One Kool Kat

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Kirk Douglas was never really known for comedy.  Brawler, tough guy, a hero who was often tortured, if not physically (which was often), then psychologically—his films are typically serious stuff.  When he did smile, it was often wolfish, or as if the cat ate the canary.  What humor he showed in his characters would often be wry, acerbic, cynical.  The most playful he ever got—his Ned Land in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)—was in a fantasy adventure, but even his films that had a comedic bent (There Was A Crooked Man... (1970), for example) would have a dark undercurrent.  While this changed towards the end of his career (1980 and beyond), it was mostly in the service of forgettable films, the best of which was Tough Guys (1986), his final pairing with long-time screen partner Burt Lancaster—another actor, in fact, who rarely did comedies, though his screen charisma had far greater natural buoyancy.  Even when Kirk wasn’t fighting, he was always like a coiled spring, ready to pounce at any time.  It’s what made him a great villain in his early years and such a suitable anti-hero as his career blossomed, this authentic intensity.

But we know from various interviews he’s done that he is a funny, warm, charming guy in real life—a trait that didn’t fade an iota even after his debilitating stroke in January 1996.  So on the occasion of his 100^th birthday, I thought we’d talk about the best, overtly funny thing he was ever in, his guest appearance on The Simpsons which aired just a few months after the stroke: “The Day the Violence Died.”

In it, the famous Itchy & Scratchy cartoon pair are celebrating their 75^th anniversary, commemorated by a parade through downtown Springfield.  It’s here that Bart meets the bum Chester J. Lampwick (Douglas), who claims to have created Itchy, only to have it stolen by Roger Meyers Sr. (a Walt Disney proxy in the world of the Simpsons).  The ensuing court case and rags-to-riches storyline for Chester is packed with a ton of fun references to animation tropes from a variety of decades.

Of course, Kirk is no stranger to exposés on the cutthroat character of Tinseltown.  He played a merciless producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and a washed-up actor in Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), and his real-life political courage in the face of enormous industry pressure during the Blacklist era is the stuff of legend (his Spartacus storyline is the best thing about the otherwise tedious Trumbo).

So it’s fun to see his irascible Chester go up against the craven, money-grubbing system.  But Chester doesn’t care about art.  He only cares about restitution.  So It’s no skin off his nose when the studio goes bankrupt.  In this way, he’s a kindred spirit to Grandpa Simpson (one of the most reliably hilarious characters on the show).  A funny running gag is that various Springfield characters have a history with Chester, contracting him to do odd jobs he never completed for food he insists was terrible.  Invariably, each of these ends in a roll-on-the-floor fist fight.  He’s a crank, and the tough guy hasn’t softened a bit with age, though he also plays a good piano accompaniment to his silent short.  Throughout, Douglas plays it straight, but still sounds like he's having fun.  And in the end, he gets his just reward: his solid gold house and rocket car.  And eventually, the studio finds an unexpected cash flow, so that means for the last 20 seasons, Chester has been getting residuals on all the new Itchy & Scratchy cartoons that are made.  A suitable happy ending.

What is the origin of Itchy & Scratchy?  Certainly the most famous cat vs. mouse dynamic in film history is Tom & Jerry, a pair that has yet to earn a USPS stamp but which earned more Oscars for their shorts than either Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny.  But a more obvious progenitor is Krazy Kat by George Herriman, most famously a comic strip for over 30 years but also the subject of some very early animation efforts.  In the strip, Krazy Kat is a soft-hearted character who is constantly trying to woo Ignatz the mouse.  The latter always responded by throwing bricks at Krazy’s head.  Similarly, Scratchy is always depicted as a sweet or sentimental soul, with Itchy the brutal aggressor, blessed with a limitless imagination when it comes to inventive ways to murder his nemesis.  Chester also says, "Before I came along, all cartoon animals did was play the ukelele."  One of Krazy's signature traits was strumming a makeshift guitar or banjo.  So even though Krazy Kat is hardly known at all anymore, it holds striking similarities with the Simpsons’ incarnation.

In the show, we learn that Chester first created Itchy back in 1919, long before his “official” debut in 1928’s Steamboat Itchy.  The first Krazy Kat cartoon was in 1916, and while I’ve never heard any allegations to Disney using Krazy Kat as a model for Mickey, it’s a different story with the design elements of his famous mouse and Felix the Cat (also stampless) who debuted in 1919 in Feline Follies and became incredibly popular thereafter, with more than 150 shorts between 1919 and 1928.  When we see footage of Itchy’s debut Manhattan Madness, it’s a fun lampoon of the visual style of the time, as well as a satire of the unfortunate tendency to use ethnic or racial stereotypes back then.

