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MR. JIM McALLISTER’S POLITICALLY SIGNIFICANT, ETHICALLY QUESTIONABLE, ANTI-HISTORY- REPEATING-ITSELF SPRING TERM MOVIE QUIZ
Well, it’s been a while, hasn’t it, students? About two-and-a-half
years, to be exact, since any missive at all from the SLIFR campus, and even
further back than that—sometime in the first couple of months of 2020, when
COVID was tightening its grip on the world—for the last SLIFR Movie Quiz. Over
the past two and a half years I just kind of assumed that the doors of this
musty old institution had been shut forever, and who knows—maybe they should
be. But I’ve been missing it just a bit—Facebook has pretty much eclipsed the
relevance of the blog and the blogosphere, as we who were cranking posts out
almost daily in the early 2000s used to call it, and it’ll never be the same as
it was, in terms of finding new voices and connecting to them and passing them on
to others. But, to co-opt an even mustier banner, SLIFR will always be my
space, and it’s nice to know I can return to it whenever I decide the time is
right. And I guess that time is now.
I don’t know how consistently I’ll be
contributing in 2024 and beyond, but you know, when I started Sergio Leone and
the Infield Fly Rule back in November 2004 there was never a plan, and I
certainly never expected to be hard at it for 17 years. I never wrote for
anybody but myself anyway, and I certainly never expected, given my track
record with long-term commitment to any project, that I’d last much more than a
few months before I lost interest or just wore myself out. So I was just lucky
that I managed to linger for a while longer than that and drag a whole bunch of
others, most of them smarter than me by a country mile, along for the ride. Now
I’m back, and I have questions.
Or more accurately, Dr. Jim McAllister, head of the History department at SLIFR
University, has questions. As a faculty member with his own track record of
ethical challenge in the arena of rigging outcomes (he did not Pick Flick), we
felt it would be a perfect time for him to step in and massage the SLIFR
student body with some pleasurable brain-tingling
as a prelude to what promises to be a conversely mind-numbing election season,
during which there will undoubtedly be more than enough pompous blather about
rigged contests and threats to our constitution (from them, of course,
never from us). Stimulation, says McAllister, is better than depression,
and we couldn’t agree more. So in that spirit we are proud to present something
less despairing to think about as the six months leading up to November begin
to dawn: Mr. Jim McAllister’s Politically Significant, Ethically Questionable,
Anti-History-Repeating-Itself Spring Term Movie Quiz.
The rules are the same as always—just copy and paste the questions into the
comments column (either here or, since this is 2024 and not 2004, on Facebook) and let the answers come naturally.
There is no wrong answer, and the more elaborate that answer is, the better.
And this time, Mr. McAllister has allowed me to go first, because he feels sure
that if I wait to post my answers for another week or two that I’ll get mired
into some other responsibilities and end up not offering my completed quiz
until August. And his fears are well founded—he knows me better than I’d like
to admit.
Okay, get your #2s ready. It’s time to open your Blue Books, knuckle
down and get to writing. After a near-four-year hiatus, let the latest SLIFR
Movie Quiz begin!
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1) Movie that best reflects, describes or embodies the tenor of our
times I won’t be surprised
if titles like All the King’s Men and A Face in the Crowd make a strong showing here, but for me, just as it was in 1975, just as it was
in 2016, no movie better reflects, describes or embodies the fucked-up strange
brew of corruption, racism, malfeasance, boorish sexism, general upending of
decorum and tradition—yes, what used to be called a weird sort of effervescent
American spirit-- that has marked political discourse in this country for at
least the last 60 years than Robert Altman’s Nashville.
2) Favorite Don Siegel movie not starring Clint Eastwood With
all due respect to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956),
it’s gotta be Charley Varrick (1973)-- Siegel’s original Invasion runs a very close second.
3) Your favorite movie theater, now or then I’ve been to
many theaters since I started going to them in 1963, many of them some of the
most beautiful movie palaces I’ve ever seen, some of them rundown cineplexes,
and most of them with top-notch projection and sound. At least compared to the
theater I absolutely must pick, the theater where I grew up with the movies,
learn to love them, argue with them, absorb them, the theater from where all
the cinephilia that has so marked my life originally sprang. It’s being slowly,
loving restored for a community that is enthralled by the process but may not,
once that restoration is finished, may not know how to properly honor it, and
it has now, thanks to those restoration efforts, been recognized in the National Register of Historic Places. It’s been in my hometown since
1940, and it’s been in my life since 1963. It’s the Alger Theater in downtown Lakeview, Oregon. It’ll never be the best theater in the world, but
it’s definitely the best theater in town, and it’s looking better than ever. And I’m so glad it
was there for me when I needed it.
4) You’re booking this Friday and Saturday night at that
theater—What are the double features for each night? I think it’d
have to be a double feature of Frankenstein Must Be
Destroyed (1969) and Tales from the Crypt (1972)
to mark the formative experience I had as a young horror fan seeing both of these
movies for the first time at the Alger.
5) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr? In a
not-exactly-grudge match between two Powell/Pressburger heavyweights, you might
think that Kerr would be the easy winner here on the strength of her strong
showing in two indisputable P&P classics, The Life and Death of
Colonel Blimp (1943) and Black Narcissus (1947).
