Drag Race

The 1982 Oscar race is the first one I can remember.  Not only were 3 of the Best Picture nominees films that I’d seen (a first for my then 12-year-old self), but other films I’d been allowed to see—Annie, TRON, Poltergeist—were in the running in some of the smaller categories, too.  Only years later would I catch some of the other highly-acclaimed nominees like Missing, The Verdict, Sophie's Choice or Das Boot. 

But that year, it was all about Gandhi and Tootsie and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, a poster of which hung on my bedroom wall, another first (previously it had all been sports legends and super heroes but never movies).  These were the 3 top nominated films—with 11, 10, and 9 nods respectively—and the anticipation was high to see who would emerge the winner in the end.

But what I do remember about the race in the build-up to the nominations—and eventually the ceremony itself—was the talk about the gender-bending that year, for not only was Dustin Hoffman’s masquerade as a woman in the mix, but so was Julie Andrews (whom I only knew as Mary Poppins and Maria Von Trapp) as a woman playing a man playing a woman in Victor Victoria and John Lithgow (a supporting actor nominee) as a transsexual in The World According to Garp.  In the end, none of them would win, but it was the first time I remember the Academy Awards acting as a springboard for conversation that intersected with the cultural zeitgeist.

Looking back, it seems almost a miracle that a movie almost exclusively about Muslims, Hindus and the tyranny of white imperialism was even made, let alone go on to sweep with 8 wins.  But few people talk about Gandhi now, except for the role it played in catapulting Ben Kingsley (the Best Actor winner) into our consciousness.  E.T. is still adored, though Spielberg’s career has expanded well beyond the summer blockbuster wunderkind which was his reputation (not without a bit of condescension) 35 years ago.

But Tootsie has taken on a new, burnished reputation as one of the Great American Comedies, even elevated to #2 of all-time by the American Film Institute in 2002 (behind only Some Like It Hot, another guys-in-gals-clothing romp).  But to these eyes, time has not been kind to Sydney Pollack’s film and while it still has some very funny moments, it’s not without the acrid aftertaste of its regressive, even toxic, views on sex and gender.  This is especially true when compared to Blake Edwards’s Victor Victoria, which is just as funny but also far more compassionate, generous, and forward-thinking.

Tootsie is about Michael Dorsey, a New York actor who’s earned a well-deserved reputation as a prima donna, but whose vanity is rooted in his adherence to the “craft” of acting, which he uses as an excuse to be insulting, unyielding, and a royal pain-in-the-ass.  This renders him unemployable and the only way he can get a job is to impersonate a woman at an audition, which lands him a gig on a daytime soap opera, Southwest General.

Victoria Grant is also hard on her luck.  A classically-trained singer in 1930s Paris, she is destitute and desperate and can only find work by taking on the guise of Count Victor Grazinski, a gay Polish aristocrat and female impersonator.  In both films, the only other people complicit in these actors’ secrets are their roommates (Bill Murray and Oscar-nominee Robert Preston, respectively).  And both find their love lives and worldviews altered from the experience.

Tootsie is on the surface an exercise in empathy.  Michael has to experience firsthand the indignities of harassment at work, the condescension of the piggish male director (Dabney Coleman), the misogyny of playing roles that only perpetuate stereotypes, and the countless everyday challenges (hailing a cab, buying endless accessories) that women face.  In this sense, the film actually works fairly well.  The problem is the film isn’t satisfied with him as a low-level actress who gets to walk a mile in another’s high heels.  For the movie’s purposes, “Dorothy Michaels” has to become a feminist icon.  She talks back to the director, changes her lines on the show without permission, and is never really reprimanded or punished like any woman would be in such a sexist environment.  Instead, she’s indulged and rewarded, with a fervid fan base and photo shoots for the covers of Woman’s Day and Ms.  It’s a fantasy of male privilege—a world where the women are brow-beaten or complacent and where it takes a guy to come to the rescue and role model real feminism, even if he has to dress up as a gal to do it.

What’s worse is that there’s no evidence that Michael has learned anything from his parallel life to inform his “real” one.  His treatment of his friend and pseudo-lover Sandy (a delightful, Oscar-nominated Teri Garr) is atrocious, he makes sexual advances to his co-worker Julie (Supporting Actress winner Jessica Lange) as both a man and a woman, and when he finally “outs” himself as a dude, he still feels entitled to approach Julie on the pretense that they were “good friends” the entire time she was confiding in him while he was lying to her.  And she falls for it!  Another male privilege fantasy.  While perhaps slightly more enlightened when wearing a girdle, Michael hasn’t really changed.  He still gets his way through coercion and egoism but we’re supposed to believe that he’ll somehow be different than Julie’s malignant previous boyfriend.  Lange’s portrayal only scratches the surface of how damaged Julie is, but she’s clearly co-dependent and he’s a narcissist who, lip service aside, is still lacking in any real self-awareness. 