Other animation references in this episode:

·       Mickey’s Steamboat Willie (also 1928), of course, as well as Roger Meyers Jr. no longer being able to afford the cryogenic chamber where his father was being stored (another allusion to one of the dafter Walt Disney rumors).

·       Chester’s last name Lampwick is also the name of Pinocchio’s juvenile delinquent friend in the 1940 Disney feature.  His terrifying transformation into a donkey (fated for a life of animal servitude) remains one of the most horrific moments in the studio’s history.

·       The unnamed Itchy & Scratchy cartoon featured at the end has the familiar southwest landscapes used in all the Warner Bros. roadrunner cartoons, as well as the rocket skates by Acme (Wile E. Coyote’s favorite brand).

·       Itchy & Scratchy Meet Fritz the Cat, another animated feline, this time created by R. Crumb and featured by Ralph Bakshi in his infamous 1972 feature film.

·       Perhaps the most blistering lampoon is that of Schoolhouse Rock, with the Amendment-To-Be song that acts as a gross perversion of the original Saturday morning civics lessons.  They even got Jack Sheldon (who sang the original “I'm Just a Bill”) to perform this number.  Check it out.

At 100, Kirk has had a wonderful run, and he’s managed to outlive several of the other guest actors from his episode.  Terrible lawyer Lionel Hutz (who actually manages to win his case here) was played by frequent guest, the late Phil Hartman.  And Alex Rocco did recurring bits as Roger Meyers, Jr. on the show before passing away last year.  At least Sheldon and other guest actor Suzanne Somers are still with us.

One other bit that makes this a particular favorite episode for film buffs: When Bart uses the school projector to screen Chester’s copy of Manhattan Madness, the film catches fire and incinerates just like a movie made from the old nitrate film stock would.  The former film archivist in me values this moment a great deal (though the less said about how much I resemble Milhouse at that age, the better).  And the philatelist in me appreciates how the Itchy & Scratchy studio becomes solvent again once it’s revealed the United States Postal Service plagiarized Roger Meyers with its Mr. Zip icon (a real cartoon brand in the 1960s, used to publicize the importance of the newly introduced Zip Codes).

One other bit of Simpsons trivia.  At exactly 100, Kirk still isn’t the longest-living person to appear at one time on the show.  Bob Hope lived to 100 years, 2 months.  So it won’t take long to beat that record.   Another curiosity: Even though the Stanley Kubrick references are prolific throughout the series's lifetime, there has never been a Spartacus spoof, unusual for a film with such iconic possibilities.  Maybe one day.  But Kirk's legacy on the show is secure.  Look at the postcard below and you’ll see Chester in the upper left-hand corner, nestled between Dr. Nick and Nelson Muntz.

Kirk isn’t eligible for a USPS stamp yet (thank goodness) but he has appeared in stamps from other countries, like the Mali one depicted at the top.  The Walt Disney stamp is Scott # 1355.  Other Scott #s for the Disney issues: Mickey w/friends (3865), Pinocchio (3868), Mickey & Pluto (3912), Mickey & Minnie (4025), Dumbo (4194), Fantasia (4192) Steamboat Willie (4343).  Homer, Bart, and Lisa Simpson are Scott #s 4399, 4401, and 4402 respectively.  The cartoon cat stamp on the Fritz the Cat poster is part of the Bright Eyes series, Scott # 3232.  The Stanley Steamer stamp is Scott # 2132, Krazy Kat # 3000e, and Roadrunner # 3391.  And the pet stamps from this year included cat (# 5122) and mouse (# 5117). 

For more entries in the Kirk Douglas Centennial Blogathon, go here. 

       My Top 10 Kirk Douglas films

• 1. Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957)
• 2. Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)
• 3. Seven Days in May (Frankenheimer, 1964)
• 4. Champion (Robson, 1949)
• 5. Lonely Are the Brave (D.Miller, 1962)
• 6. Spartacus (Kubrick, 1960)
• 7. Detective Story (Wyler, 1951)
• 8. The Man from Snowy River (G.Miller, 1982)
• 9. Lust for Life (Minnelli, 1956)
• 10. A Letter to Three Wives (Mankiewicz, 1949)

Like Silver

Happy Birthday to Lily Tomlin, who turns 77 today.  One of my favorite films of hers is also the best stamp film from the 70s, Robert Benton’s underrated neo-noir, The Late Show (1977).  In it, washed-up private eye Ira Wells (Art Carney) forms an unlikely alliance with new-agey flake Margo Sterling (Tomlin) after the case of her missing cat leads to blackmail, adultery and the murder of his former colleague, Harry Regan.