But purely based on the fact that I recently saw it again, and as it always
does it made me swoon like a schoolgirl in full blush, I’m handing this one
over to Wendy Hiller and her magnificent turn as a fiancée
thwarted by forces of nature (the weather and Roger Livesey) in her attempts to
cross a Scottish channel and reunite with her betrothed in I Know
Where I’m Going! (1945). Raise your eyebrows if you must, but
given that my first exposure to Hiller was in Murder on the Orient
Express (1974), where she was anything but sensuous, I think she’s
hella sexy in the movie too. And speaking of sexy, don’t even get me started on
Kathleen Byron…
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7) Name a young actor in modern films who, either physically or
by personality, reminds you of an actor from the age of classic movies Every time I
see the young up-and-comer Kathryn Newton (Abigail,
Freaky, Blockers) I think to myself, she’s gotta be related to Joan
Blondell…
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8) Favorite film of 2014 For me, it
didn’t get any better than the Scarlet Johannsen sci-fi one-two punch of Under
the Skin (Jonathan Glazer) and Lucy (Luc Besson), though Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)
came close.
9) Second-favorite Louis Malle film How about Crackers? I’m
kidding. Seriously, if Murmur of the Heart (1971) is my
favorite, then I’d have to say that Elevator to the
Gallows (1958) would be #2, with Vanya on 42nd
Street (1994) somewhere in the vicinity.
10) The Ladykillers (2004 Coen Bros. version)—yes or no? I don’t see why not. The
Coens’, in raunchy goof-off mode, bring their patented sensibility to bear on
the legacy of the terrific Ealing Studios classic, and while Tom hanks is no Alec
Guinness, he isn’t trying to be either and makes his own stamp on the character
and the movie. Apparently doomed, sight unseen, to be a smudge mark on the
history of a classic movie, it may not be a classic itself but it’s still a lot
of fun.
11) Andy Robinson (Scorpio) or Richard Widmark (Tommy Udo)? At the risk of
being burned at the stake as a heretic, I love Widmark in Kiss of
Death (1947)—his is, to use a lately overused word, an iconic
performance, at the very foundation of great portrayals of sadistic psychos in
film noir and beyond. And though Andy Robinson’s terrifying performance as
Scorpio in Dirty Harry</i> (1971) seems to directly reference
Widmark at times (that cackle!), Robinson’s work has affected me far more profoundly
than Widmark’s, by virtue of having seen it when I was very young
(Dirty Harry was my first R-rated movie, at age 12), but
also because Robinson is so preternaturally committed to the role, aware of his
precedents but able to create memorable work in his own sphere. When I saw
Robinson interviewed by Eddie Muller at this year’s TCM Classic Movies Film
Festival before a screening of Dirty Harry, which has never
been presented to these eyes more spectacularly, it was one of the top highlights
of my 13 years of attending that festival. Did I feel lucky? Yes, Mr. Robinson.
Thank you!
12) Best horror movie from the past ten years Wow. For some reason, I decided to Google
“best horror movies 2013-2024” to help try to answer this question and
stumbled, after a bunch of false leads, onto IMDb’s presumably comprehensive
list of 739 (!!!) horror movies released between those years. I have made it
through the first 350 before I found the
first one I’d consider for the honor—not that I’m even close to having seen all
739 and knowing definitively, but a casual glance here reveals there’s a lot of
shit out there, folks, even over just a ten-year span. Final tally on the ones
I would choose comes to about 19… out of 739. Not a good return on your
investment, horror fans. But I do like the list I came up with, which includes,
in alphabetical order, Antlers (2021; Scott Cooper), The Babadook (2014; Jennifer Kent), Cult of
Chucky (20217; Don Mancini), Crawl (2019; Alexandre
Aja), Don’t Breathe (2016; Fede Alvarez), Easter (2016; Nicholas McCarthy, from the anthology film Holidays), Gerald’s Game (2017; Mike
Flanagan), Green Room (2015; Jeremy Saulnier), Happy Death Day (2017; Christopher
Landon), 1922 (2017; Zak Hilditch), Pearl (2022; Ti West), The Prodigy (2019; Nicholas McCarthy), The
Shallows (2017; Jaume Collett-Serra), Train to
Busan (2016; Yeon Sang-ho), Unfriended (2014; Levan
Gabriadze), Us (2019; Jordan Peele), The
Visit (2015; M. Night Shamalyan), X (2022; Ti
West), and the winner, only slightly out of that alphabetical order, The Witch (2015; Robert Eggers). If I’ve
missed anything, and I’m sure I probably have, I am counting on all of you to
remind me.
13) Upcoming movie release you have the highest hopes for in 2024 Given how luridly effective Ti West’s X (2022) was, and how devastated I was by his follow-up prequel Pearl (also 2022), it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I am most dying to see how he and the mercurial Mia Goth ti (see what I did there?) things up in the upcoming MaXXXine. And my expectations are sky high for Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, which will be playing nowhere near me but will be assigned (like his last terrific movie, Apollo 10½: A Space-Age Childhood) to the Netflix shelf. But more than anything, even, how could I not be looking forward to Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, be it masterpiece or disaster (or likely somewhere in-between)?