Victor Victoria, on the other hand, is about real female empowerment, as Victoria becomes aware of the choices and privileges she gets as a “man” that she wasn’t even aware of previously.  But more than that, the film embraces sexual identity and the variety of ways it expresses itself.  Sex (the act) is only seen in relationship to power in Tootsie.  But the complexity of desire and the fluidity of attraction is explored in smart, sophisticated ways in VV.  This is particularly true with the character of King Marchand (James Garner).  He’s initially attracted to Victoria before he discovers that “she” is a drag act.  But even then, his curiosity is piqued—as well as his suspicions—and they are all tied to what he as a man is traditionally drawn to.  After Victor's debut, King confronts "him" backstage.

King: I find it hard to believe that you’re a man.

Victor: Because you find me attractive as a woman?

K: Yes, as a matter of fact.

V: It happens frequently.

K: Not to me.

V: It proves the old adage, “There's a first time for everything.”

K: I don’t think so.

V: But you’re not 100% sure.

K: Practically.

V: But to a man like you, someone who believes he could never under any circumstances find another man attractive, the margin between “practically” and “for sure” is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

K: If you were a man, I’d knock your block off.

V: Then prove that you’re a man.

K: That’s a woman’s argument.

V: Your problem, Mr. Marchand, is that you’re preoccupied with stereotypes.  I think it’s as simple as you’re one kind of man.  I’m another.

K: And what kind are you?

V: One that doesn’t have to prove it—to myself or anyone.

Later, after he learns her secret and they spend the night together, King wants her to quit the show and revert back to being Victoria.  But she refuses, noting the hypocrisy of asking her to do something he would never consider doing himself.  She recognizes the power, and freedom, that has come with her new standing and is loathe to lose it.  The two then begin to see each other romantically, but since “Victor” must continue to maintain his public identity, King is put in the position of being perceived as gay, even though he knows he’s not.  In Tootsie, there are several scenes that are played for comic effect about characters being mistaken for being gay, but it never extends beyond a joke.  But VV mines this landscape for larger truths about homosexuality and society’s scrutiny, personal worth vs public perception, and ultimately accepting yourself with or without others’ validation. 

So many of the supporting characters feed and reflect this theme in different ways.  King’s moll Norma (hilarious, Oscar-nominated Lesley Ann Warren) can’t decide whether to be jealous or not as Victor slowly insinuates himself into King’s orbit.  King’s bodyguard Squash (Alex Karras) comes out to his boss as gay after he mistakes his boss for also swinging that way—a genuinely touching moment layered under a light comic affect.  And then there’s Robert Preston’s Toddy.  I certainly can’t begrudge Louis Gossett Jr.’s Supporting Actor victory that year for An Officer and a Gentleman (the first person of color to win that award).  But Preston’s performance is one of the finest in any musical ever—a queen who’s funny, catty, nosy, flirtatious, but also has the biggest heart in the film.  He’s sublime.  Of course up to this point, nobody had ever won an Oscar for playing a gay character (the first would be William Hurt in Kiss of the Spider Woman three years later) and it’s impossible to say if Hollywood’s old-school homophobia played a part in Preston losing, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me.  This was his only nomination (incredibly, he was overlooked for The Music Man 20 years earlier), and he’s perfect.

Then again, it’s hard to think of a mainstream film from the 80s that’s as gay-friendly as Victor Victoria.  Maybe having it set as a European period piece, and a musical no less, helped.  But it features a wide variety of queer characters as part of the natural fabric of the cabaret scene (and beyond) and even has a remarkable musical number that explicitly references the duality of masculine and feminine in everyone.  The fact that the central romance is hetero doesn’t relegate the LGBT themes to the margins.  They’re still unquestionably front and center and make the movie feel, even a third of a century later, very modern.  By contrast, there isn’t a single gay character in Tootsie’s NY acting community that we see.  The closest concession we get is a brief cameo by Andy Warhol.