After an early gunfight in front of his home leads to the death of a small-time crook, Ira discovers a wallet-size album of stamps on the corpse and starts to process the clue with Margo and his lowlife tipster contact Charlie (Bill Macy). 

Margo: What’s that? Stamps?

Ira: The Whiting job

Margo: Who? Whiting? I’ve never heard of anyone named Whiting...

Ira: About 10 days ago, some place out in the valley.

Margo: Who is that?

Ira: That guy Whiting had a collection worth almost 50 grand.

Margo: Who is that? Who’s Whiting?

Ira (to Charlie): There’s a Murder One tied to it, right?

Margo: OK, don’t tell me, what do I care?

Ira: Two guys broke into a house out in the valley. They tied up Whiting and his wife and started to lift the stamps.  And then something must’ve gone wrong because they beat up Whiting and killed his wife.

Margo: Oh how disgusting, I don’t want to hear any more.

Ira: That’s what Harry was on to, right?

Charlie: How should I know? He didn’t say.

Margo: I don’t wanna hear anymore, you guys are too much!

Ira: Oh come on, Charlie, Harry knew about the stamps—what’s more, he told you about it, that’s why you knew what to look for on the bum!

Charlie: Kid, I swear, he didn’t tell me anything.  (sirens)

Ira: Hear that?  That’s the cops.  They’ll be here in a coupla minutes.  Now either you start to play it on the square with me, or I’ll feed you to them.  Which considering your record...

Charlie: You wouldn’t do that.  (beat)  OK, here’s the house number.  Harry is tailing this guy Brian, looking for Margo’s cat.  Then Brian and this pal of his pull off the Whiting heist.  The next day Harry comes to see me and lays out the whole thing, wants me to check out the reward angle.  I nose around, and sure enough, Continental Insurance is offering fifteen grand for the goddamn stamps. 

Ira: You guys were gonna split it.  Just the kind of cheap grift Harry would go for.

Soon after, the trail leads Ira to fence and underworld kingpin Ron Birdwell (Eugene Roche), whom he confronts:

Ron: What’s your business?

Ira: The Whiting job.

Ron: Postage stamps, right?

Ira: That’s right!

Ron: What’s that got to do with me?

Ira: The word is it could be tied in with you....Now stamps are a specialty item.  Not just anybody can move them.  So usually when a guy pulls a heist like that, he’s got the fence lined up in front.

As it turns out, the stamps are a red herring and the plot corkscrews out in other directions and they're never mentioned again.  And the stamps we see--all US--really aren't very special.  They are (as pictured from top to bottom):

• Abraham Lincoln (1958, Scott #1113)
• Forest Conservation (1958, #1122)
• Wheels of Freedom (1960, #1162)
• Employ the Handicapped (1960, #1155)

All four examples are in blocks of four and are taken from the original plate block (which I explained in a previous post), since you see the edge portion still intact.  But that still wouldn't make them particularly valuable.  What would make them valuable is if there were a perforation error, or if the image was off-center of the cut, or if there was an ink shift in the printing of the images.  Obviously, these we see in the film were just mocked up for some production design without any real concern about philatelic details.

And like the plotting itself, those details aren't what matter.  What counts is that Carney and Tomlin’s odd couple are an inspired pairing: he’s practical but crotchety, she’s quirky and deeply empathic and their oil & water chemistry add a lot of comic fizz to what is really a meditation on aging and loneliness.  Like one of my favorite noirs, The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946), the plot is labyrinth-like but the real story is not the mystery but rather the character dynamics.  And while that film is saturated with sex, this one is grounded in melancholy as two perpetual misfits gradually find that trust and connection can appear under some of the most bizarre circumstances.  Robert Benton would go on to win an Oscar two years later for Kramer vs. Kramer, but I think this remains the best film he ever directed.  Go check it out.

My name is Sterling Hedgpeth and I’ve discussed the origin of my name, briefly, in a previous post, but it is a name I don’t encounter often—in real life or in pop culture, so whenever I see it (like Lily Tomlin’s character in The Late Show), I tend to remember it.  Of course, the greatest cinematic Sterling was Sterling Hayden who, whether in supporting or leading parts, made indelible marks in such classics as Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather, The Long Goodbye, Johnny Guitar, and The Asphalt Jungle.  He always brought an air of worn-down fatigue or coiled, violent energy to every film he did.  Definitely from the less-is-more school of Mitchum and Marvin, he died in Sausalito 30 years ago, just a few miles from where I go to work every day.  And aside from Sterling Morrison (the guitarist of the Velvet Underground), he may be my favorite Sterling to whom I’m not related.