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15) Favorite AIP one-sheet Oh, my God, Mr. McAllister, give me a break. I grew up ogling the ad campaigns—newspaper pastings and one-sheets—for American International Pictures releases for almost as long as I can remember, and I’ve always loved their lurid dynamic, no matter the genre. What movie-ad kid could forget Blood and Lace (1971) (“Shock After Shock AFTER SHOCK!”)? Or the semi-clad brides of Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) (“Mistresses of the Deathmaster”) attacking some poor son of a bitch and making him their midnight snack, all set against a counterintuitive, decidedly non-nocturnal turquoise background? Or the hard-sell psychedelic hysteria created for Richard Rush’s Psych-Out (1968)? Or Pam Grier lounging in that green dress on the one-sheet for Foxy Brown (1974)? Or the fantastic tableau of destruction created for Destroy All Monsters (1969)? But without making any claims that it’s the best of them all, I’d have to say my favorite AIP poster is for the 1972 release of the Angela Mao kung fu classic Lady Whirlwind, given by Samuel Arkoff and company a new title, Deep Thrust, in order to capitalize on a certain other phenomenon happening in American genre cinema at the time. There’s something so primitively appealing about the bare-bones visual distillation of the experience of this movie on this poster, combined with the usual hyperbolic verbiage (“Mistress of the Death Blow!”), that it stuck with me for 50 years, from the time I first saw a form of it on the movie pages of the Portland (OR) Oregonian to today, only about a year after having finally seen the movie for myself. I love it.
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16) Catherine Spaak or Daniela Giordano? Giordano
is a captivating screen presence, especially in Mario Bava’s sexy romantic
comedy (unusual for him) Four Times That Night (1971). But
Catherine Spaak wins my heart for Dario Argento’s Cat o’ Nine
Tails (1971) but even more for the way she occupies a seat between
Vittorio Gassman and Lean-Louis Trintignant in Dino Risi’s Il
Sorpasso (1962).
17) Favorite film of 1994 The top of my
Best Of list for 1994 was headed up by Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Cobb (Ron Shelton), Quiz Show (Robert
Redford), Ed Wood (Tim Burton) and Vanya on 42nd
Street (Louis Malle). But if “favorite” can be qualified by number of
times seen, then my favorite films of 1994 would have to be Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter (Ready to Wear)(yeah, yeah, yeah…)
and Cabin Boy (directed by Adam Resnick,
sure, but this is a Chris Elliot film through and through).
18) Second-favorite Wim Wenders film With the top
spot firmly gripped by the five-hour director’s cut of his 1991 Until
the End of the World (a masterpiece), positioned squarely midway
through his great career, it’s worth recognizing that my third and then my
second favorite Wim Wenders movie both come from the earlier and then the most
recent mile markers of his extraordinary output—at #3, The State of
Things (1982), and at #2, Perfect Days (2023),
yes, an almost perfect movie.
19) Best performance by an athlete in a non-sports-oriented
movie With all due respect to Jim Brown, Bo Svenson and Joe Namath (?), the
only pick for me here is Jim Bouton as Terry Lennox, the
worst best friend a private dick could ever have, in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973). 
20) The cinema’s Best Appearance by A Piece of Fruit Unless I’m
forgetting something, for 88 years the answer—maybe the only answer—had to be
that half a grapefruit so gently applied to Mae Clarke by Jimmy Cagney
in The Public Enemy (1931)-- until 2019 and Parasite came along...
21) Favorite film of 1974 Again, good God, Mr. McAllister… I’m so glad the wording is “favorite” and not “best.” Because in a year that saw the release of California Split, Freebie and the Bean, The Conversation, Chinatown, Juggernaut, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and The Godfather Part II among many others I’m probably forgetting about at the moment, my favorites (a tie—sue me, Mr. McA) are unquestionably Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, two relatively disreputable pictures that have really grown in my estimation and hung with me in ways that continue to surprise me 50 years later.
22) Most would probably agree we are not currently living in a
golden age of film criticism. Given that, who, among currently active writers,
do you think best carries the torch for the form? For my money,
it’s gotta be Justin Chang, who has risen through the ranks, from Variety to the Los Angeles Times and
now, where more than one brilliant critic has called home, The New
Yorker. And when I say “for my money,” I mean that quite
literally—Chang’s presence alongside Richard Brody’s has inspired me to try to
wrangle a subscription to this none-too-inexpensive periodical for Father’s
Day!
23) Favorite movie theater snack(s) Well, it’s
hard to beat a buttered popcorn, especially at the Rose, here in Port Townsend,
where a combo of chipotle chorizo and asiago cheese seasonings makes this truly
a compulsive snack for the ages. That said (and taking my type-2 diabetes into
account), if there’s a candy selection on ice, say, a box of Charleston Chews
or Junior Mints or, at the top of the heap, a completely frozen Uno bar (the
way we used to gobble ‘em at the Circle JM Drive-in back in my hometown), I’ll
go for that almost any time. To drink? A diet Coke or a Minute Maid zero-sugar
lemonade, to make my endocrinologist sleep better at night.
24) Marion Lorne or Patricia Collinge? Two of
Hitchcock’s dottiest mothers. Patricia Collinge, as Teresa Wright’s emotionally
fragile mother in Shadow of a Doubt, engenders a lot
of sympathy as she feels the ground crumbling beneath the idealized
relationship she has with her brother Charlie (Joseph Cotton), who may be a
serial killer. On the other hand, Marion Lorne softened me
up for years with her portrayal of Samatha Stephens’ dotty-for-the ages Aunt
Clara on Bewitched, so it was a genuine revelation for me
to discover her relatively creepy, insinuating relationship with son Robert
Walker, who very much is a killer in Strangers on a
Train. Lorne’s screen time is short compared to Collinge’s, but she’s
the actress I’d rather see in any part, and she’s brilliantly batty here..jpg)
25) Recent release you wish you’d seen on a big screen Hmm.
Well, if Mr. McAllister will allow me to choose one that I haven’t yet seen but
already have no possible chance of seeing projected, it’d have to be Richard
Linklater’s upcoming Hit Man, which got leaked to theaters
in bigger markets for a week before making its debut on Netflix on June 7.
