The Golden Age of Hollywood on Turner Classic Movies

I love the TCM channel on cable. Last weeked I saw All About Eve which holds up marvelously thanks to a great script.

As my friend Ted said: Yes, it does work wonderfully. I like A Letter to Three Wives just as much. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a fine sentimental comedy, and People Will Talk, like Marnie, is having its rep rehabilitated. It’s not often you get that kind of dialogue by an American writer in an American film. Most writers of the Golden Age were more of the clipped Ben Hecht/Preston Sturges American wisecracking school. IMDB says Mankiewicz’s idol was Lubitsch, and you can see that Mank blends the continental with wisecrack. That allowed him to be the screen’s Shaw, and not just another second rate issue of the George S. Kaufman progeny.

Have you ever checked out TCM’s website? You can order videos and film books directly from them. Every month I try to remember to enter their book giveaway contest:

http://www.tcm.com/bookcorner/index/?cid=193149

Yesterday I saw a Kirk Douglas film (directed by Vincente Minnelli, who was so versatile) I haven’t seen in ages, The Bad and the Beautiful, an expose of how Hollywood producers and directors (and different kinds) get ahead at the expense of actors and writers. Kirk Douglas is amazing in the scene where he viciously rejects Lana Turner’s love, the only time he exposes his character’s insecurities. You might have thought the character Dawn on Buffy was the only one to have an emotional breakdown, shrieking, “Get out, get out, get OUT!!!!!” Not so. Douglas was the first. You could have knocked me over. Then Lana Turner (who I never thought of as a great actress) practically outdoes him as she disintegrates driving away from that humiliation. Wow.

And in tribute to Buffy and its panel at the Paley Center in Los Angeles a few days ago, I’ll be watching the episode The Body today from my Chosen Collection, arguably the, if not one of the best episodes of the entire series.

Joss Whedon’s Message: Stop the Violence - Work for Equality

Originally posted at MySpace, May 20, 2007:

Like other of my friends at Whedonesque and MySpace, I’m going to write a short note to you, asking that you read a message by a very special person that was posted at Whedonesque last night.  That person is Joss Whedon.   He cares so much, he does so much, he thinks about this issue so much that I fear for his health.  I have spent last night and much of today reading through, and contributing to, the more than 200 posts (note: as of 3/9/08 over 400)  from folks trying to understand through sharing their own experiences of violence and misogyny, their thoughts and feelings about womens’ rights, and the inequality that exists for both genders, all sexual orientation, all ages.

Joss’ post is a prayer to the universe, a plea for overcoming insanity.  When I first read it, my heart felt like it would burst through my chest.  We can never be reminded enough to try, at least try to make a difference, so that equality becomes a reality across all borders, all nations, all cultures.

Whedonesque - Read the reactions and discussion.

Joss’ post:

Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death. This is not my blog, but I don’t have a blog, or a space, and I’d like to be heard for a bit.

Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.

A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear.

The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up.

My Take on Gone With the Wind, Violence, Racism, Sexism and Misogyny

Originally posted at MySpace, June 11, 2007:

Are you a big book reader? A few months ago out of a conversation about eccentric characters in Southern films like Steel Magnolias, I wrote some commentary at my movie forum in the thread started by my friend Noel, called The Penis Mightier Than The Sword.

As I age, I become more tolerant and INtolerant of myself, the world, society, and how people treat each other. Why, just this last Friday I had a couple of people tell me and some others that Paris Hilton is not worth caring about as a human being by saying in so many words, “Here is what you ought to be caring about.” That is disturbing on many levels. No one has the right to say that to me. It is arrogant and insulting.

So, even before this discussion some time back, some of the words from Gone With The Wind have been rattling around in my head, probably because of the whole Imus situation. I don’t mean to offend anyone either with my opinion. I don’t judge those who think GWTW was a good novel or movie. The particular phrase that I’ve been remembering is “Lawsy, Miss Scarlett, I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies,” and the particular scene this discussion brought up is Rhett overpowering Scarlett, carrying her up the stairs and ravishing her in the bedroom. I stop short of saying rape because the narrative in the novel doesn’t go there, but it does imply very strongly that Scarlett could only find sexual pleasure in being used harshly. Which I find utter crap and it cuts a little too closely to the party line I’ve heard far too often, that women like it rough, that women live to be overpowered and “taken” by men.

The following is the relevant section:

You turned me out on the town while you chased him. By God, this is one night when there are only going to be two in my bed.”

