to remember why Mamet is great. I think he directed Spartan pitch perfectly. (John P.)

Last movies I saw in the theater was a double bill of The Man I Killed, Ernst Lubitsch's only Hollywood drama, and The Scoundrel, one of the pictures Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur made in their short-lived New York outpost of Paramount, at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Though a drama, The Man I Killed has some great Lubitsch Touches. Early in the picture is a mass in celebration of the first anniversary of the French victory in World War I, and there's a shot along a row of pews with a sword scabbard trailing out of every one. Later in the movie when the erstwhile French soldier is out walking in the little German town with the fiancé of the German soldier he killed, the door chimes of the shops play a chorus wherever they go as the shopkeepers open their doors offscreen to look at the couple. The Scoundrel brings to mind how appallingly irresponsible Hecht and MacArthur were to allow their cynicism and contempt for Hollywood lead them to fritter away their chance to work outside it. Based on The Scoundrel it doesn't appear that much was lost. What Hecht and MacArthur saw as making movies for adults was transporting the values of commercial theater onscreen: Artificial characters proclaiming artificial dialog in artificial settings, with a visual style that amounts to "point the camera at the actors," wrapped in a fantasy redemption plot that would make Louis B. Mayer blush (it involves divine intervention). The ambitions of the Astoria project would actually be realized in Hollywood by Orson Welles, and again frittered away through self-indulgence. The strategy of finding a creative modus vivendi with the commercial film industry has over the years been far more successful than the strategy of trying to work outside of it, if only for the reason that the commercial industry gives a filmmaker access to collaborators just as talented as himself.

The last movie I saw on DVD was Left, Right and Centre, a political satire starring Ian Carmichael and Alistair Sim, from a Region 2 collection of Alistair Sim pictures. Back during the golden age of British movie comedy spearheaded by Ealing Studios comedies often starring Alec Guinness, there was a second string from other studios often starring or featuring Sim. This was definitely second stringy, but with moments, mostly thanks to Sim. I watched it because Sim was in it. (Robert Fiore)

The baby makes it pretty hard to get out to a movie, all I've seen this year is In Bruges. I'm watching The Day the Earth Stood Still right now, just had to hear Bernard Herrman's Gort theme. (Adam Ross)


In a theater: I (Heart) Huckabees. I wanted to see what all the furor was about, but sadly the most memorable thing about it was Naomi Watts in a swimsuit. I work nights, so it's difficult for me to see movies in a theater, and they really aren't designed for my age group (I'm 52) anymore. On DVD: Hands Across The Table. Carole Lombard is my all-time favorite actress. (VP81955)

Today saw a double billing of Baby Mama and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Why? Because I've been sick for a week and I was going stir crazy. Off to the theater. We'd already seen everything good so it came down to these two flops. (El Gringo)

Theater: Iron Man. I wanted to take my nephew to see something that I myself wanted to see. Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges made sure neither of us was disappointed. DVD: Once Upon a Time in the West. My father likes westerns, and he likes Leone, but he'd somehow never seen this before. That opening ten minutes never gets old. And I'll take any excuse I can to watch Claudia Cardinale at her most beautiful. (Patrick)

In theater: The Strangers, two evenings ago. The marketing campaign (with that great one-sheet hooked me in, I must admit. On DVD: Pirates of Blood Island (John Gilling, 1962) -- as a palate cleanser for The Strangers, and for the simple reason that I wanted to see a Hammer-mounted pirate action film. It didn’t disappoint. (Aaron)

In a theatre: Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? because it was playing in a beautiful 16mm print as the second half of a double-bill also featuring a personal favorite film maudit The Last Movie. A truly bizarre night at the cinema. How can I pass that up? On DVD: Ozu's Passing Fancy because I love Ozu and it's the last of his four silents available on R1 DVD I hadn't seen before. In fact, it's the last of the four Japanese silents available on R1 DVD I hadn't seen before! (Brian Darr)

In the theatre, I'd have to go all the way back to No Country for Old Men. On DVD, Lars and the Real Girl. Hmmm... and you ask why? I can tell you this much: since getting my big screen HDTV in January, I haven't felt much of a need go back to a theatre. (Stennie)

Theater-- Baby Mama, because Iron Man wasn't playing in Glendale (where I was doing other things Saturday), and because my wife wanted to support a comedy with two female leads, and because I generally think Tina Fey is great and 30 Rock is the best sitcom on TV right now. DVD-- Female Prisoner 701 Scorpion, as the climax of a 70's women-who-kick-ass triple feature (Switchblade Sisters and Sugar Hill started it off) for Memorial Day/My Birthday. (Actually, since I wrote this, I've seen the amazing Blast of Silence on DVD) (Chris Oliver)

7) Name an actor you think should be a star

Fairuza Balk. No, seriously, Fairuza Balk. I'm sure I'll catch hell for that answer. Jonathan Lapper)

Maggie Q is a star in Asia, damn it! (Peter Nellhaus)

I don’t know…there are so many. I’ve recently become incredibly impressed with Robert Sean Leonard’s work on the TV show House. His performance in the most recent season finale was devastating. (Bill)

Ciaran Hinds (Flower)

Chiwetel Ejiofor. And I predict an Oscar nomination within the next five years. (John P.)