26) Favorite supporting performance in a Sam Peckinpah film I’ve
not allowed myself the luxury of IMDb here—it’s a total off-the-top-of-my-head
game, and the winner is Peter Vaughn in Straw
Dogs.
27) Strother Martin or L.Q. Jones? These two old
salts seem to be joined at the hip in my mind, much the same way they were as
scurrilous desert rats haunting Jason Robards in The Ballad of Cable
Hogue. But I’d have to give the edge to Strother
Martin, not only because of how he ultimately moved me in that film,
but because he’s been so indelible in so many other films like McLintock (1963), The Wild Bunch (1969), Fools Parade (1971), Ssssssss (1973), Slap Shot (1977), Hard Times (1975) and,
of course, Cool Hand Luke (1967). But then again, L.Q. Jones
directed A Boy and His Dog (1975), didn’t he? And I used to
say hi to him as he glided down the aisles in his cargo shorts and Hawaiian
shirt at the Beachwood Canyon Mayfair Market back in the early ‘90s. Not so
with Mr. Martin!
28) Current actor whose star status you find partially or
completely mystifying It strikes me that Chris
Pratt must either be the luckiest man in Hollywood or have the best,
most bloodthirsty agent in town who has a lot of scurrilous info on a lot of industry folks.
29) Reese Witherspoon – Election or Freeway? Reese’s
tornado of a turn in Freeway (1996), opposite a
never-creepier Kiefer Sutherland, may be the wilder, more go-for-broke turn
(and don’t get me wrong-- it’s a great turn), but as Tracy Flick in Election (1999) she is simultaneously obnoxious
and sympathetic and a perfect avatar for unrestrained entitlement and
hollowed-out achievement, which makes her the perfect antagonist/hero figure
for our times. It’s a remarkably sustained balancing act of a performance which
is set in brilliant relief when it becomes clearer and clearer that she’s not
the only ghoul in Alexander Payne’s deck of acid cards. As good as she was as
June Carter, I’d trade that Oscar-winning performance for this one every time.
30) Second-favorite Michael Ritchie film Okay, if #1 is
now and ever shall be, world without end, amen, The Bad News Bears (1976), then there’s no way the #2 spot could go to anything but Smile (1975), a satire of Americana that
not only stands with The Bad News Bears but also, I think,
exists and interacts in close company with Robert Altman’s Nashville, released the same year.
31) Favorite theatrical moviegoing experience of the last three years (2021-2024)
Okay, as Mr. McAllister’s teaching assistant, I’m going to exercise a
little license here. The last movie I saw in a theater before the COVID
lockdown was Emma. (2020). About a day out of that screening
the word came down that movie theaters (and a whole lot of other stuff) would
be closing indefinitely. After a lifetime of making them some of my favorite
places to be, there were times in that first year of the pandemic when I
seriously wondered whether I’d ever step inside a movie theater again. But when
things started opening up a little over a year later, with all necessary
caution, I soon found the habit again, and consequently I feel like my
appreciation for the experience, and my tendency to be a
<i>whole</i> lot more picky about where I’d go to see a movie, was
heightened. Not every experience has been memorable or special since then, but
as I went about remembering for this answer, I realize a whole lot of them
were. So here then are my 33 (yes, you read that right)
favorite moviegoing experiences since our collective return from our various
quarantines, in the order in which they occurred.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (AMC
Burbank 16, April 2021) Emma and I saw this 10th anniversary
presentation together (I snuck her into a showing of the original release
without Patty’s knowledge when she was 11, so this return seemed appropriate),
and it is the only time, before or since, that seeing the AMC logo and their
endless preshow junk parade brought me to tears. They have since returned to
their usual shelf of contempt.
Summer of Soul (El Capitan, Hollywood,
June 2021) A solo trip to Hollywood at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning to make
sure I saw this in an appropriately magnificent setting, and though the house
was near empty, it was well worth the trip.
Nashville and McCabe
and Mrs. Miller (Million Dollar Theater, Downtown Los
Angeles, Summer 2021) A dream Saturday afternoon double bill at this storied
downtown movie palace attended with my pal and fellow Altman fanatic Anastasia
McGee.
No Time to Die (LOOK Cinemas,
Glendale, November 2021) Another father-daughter night at the movies with Emma.
This screening was memorable for me for the movie, of course, which we both
enjoyed a lot more than either expected, but even more so for the
father-daughter conversation we had before the show started, the subject of
which I will not share here, only to say that it was one of those moments as a
parent that completely changed my perspective on the child— no longer a
child—who I helped raise.
The Godfather and The
Godfather Part II (two nights, David Geffen Theater,
Academy Museum, February 2022) The first night was with Emma, the second with
Patty (I was ticketed to see The Godfather Part III later in
the week, but I got sick), and both in the presence of Coppola and Talia Shire.
I took Emma to see The Godfather for the first time a few
years earlier (at the Million Dollar Theater)—she loved it and had seen it a
few times more since, so for he to get to hear Coppola speak beforehand was a
real treat.
Coffy (Turner Classic Movies Film
Festival, April 2022) One of the best experiences at TCMFF I’ve ever had, in
the presence of the goddess herself, who owned the house during her interview
with TCM’s Jacqueline Stewart, and alongside equally appreciative pals Bruce
Lundy, Odie Henderson and Steven Santos.