Another great Sterling was Sterling Holloway, the indelible character actor with the gentle high-pitched voice, most famous for his contributions to the Disney canon: the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, Kaa in The Jungle Book, and four shorts as Winnie the Pooh.  And although I’ve never known anyone personally whose last name was Sterling, the movies have offered us Oscar-nominee Jan Sterling (terrific 50s actress with ice in her veins in Billy Wilder’s An Ace in the Hole) and ever-present comic actress Mindy Sterling, best known as Frau Farbissina in the Austin Powers films.  And while his work has mostly been limited to TV, Sterling K. Brown did win an Emmy for his role in The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which I may get around to catching one day.

The only Oscar-winner with my name Is Stirling (with an i) Silliphant for the screenplay of In the Heat of the Night (Jewison, 1967).  Quite bizarrely, he also wrote the screenplay for The Liberation of L.B. Jones, whose main character is named Moan Hedgepath.  That movie even came out the year I was born!  This is one of only two variations of my last name I’ve ever seen in a movie (the other being Paul Mantee’s small role in The Great Santini) and my last name has always been misspelled like these variations.  While I’ve never seen Liberation, its cast (Lee J. Cobb, Anthony Zerbe, Lola Falana, Lee Majors, Barbara Hershey, Yaphet Kotto, Chill Wills, and Roscoe Lee Browne in the title role) intrigues me no end.

So here's a list of my 10 favorite characters named Sterling (first or last) in movies or TV

1. Roger Sterling (John Slattery in TV's Mad Men)
2. Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past - Tourneur, 1947)
3. Nat Sterling (Denzel Washington in Courage Under Fire - Zwick, 1996)
4. Margo Sterling (Lily Tomlin in The Late Show)
5. Tony Sterling (Donald Woods in Fog Over Frisco - Dieterle, 1934)
6. Sterling (Patrick Stewart in Jeffrey - Ashley, 1995)
7. Sterling Archer (H. Ron Benjamin in TV's Archer)
8. Tim & Lionel Sterling (Ray Milland & Edmund Gwenn in The Doctor Takes a Wife - Hall, 1940)
9. Robert Sterling (Roger Moore as James Bond's alias in The Spy Who Loved Me - Gilbert, 1977)
10. Jim Sterling (Mark Sheppard in TV's Leverage)

The Marilyn Monroe & Bette Davis stamps are Scott #2967 & 4350 respectively.  John Huston is #4671 and the Cinematography stamp from the American Filmmaking series is #3772g. Bambi, Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo are #3866, 3913, & 4194 while The Jungle Book (#4345) is a stamp I used on a card which I then forgot to send in to USPS, which is why it's missing the first-day-of-issue postmark.  The Sport of the Gods stamp (#4337) was part of the Black Cinema issue and the quilled paper heart love stamp (#5036) was issued earlier this year.

Good as Gold

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I’ll admit it: Despite the waste and corruption that often go hand-and-hand with their undertaking, I am easily seduced by the Olympics.  Given that coverage (live or tape delayed) often occurs round-the-clock, the looming Summer Games in Rio de Janiero will prove to be an extraordinary temptation over the next 2 weeks, especially for this perpetual early riser.  Although I love watching the relatively obscure sports that are often broadcast in those pre-dawn hours, I’ll inevitably watch some track & field, too—races that often get front-and-center attention in the TV coverage, not only because the US always does very well in them, but because of the natural mythology around naming “The World’s Fastest Human” in the 100-meter dash.

Certainly, Track & Field has played a more prominent part in movies about the Summer Olympics than any other sport—most recently with the historical drama Race (Hopkins, 2016) about Jesse Owens in the 1936 games.  While not the first black athlete to medal in the 100m, his victory that year (exactly 80 years ago today) carried enormous symbolic weight because the games were held in Berlin under the shadow of Hitler and orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels and the propaganda arm of the Third Reich.  In defiance of the host country’s insistence that no Jewish or “Negro” athletes compete, Owens’ 4 gold medals struck a powerful blow against the dogma of racial superiority that was a driving engine of the Nazi Party.