He swung her off her feet into his arms and started up the stairs. Her head was crushed against his chest and she heard the hard hammering of his heart beneath her ears. He hurt her and she cried out, muffled, frightened. Up the stairs he went in the utter darkness, up, up, and she was wild with fear. He was a mad stranger and this was a black darkness she did not know, darker than death. He was like death, carrying her away in arms that hurt. She screamed, stifled against him and he stopped suddenly on the landing and, turning her swiftly in his arms, bent over and kissed her with a savagery and a completeness that wiped out everything from her mind but the dark into which she was sinking and the lips on hers. He was shaking, as though he stood in a strong wind, and his lips, traveling from her mouth downward to where the wrapper had fallen from her body, fell on her soft flesh.

He was muttering things she did not hear, his lips were evoking feelings never felt before. She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her. She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again. Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast. For the first time in her life she had met someone, something stronger than she, someone she could neither bully nor break, someone who was bullying and breaking her. Somehow, her arms were around his neck and her lips trembling beneath his and they were going up, up into the darkness again, a darkness that was soft and swirling and all enveloping.

I’ll admit that when I was young and hadn’t had sex yet, I found this passage exciting, yet confusing. I didn’t like the part about being bullied and broken but the other imagery was highly sexual because we know what it means. The character had an orgasm for the first time in her life. But the point of a truly loving relationship is not to come, but to care about the other person’s pleasure more than your own, ensuring that orgasm is more possible. So this book really sent me mixed messages about a married relationship.

Keeping in mind the time period in which the novel was written, the depiction of slaves and the way they talked and were treated is still highly disturbing. The O’Haras and the Wilkses might be a glorified bunch, but I don’t care how nicely they treated their slaves, it’s still slavery isn’t it? And having a 17-inch waist as the perfection of womanhood? And not eating much to preserve that waist? And how about Scarlett herself. Is she someone to look up to or was she just another female opportunist who expediently bounced from man to man? You might think she displayed the strength of Buffy in her “As God is my witness, I’m never going to be hungry again,” speech after all her travails up to that point, but her ability to get through tough situations was hardly selfless as Buffy often was in helping others.

In my opinion, GWTW is a potboiler novel full of cliched Southern ideals and thinking about the old South, where the “darkies” are all either smiling and pleasant like Mammy, or shiftless and lazy like Prissy, there to serve as background stereotypical figures to the white folk.

It’s amazing how much a person’s viewpoint can change over the years. I don’t think I was ever truly comfortable as an adult watching the movie, I admittedly was more into the actors like Vivien Leigh et al and the filmmaking process itself. The only scene that I truly love in the whole film is when Ashley comes back from the war and at first Melanie thinks it’s a beggar from far off, coming up the roadway to ask for food:

She stopped so suddenly that Scarlett turned to look at her. Melanie’s thin hand was at her throat, clutching it as if it was torn with pain, and Scarlett could see the veins beneath the white skin throbbing swiftly. Her face went whiter and her brown eyes dilated enormously.

She’s going to faint, thought Scarlett, leaping to her feet and catching her arm.

But, in an instant, Melanie threw off her hand and was down the steps. Down the graveled path she flew, skimming lightly as a bird, her faded skirts streaming behind her, her arms outstretched. Then, Scarlett knew the truth, with the impact of a blow. She reeled back against an upright of the porch as the man lifted a face covered with a dirty blond beard and stopped still, looking toward the house as if he was too weary to take another step. Her heart leaped and stopped and then began racing, as Melly with incoherent cries threw herself into the dirty soldier’s arms andhis head bent down toward hers. With rapture, Scarlett took two running steps forward but was checked when Will’s hand closed upon her skirt.

“Don’t spoil it,” he said quietly.

“Turn me loose, you fool! Turn me loose! It’s Ashley!”

He did not relax his grip.

“After all, he’s HER husband, ain’t he?” Will asked calmly and, looking down at him in a confusion of joy and impotent fury, Scarlett saw in the quiet depths of his eyes understanding and pity.

In the movie it was Mammy who stopped Scarlett, and it was the only time the two interacted as equals.

I was also thinking bout comparing the misogyny of the Scarlett/Rhett sex scene in the book (the movie give you nada because of the times) to another book that fascinated me as a teenager. I remember my best friend’s mom talking about a certain page number in The Godfather. Of course, I didn’t understand it at the time, but when I read it later … oh, what that did to me as an impressionable youth in search of sexual materials because my parents never explained nothin’ about nothin’.

But what was titillating then, is of course, ridiculous now, this notion that only a man with a big penis can satisfy a woman, and all these women in Sonny Corleone’s purview were lining up to get some. Well, not that Puzo didn’t later write more effective novels about the Mafia, but that’s another example of a pot boiler, par excellence.