RRR (Laemmle Glendale, May 2022) Probably
the most unbridled fun I’ve had in a movie theater in the three years this
question spans. I don’t think anyone in the packed house I saw it with knew
what we were getting into, and it was the most baseball game-like atmosphere
I’ve ever seen in a movie theater too,
people reaching over and behind their rows to high-five other viewers after a
particularly spectacular stunt or set piece. We stumbled out into the light of
a Sunday afternoon, and many of us perfect strangers hung around the lobby just
to marvel among ourselves at what we’d just been witness to, truly blindsided
for once (no spoilers) by this truly spectacular work of popular art.
Top Gun: Maverick (AMC Media
Center 8, June 2022) Please forgive me, but this one requires a bit of
backstory:
My mother-in-law and I have been solid moviegoing pals
since early on in my relationship with Patty. The first movie we ever saw
together in a theater was The Last Boy Scout, way back in
1991– she is and always has been a big action movie fan, and together,
sometimes with Patty and friends in tow, it seems like we saw them all. A few
of her favorites were The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995), Casino
Royale (2006; we saw all the Brosnan and Craig-era Bonds together), Payback (1999) with Mel Gibson and Crimson Tide (1995) starring
Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman— my friend Andy and I took her to see that
one at the Cinerama Dome, and her comment afterward (“I liked that one! Lots of
manpower!”) has entered into my personal hall of fame of gratifying movie
reactions.
In recent years, as she has become more frail and less
energetic, and as COVID took its toll on national moviegoing habits our outings
kind of tailed off. She didn’t care to see No Time to Die (2021) in a theater (and I was too nervous for her safety to seriously consider
it). The last movie I took her to was Mission Impossible:
Fallout (2018). She is the self-described Tom Cruise #1 Fan and there
was no way she was going to miss that. (She even got to see it in IMAX.) But
since then it’s been about four years since she’d seen the inside of a theater,
and I figured her indifference to going out to see the latest James Bond was a
signal that <i>Fallout</i> was going to be her moviegoing swan
song.
Then one day she
pulled me aside and whispered, as if she could barely sound out the words for
fear that it might turn out to be just a rumor, “I heard there’s a new Tom
Cruise movie coming out— Top Gun 2!” I confirmed it and, on
a lark, asked her if she wanted to go. She looked at me, and I swear her eyes
twinkled. “Yeah, I think so,” she replied. And that’s all she had to say to me.
I began looking for movie theaters and showtimes as soon as I could, and I figured that my local neighborhood independent cinema, the Laemmle Glendale, would be a good candidate, if they were going to play it (they were, as it turned out)— small theaters, easy access, wheelchair seating. But as time moved on and mask restrictions on public places began dropping (unlike the actual incidences of new COVID cases), I began to get cold feet about the idea of taking Mommy out to a tiny, enclosed movie theater where she would be surrounded by who knows how many unmasked, possibly unvaccinated, possibly contagious popcorn munchers. I briefly considered even taking her to the drive-in— we have taken her in the past— but she’s not nearly ambulatory enough for such a complicated journey, and I’m sure she would have found being confined in the car for the long drive to and from, to say nothing of the long running time of the movie itself, an insurmountable situation.
I was about to give up on the idea altogether and suggest we just wait for home video— a depressing idea, given how infrequently she gets to get out of that house to do anything these days— when a light bulb went off above my head and caused a surely blinding light to reflect off my shiny pate: why not just pick a day and time and rent the theater? Then we could pick the location with the easiest access and solve the big problem of exposure to a possibly heavily populated and contagious auditorium with one easy move.
So I ran the idea past my sisters-in-law to see if they thought it was a good idea or just an ill-advised, cockamamie fantasy, and they were all for it. (I was especially solicitous of the advice of SIL Debbie, a doctor who heads up the infectious diseases program at a big San Francisco hospital who I felt could be trusted to tell me if she thought I should just drop it and keep Mommy at home.) She and Angie offered to split the shockingly affordable theater rental three ways, and so I booked it and began the month-long process of looking forward to the event, and to the surprise on her face when she would finally roll up to the theater and realize it would not be just another Saturday afternoon at the movies, but instead a private screening orchestrated just for her.
In addition to Patty, myself,
Emma and Nonie, we invited a couple of our friends, Andy (he of the Crimson
Tide outing) and Scott, and we also invited John and Jill, Mommy’s
relatives and next-door neighbors, and Ramona and Paul, daughter and son of her
recently-deceased best friend of many years. It all came together brilliantly,
and it didn’t matter a bit that most of us weren’t really all that interested
in seeing Top Gun: Maverick (2022)— what was important was
that Mommy was going to get to see it without worrying about catching an awful
disease as part of the price of admission. (She even brought her Tom Cruise
pillow!)
The movie itself is an improvement on the 1986
original, which isn’t really saying much— it’s still a battleship-load of
hooey, but it’s not aggressively obnoxious like its forebearer, and the last 45
minutes or so are exciting enough to make you more forgiving of the paucity of
actual beauty in any of the imagery and of the fact that it’s as much a
recruitment tool in the post-Trump Ukraine war era as the original was an
embodiment of hollow Reagan-era patriotism. Neither movie is overtly political,
but they don’t need to be— it’s all about the fetishistic fascination for
military hardware, which is something craven political opportunists of both
periods can and have appropriated for their own ugly ends.
But like I suggested earlier, who cares what I or any
of us thought of the movie. Mommy was the only one who counted today, and she
loved it. She said over and over again that she couldn’t believe we had the
whole theater to ourselves, and that she was so happy and surprised. (John and
Jill surprised us all by hitting the snack bar for popcorn, soda and candies
for everybody!) So I’d count this day as a smash hit, one that, in our family
annals anyway, far surpasses the box office take for the new Tom Cruise
blockbuster. Oh, and by the way, the movie was preceded by a trailer for the
next Mission: Impossible epic. Mommy fully endorsed booking
our theater for that one as soon as possible. More on that later.