The movie isn’t bad.  Stephan James is good in the lead role, and the story is an important one.  Predictably, the double meaning of the title is a prominent theme, since not only did Owens face systemic prejudice at Ohio State (where the movie begins), but he felt enormous pressure from the NAACP not to compete in Berlin as a gesture of protest against how African-Americans were still being oppressed in the US.  Although the horrific explicitness of that racism isn’t depicted as vividly as it was in 42, the movie follows many of the same beats as that recent (superior) Jackie Robinson film.  There’s even a scene where German runner Luz Long befriends Jesse in front of the entire stadium of Germans (and the Fuhrer) that echoes what southerner Pee Wee Reese would do with teammate Jackie in Cincinnati decades later.  Long’s scene with Owens in private after their race is perhaps the best in the film—two athletes with deep mutual respect acknowledging the role they’re each playing as propaganda tools of their governments.  But like many movies dedicated to recreating real events, the other characterizations are cookie-cutter and the final result is more of a history lesson than an emotionally engaging drama.

What’s interesting about the film, though, is that its story directly links to the two most celebrated films about the Summer Olympics: Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938) and Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire (1981).  The connection with the former is obvious.  Riefenstahl (played by Black Book’s Carice van Houten) was perhaps the most prominent female film director in the world at the time and is an important character in the movie.  While commissioned by Goebbels as a tribute to the wonders of a modern Germany (we see the two of them watch rushes of her coverage), Riefenstahl went beyond that short-sighted mandate and redefined cinematic language when it came to form and athletics in ways that are now commonplace on ESPN and advertising today.  It’s still a problematic film, with the ever-present swastikas and the specter of the Holocaust around the corner, but it’s not a paean to National Socialism the way the country’s leaders might have hoped for.  Her eye transcends the politics of the piece, even if it can't divorce itself from it completely.  And she doesn’t give short shrift to Owens’ accomplishments either.  In a scene in Race where Riefenstahl asks Owens to help her shoot some pick-ups for his Gold medal Long Jump that would later be inserted into her film, they have this exchange:

Jesse: Isn’t that cheating?

Leni: Cheating?

Jesse: Yeah.  I’m just saying it’s not the actual jump I made.

Leni: You did make that jump.  We all saw it.  You made history out there.  All I’m doing is making sure years from now, those people who weren’t there can see it too.  ‘Cause they’ll never forget what you did.

And she did.  And we haven’t.  Riefenstahl is one of the most complex figures in movie history, and one of my favorite documentaries is about her: The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (Muller, 1993).  In it, the film doesn’t blink at the insidious contribution she made to the Nazis’ ascendancy through her notorious film The Triumph of the Will.  But it also shows in the many decades after WWII that she was smart, resourceful, innovative, gutsy, and supremely talented.  Perhaps the best you can say about her is that she was a fervid aesthetician who lived in denial about how her gifts were exploited for evil.  Other judgments, far harsher, would be equally fair.  But this exchange in the film also brings the conversation about myth-making in an ironic full circle, because Owens’ legacy is also helped immeasurably by her film.

The connective tissue between Race and Chariots of Fire is interesting, too.  Larry Snyder (SNL’s Jason Sudekis) was Owens’ coach at Ohio State, and also on the US Track & Field team that competed against Brits Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell in the 1924 Paris games.  We even see a picture of Snyder with Charlie Paddock (played by Dennis Christopher In Chariots).  Sadly, Snyder was in a plane crash weeks before the games and never competed.  But he did go on to coach the US team in Helsinki (1952) and Rome (1960).

Abrahams, like Owens 12 years later, won the 100m (his time was 10.6 seconds; Owens, 10.3).  The film shows that he dedicated his athletic pursuits to fight the antisemitism he faced in the English establishment.  This resonates in Race because on the eve of the 100x4 relay in Berlin, the US benched its two Jewish runners out of deference to the Germans.  Owens ended up subbing in that race and there is a powerful scene where his teammates talk to him about what a victory would mean to them, watching from the sidelines.  They won, of course.  Although Chariots doesn’t depict it, Abrahams also won a medal in the 4x100 (a silver) in Paris.

I think Chariots often gets a bad rap.  It does have a bit of Masterpiece Theater stuffiness about it, but it also does address religion (Abraham’s Judaism and Liddell’s Christianity) in ways that you rarely see in mainstream movies anymore—with thoughtfulness, sincerity, and lack of piety.  Vangelis’ iconic synthesizer score manages to be anachronistic but still mines emotional depths.  It’s the only Oscar nomination Ian Holm has ever received (an oversight bordering on the criminal).  Its period details are meticulous (lacking starting blocks, the runners use small trowels to dig in footholds before the race, something we see Owens do in Race, too).  And with the recent Star Trek reboots, there’s a perverse delight in seeing Spock’s father (Ben Cross) and the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) fall in love.  Plus it was my first introduction, at 11 years old, to Scotland, and I’ll admit to thinking of Liddell training across the lush countryside when 20 years later, I hiked up to Arthur’s Seat, the mountain peak overlooking Edinburgh.  