Chalk it right up there with all the Harold Robbins, Henry Miller, and Happy Hooker books I read.

Randy Quaid Banned From Actor’s Equity For Life

Originally posted at MySpace, February 9, 2008:

I remember hearing a story not nearly as severe as the one at the link at the bottom of this blog, from an actress who worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Apparently she was doing a play with an actor who kept hurting her physically on stage; now whether this was intentional to cause pain or because he was just an ass, I can’t remember. But she warned him not to do it again and when he did, she knocked him down on stage with two hands to the chest. He never touched her again.

Rule 1 on stage. Never hurt your partner, don’t change the blocking to suit yourself. Yes, you can get bruised or injured while acting if the action is extremely physical, such as in a play called Extremities. I’ve read about actors who have performed in this play and they were covered with bruises by the end, even in a play that is totally choreographed. It’s part of the job, just as sword-fighting on stage can lead to injuries, but not as the result of another actor not caring about your safety. Lewd stuff? Never experienced it, nor intentional physical violence, and glad I didn’t because I might be in prison right now for homicide.

But apparently in this case, the person didn’t care and thought he couldn’t be touched.

The Stranger in Seattle has a short blurb with some pertinent comments, apart from the crap ones, theatre people in the know, about the Randy Quaid banning from Actor’s Equity. I concur that this is a sad turn of events for Quaid, an excellent actor, perhaps misled, perhaps not, by a spouse who comes off like an anti-depressant deprived, or perhaps alcohol-fueled fiend. Who in their right mind kicks a 76-year-old Receptionist in the leg because they’re peeved they can’t get the paperwork they want?

It’s like there’s a weird energy going around the planet, or perhaps it’s just karma catching up to people, but whatever the case, I’m sad that Quaid’s excellent work in film and other theatre projects is now blackened forever. Whatever his appeal accomplishes, it’s a little late now for public perception to be healed from this:

The Stranger Article, Comments, and Link to the full story

Anti-Semitism in Hollywood

Originally posted at MySpace, August 27, 2006:

Well, as we all know, all the financial institutions and movie studios are run by Jews. No. I don’t really think that at all but I’m sure Mel Gibson does:

I LOVE ROB REINER - He’s preaching to the choir but has finally said what needs to be said:

Rob Reiner Attacks Mel Gibson’s Films

So here’s a rhetorical question: Is Mel Gibson capable of changing? It makes me sort of sick inside that I’ve liked his work, and I have, in the non-recent past. But I guess it can’t be held against me because I didn’t know about the illness he harbored.

I like what Jason Alexander quipped at the William Shatner Roast on Comedy Central the best:

“Jason Alexander kicked off the Celebrity Roast on Comedy Central with some good one-liners, pointing out that Shatner is the son of Jewish immigrants. “That’s right,” he said, “Captain Kirk is a Jew.” and told Mel Gibson to “Stick that photon torpedo up your ass.”

Addendum - March 9, 2008: The answer to my rhetorical question still remains to be seen.

My Upcoming Birthday - Or, Who Am I Now?

Originally posted at MySpace on October 15, 2007:

So I had some maudlin thoughts about getting rid of this angst on the eve of my birthday (Nov. 12th) but I think it’s better to shake this crap off right now.

My birthday.  50.  The big 5-0.  Why is a landmark age always referred to as “the BIG” one?  I would prefer to just let it slide by with the muted whimper it deserves.  When midnight strikes and it’s November 12th, does a hump suddenly grow on my back, do I grow a beard, or a cane materializes and immediately adheres to the skin on my right hand like super glue?  Fuck that.  And this is the source of my angst:

I don’t like being put in a category or defined by other people as to who I should be, act, or believe.  In my grandmother’s day, 50 meant you were a “grandmother.”  A sexless, white-haired woman who no longer had a vagina or any sexual desire at all.  I’m here to tell you that is not the case for me.  I may not be using my vagina right now except to needlessly keep on menstruating but I could if I wanted to. Yes, 50 is a strange no-man’s land, at least for me.  Because after all, WHAT AM I?  Not young, not elderly, 15 years away from social security if it even still exists at that point, certainly not middle-aged (what, I’m going to live to be 100?).

The media and society bombard me with images that say I’m not a viable human being, let alone woman anymore (how do actresses in Hollywood stand it?!).  I’m not nubile, not super skinny, don’t have a perfect body, the right designer jeans, nothin’!  Nor would I want to be or have any of the above.  I’d rather be a viable, interesting, intelligent human being who happens to be a woman.  One who still has a lot of juice left in her.  I still desire, want, have ambitions and interests that I want to fulfill.