Having seen Shotgun Stories just a couple of weeks ago, I will have to say Michael Shannon. (W. Australopithecus)

I guess I am supposed to name someone contemporary, so I pick the gorgeous, mesmerizing but underutilized Maria Bello. I also think Benoit Magimel should be a worldwide big name, although I have no idea if his English is up to Hollywood. As for neglected names from the old days, I'm working on a whole list of those. (Campaspe)

Bruno S. (Bemis)

David Tennant, the star of Dr. Who and Viva Blackpool, is intense, sexy, smart, lovable. He just needs the right breakthrough part. (Anne Thompson)

I remember a few years ago when I watched The Prestige for the first time, I found myself really enjoying the performance by the actress playing Hugh Jackman’s wife at the beginning of the film. I recognized the face, but it took me a while to place who it was. Finally, it came to me- Piper Perabo, who I don’t think I’d seen in a movie since her awesome turn in Lost and Delirious. Had it really been five years? And after her character exits the film, I began to miss her, wishing maybe she’d been cast in Scarlett Johansson’s role instead. Anyway, seeing her again onscreen made me think about her career, which never quite panned out as it should have. I considered the films she’s made- Prestige and Lost aside, a long string of forgettable roles in subpar movies. Gorgeous, talented, and charismatic, with a natural and engaging screen presence, she deserves much better than she’s gotten so far. Perhaps her name is a problem? Doesn’t seem to be an issue for Shia LaBeouf. (Paul Clark)

Should - it's not something I particularly wish on anyone, doesn't look like fun to me. Deserves to be, when it comes to talent: Sam Rockwell. At first I thought he was just a goofball, but he turns out to be quite versatile, he's done well in supporting and leads, comedy and drama.The same (minus the goofball thing) goes for Peter Sarsgaard. (California)

8) Foxy Brown or Coffy

Foxy Brown has the always delightful Sid Haig. Did I tell you that Pam Grier and I went to the same high school? (Peter Nellhaus) (Peter, you had a golden opportunity here, man…!- Dennis)

Coffy, because she was the Godmother of them all! (Dave S.)

Coffy! Can't beat the knives in the hair. Also a woman walking alone on the beach is my favorite way to end a film, see also: Under the Sand! (Erin)

Only Coffy will put razor blades in her 'fro! (Chris)

(*Hangs head in shame*) I've never seen either, but can either be bad if they both star Pam Grier? (Brian Doan) (Brian, the answer is no—Dennis)

I've only watched the male-dominated blaxpoitation flicks for some reason. (Krauthammer)

“You pink-ass corrupt honky judge, take your little wet noodle outta here and if you see a man anywhere send him in because I do need a MAN!” Foxy! (John P.)

Jackie Brown (Mr. Middlebrow)

Foxy, because she's a whole lotta woman. (Campaspe)

I'm pretty sure Coffy has more nudity. (Adam Ross)

Whichever one shows more of Ms. Grier, which I believe from exacting scientific research would be Coffy. (Larry Aydlette)

Coffy, Coffy, and more Coffy (Pacheco)

Aaarrrrgghh!!! Pacheco beat me to it. (Coffy, Coffy and more Coffy) My fault for being so slow. (Peter Nellhaus)

Neither. Go with Friday Foster (Walter Biggins)

I have signed one-sheets for both, but I’m of the same mindset as Jack Hill when he claims that Pam Grier films progressively got worse as she got more glamorous. So, Coffy. (Aaron)

I never, ever pick against someone named Foxy. Then again, there's the one name thing. How to choose? Damn you, Dennis! (Lucas McNelly)

9) Favorite TV show still without its own DVD box set


As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, this is a Thriller. (Peter Nellhaus)

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley. Also, Get a Life. At least there were about six episodes of the latter released, but I need the complete series. (Bill)

Spaced, which I hear is being rectified. (Chris)

The Six Million Dollar Man. If the glimpses of similar childhood faves that I’ve gotten from Hulu are any indication (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) I’m probably much better off with my memories of the show as seen through the uncritical eyes of a ten-year-old. (Mr. Middlebrow)