Memoria (Laemmle
Glendale, July 2002) Just one of the reasons I came to cherish this little
neighborhood theater, just four blocks from my old house in Glendale, was the
chance to see a film like Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s monumental film on the
big screen. The nearly empty house only added to the movie’s startlingly
insinuating, hushed effect.
Mad God (Alamo
Drafthouse, Downtown Los Angeles, June 2022) With my pal Andy, experiencing
Phil Tippett’s one-of-a kind wonder at this brilliant shrine to movie geekdom,
preceded by a terrific presentation (curated by the theater) on the history of
stop-motion animation in the movies.
Fire of Love (Rose Theatre, Port Townsend, August 2022) Our first experience at the Rose
Theatre in downtown Port Townsend, during our family summer vacation on the
Olympic Peninsula. My second screening of the movie, Patty’s first. After it
was over we knew I’d found our new home.
In The Mood for
Love (David Geffen Theater, Academy Museum, September 2022)
This was Patty’s introduction to Wong Kar-wai’s masterpiece and my first time
ever seeing it projected, the perfect setting. To say we were both transported
is putting it very mildly indeed.
Pearl (Laemmle
Glendale, September 2022) Emma and I saw X here earlier in
the year, so of course we were there opening weekend for Ti West’s sequel (the
second in his trilogy). We both loved it, but I found it so disturbing,
especially the last ten minutes (here’s one where not staying for the duration
of the end credits is virtually impossible), that I couldn’t shake it-- I
walked around the real world for days after, genuinely haunted by what I’d
seen. (So did Martin Scorsese, apparently.)
Millennium Mambo (American Cinematheque at
the Los Feliz Theater, February 2023) I could not pass up the chance to get
absorbed in Hou Hsaio-hsien's awesome movie on the big screen, and the rewards were many.
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Laemmle Glendale, TCL
Chinese IMAX, March 2023) Twice in one week, both times with Emma, both times
overwhelming fun.
When Worlds Collide (Turner
Classic Movies Film Festival, April 2023) Bruce and I saw this fantastic
screening, hosted by the great sound designers Ben Burtt and Craig Barron. The
movie was really fun, featuring good actors (including the late Barbara Rush,
the cutest cutie pie in all of ‘50s cinema), terrific special effects and,
courtesy of our hosts, an overwhelmingly effective soundtrack retrofitted with
Burtt’s own version of Sensurround (BENSurround, of course) which fulfilled
George Pal’s dreams for the movie, as well as shook the shit out of our
internal organs and quite literally blew the side doors of the Hollywood Legion
Hall where we saw it wide open more than once.
Contempt (American Cinematheque at
the Los Feliz Theater, July 2023) My first time seeing Godard’s classic on the
big, wide screen. Brilliant.
Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning
Part 1 (AMC Media Center 8, Burbank, August 2023) Whoops,
we did it again!
Taste the Blood of Dracula and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (New
Beverly Cinema, October 2023) Fittingly, this great Hammer double bill,
featuring the best print of FMBD I think I’ve ever seen, was
the last time I attended the New Beverly Cinema to date. And just by chance, I
ran into Michael Torgan, who I hadn’t seen in a couple of years, and we got to
spend about a half hour talking outside before the movies began.
Oppenheimer (TCL Chinese Theatre, August 2023) Before it became clear that Universal was going to have to schedule more IMAX screenings, I grabbed the chance to get up at 4:30 on a Sunday morning and make my way onto a blessedly quiet Hollywood Boulevard for a 6:00 a.m. IMAX screening of Christopher Nolan’s soon-to-be-Oscar-winning hit. And that damn theater was packed. As much eerie fun as a movie about the dawning of the end of the world could have possibly been.
Stop Making Sense (two screenings, TCL Chinese Theatre, September 2023) The 40th-anniversary
rerelease afforded us two chances to see this masterpiece really big and loud.
The second time Patty and I took Emma, but the first time was a pre-rerelease
screening timed to the Talking Heads reunion at the Toronto Film Festival,
where it was screening the same night. There were folks dancing on the Chinese
Theatre’s massive stage for the last two songs, and after the movie was
finished we were treated to a live feed from Toronto featuring all four Heads
interviewed post-TIFF-screening by Spike Lee.
Farewell, My
Concubine (Laemmle Glendale, September 2023) Once again,
thank you, my favorite neighborhood theater in my old neighborhood.
Ugetsu (Laemmle
Glendale, October 2023) My first time ever seeing this on the big screen. Is it
any wonder this theater is about the only thing I miss about Glendale?
1900 (Ted Mann Theater,
Academy Museum, November 2023) I packed a lunch and gave up an entire Saturday
to see the uncut 317-minute version of Bertolucci’s harrowing masterpiece (one
intermission between the officially segmented two parts) and it was some of the
most rewarding time I’ve ever spent in a theater.
Godzilla Minus
One (AMC Burbank 16, December 2023) Emma, Nonie and I
reveled in our first screening of this surprisingly great movie together, and
they were only slightly less surprised than I was that, after a nuanced and
terrifying story well told, the climax had me in racking sobs. So glad to see
it has now cleared the restrictions that have prevented it being screened in
the US (in the wake of its Best Special Effects Oscar win later in March) and
can be seen streaming and for digital purchase all over the place. But nothing
will ever beat seeing it in a theater, especially for the first time.