There are also a couple of postage stamp references worth noting in Chariots.  When Abrahams is enrolled in Cambridge (somewhere I’ve also visited), we see him and future Olympian teammate Aubrey Montague signing up for various extra-curricular activities.

Harold (to Aubrey): “Rugby club, golfing society, tennis, squash club, flora and fauna!, philately—is that all?  You’re idle, man.  Idle!”

So stamp collecting was a viable academic pastime back then.  A few seconds later, we see a sign for another club: The Cinematic Club.  Given that the date is 1919, it strikes me as perhaps a little early for such a club, especially for a medium that was still associated with the lower classes at the time, not the halls of privilege.  Plus, even the most hardcore cinephile would be hard-pressed to name a notable British silent film up to that time (unlike other parts of Europe).

  

The second stamp reference comes a little later.  The film has already used Aubrey’s letters to his mother as a narrative framing device for the film.  Now, in Scotland, Sandy—a friend to the Liddells—makes a toast to the family, most of whom are returning to their missionary work in China, where Eric (Ian Charleson) was born.

Mrs. Liddell: I’m relying on you now to keep them all out of mischief.

Sandy: Oh, that I will, Mrs. L.  And if they do transgress, I’ll pop the details on a postcard and you can read all about it before you can say "Marco Polo".

Eric: Cost you a fortune in postage stamps.

Tragically, Ian Charleson and Brad Davis, who plays American Olympian Jackson Scholz, would be dead within a decade, both from AIDS.   

The Jesse Owens Olympic stamp is Scott # 2496.  He never competed in the hurdles in the Olympics, but the stamp commemorating his records set in the US, part of the Celebrate the Century series, is Scott # 3185j. 

Boy Story

It certainly resides outside of popular opinion, but I liked Pixar’s latest, Finding Dory (Stanton/MacLane) much more than I did Finding Nemo.  I think that certainly has to do in part with how much I didn’t like the original, though the sequel brought some new insights into much sharper relief for me.  I remember my first impression about Nemo was how loud a movie it was. Headache-inducing loud. For a medium that conducts sound faster than air, it seems everyone still has to yell underwater.  Because everyone in Nemo yells.  A lot. I don’t remember modern submarine movies like U-571 or The Hunt for Red October being so loud, because while they may have huge explosions like Nemo does, they don’t have fish that shout constantly.

But watching Dory, I realized that the thing I really didn’t like about Nemo was Marlin.  In fact, all the parts of the first movie with “Sharkbait” and his aquarium comrades are a lot of fun.  And this has nothing to do with Albert Brooks, who is a terrific comedian and has been one of the best voiceover contributors to The Simpsons over the years (his Hank Scorpio is legendary).  I just couldn’t stand Marlin, just like I quickly grew to hate Harold Perrineau’s character (whose incessant cries of “Walt!” became a running joke for fans) on TV’s Lost.  Or how, as much as I love the actor Glenn Ford, I grew increasingly irritated with him in Vincente Minnelli’s film The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.

Now, I am not a parent.  And for reasons both social and biological, it’s almost a near certainty that I never will be one.  So I can’t relate to having kids and don’t presume to even come close to understanding the bond and attachment that grows out of raising and loving and nurturing children.  To whatever extent I can project or conjure those kinds of emotions, I also know they are almost certainly a pale shadow of the real thing.

So I don’t know what it’s like to be responsible for another human life like that.  But I do know what it’s like to live with parents who are overly-protective, highly reactive, incredibly judgmental, and obsessive glass-is-always-half-empty worriers.  This is not something I feel I can complain about, because it was always completely motivated by love, for which I’m deeply grateful.  But it is still also why I couldn’t wait to leave home and why I’m rarely nostalgic about anything in my childhood, because it was usually defined by things I couldn’t or shouldn’t do.

So I have a visceral reaction to Marlin which may be disproportionate but is still very real to me.  A lot of other parents I’ve known had one Marlin and one Dory—one person who was the practical, grounded, slightly fussy one while the other was the more fanciful, adventurous, slightly scattered one.  They would balance each other out and that’s why Dory is the best thing about Nemo and the corrective figure that Marlin badly needs.

Furthermore, I could identify with Finding Dory in a way I couldn’t with Nemo because it is a tale of misfits and outsiders: Hank the septopus (a sly shoutout to Loren Bouchard’s Home Movies), Destiny the whale shark and Bailey the beluga are all welcome additions to the maritime version of the Island of Misfit Toys.  They’re characterizations that are funny and touching, as are Dory’s parents, who worry but trust and empower, not smother.  And of course, Dory is at the center, a jewel among Pixar’s stellar assortment of wonderful characters, largely due to Ellen DeGeneres’s phenomenal performances across both films.  I’ve seen Nemo several times since (TV mercifully has a volume button) but I already know that Dory is one I’ll be revisiting even more.  I loved it.