My favorite TV show without its own DVD box set, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's Not Only But Also, will never get a DVD box set because of the ghastly British practice of erasing "light entertainment" programming in order to re-use the videotape. Most of Cook and Moore is gone, and a lot of groundbreaking work by Spike Milligan, and it's a stroke of luck that Monty Python escaped. It was the most appalling combination of stupidity, snobbery and penny wise/pound foolish (denominations appropriate in this case) thinking imaginable. Actually it's unimaginable that people would be so foolish as to throw away the money they spent on talent to save a much smaller amount on raw materials. (Robert Fiore)

This one’s a tossup. Max Headroom has still not been released on DVD. I haven’t seen this sci-fi show since I was a kid and I’m not sure its ideas would hold water 20 years later, but I’d like to find out. On the flipside of the same coin, I’m pretty sure the humor in Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures would be much hipper, stranger, and more subversive to me now than it did as a 12-year-old. (Walter Biggins)

10) Jack Elam or Neville Brand

I was a kid in the seventies - Jack Elam. (Jonathan Lapper)

Elam ‘cause of Kiss Me Deadly, though both of these guys could stare down just about anybody. (Why do I always feel guilty about answering these “A or B” questions? Is it because I’m Canadian?) (Dave S.)

Jack Elam. He looks like both of his eyes want to kill you, but for different reasons. (Bill)

Jack Elam, especially if he’s rocking the beard. (Schuyler Chapman)

Aside from Stalag 17, I'm honestly pretty unfamiliar with both, which says something about me, I guess, and also about the generational gaps that sometimes exist in the film blogosphere. (Brian Doan)

Although Neville Brand was in an Anthony Mann movie, Elvis Presley movie, and Tobe Hooper movie, Jack Elam was in Once Upon a Time in the West. Jack Elam wins. (Krauthammer)

Jack Elam, if only for his summary of the stages of a Hollywood career: "Who's Jack Elam?" "We could do this cheaper if we got Jack Elam." "Get me Jack Elam!" "Get me a Jack Elam type!" "Who's Jack Elam?" (Robert Fiore)

Neville, for Stalag 17 and DOA (Campaspe)

I admit I have no idea what you're talking about. I like Edam cheese, though (Middento)

Neville Brand, for Eaten Alive, That Darn Cat!, and The Ninth Configuration, and countless others (and for not appearing on Home Improvement as Elam did). (Aaron)

Elam. Though sadly, like many thirtysomethings, this great Western character actor is known almost exclusively to me (beyond the Leone movie) as the fake doctor in The Cannonball Run. (The Bandit)

11) What movies would top your list of movies you need to revisit, for whatever reason?

Zazie dans la Metro, Omicron, Convicts 4, and anything that Albert Zugsmith had anything to do with. (Peter Nellhaus)

Pretentious as it sounds, its mostly foreign films that come to mind when thinking of an answer to this question… Films like Rashomon, The 400 Blows, Breathless, Umberto D… And the reason I would want to revisit classics foreign films is to remind myself of how great they are. (Dave S.)


Is this the question about movies you didn’t like, but everyone else seemed to love, so you want to check them out again to see if you missed something the first time around? If so, then my answer is Being John Malkovich and Fight Club. If the question is more general, than my answer is Lawrence of Arabia, Barry Lyndon and Picnic at Hanging Rock. (Bill)

A Perfect World, Sid and Nancy, I'm Not There, Alphaville, Psycho (the Van Sant version) and Happy Together and Kiss Me Deadly (Schuyler Chapman)

Nashville, Goodbye South, Goodbye, Chimes at Midnight, Millennium Actress, Fight Club, My Darling Clementine, Rohmer, Ozu, Chaplin, all those Costa films I saw a couple months ago, but I think Casa de Lava may be a lot better than I originally thought upon a first viewing... and on and on and on.... (Ryland Walker Knight)


The Rules of the Game, the richest movie ever made; Breathless, the one which most radically re-shaped my cinematic imagination; anything from Errol Flynn's late 30s period; nearly anything by Howard Hawks and Francois Truffaut; and The Godfather films, which stop me cold and force me to watch them whenever they appear on TV. (Brian Doan)

My problem isn't needing to revisit movies, it's revisiting ones I love too often, thus leaving less time to for the ones on my "drat, I still need to see that" list. If I loved it, I want to see it again. (Campaspe)

My one and only viewing of The Magnificent Ambersons left a sour taste in my mouth, I probably need to see it again before writing it off for good. (Adam Ross)

The Court Jester, because the people who are appalled when I say I can't stand Danny Kaye tell me it's The One. All the Ernst Lubitsches with Jeanette MacDonald because I've only seen a couple and that was before I kept reading how great Lubitsch (and his fans) thought she was.Mulholland Drive, because my wife and I felt we'd finally made sense of its overlapping realities after a couple of hours of post-movie dissection, and now I'd like to see if our ideas hold up to actually seeing it. (Gerard Jones)