Victor Victoria plays broader and indulges in familiar tropes of farce (especially with Edwards’s impeccable ballet of characters hiding in closets and on balconies), but it’s also far more real and human in the long run.  Tootsie has some undeniably funny moments, but it’s all in the service of reinforcing narrow sexual roles and having things revert back to comfortable normalcy.  Whatever happens to Sandy, who gets such short shrift?  That the movie forgets her (the most complex and believable woman in the film) says everything about the narrative’s priorities.  Lange may have won the Oscar, but Garr’s Sandy is the conscience of the film and gets steamrolled for her efforts.  In fact, all of the Grrl Power moments are via Hoffman and the film seems to delight In how fickle or hypocritical its female characters are.  It’s at its core a surprisingly mean movie, while VV is an open-hearted, nonjudgmental one.

Blake Edwards holds two unique records in Oscar history.  No director has had his films earn as many nominations (33 total) without ever earning a Best Director nod himself.  His only career nomination was for VV’s screenplay, and while he did lose (to Missing), he would earn an Honorary Oscar from the Academy before passing away in 2010.  The other Oscar record is that no director’s films earned more nominations for Best Song than his: 8 total, all with the assistance of Henry Mancini, his longtime collaborator.  Mancini won 4 Oscars, all for Edwards movies—2 for Best Score (Breakfast at Tiffany’s and VV) and 2 for Best Song (“Moon River” from Breakfast and the title tune from The Days of Wine and Roses).

Sydney Pollack lost Best Director that year to Richard Attenborough, but would go on to win it three years later for Out of Africa.  Still, the best thing about Tootsie is his acting, as Michael’s long-suffering agent, George.  He’s amazing and incredibly funny and if I had to choose Pollack’s filmography as director or as actor (which includes fantastic turns in Michael Clayton, Eyes Wide Shut, and Husbands and Wives), I would pick the latter.  His one scene in Death Becomes Her is a masterclass in comedy and funnier than the rest of the movie combined.  He died in 2008.

Some other trivia odds & ends about the 1982 Oscars:

·       Jessica Lange became the second person in history to receive a Lead and Supporting nomination in the same year for different films (the first being Fay Bainter over 40 years earlier).  She was up for the lead in Frances and this double-whammy no doubt had some bearing on her winning for Tootsie, the only Oscar that film would get.

·       Charles Durning, who played Jessica Lange’s dad (and Dorothy Michaels’s suitor) in Tootsie was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor that year, but for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, a title which included a word that went over my head in 6^th grade.

·       This year’s sequel to Blade Runner reminds us that Ridley Scott's original quite famously lost both of its nominations back in 1982, most notoriously for Visual Effects to E.T. (for more thoughts on the Spielberg film, check out my blog post here).

·       In 1982, Das Boot became the first foreign language film to earn six Oscar nominations, and its director Wolfgang Petersen still holds an Academy record himself: Director whose films have earned the most nominations (15 total) without winning anything at all.

·       Mickey Rooney received an Honorary Oscar at that year’s ceremony, making him the only person in Academy history to win both a Juvenile Oscar (a miniature statuette they gave to young performers for a short time) and a full-size one.

Since this blog also covers postage stamps in the movies, both Tootsie and Victor Victoria have items worth mentioning.  Southwest General’s producer (Doris Belack) says that the show is getting 2000 letters a week thanks to Dorothy (whose character's name is Emily Kimberly), and we see a shot of some of these letters, which feature real-life stamps including the floral Love stamp (Scott #1951) and the fire pumper stamp (#1908), both issued in 1981.  As for VV, there are no stamps visible, but the Parisian set was built on a soundstage, including this storefront for “Timbres Poste” (French for postage stamps).

As for the cards from my collection, the Henry Manicini stamp (which includes Victor Victoria in the titles listed, if you look close enough) is Scott #3839.  Audrey Hepburn is #3786 while the two Tiffany stamps are #3757 and #4165.  The Han Solo stamp is #4143l and while Tootsie wasn’t nominated for Best Makeup (only the second year of that category’s existence), I did include a Makeup stamp (#3772e) from the American Filmmaking series.  The "Things to Come" stamp is from the UK, released as part of a science fiction set in 1995.