The Devil and Daniel Webster (All
That Money Can Buy) (December 2023) This special screening
of the recent 4K restoration of this mind-boggling movie was the very first
time I’d ever seen in any form, under any title, and I’m so glad it was on the
big screen, where it mesmerized me from start to finish.
Ed Wood (Nuart Theater, Santa Monica,
February 2024) Somehow it worked out that this would be the last movie I would
ever see as a citizen of Los Angeles, and it was beyond perfect that I was able
to make it across town on a Friday night just before our exhausting move would
commence in earnest to see this paean to the creative spirit as it once
manifested itself in this moviemaking capital where I spent 37 years of my
life.
Perfect Days (The Rose Theatre, Port
Townsend, March 2024) And speaking of perfect, it’s hard for me to express right now just how perfect it was that Wim Wenders’ great movie was the first theatrical film I ended up
seeing as an official resident of Port Townsend. I just wanted to see a good
movie, and instead I saw one that, though it was very much about perceptions of
modern Japanese culture and how one man defines and comes to peace with himself
amidst that culture, seemed also to speak directly to my soul and where it sits
at this crossroads in my life.
The First
Omen (SEE Film Cinemas, Bremerton, WA, April 2023) It was
our first get-out-of-town movie—that was Godzilla x Kong: The New
Empire at a Regal in Poulsbo—but this was the first one where Emma
and I saw a really good, satisfying movie. It was one of our first steps in
making ourselves feel like part of the community of Port Townsend and the
surrounding towns. That process continues, thankfully!
Dirty Harry (Turner Classic Movies Film Festival, April 2024) I’ve never seen this brutal, troubling,
electrifying crime thriller, the first R-rated movie I ever saw (at age 12 in
my hometown drive-in), look so fantastic. Add to that the experience of seeing Andy
Robinson speak beforehand (described movie, answer #11) and you’ve got an unforgettable
experience.
The
Beast (The Rosebud inside the Rose Theatre, Port Townsend,
May 2024) Not unlike my experience with Pearl, this challenging,
intricate film, anchored by a brilliant performance from Lea Seydoux, is the scariest thing I've seen in a theater in ages, far outstripping recent highly touted horror offerings in the level of fear it generates and in its own boundary-pushing filmmaking intensity, and it took me nearly a week to shake it off. Actually, I'm not sure I really have even yet.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (SIFF Downtown-- formerly the Cinerama, May 2024) This theater is as good as advertised, and seeing Furiosa here, my first experience at the theater, was a spectacular introduction. one of the most overwhelming sonic and visual
presentations I’ve ever been lucky enough to attend. Only George Miller could,
or apparently would even care to infuse the end of the world with this much
nerve-jangling exhilaration, and it sent me out of the theater on the sort of
big-budget movie high the likes of which I haven’t experienced since perhaps Mad Max: Fury Road.
32) Favorite Southern-fried movie sheriff With all due
respect to Buford T. Justice (aka Jackie Gleason) and J.W. Pepper (aka Clifton
James), I’m gonna go dark and choose Ned Beatty, never more
sinister and insinuating (especially in his deadpan, where he hides behind
assumed good-ol’-boy charms he never forefronts) than as Sheriff J.C. Connors,
the murderous lawman set against Burt Reynolds’ Gator McCluskey in Joseph
Sargent’s crackling-good White Lightning (1973). And in Connors’s
shadow, you might just find the sheriff who greets Reynolds, Jon Voight and
Beatty himself near the end of Deliverance (1972), a cynical
lawman played by James Dickey, presiding gruffly, sometimes disapprovingly, and
even more insinuatingly over John Boorman’s grueling adaptation of Dickey’s own
book. I’d bet Beatty took notes on this performance and incorporated them into
his own just a year later.
33) Favorite film of 1954 Any year that
saw the release of Kiss Me, Deadly, Bad Day at Black Rock, Rear
Window, Dam Busters, On the Waterfront, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Seven
Samurai, Them!, Johnny Guitar, La Strada and the original Godzilla has to be considered a great year for movies. And
the greatest, my most favorite? Take a bow, Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo
Story.
34) A 90-foot wall of water or the world tallest building on
fire? The Poseidon Adventure (1972) is certainly the OG of the
now-50-plus-year-old disaster movie cycle, but of the two I’m inclined to favor
the big dog these days-- The Towering
Inferno. OG, meet apex, the big movie statement this ‘70s subgenre would never
again approach. (That said, I have a great and widely acknowledged fondness for Airport ‘77 which I suspect I will carry with me to my
grave.)
35) Second-favorite Agnes Varda
movie My favorite is Varda’s sublimely beautiful and understated love letter
to her Parisian neighborhood, the 1975 documentary Daguerréotypes. So
that leaves second place to be occupied possibly by Vagabond (1985) or perhaps Mur Murs (1981). But really there’s no
contest: second place goes to her beautiful and moving feature swansong, Faces Places (2017).
36) Favorite WWII movie made between 1950 and 1975 Again, leaving
it all up to the top of my head, the one that made a really huge impression
on me, when I was lucky enough to see on
the big Egyptian screen courtesy of the American Cinematheque a few years ago,
was Sam Fuller’s Merrill’s Marauders (1962).