The 400 Blows, because I really didn't like it. Blue Velvet, because I hated it. Radio Flyer, because I'm trying to remember if the story is supposed to be realistic, or if it's all actually an "imaginary situation" that allows the kids to escape from the trauma of an abusive parent. (Pacheco)

The Puppetmaster>, because was too ignorant first time I saw it. Ditto for Alphaville and many others. (Marc Raymond)

The Far Country and Bend of the River top the list because I've never seen them on the big screen and they're scheduled to play the Stanford Theatre next week. Though since they're Universal titles I'm going to call the theatre ahead of time to make sure the prints booked weren't destroyed in the fire. (Brian Darr)

Among older films - Kurosawa's The Idiot, which I saw on VHS many years back and didn't get much out of... Dreyer's Joan of Arc, just because it's been too long since I've seen it.... Rio Bravo, ditto.... more recently: The Ice Storm comes to mind... I need to rewatch some Cronenberg's - I might like them better. There are filmmakers I've seen once and want to see again - Olmi, Ichikawa, etc... And - RC reminds me - a couple Coen Brothers films - actually, about half of them, but especially The Man Who Wasn't There... (Weeping Sam)

Point Blank. This should be right up my alley, I love Boorman, I love Marvin... hell, I love the eight billion movies it inspired. For some odd, odd reason, the one and only time I saw it, on badly panned and scanned ancient VHS, it left me cold. (The Bandit)

12) Zodiac or All the President’s Men


Brian Doan's answer will be All The President's Men - just wanted to put that out there. Mine is Zodiac. (Jonathan Lapper)

Zodiac, ‘cause it’s fresher in my memory, and it’s about obsession with no definite resolution… (Dave S.)

Zodiac. I’m a fan of both, but Zodiac is one of those unexpected masterpieces we rarely see. At least, it was unexpected for me, given that, previously, I was at best ambivalent about David Fincher. Along with everything else that Zodiac does well, it is, with the possible exception of High and Low, the greatest police procedural I have ever seen. (Bill)

It’s a sign of changing generations that bloggers generally prefer Zodiac, a good, not great, work…but filled with that sense of ambiguity championed by those with abbreviated attention spans. I’m sure they see the Redford/Pakula film as hopelessly dated, when, in fact, it’s still fresh provided one is capable of appreciating its many qualities. It’s 2008 and here we are talking about All the President’s Men (1976). Thirty years from now, will anyone give a hoot in hell about Zodiac? (Flickhead)

Oh, All The President's Men, no question! Zodiac is okay, but Men is one of the three best American films of the 70s, and one of the most inexhaustible suspense films ever made. (It's also a great teaching tool). (Brian Doan)


All The President’s Men. But these kind of choices should get Cozzalio put on double-secret probation. (Larry Aydlette)

Zodiac. The Watergate case probably had more obvious far-reaching effects than the Zodiac murders, but we’re not talking about real life, but rather its cinematic reflection. And in that respect, Fincher’s movie wins hands down. All the President’s Men is a fine film, but it’s a fairly straightforward story of men whose intelligence and dogged perseverance gets them what they want. Zodiac isn’t so simple. Graysmith, Toschi, Avery, and the others work just as hard on their case as Woodward and Bernstein, but real life gets in the way of them tracking down the killer. Their best simply isn’t good enough, for many small reasons and a few big ones as well. It’s a more haunting variation on the theme, and a more mature one as well. (Paul Clark)

All the President’s Men. Zodiac was only okay, despite the presence of the sublime Robert Downey, Jr., but President was riveting. (Sharon)

So, so close. If only because I've seen it a billion times and it's stood the test of time, and was a legit product of its time rather than a flawless approximation of that era, I'll go with President’s. (The Bandit)

(Next up, part 2: Important film comedies, the Worst Movie Title Ever, reasons to blog, blasphemy, death and more difficult-to-impossible choices.)

CHRISTMAS IN JULY, HOLLYWOOD STYLE

First of all, here’s wishing everyone a safe and sane 4th of July weekend as well as a reminder straight off the labels of many small and large-scale fireworks I detonated on the holiday as a kid: DO NOT PUT IN MOUTH! (This applies to searing hot explosives and not, of course, to your favorite nitrate-infused and lovingly grilled Farmer John product.)

My friend Tom Sutpen, proprietor of that visually splendiferous oasis in the blogsphere known as If Charlie Parker Was A Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats (where an image from the lost Metropolis footage can be seen), has ensured that my own three-dayer gets off to a wonderful start. Tom has unearthed the magical picture of Sergio Leone you see above, I’m guessing taken on the set of Once Upon a Time in the West (#382 in his “Artists in Action” series) and kindly bequeathed it to this blog. Since opening the saloon doors to this site nearly four years ago I’ve searched for an image like this but never found one. Thanks to Tom (and Stephen and Richard and old friend Kimberly) the search is over. In addition to getting the spotlight here, it’s going to take up permanent residence on my sidebar as well. My ceramic Buddha, my St. Christopher medal, my good luck charm has finally arrived.