I wish I had a thousand bucks for every time I’ve read or heard a woman worried about not being able to “get a man.”  I’d be a frigging millionaire right now.  Or studies that tell us that women over 40 have a better chance of being hit by lightning than finding a partner.  Such bullshit.  Things happen in their own time or they don’t.  Yes, I want to meet a kind, sensitive, artistic, gentle man to love for the rest of my life.  And as I’ve often said, if it doesn’t happen, I’m content to love my cats and be an old cat lady if that’s how it turns out.  I’ll love on my own terms, thanks very much.

So get.off.my.back.world.  Turning 50 won’t break me.  I’m a Scorpio and we don’t break easily.   Have a drink with me sometime and I’ll tell you all about it.

As Monty Python said, “I’m not dead yet.”

More Thoughts About Impostor

Originally posted at MySpace:

I admit it. When I get these marbles, or maybe it’s squirrels, clinking, rustling and running around in my head, writing it down is what relieves their pesky noise. I posted this elsewhere yesterday, but because no one may see it for awhile, I’m going to blog it too, editing for making sense:

I won’t be posting any spoilers, for people who haven’t read through the book yet (the general populace hasn’t because the publishing has been delayed; however, we few, we lucky few have), but have some more thoughts about not only the level of imagination that went into the writing (from what source(s) did he draw his inspiration?), but one specific thought on how you might approach reading a book like this. I’ve been marking it up with post-it notes in anticipation of talking with you all about passages, key sentences that I thought were particularly witty, disturbing, macabre, deep, hilarious … you get the point.

When a video of Richard talking about David Lynch for his Twin Peaks Archive interview was posted (see bottom of post), it inspired me to write a fairly long, bloody blog about it. When people talk about process, I get nostalgic for teachers I’ve trained with and related how the best acting teacher I ever had would read us inspirational quotes before class. The following quote from Henry James is one that could certainly be applied to Richard (from my blog):

“The best acting teacher I ever had, Brad Whitmore, would have us close our eyes before class and read inspirational quotes. This was my favorite. I’ve found the source again after many years.

(From the source) Henry James, in his great essay “The Art of Fiction,” captured in a very few words what it means to learn from — and to write from — experience that has been sifted and evaluated until it begins to take on meaning:

What kind of experience is intended, and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every airborne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative … it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations.”

Brad used to say about acting: “Everything is grist for the mill … including the mill.” Writers must feel the same.

The specific thought I had about a possible approach to reading this book (and of course, your approach will be unique unto you - I’m just hypothesizing here) is based on something a friend of mine posted in a movie forum about a month ago I think, that came back to me as I was going through the book again. Someone was relating a rumor that Meryl Streep approached the acting of each scene in a film, as though it were a mini-film in itself, not worrying about continuity between scenes. When I read that I was stunned. And then I thought to myself, “Well, if that’s true, that is a pretty fucking brilliant approach.”

What if you were to just take the book scene by scene, each scene complete within itself, not worrying about how it connected to the preceding one or the one that followed? In Richard’s comments to me about the review I wrote, he gave an example of someone who had the opposite reaction of mine. And if, as he said, “Since there is no plot or message I’m trying to get across, a successful read is only possible to the degree the reader is willing to go with whatever my life (real or imagined) triggers in them…” wouldn’t each scene be something to just sit back, savor, and think about?

This is true for me as I go through making these notes. Whether it all comes together for you at the end of the book as something cohesive or makes total intellectual sense is besides the point. You can have an experience, an emotional reaction of some kind just within a few pages, rather like when I watch a David Lynch film (I always end up comparing Richard and David in my mind - as I said in another blog, I think of them as brothers under the skin). Even if I don’t immediately “get” and sometimes never do, what David is intending, I have a rich and deep experience. So too with Richard’s writing.

Maybe I love analyzing things a little too much, but those are my thoughts for now.

Gone Baby Gone

Gone Baby Gone - talk about a morally gray film. Casey Affleck stars as Patrick Kenzie, a Boston homeboy with close connections to his working class neighborhood, who, with his girlfriend, does private investigations and is hired by the family of a missing girl to go places or talk to people the police don’t have connections to. A keen bit of misdirection turns Kenzie and partner into suckers by people close to the investigation, so what you have in this movie is a “do the right thing for the child” motif going on. Said child is pronounced dead, never found, and in the meantime Kenzie finds himself caught up in another child’s disappearance, one he finds dead at the hands of a child molester.