A Force to be Beckoned With

Growing up in San Diego, it was summer’s annual pilgrimage—waking up before dawn and piling in the car so we could arrive in Anaheim by the time the gates opened.  This was back in the time when you literally could do everything in one day, the era of “Mission to Mars”, the People Mover, Bear Country, and the E-ticket ride.  It was the "Happiest Place on Earth" and always represented not just one childhood siren song, but the whole Disney catalog we'd collected on LPs.  By the time I went to Disneyland for Grad Night (a tradition for SoCal high schools), all three Star Wars films had been released and the new ride at the Magic Kingdom was the motion simulator, Star Tours.  Little could I possibly know (or imagine) that 25 years later, I would be a fixture in the park myself, a minuscule part of these two pop culture legacies.

If you Google me, always one of the first things to pop up is my IMDB profile which includes one single acting credit: Rebel Pilot on Star Tours, The Adventures Continue (2011).  I’ve talked about my life on Skywalker Ranch before on this blog, and while many different highlights stand out (some of which I can talk about, some I can’t), that film credit is the one thing about me that the internet will likely remember the longest.  Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars, so here are some thoughts on that day I spent on the green screen stages of “Kerner Optical” (ILM) in downtown San Rafael and the first time I saw the final product, many years later.

We were only given the sketchiest of outlines: we were in a hangar and we were welcoming back the patrons of the ride, who miraculously survived their thrilling adventure.  Because there were no corrective lenses “A Long Time Ago”, I had to hide my glasses inside my glove take after take, so I could only barely make out the camera as we all collectively whooped and hollered and applauded.  As is often reported, there’s a lot of down time on the set, so after multiple turns at that scene, we wore Hefty trash bag bibs while eating at the craft service tables (all our costumes were original artifacts from the first SW trilogy—see the Return of the Jedi still below).  Then there was lots of hangar B-roll footage: “I want you to walk from here across to there, but not in this area, because that’s where a big spaceship will be”, etc.  I also remember there was an actor from the prequels there (one of Padme’s guards) who had some lines to intro the ride, which we watched being filmed from the wings.  I asked if I could get a SAG card from my stint that day (I had no lines, so the answer was No) and then went back to my regular job the next day.

Years later, and just a few months after the ride opened, I left Lucasfilm.  And while the ride sounded cool (with its multiple randomizing elements, which made every experience a unique one), it hardly was convenient or practical to travel hundreds of miles to see myself for a whole 15 seconds.  But I’d hear from friends once in a while—none of whom had known I was on the new Star Tours but who could clearly pick me out among my rebel band.  I was intrigued but since the ride was in 3D, all the cel phone renditions that popped up on YouTube relegated me to a blur.  And that was part of my past anyway. Even when my mom asked to be taken to Disneyland one last time before leaving California for good, there were a lot of things I knew she wanted to do more (and with the randomizing element, there was no guarantee the herky-jerky ride which she wouldn’t enjoy would even pay off with an appearance from her son).

But then I heard there was going to be an expansion of Disneyland, which would include a huge new Star Wars section.  Would they move the ride?  It is just a flight simulator, easy to relocate.  Would it be closed for a while?  Would the now-expanding universe of new Star Wars films mean the need for constant revisions and updates?  I couldn’t be sure, but I knew I would feel like an idiot if I never saw myself on this thing.  The idea of going down seemed absurd since I had just been there recently (because a campus that big required me pushing her around in a wheelchair, Mom and I were able to go on everything she wanted).  But just around this time last year, I decided to drive down and go.

It only took two turns standing in line to see the module with me in it.  It’s a fun ride, cleverly done and entertaining.  No sign of any of the B-roll footage they shot; all the hangar footage on view as patrons wait in line is now much more CG-oriented.  No sign of Padme’s aide (C-3PO now took over hosting duties).  But sure enough, I was there in what one might call muted exuberance, welcoming myself home.  And the one module I'm in has my favorite music cue ("The Asteroid Field") from the entire series.  I found a single YouTube that shows all the original variations, so now I’m visible for the idly curious: my module (a hybrid of Eps 2 & 6) starts at timecode 19:51; I appear at 21:15.

And like I suspected, they had added a new module that included scenes from Episode 7: The Force Awakens.  Like George before it, the Mouse has the itch it can’t not scratch, this impulse to update, revise, and rebrand.  That’s particularly true of the park where I had so many childhood memories. I remember Nemo’s submarine ride when it was an homage to Jules Verne, Tarzan’s treehouse when it belonged to the Swiss Family Robinson, the Pirates ride before it was polluted by the movie’s score and uncanny valley Johnny Depp.  The reason I went in the spring was so I could ride the Haunted Mansion when it wasn’t taken over by The Nightmare Before Christmas (much as I love that film).  The one time I was on a ride that broke down and we all had to walk through it to exit outside, it was the now-long-gone miniaturization ride "Adventures thru Inner Space" which was in the same spot where Star Tours is now.