The image arrives just in time to help highlight another Leone series coming up here in Los Angeles, yet another chance to see the director’s major works on the big screen. The Aero Theater, in conjunction with the American Cinematheque, will be screening the great Leone films near the end of this month, and as obvious as it sounds, if you’re in this city and have never seen them bigger and wider than a 60” plasma screen this is an opportunity of which you must avail yourself. The Dollars movies are screening out of order, for some reason, but that’s no reason to grumble. Thursday, July 24, is the night to see The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966). Then the next night you can make your way back to Montana Avenue and 19th in Santa Monica for a double feature of A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965)—this is one of the two nights I’ll be at the Aero (though there is a crucial conflict, which I’ll mention in a minute). Saturday night, July 26, the 165-minute director’s cut of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) screens—get there early, know what I mean? And on Sunday night, July 27, the director’s swansong, the original 226-minute version of Once Upon a Time in America (1984) gets another showing. But the engagement I’m most looking forward to comes Wednesday night—it’s Leone’s rarely screened Duck, You Sucker (A Fistful of Dynamite) (1971), a movie which I have never seen theatrically—this is the big treat of July, to be sure.

The trouble is, as good as repertory and revival cinema is in Los Angeles at this moment in time, there’s certain to be conflicts when planning to attend one-time-only screenings of this sort, and the last weekend of July has a couple of doozies in store, for me at least. Saturday night, July 26, the Alex Film Society is showing Lawrence of Arabia, which should be spectacular indeed in the palatial confines of this magnificent Glendale theater. But there’s an out here-- Lawrence screens at 1:00 p.m. as well as 7:00 p.m. that day, so it’s entirely possible that one could be witness to the greatest of Lean and Leone on a single day in July (and presumably live to tell the tale). Not so the night before, when the Dollars double bill is in direct conflict with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s final film, the delightful Cluny Brown (1945), starring Jennifer Jones in the title role and Charles Boyer. Cluny Brown is part of LACMA’s July tribute to Boyer, and as such will be making Saturday, July 26 an even more impossibly bountiful evening for cineastes with its screening of Max Ophuls’ sublime masterpiece The Earrings of Madame de… (1953). On one night, the masterpieces of Lean, Leone and Ophuls. Remember back in the days before the invention of the Betamax when a standard complaint was that there would be nothing on TV to watch, and then on one night, all scheduled at the same time, three must-see shows? Marvelous as it is, TiVo can’t possibly solve this dilemma!

Just to add fuel to the fire, the Cinematheque will be celebrating Blake Edwards’ 86th birthday that day with a 3:00 pm screening of The Great Race (1965), Edward’s loving tribute to silent comedy starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon and featuring perhaps the largest-scale pie fight in movie history. (Another part of their family matinee series, a compilation of great shorts by the likes of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Laurel & Hardy, called Silent Clowns, screens July 12.) The Cinematheque’s Blake Edwards Retrospective runs July 10-17 and will feature Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961; July 10); a double bill of The Pink Panther (1964) and Return of the Pink Panther (1975) on July 11; two more from the Clouseau series on July 12-- The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978); two with Julie Andrews on July 13-- Victor/Victoria (1982) and Darling Lili (1970); the great Hollywood poison-pen letters S.O.B. (1981) and The Party (1968); and on July 17 Days of Wine and Roses (1962) along with Experiment in Terror (1962). This last double bill will be introduced by Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Thomas.

And as if life at the Aero weren’t already interesting enough in July, how about four great Jean-Luc Godard double features? They’re all on DVD, and mostly good quality (except maybe La Chinoise), but that’s still no substitute for a darkened theater. Friday, July 18, the Aero features Breathless (1960) along with A Woman is a Woman (1961); see Pierrot le Fou (1965) alongside Masculine Feminine (1966) on July 19; a rare screening of Alphaville (1965) on the same bill with La Chinoise (1967); and finally, on Wednesday, July 23, Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) along with Band of Outsiders (1964).