Which is what makes the USPS issues of Pixar stamps a few years back even more frustrating since Dory was one of the few compelling female characters in the first 15 years of Pixar features, but she (and other women ) were slighted in what was already a highly boy-oriented landscape.

Here is the breakdown of boy vs girl characters depicted on the 10 Pixar stamps:

M: Bullseye, Buzz Lightyear, Carl Frederickson, Dash, Dug, Flik, Lightning McQueen, Linguini, Mater, Mike Wazowski, Mr. Incredible, Nemo, Remy, Squirt, Sulley, Wall-E, Woody (17)

F: Boo, Dot, Jessie (3)

Ouch.  No Dory, no Eva, no Elastigirl.  Heck, Bonnie Hunt has provided character voices in 3 different Pixar franchises and none of her incarnations are referenced either.  Up doesn’t have any women at all (who survive the opening montage) and Cars and Ratatouille both have single token females.  And the other features from that era aren't much better (A Bug's Life having the best assortment, via Hunt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Madeline Kahn, Phyllis Diller, and others).

The studio has gotten better with Brave and the exceptional Inside Out, both of which were made after the USPS stamp issue.  But the omissions still feel glaring and another release that includes Merida and Hope & Sadness along with those already MIA would be most welcome. 

By contrast, here is the breakdown by gender of the 5 years of Disney stamps (excluding Mickey, who appears once each year)

M: Aladdin, Baloo, Bambi, Beast, Donald Duck, Dopey, Dumbo, Flounder, Genie, Goofy, Jiminy Cricket, Mad Hatter, Lucky, Mowgli, Mustafa, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Pluto, Pongo, Prince Charming, Simba, Thumper, Timothy the Mouse, Tramp (24)

F: Alice, Ariel, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, Fauna, Flora, Lady, Merryweather, Minnie Mouse, Snow White, Tinkerbell (12)

So not great, but far better than a 1:6 ratio.  So why not another issue from Disney too, with Anna & Elsa, Lilo, Miss Bianca, Mulan, Pocahontas, Rapunzel, Tiana, and Vanellope von Schweetz to level the playing field a little?  Seems fair to me.

The Scott #s for the pictures Pixar stamps: Buzz (4555), Wall-E (4557), Bug's Life (4677), Nemo (4679), Woody (4680) & Monsters (4681).  The Disney stamps pictured are Little Mermaid (3914), Peter Pan (4193), Aladdin (4194), Sleeping Beauty (4344) & Jungle Book (4345) .  Elektra was part of the Marvel Comics series (4159i), Where the Wild Things Are part of the children's books issue (3992) and Barnum & Bailey part of the circus poster release (4903).  Sweet corn was #5005 and the tropical fish stamps are #3831f (taken from the Pacific Coral Reef sheet) , 2866, & 3320 respectively.

My Top 10 favorite Pixar movies

1. Toy Story (1995, Lasseter)
2. WALL-E (2008, Stanton)
3. Toy Story 3 (2010, Unkrich)
4. Inside Out (2015, Docter)
5. The Incredibles (2004, Bird)
6. Monsters, Inc. (2001, Docter)
7. Finding Dory (2016, Stanton/MacLane)
8. Toy Story 2 (1999, Lasseter)
9. Up (2009, Docter)
10. A Bug's Life (1998, Lasseter)

 

 

She Certainly Can Cannes-Cannes

When people (quickly) discover what a big cinephile I am, the question I get the most often (besides “What’s your favorite movie?”) is “Have you been to Sundance?”  And they’re invariably surprised when I tell them No.  After all, isn’t that what cinephiles do?  Isn’t Cannes our Mecca?  But honestly, I’m not interested in going and never really have been.  The newest incarnation of this query is the Turner Classic Movies Festival every spring.  I’m a regular on #TCMParty, have met dozens of fabulous film fans from around the US on that hashtag, and even am lucky enough to have TCM follow me on Twitter.  But I’m guessing I’ll probably never go to that, either.

This year will be my seventh working for the Mill Valley Film Festival.  But long before that, I’ve been going to local film festivals, most notably The San Francisco International Film Festival.  So I love the energy film fans bring to a screening.  I'm excited by the marathon days, the triangulation of schedules across multiple venues, the bustling from one show to the next.  In particular, I love that festivals are usually the only place you can see short films projected, which I consumed voraciously long before it became my job to program them.