Another ride that’s no longer around is America Sings, this strange musical revue of early traditional American music, all performed by animatronic animal characters.  As it happens, most of those characters are now on Splash Mountain, in some ways an even stranger ride since it references a movie, The Song of the South (1946), that I’d wager few Disney visitors younger than I have ever seen.  There’s a perverse form of denial in the Mouse House about that controversial film since there’s no song you’ll hear more often in Disneyland than "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" (it is everywhere), but you won’t find the movie in their gift shops or the title referenced at all.  But it is a great ride and when I was on it, I had an epiphany: I’ll wager that Splash Mountain will be rebranded as a Zootopia variation at some point, since the rabbit and fox are already principal characters.  Plus, it's a safer, fresher property. Disney has little patience for the forgettable, so the regrettable seems even more likely to be casually swept away.

The one thing that made this Disneyland trip most unusual for me was that there was no urgency about lines or access or getting the most bang for my buck.  I had one mission, which I accomplished early, so the rest was active but oddly relaxing.  Some old favorites I revisited, but there was plenty of new stuff to discover: California Adventure is more serene, less congested.  The truly psychedelic Winnie-the-Pooh ride is audacious and bizarre, and the Monster’s Inc. and Little Mermaid rides are in the spirit of the old school Fantasyland storybook rides.  Cars-land is more entertaining than either of the actual movies.  I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed Toon Town as a kid (Who Framed Roger Rabbit? opened the same year as my grad night), but I did find this extraordinary little tidbit.  This is the mailbox outside Goofy's house.  Do you see the manila envelope?  Here's a close-up, upside down.

 

I love this inside joke.  The postmark date--July 17, 1955--was the date that the original park opened, back when Uncle Walt was alive.  And while we know a stork (voiced by one Sterling Holloway, a Disney regular) delivered the famous baby elephant in Dumbo, Roger Rabbit reminds us that in Toon Town, storks also deliver the mail.

 

Had any visitor even noticed that postmark before?  It’s the most incidental of grace notes.  But that’s what’s always been most amazing about the park: its meticulous attention-to-detail, embedding Easter eggs and hidden references everywhere—things you might never notice but whose cumulative impact is undeniable.  But I’ll admit it: it’s weird to be a childless single adult at the park.  It’s saturated In the cult of family and franchising and nostalgia and while it’s all impressive (almost to the point of overwhelming), I really have a hard time imagining myself ever going back.  I’ve seen everything there is to see, in some cases many times over.  Things will change, of course, but while I’ve been a lot of places across several continents, I hope to see much more out there before it’s all over.  The real world is my Tomorrowland.  And it’s even more true now than it was when I first heard the Sherman Brothers song: It is a Small World after all.  And an inviting one.

The day before I went to Disneyland, I hiked through Griffith Park and to the top of the Hollywood sign, something I’d always wanted to do.  I was in no rush, so it took a few hours of just me surrounded by nature, slowly working my way up to this gorgeous vista, a heavenly view of the City of Angels.  That hike was a bigger deal to me than what came the next day.  That was true magic. 

 

 

First, the Disney stamps.  You'll note the California Adventures card has all 5 different Mickeys (one per issue over 5 years).  Note that those postmarks are all Anaheim or Orlando (home of Disney World, which I've never visited).  To summarize:

Mickey, Donald, Goofy - Scott #3865

Bambi - #3866

Pinocchio - #3868

Mickey, Pluto - #3912

Alice in Wonderland - #3913

Snow White - #3915

Mickey, Minnie - #4025

Cinderella - #4026

Fantasia Mickey - #4192

Peter Pan - #4193

Dumbo - #4194

101 Dalmatians - #4342

Steamboat Willie - #4343

Sleeping Beauty - #4344

The two California statehood stamps are #997 and #3438.  The X-wing fighter is #4143m and the planet Neptune #5076.  Joel Chandler Harris wrote the Uncle Remus stories; his stamp (on the Splash Mountain card) is #980.  The Jack-o-Lantern is #5137.  

And at the time the Muppet stamps were released, they had a 3D show at California Adventure (though it's not there now).  The Scott #s are Jim Henson (#3944k), Kermit (#3944a), Fozzie (#3944b), Statler & Waldorf (#3944e), the Swedish Chef (#3944f), and Dr. Honeydew & Beaker (#3944h).