This should get you out to see Pierrot le Fou on the big screen…

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I just got back from ogling a great print of Kenji Mizoguchi’s stunning Sansho the Bailiff (1954) at the New Beverly Cinema, which I was so glad to see on the big screen, even though Criterion’s DVD is just about perfect. I was also glad to be able to say hi to owner Michael Torgan and thank him personally for bringing this one back-- it shared the bill with Ugetsu monogatari (1953), one of my favorites which I had to miss. Michael is doing his part to make sure the Independence Day weekend is special on Los Angeles movie screens with a terrific Friday-Saturday (July 4-5) double bill of Joseph von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (1930) featuring the incomparable Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, up next to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s personal response to that film, 1981’s Lola (1981) starring Barbara Sukowa. Then the holiday weekend concludes with the beginning of a five-day engagement of perhaps Ridley Scott’s finest four-and-a-half hours—the “final cut” of Blade Runner (1981) paired with the “director’s cut” of Alien (1979). Later in the month the New Beverly showcases classic Monty Python-- Life of Brian (1979) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974) on July 25-26; James Toback’s Fingers (1978) and Exposed (1983) on July 27-28, with the writer-director in attendance for Sunday night’s screening; a Grindhouse Film festival tribute to Ted. V. Mikels on Tuesday, July 29; and finally, Enzo Castellari’s Inglorious Bastards (1978) with surprise second feature on July 30 and 31. Castellari will appear in person on July 30, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a certain other director with a distinctly Italian surname showed up as well.

But the New Beverly’s July showcase is Mondo Diablo, the two-week festival programmed by screenwriter Diablo Cody that begins on July 11. As will come as no great surprise to regular readers of this blog I have no love whatsoever for Juno, and I find that I’m either a little too old or a little too little enamored of the ’80s to appreciate most of Cody's festival picks. But lovers of ‘80s kitsch will groove on her double bills of Xanadu (1980) starring Olivia-Newton John and Gene Kelly with Labyrinth (1985) starring David Bowie (July 13-15); Fright Night (1985) alongside A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)—okay, I might come out for that one July 18-19; Midnight Madness (1980) with co-hit Wet Hot American Summer (2001), the postmodern Meatballs, slated for July 20-22; and Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) paired up with Pretty in Pink (1986), the most revered of the non-John Hughes-directed John Hughes movies on July 23-24. Cody kicks off the fest July 11-12 with a nod to the Reitmans in her life-- elder statesman Ivan (Stripes, 1981) and whippersnapper Jason (Thank You for Smoking, 2005), who just happens to have directed that movie she won an Oscar for writing. The cream of the Mondo Diablo fest has to be, however, her one nod to pre-Reagan-era life, a compelling Maysles Brothers documentary doubling of Grey Gardens (1975) and the notorious Gimme Shelter (1970). I can’t feign too much enthusiasm for Cody’s slate of movies, but I bet there’s a whole passel of Los Angeles SLIFR readers who will dig ‘em just fine, and to them I say support your only locally owned and operated full-time repertory cinema, head to the New Beverly in July and enjoy he hell out of ‘em! Me, I’m just thanking my lucky stars Inglorious Bastards isn’t playing on July 26!

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Finally, it’s getting late and I haven’t had time to peruse the July schedule for The Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. Click on the links for their Silent Wednesdays series ”Silent Sirens”; Music Thursdays ”Don’t Knock the Rock ‘08”; Early Fridays “The Female Gaze” (this one sounds great!); Late Fridays “Summer Camp”; Early Saturdays ”John Huston’s Beautiful Losers”; and Late Saturdays Holyfuckingshit Series, this month featuring ”Gore Comedies” (not only is July good in the series, but the August theme—“When Animals Attack”—is pretty damned special too!). And when you click on these links, be sure to check in and tell me what I’ve missed by not doing a full and proper write-up! I need as many heads-up as I can get!

Dammit, I didn’t mean to stay up this late. But this is what happens when there’s so much good stuff on L.A. screens to talk about—and on top of that, my shorts are on fire to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army and The X-Files: I Want to Believe as well, both coming out this month. Okay, well, I’d better get to bed soon. The missus and I are taking our daughters out to see the Werner Herzog documentary Encounters at the End of the World tomorrow morning—might as well get ‘em started on their apocalyptic beauty kick early, right?



And then there’s fireworks tomorrow night too. Again, I hope everyone has a ripping good holiday and makes it out the other end happy and safe and ready for another great month of movies and of life, wherever you live. All the best from me and mine to you and yours, and I’ll talk to you next week when “Double Secret Probation” month continues!

SYMPATHY FOR THE BEDEVILED

I have always had an extreme aversion to the portrayal of rape on the screen. I’ve certainly seen enough graphic depictions of it, in films like Death Wish (1974), Lipstick (1976), Man Bites Dog (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Rob Roy (1995), Showgirls (1995) and even The Sopranos, and each time I do I feel like crawling as far out of my own skin as might be possible. (After hearing enough sane and rational voices talk about its virtues or lack thereof, I could not bring myself to see Irreversible, and I have not seen it to this day.) This aversion has a lot to do with natural empathy for the victim of a violent crime, I think. But it also has something to do, at least for me, with the agonizing realization I often have as a viewer that, given my status as a relatively strong male, it is perfectly within my physical capability to enact this kind of violence myself. I don’t ever worry that I ever would commit such heinous acts—the requisite hatred and/or fear of women does not, thank God, reside within me. But the ability to identify with rage, to understand it to some degree in such a gender-specific crime is a source of profound unsettlement for me that gets stirred up quite a bit whenever I see a film that puts rape at the forefront of its themes or of individual scenes. I cannot help but be repelled at what I’m seeing, and even in a relative innocuous scene like Candice Rialson’s nasty encounter with a customer in the projection booth of a drive-in in Hollywood Boulevard (1976) my fear for and, yes, identification with the victim is often too much to bear. But such scenes raise a lot of questions for me about what men are capable of, and how far away some of us are from venting those fears and frustrations and acting on such violent impulses. I know I’m not capable of such violence, but the fact of my maleness allows me to understand that I could be, even if I didn’t want to be, if I were subject to the kind of predatory impulses that separate rape and rapists from the perpetration of benign, consensual sexual contact.