But destination film festivals have held little appeal to me.  As much as I love travel and movies, they’ve very rarely overlapped in my life.  When I’m somewhere new, foreign, different, I want to explore the landscape, not hole up in a theater.  I’ve seen movies in England and Ecuador when I was living there, and once in Thailand because the humidity was so oppressive, it was the easiest way to cool off (it was one of the Bourne films), but otherwise, my travels meant seeing parks and museums and centers of culture and history, never movies.  And that’s what it’d be like if I was in the south of France or Park City, too.

Some of it is also the cost.  Festivals can be expensive on their own, let alone the additional price tag of planes, hotels, food, etc.  The one festival I have been to outside the Bay Area was SXSW, and that was because I’d visited Austin already and my all-access badge was paid for.  But everything else on that trip still made a huge dent on my wallet.  It was undeniably fun, but not something I had any wish to make a habit of.  And that’s why I can’t see myself spending money to stay in LA for a week for TCM, no matter how great the crowd, the guest list or the program schedule might be.

There are lots of different types of festival patrons, too.  Some love to see the big stars, the legends or masters or household names.  Some people are drawn to the First Look appeal—the chance to see a film weeks or months before anyone else.  Festivals count on that kind of star-power draw and name recognition, and I totally get that.  But that’s not what draws me.  I love festivals for the chance to see films I’ll never see anywhere else, arthouse or otherwise.  Guests are great and Q&As can often be illuminating and memorable, but that’s not the reason I go.

And that’s why, given a choice, I’d always prefer SFIFF over TCM (whose schedules overlap annually).  Because I live in the Bay Area, there’s no shortage of classic films available on the big screen here.  Here’s a list of all the films that screened in June in a theater within 40 minutes of me that were made at least 40 years ago:

The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 25)

Behind the Front (Sutherland, 26)

Nell Gwyn (Wilcox, 26)

The Scarlet Letter (Sjostrom, 26)

The Big Broadcast (Tuttle, 32)

White Zombie (Halperin, 32)

Duck Soup (McCarey, 33)

The Crime of Doctor Crespi (Auer, 35)

The Great Garrick (Whale, 37)

Four’s a Crowd (Curtiz, 38)

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Curtiz, 39)

The Long Voyage Home (Ford, 40)

Santa Fe Trail (Curtiz, 40)

Hold Back the Dawn (Leisen, 41)

They Died with Their Boots On (Walsh, 41)

Double Indemnity (Wilder, 44)

The Dark Mirror (Siodmak, 46)

His Sister’s Secret (Ulmer, 46)

La Otra (Gavaldon, 46)

To Each His Own (Leisen, 46)

The First Legion (Sirk, 51)

The Forbidden Christ (Malaparte, 51)

Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 51)

The Lusty Men (Ray, 52)

The Devil’s Money (Galindo, 53)

Roman Holiday (Wyler, 53)

Giant (Stevens, 56)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Brooks, 58)

Suddenly, Last Summer (Mankiewicz, 59)

Butterfield 8 (Mann, 60)

La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 60)

The Great Race (Edwards, 65)

Tokyo Drifter (Suzuki, 66)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols, 66)

Spring Night, Summer Night (Anderson, 67)

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (Straub/Huillet, 68)

Dillinger is Dead (Ferreri, 69)

The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 69)

Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 71)

Fat City (Huston, 72)

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah, 74)

The Sugerland Express (Spielberg, 74)

Kings of the Road (Wenders, 76)

And that's not even including the SF Silent Film Festival, which featured 16 features--including films by Ozu, Clair, Lang, Lubitsch, Fleming, Micheaux, and Wellman's Beggars of Life, starring Louise Brooks--and even more shorts. 

TCM fans are drawn to their festival by the opportunity to see those classic films on the big screen (many of which I already have), by the stars, the interviews, and the camaraderie.  And I don't doubt for a second that I would have a lot of fun in their company.

But there are far more things I would feel I missed out on by not attending SFIFF--new foreign treasures, innovative docs, experimental shorts I'll never see anywhere else.  Every month is like a TCM festival living here in the Bay Area anyway--beautiful Art Deco houses, or film archive theaters, or dungeon-like screening rooms specializing in 16mm arcana--so I save my pennies (or rather, maximize their cinematic heft) by staying put.  There are still a lot of places in the world I want to visit.  But movies have very little to do with any of them.  Which suits me fine.

The Ingrid Bergman stamp is Scott # 5012 .  The stamp of Aaron Douglas's painting The Prodigal Son (Scott # 4748g) is part of the "Modern Art in America" series.