2017 SFFILM & Cinequest Wrap

A big year for the newly branded SFFILM (formerly the San Francisco International Film Festival), which just celebrated its 60^th anniversary.  Here are some thoughts and impressions of the terrific cross-section of their programs (20 features, 49 shorts) I was lucky to catch this year.

There were more archival films and live music performances than usual, including an unlikely merging of the two with a screening of George Lucas’s first film THX-1138 (the revised 2004 “Special Edition” re-release version, not the original 1971 version) accompanied by a hard-driving rock score from Asian Dub Foundation.  This meant that Walter Murch’s sophisticated sound design was inaudible (the entire film played with subtitles), but it helped play up the dystopic visuals, which still pack a wallop 40+ years later.  It’s still my former boss’s most mature movie and a fun one to revisit in the glories of the Castro Theater.  The Castro was also where a rare screening of Jerome Hiler’s experimental shorts (both old and new) occurred, also to live music from Will Oldham.

The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968) was Melvin Van Peebles’s first film and that also enjoyed a rare archival screening.  Shot in France, it’s clearly a child of the Nouvelle Vague with its free-wheeling pacing and visual imagination, but also with what would be MVP’s familiar exploration of racial identity, brimming with wit and clear-eyed cynicism.  His next film would be his legendary Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, and it was great fun seeing where that ballsy attitude originated.  Another standout retrospective screening was the Russian film A Long Happy Life (Shpalikov, 1967), also infused with a warm French sensibility, but in the classic tradition of Vigo or Pagnol and a lovely and poignant film I saw for the first time.

Since this was my first year visiting the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose the month before (5 features, 58 shorts), I’ll also discuss some of my discoveries there, particularly since the new British drama Wilderness was a fitting companion to the Van Peebles film.  Both are about whirlwind interracial romances that take place in Europe around the same time (the late 60s).  And while it can’t completely avoid some narrative contrivances, the acting by the two leads (Katharine Davenport, James Barnes) is excellent and the eroticism is potent and very natural.  It’s sometimes hard to tell which festival features are destined for wider distribution but this one certainly deserves it.

Another one that does is the terrific Iranian thriller A Dragon Arrives!, part true-life mystery, part stylish 60s noir with some supernatural tensions, and part meta-examination of the melding of history and storytelling.  For those of us who love what the last couple of decades have brought us from that country via Kiarostami, Farhadi, and Makhmalbaf, this is a very, very different animal, but an exciting demonstration of western tropes taking root with Iranian themes and issues.

Festivals have often proven themselves a showcase for talented female filmmakers in ways that the studio and distribution worlds continue to fall short, and some of my favorite narrative films were directed by women (also not surprisingly, all international).  The best to these eyes was the Cinequest title Past Imperfect, grounded by a phenomenal performance by Evelyne Brochu about a woman who has her life turned upside down by having her son (formerly raised by family) thrust back into her life.  It’s a familiar premise, but handled with soulfulness and compassion, with an immense amount of gorgeous nighttime photography.

More wonderful female-helmed films included The Wedding Ring from Niger and The Wedding Plan (Burshtein) from Israel.  The latter is a very funny wry comedy in the spirit of Rohmer (one of my favorite directors) about a woman committed to a scheduled wedding for herself even though the groom is a complete mystery.  And the former is a beautiful, vivid tale of a woman living in Europe returning to her African homeland and navigating the tricky landscape of traditions around matrimony.  Both are warm, generous, and clear-eyed about making a stand in the face of cultural expectations—unapologetically feminist, with complex characters and conflicts.

There were also two quite lovely Latin American films that stood out.  The Winter is about a laborer in the Patagonian highlands who must take over managing a ranch from a seasoned veteran. Family Life is about a Chilean drifter who tries on a new identity during a housesitting gig.  While one has epic sweep with an eye for the isolation in landscape and the other is an urban drama with an immersive sexual immediacy, both are intimate meditations on the challenges of finding your place in the world.  And while it may have a few too many echoes with Brokeback Mountain, the English farm drama God’s Own Country, about a burgeoning rural, cross-cultural gay relationship, manages to meld sensibilities from both these films quite effectively, too.