This willingness to access understanding of the unspeakable lashings out of a destroyed soul is at the heart of Matthias Glasner’s grueling character study The Free Will (Der Freie Wille) (2006). Created in collaboration with lead actor and co-writer Jurgen Vogel, who won the Best Actor awards at the Chicago and Tribeca film festivals for his performance as Theo, a brutal, haunted rapist, The Free Will is not so much a critique of a sexualized society, as critic Ian Johnston suggests on the back cover of the gorgeous new DVD package from Benten Films, but instead a terrifyingly intimate glimpse onto the hardships of a convicted sexual predator’s attempt to reconcile his profound need to meaningfully connect with women and the vile impulses that make his attempt to re-enter society after nine years away in prison so awfully difficult.


One thing that characterizes Glasner’s intelligent approach, an approach that hands over a huge parcel of trust to his audience, is the degree to which he is unwilling to sentimentalize Theo or his plight. Our first glimpse of Theo is one in which we, as viewers, are thrust uncomfortably close to him—a close-up in which heretofore undiscovered subterranean disturbances are reflected in his mournful eyes and restless manner. We see him fly into a rage over a perceived slight by some teenage kitchen coworkers and hit the road, leaving presumably yet another menial, dead-end job in the dust of his uncontrolled anger. As he flies down the road, seething behind the wheel of his car, he passes a young woman riding a bicycle. Theo then circles back around, pulls off to the side of the road and waits for her to pass. Had I availed myself of information about The Free Will and what comes next, including David Fear’s excellent essay in the DVD booklet, I may have opted out of seeing it. But even given the intense level of pain involved in watching the film I’m glad I endured it. Theo grabs the woman and submits her to a ghastly beating, humiliation and animalistic penetration, played out with cuts but otherwise in agonizing real time—the scene takes nearly 10 minutes as Theo, devoid of any emotion save the sexualized rage he expresses during the penetration itself, toys with her (and himself) before going through with his assault. It is characterized by Theo’s despairing reticence, as well as the agonizing cries of his victim, who lies just off-screen or out of frame awaiting her fate. (After a while I had to shut off the sound.)

The difference, it seems to me, between The Free Will and Irreversible (and I may be getting into hot water, having never seen Noe’s film) is that Noe’s long-take set piece is, by trusted accounts, designed as a grueling audience endurance test whose point of view is that of the victim’s, which is as good a way as any to ensure that the audience feel similarly assaulted. Glasner and Vogel’s achievement is far more daring, in my view, in that they are sparing no ugliness in letting us know exactly what this rapist, the protagonist of the film, is capable of. True, Theo’s attack on the bicyclist is a harrowing scene and we cannot help but identify in some way with the poor woman subjected to these horrors. But the movie is going to go someplace very dark indeed in asking us, after seeing what we’ve seen, to follow this man in his struggle to overcome the unknowable desires within him to act out this perhaps untamable sexual hostility. Our capability for sympathy for this bedeviled bastard will be put to the test as much as his own ability to cope with the brutish dissonance inside his head.

The Free Will doesn’t take easy shots at the ubiquity of sexualized images in advertising and in the mall-culture fashion of young women. Theo is frequently seen framed with these images, but Glasner and Vogel are not so naïve as to suggest that Theo’s rage is an inevitable response to them. They exist simply as part of the fabric of reality with which he must integrate and respond to responsibly if he hopes to survive. A friend at a halfway house where he lands just out of detention suggests that the journey Theo is about to take will be difficult as hell, and he couldn’t be more right; Theo sublimates his energies, sexual and otherwise, into joyless exercise, endless repetitions of movement designed to keep his mind from going places it ought not venture, but he suspects, as do we, that another breakdown is inevitable. The suspense in The Free Will is less artful and more a looming sense of unshakeable dread—it’s just a matter of when and where, not if the rage will be loosed again.