37) After the disappointing (against predictions) box-office
weekend for The Fall Guy, writer Matt Singer, perplexed by the relative
indifference from ticket-buyers toward a film most expected to be a big hit,
asked in his piece for Screengrab, “What the hell do people want from movies?” To
focus the question slightly more narrowly, what the hell do you want out
of movies? I want a movie to surprise me, to challenge my expectations, to show me
facets of a world (our world, its world) that I might never have considered
before. Whether or not a movie makes money at the box office is absolutely
immaterial to its worth—how many of your favorite films, of my favorite films,
were flops at the box office? What I want is a movie that is worth coming out
to see, whether it’s an overwhelming sound-and Furiosa epic, or a movie like Perfect Days or The Beast</i>, films that demand
something from their audiences and give back rewards (and in the case of The Beast, nightmares) that could never be anticipated, and
for the movies themselves to have more than an opening weekend’s chance to lure
the audiences that would most enjoy them in the company of strangers inside a
movie house.
38) Ned Sparks or Guy Kibbee? Both have their
specific and beloved niches in pre-code Hollywood comedies, but I gotta give
the edge to Guy Kibbee, a little less one-note than Sparks, hilarious
in Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) and Dames (1934) and downright moving in Central Park (1932).
39) Favorite opening line in a movie There are
surely better, wittier, more resonant ones in the storied history of the
movies, but for me one of the ones that best sets the tone for what’s to come
is seeing Ava Gardner in her lounging gown stumble into the ostensibly posh (no
thanks to the Universal production design department) apartment she shares with
her increasingly estranged husband Charlton Heston, noting his absence and
uttering a perfectly vituperative “GodDAMN it!” After that, the wrath of God in
Sensurround seems tame by comparison.
40) Best movie involving radio or a radio broadcast Obvious choices
for me might include American Graffiti (1973) for its
hauntingly pervasive radio broadcast soundtrack of late ‘50s-early ‘60s pop
radio hits, and for that scene with Wolfman Jack broadcasting from that eerily quiet
station on the outskirts of town (that scene best reflects my own nascent
fascination with radio and radio stations when I was a kid); or maybe, if I
stretch the boundaries of the question, Jonathan Demme’s Citizens
Band (1977), a beautifully woven tale of identities lost, found and
created over the air on CB radio in a small town. I’m even thinking about the
intrusive PA radio broadcasts that pervade the hospital camp in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970). And there’s Sex and
Broadcasting (2014), a terrific documentary about New Jersey’s own
WFMU and one man’s effort to keep the station alive in the face of recession,
the never-ending threat of commercial media invasion and the challenges of
keeping a staff of weirdos (benign and less-than-benign) in line. But the one
that really makes the nostalgic case for radio, what it was, what we remember
it to be, and what It may never have been, is Woody Allen’s lovely and
evocative Radio Days (1987), in which
nostalgia achieves a warm, penetrating aesthetic that goes beyond radio and
straight into the ways we embellish our memories—“The scene is Rockaway. The
time is my childhood. It’s my old neighborhood, and forgive me if I tend to
romanticize the past. I mean, it wasn’t always as stormy and rainswept as this.
But I remember it that way because that was it at its most beautiful.” 
41) Buddy Buddy—yes or no? Absolutely yes.
42) Favorite film of 1934 I tried, but I
just cannot choose between Josef von Sternberg’s The Scarlet
Empress and Jean Vigo’s L’Atlante, so they both get top dog
honors for their 90th anniversaries.
43) Kay Francis or Miriam Hopkins? Hopkins may
have made better movies overall, at least in the early stage of her career-- Design for Living</i> (1933), Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde (1931), The Story of Temple Drake (1933)-- but all Kay Francis has to
do is approach the camera at the end of Jewel Robbery, the
nifty romantic comedy she made with William Powell in 1932, and I’d follow her
anywhere. And you know, the movie these two made together in 1932 with that
fella Ernst Lubitsch, Trouble In Paradise isn’t exactly
chopped liver either.
44) What’s the oddest thing a movie theater employee has ever
said to you? Recently a friend and I were watching Challengers at a small theater in a nearby town. We happened
to be the only customers for the first Saturday afternoon showing and were
enjoying our private screening, but at some point I had to make a quick exit to
the little boy’s room. As I left the auditorium and crossed the snack bar
toward my goal, the man running the show—literally—looked up from where he was
seated near the popcorn machine and asked sincerely, “You want me to pause the
movie for you?” I hope he didn’t think me rude, but I had to laugh, especially
when I imagine my friend sitting in the auditorium alone and suddenly watching
the frame freeze, expecting the old-school melting frame we’d seen so many
times in our hometown theater which, of course, this being a DCP, would never
come. I thanked him for his concern but told him I’d be in and out very
quickly. I sometimes think I’ve heard it all in my 64 years, and then…
45) Is there such a thing as an ideal running time for a movie? Is
X too long? Is Y too short? I get the feeling people who are concerned about
this issue just want everything to be a neat-and-tidy TV show (or a leisurely
paced long-form one) and not let themselves surrender to the particular rhythms
any one film might have. So of course I think it’s absurd to try to suggest
there’s anything like an ideal running time. The Irishman (2019) is the perfect length at 209 minutes, and so is Central
Park (1932) at 58 minutes. So I think the answer is: If a movie is
really good, it is as long or short as it needs to be.
46) Favorite Roger Corman movie(s) On the day he
died (yesterday), my favorite Roger Corman movies were The Premature
Burial (1962), X- The Man with X-Ray Eyes (1963), The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) and The Masque of the
Red Death (1964)—that’s a hell of an account over two years, and
those are only four of the 12 (!!!) movies he made during that short period.
But tonight (the day after he died), I’m gonna watch The Wild
Angels (1966) again, and maybe The St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre (1967) or Bloody Mama (1970) again after that, so anything could
happen.