When it comes to documentaries, the high-profile standouts I saw were the two on filmmaking, 78/52 (Philippe), about the shower sequence in Psycho, and Score: A Film Music Documentary (Schrader).  And while both are ambitious, on a micro- and macro-level respectively, they’re also both incredibly frustrating works.   78/52 does an interesting job of deconstructing the sequence (cue Walter Murch again for analysis) and provides some helpful connective tissue between this legendary scene and both Hitchcock’s work and film history in general.  But it revels too much in Hitchcock’s reputation as an auteur and provocateur; it’s all adulation when deconstructing the mythology of the man 50+ years later would’ve been more incisive (I discussed Psycho previously on my blog here).

Even more troubling is the film music doc, which tries to be both an historical overview and a broad examination of the creative process.  The latter is certainly much more effective than the former (where significant talents get short shrift), but as interesting as it is to see composers collaborate with film directors or conduct orchestras recording sessions, the film is blind to the conspicuous lack of women and people of color in this role.  This is particularly noticeable because so many contemporary composers are interviewed or filmed working on projects, virtually all of them white dudes.  It makes the craft feel like a big boy’s club, and while there might be an element of truth to this in an industry which still has a serious gender and racial imbalance in certain disciplines, it goes completely without comment throughout the film.  Amidst the air of simplified celebration, it’s the elephant in the room, and a token Rachel Portman or Quincy Jones can’t change that.

Some more effective documentaries included the remarkable The Force, about the Police Department in Oakland (my home) and the history of controversies it’s instigated through violence and scandal.  It’s a very clever film, giving the impression that access means the OPD embraces a new sense of transparency, only to discover that ugly cultural traditions behind the blue wall still run deep.  Talking the talk and walking the walk are very different things, and it’s a great lesson on why mistrust in a community can be pervasive when abuse of power goes ignore or unchecked.  Even better is In Loco Parentis, a thoroughly charming doc about a British boarding school and the loving, committed teachers on the staff.  Both films take a Frederick Wiseman-like view of their subjects (no interviews, voiceover, or score), which works incredibly well in both cases.

Also worth noting were two docs from Cinequest about a very different group of doctors.  Memento Mori (Thompson) is about the incredible logistical challenges and devastating emotion one encounters in the field of organ donation.  With The Twinning Reaction (Shinseki), sets of identical twins separated in infancy through a shady adoption agency under the guise of “scientific research” are interviewed--some reunited with their sibling and some not, but all dealing with the heart-breaking repercussions of a needlessly cruel policy that persisted for decades.  Not without their flaws, both are still well worth checking out.

10 Favorite new feature films

1. Past Imperfect (Teirlinck; Belgium)+

2. The Winter (Torres; Argentina)*

3. In Loco Parentis (Chianain/Rane; Ireland)*

4. A Dragon Arrives! (Haghighi; Iran)*

5. The Wedding Ring (Keita; Niger)*

6. The Force (Nicks; US)*

7. Wilderness (Doherty; UK)+

8.  God’s Own Country (Lee; UK)*

9. Family Life (Jimenez/Scherson; Chile)*

10. That Trip We Took with Dad (Lazarescu; Romania)+

10 Favorite new short films

1. Bagatelle II (Hiler)*

2. Pearl (Osborne; Virtual Reality version)+

3. Modern Houses (Dixon)+

4. A Brief History of Princess X (Abrantes)*

5. The Rabbit Hunt (Bresnan)*

6. Russian Roulette (Aston)+

7. The John Show (Sokolow)+

8. Real Artists (Wood)+*

9. Summer Camp Island (Pott)*

10. No Other Way to Say It (Mason)+

* = SFFILM; + = Cinequest

The Alfred Hitchcock stamp is Scott #3226, Bernard Hermann (who is featured in both films docs I mentioned) is #3341 and Editing, part of the American Filmmaking issue, is #3772h.  The Star Wars stormtroopers are #4143o and the stamp for the Sport of the Gods one-sheet (part of the Black Cinema release) is #4337.  The Jack O’Lanterns from last year’s Halloween issue are #5138 & 5139 .  The Iranian Film Festival is a cache I picked up at Westpex, which has its annual convention in San Francisco this coming weekend.  Hope to see you there!

Luminous Beings

In what now seems a lifetime ago, I once had to go through tens of thousands of feet of 16mm behind-the-scenes footage from the original Star Wars trilogy.  Most of this was not shot on the set, but rather with the effects crew, model and creature shops, and other artists commonly known as “below the line” but critical to any movie’s success, especially those.  So you rarely saw much of the cast, but one memorable sequence was Carrie Fisher in her (in)famous slave bikini outfit from Return of the Jedi (1983, Marquand) sunbathing in the Arizona desert during a break, side by side with her similarly costumed stunt double.  And it was a jarring moment because you actually saw her interacting with another woman.