Sabine Timoteo and Jurgen Vogel in The Free Will

When he meets Nettie (Sabine Timoteo), a young woman scarred by a gnarled relationship with her own father, the possibility for redemption is dangled in front of them both. Even as he struggles with the dark impulses which are not staved off by his masturbatory gestures of release, Theo allows himself to get close to this woman, even love her, and for a time it seems their beaten, burdened souls are well-matched. But Vogel has already accessed the wild animal in this man’s soul; that atavistic nature may be put off temporarily but cannot, in the end, be denied. It’s a testament to the grace within Glasner and Vogel’s unflinching but humanistic timbre that following the couple from their tentative tenderness through Theo’s desperate, stabbing rejection of Nettie and their ultimate reunion, which occasions the movie’s only true demonstration of the free will its title alludes to, is as heartening and illuminating of the trials of meaningful human contact as it is difficult to endure.

Timoteo is raw and unadorned in her simplicity as an actress, which is not to say her portrayal isn’t nuanced but rather that it reflects a recognizable realism, a subtle refusal to traffic in melodramatic flourishes that bolsters the conviction of her performance and ultimately gives us access to moments that seem private, intimate, unblemished by pretense. (The movie’s only misstep, however, involves Nettie’s encounter with one of Theo’s previous victims which ends in a ghastly indulgence of just such a melodramatic impulse. Nettie’s questions of the woman are rewarded with a nasty turnabout assault in a restroom borne of Theo’s victim’s suppressed, unarticulated rage. It’s an unexpected moment that rings no less false because of its unexpected brutality; this catharsis for the perpetrator never translates into a meaningful act in terms of Nettie’s character—there is little doubt that Nettie already knows the agony of violation.)

But the movie belongs to Vogel, whose performance approaches heights of physical and emotional bravery the likes of which I’ve rarely witnessed in a movie. He infuses Theo with a haunted sensibility that is simultaneously guarded yet less than forbidding. The transformation from the howling beast of the movie’s opening sequence to well-groomed, sincere ex-convict is about the only gesture Vogel makes to the audience to get us on the character’s side. Instead, he steeps us in the detailed behavior of a man in constant thrall to a very personal evil; each gesture of repetitive exercise, each furtive glance at passing women on the street contains the ingredients for emotional and physical catastrophe, and the actor comports himself with a subtle awareness of this truth even at his most physically confident. The war within Theo is part of his body as well as his mind, and Vogel brings us to a stringent, despairing understanding of the end of hope for beauty in this man’s wounded soul. That we finally see him as a man and not simply as a beast, without untoward, unearned pleas for sympathy, is one of the glories of Vogel’s performance, and of The Free Will itself.

(The Free Will is available on DVD from Benten Films.)

METROPOLIS UNEARTHED!

Leave it to Fritz Lang to steal Animal House’s thunder!

According to reports out of Germany, as related by David Hudson at Green Cine Daily, apparently the original version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, long thought to be lost, is anything but. As Hudson relates, according to ZEITMagazin, "The most important silent film in German history can, from this day forward, be considered rediscovered." The movie was significantly cut down, by as much as one-quarter of the footage, from its original Berlin premiere version by Paramount for U.S. distribution and thought to be lost forever. Hudson relays the rest of the story so far:

"In 1928, Adolfo Z Wilson, head of Terra, a distribution company, secured a copy of what Die Zeit is calling the 'long version'… and took it with him back home to Buenos Aires. Manuel Peña Rodríguez, a film critic, then acquired the film rolls for his private collection, and there they stayed until he sold them to a national museum in Argentina in the 60s. A copy of these rolls then wound up at the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires.

Paula Félix-Didier, who's quietly relayed this sequence of events to Die Zeit journalist Karen Naundorf so that the story would break in Germany, took over direction of the museum this January. Félix-Didier's ex-husband heads the Film Department of the Museum for Latin American Art in Buenos Aires and he heard from a fellow who runs a Cineclub there that when he last screened Metropolis, he was amazed at how long the film ran on. That's when they delved into the archives and discovered the scenes no one believed would ever be seen again.”

The F.W. Murnau Foundation will be heading up efforts in Buenos Aires to restore the rediscovered scenes and present them to the public in the near future. Kind of beats the hell out of a colorized version with Loverboy, Freddie Mercury and Pat Benatar on the soundtrack, doesn’t it? It’s all just a bit on the incredible side, enough to make long-deprived cinephiles believe that now anything is possible. Is Greed really gone, or just hiding someplace especially secure and confounding? And what about The Magnificent Ambersons? Or even London After Midnight or any number of other silent and sound films that have been written off by history? Who knows what's socked away in the attic of that dilapidated house over on Frederic Street in Burbank, or in the basement of that old warehouse in Paris? Given the significance of this story, there should be plenty of interesting stuff to read in the next few weeks, and Green Cine Daily will be as good a place as any, perhaps better, at rounding it all up for us.