Haunted by the first missing child, Amanda, and a promise he made to her coked-out, irresponsible, and uncaring mother Helene (Amy Ryan), Kenzie can’t let the case go and starts to put two and two together.

Ultimately, he makes a decision that comes from every fiber of his Catholic, Boston, family-oriented psyche. That a child belongs with its parent, no matter what. The last, brave scene will haunt you.

Ben Affleck can now hang up his acting cape and don the one that says director with a capital D. I’ve never seen Casey Affleck in a large role before and he carries this film easily. I’d say if he hadn’t been nominated for the Jesse James film, it should have been lead actor for this role. Just outstanding work by all involved. I liked this much more than the overwrought Mystic River, adapted from a novel by the same author.

Away From Her

Originally posted at MySpace:

Oh my. Away From Her is one of the loveliest films I’ve seen in a long time. Low-key, yet utterly involving. Julie Christie and Olympia Dukakis are names and talent that go without explanation, but Gordon Pinsent as the husband riveted me, and broke my heart. I know I have seen him in other projects but they are dim memories. Very rarely have I seen on film a married couple who had such a great understanding of one another and shown with such economy that it seems utterly natural. If I had been the wife watching my husband succumb to Alzheimer’s and falling in love with someone else, I don’t know that I could have survived it. What a marvelous meditation on love, commitment and letting go.

Lady Chatterley and the “Evil” Penis

Originally posted at MySpace:

Can someone answer me this? Are penises evil? It seems so, they are so neglected, given brief glimpses, with the camera cutting away to … someplace else as soon as possible. Apparently female actors in film can be objectified 20 ways from Sunday as far as their pubic area goes but you can’t tell me moviegoers are not squeamish about penises. “Oh God, you can’t show a penis, let alone an erect penis on a legitimate theatre screen!!!” I can hear the screaming now.

We’re into the year 2008, aren’t we? I’m afraid to look around and suddenly find all this modern-world trappings stuff I “thought” I was living in is utter bullshit and we’re really still walking around with clubs and wearing Mastodon skins. Really, in terms of cinema and the human experience, we are far behind the times when an unrated film version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is still not a definitive adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, i.e. one that celebrates sexuality. One reason is that the film (Lady Chatterley) is based on the second published version of Lawrence’s story, Lady Chatterley et l’Homme des Bois, published as John Thomas and Lady Jane.

It’s softer, without all the luscious rolling around in bed that Constance and Mellors do in the first version of the novel, and the coming to grips with, in very descriptive language, acceptance of the human body and its functions; sexual and otherwise. And I rather like that version and its implications in the words and actions of other characters, at least in the beginning, that women who want to have orgasms are just creatures who are out of whack with nature somehow, unnatural. And then goes on to prove how sick a concept that is.

Directed by Pascale Ferran, this is a film about nature, human and otherwise. It leaves most of the political and social conventions of Version 1 of the novel, in the background, and instead focuses on how nature, its sounds, its touch, and sex, can heal a human being. This Constance has never known sensual pleasure or so it would seem, and that lack is killing her in every way. When the new housekeeper innocently suggests she pick early-blooming daffodils near the gamekeeper’s cottage, the beginning of her sensual journey begins.

It’s a gorgeous film, make no mistake. Utterly sensual in every way as you experience Connie’s unfolding from misery to joy. But it is so puzzling to me that scenes which had great promise ended abruptly. Connie wants to touch (Parkins in this story, not Mellors) Parkins, explore his body, look at his penis instead of making love in the dark. “Wait for it, here it comes, the brief glimpse of Parkin’s semi-erect penis …. Aaaaargh, there goes the camera.” This of course, is more due to the director’s vision of the material than fear of showing too much.

You can’t even accuse (”J’accuse!”) the filmmakers or producers of being puritanical because they’re not Americans! The film Intimacy at least was going in the right direction of combining simulated sex and unembarrased nudity with a real moment of oral sex between the two actors. This has been a somewhat oft-discussed conundrum in my own movie forum and other websites I’ve frequented in the past. How do you show genitals and sex without it being labeled base pornography? Easy. Artistically and with great skill.

It’s not that inroads aren’t being made, but films that have come out post-Intimacy have been experiments with real sexual content and with varying degrees of success; Shortbus and 9 Songs, neither of which I’ve seen yet but heard about.

But real sex on film is one thing. Non-leering and realistic nudity is another. The studios are still afraid of the penis. It’s obvious. So it’s up to the independent filmmakers to drag the resistant 60 or 70 percent out there, kicking and screaming into the modern world. The body isn’t evil, and neither is the penis.