For let’s face it—the original three films are a sausage fest and Bechdel test nightmare.  There are only 3 female speaking parts in the whole trilogy—the short-lived Aunt Beru, the blink-and-you-miss her Mon Mothma (recently revived in the terrific Rogue One), and Princess Leia Organa.  So Carrie had to do the heavy-lifting for all 3 films when it came to female characterization, since she was both love interest and leader of the Rebellion.  Powerful, commanding, willing to stand toe-to-toe with anyone she came up against (Vader, Tarkin, Jabba) but also kind, caring, and authentic.  One of the highlights of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was seeing her back in action, still filled with authority and compassion.  The fact that the last two franchise films have had women at the center of the heroics is due in large part to her influence. 

Of course, since then she has also proven herself a witty writer and raconteur, smart aleck and cinematic sidekick, member of a vibrant-but-troubled Hollywood dynasty, an object lesson about addiction and an ambassador for destigmatizing mental health issues.  And she leaves us just a few months after her co-star Kenny Baker (who played R2-D2) and, tragically, one day before her mother Debbie Reynolds.

Just a month ago, I saw a sneak preview of Bright Lights (2016, Bloom/Stevens), a documentary about Carrie & Debbie.  It's a marvelous film in how it shows the once tumultuous mother-daughter relationship that evolved into one of deep love and support, but leavened with an enormous amount of playful ribbing, snark, and self-deprecation.  They had come to terms with the demons of the past and were both continuing to dive into creative pursuits fueled by wisdom and nostalgia.  So much of their personal bad luck and bad choices were scandal sheet fodder for so long, that there was little choice but to face the future with bravado and pluck.  The film follows each of them individually (Debbie rehearsing a one-woman show, Carrie attending a scifi convention), but the best parts are when they are together.  They come off as best of friends and savvy partners in crime, and it really did seem hard to imagine how one could exist without the other.  Both full of such indomitable spirit in the film, and both gone much too soon (Carrie at 60, Debbie at 84).

Another wonderful thing the film highlights is Debbie’s tireless campaign to save the artifacts of Hollywood history, particularly the costumes—not just of her films, but of films that predate her and that would have otherwise been thrown out by studio departments who were, back then, far less interested in preserving their past than making space for the latest productions.  Pieces that she purportedly saved over the years (through fundraising and her own backlot connections and initiative) include Charlie Chaplin’s bowler, Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra headdress, Marilyn Monroe’s subway grate dress from The Seven Year Itch, and Judy Garland’s Oz ruby slippers.

One of my favorite songs is “Graceland” by Paul Simon, who was once married to Carrie, and whose relationship with her is documented in that song (among many others).  It’s a song about renewal and second chances, and when I drove across country last year, I listened to the whole Graceland album as I approached Memphis to visit Elvis’s legendary estate of the same name.  In the song, Simon writes about his ex:

She comes back to tell me she's gone
As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead
And she said losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow

Life is a pilgrimage and we should all be so lucky as to have it filled with grace (in both the poetic and spiritual dimension).  Yoda says to Luke, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”  2016 was a rough year for a lot of people for a lot of reasons.  May the road we take in 2017, portentous clouds notwithstanding, be filled with the light, courage, good humor and fierce resolve that they both embodied so well.

Carrie and Kenny share a USPS stamp, essentially, from the Star Wars issue back in 2007.  That is Scott #4143f .  The X-wing fighter is #4143m.  The Wizard of Oz stamp is #2445, Judy Garland #4077, and Yip Harbug #3905.  The music stamp from the American Filmmaking series is #3772d.  And Elvis is #5009.  Incidentally, the first film poster on a postcard I ever owned was a gift from my high school girlfriend.  It was for Singin’ in the Rain, still one of my favorite films ever.  I’ve included it here, along with the inscription she wrote on the back, since this whole blog & collection originated, in a sense, with her.

My 10 favorite films featuring Debbie*, Carrie+, or Kenny#.

1. Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Donen/Kelly) *

2. The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Kershner) +#

3. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986, Allen) +

4. Time Bandits (1981, Gilliam) #

5. Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989, Miyazaki) *

6. The Elephant Man (1980, Lynch) #

7. When Harry Met Sally… (1989, Reiner) +

8. Mona Lisa (1986, Jordan) #

9. Star Wars (1977, Lucas) +#

10. The Blues Brothers  (1980, Landis) +