This is a regular list of random things that have fueled my love affair with cinema over the years.
I LOVE the “Mr. Creosote” sketch in MONTY PYTHON’S THE MEANING OF LIFE. The movie’s a collection of hit-or-miss skits, not my favorite from the British comedy troupe (can never decide if that would be THE HOLY GRAIL or THE LIFE OF BRIAN) … but this skit is comic genius. Thoroughly disgusting and, in true Python fashion, preposterous and hilarious. Terry Jones (Creosote), John Cleese (maître d’) and Eric Idle (waiter) are wildly funny together.
I LOVE the evocative black-and-white photography by Robert Surtees in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. The movie, directed in 1971 by Peter Bogdanovich from the novel by Larry McMurtry, is a coming-of-age tale set in a dying Texas town in the 1950s. Bogdanovich reportedly wanted the movie to look as if it were actually shot in the ’50s, and Surtees’ cinematography also evokes the bleak, aimless, dead-end lives of the residents of a dried-up town in Northwest Texas. Powerful imagery.
I LOVE Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb as punk rocker Sid Vicious and his foul-mouthed muse Nancy Spungen, perhaps the most damaged and doomed romantic couple that ever hooked up, in the 1986 biopic SID AND NANCY. I can’t think of two people in rock and roll lore I’d least like to have spent a few hours with in a room — Sid an inveterate junkie with an infantile lack of restraint and Nancy a shrill, obnoxious Yank always spoiling for a fight. If you don’t know how the true love story between the Sex Pistols’ bass player and his Philadelphia girlfriend ends, the movie was originally titled LOVE KILLS. From all accounts, the real Sid and Nancy were impossible to tolerate, but I’ll be damned if their tragic story, directed by Alex Cox, isn’t eventually affecting. That’s thanks to the two actors, Oldman and Webb, both at the beginning of their careers. Funny, exasperating, defiant, loud and never apologetic, they bring Sid and Nancy back to life for a few hours … you’ll want to kill them several times yourself, but you’ll also, against all reason and odds, have a hell of a good time with them
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I LOVE the super-exciting car chases in Quentin Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF, one half of GRINDHOUSE, his tribute to the sleazy, cheap exploitation movies of the 1970s. Tarantino has claimed he feels DEATH PROOF is the worst movie he’s made, but I’m not buying it. QT staged a hell of a car chase here, a deadly battle between two movie stunt professionals, Kurt Russell as psychotic “Stuntman Mike” and Zoe Bell as, well, herself. They’re both badass, and so is the scene.
I LOVE Gary Jules’ melancholy remake of the Tears for Fears song “Mad World” over the haunting end of Richard Kelly’s 2001 brain twister DONNIE DARKO. I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had … I don’t know what inspired Kelly to write this trippy mind-fuck of a movie, but “Mad World” could certainly have been it. Went to school and I was very nervous, no one knew me, no one knew me … Curt Smith of Tears for Fears has said, “It’s very much a voyeur’s song. It’s looking out at a mad world from the eyes of a teenager.” Perfect description of the movie as well. And Gary Jules’ piano cover perfectly accompanies the DONNIE DARKO’s sad coda. Hello, teacher, tell me what’s my lesson?, look right through me, look right through me … Hits me every time.
… and the music video, created by Michel Gondry, director of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, fills my heart every time I watch it.
I LOVE Joan Cusack, one of the most entertaining and versatile character actresses of her generation. She may not have the traditional leading lady features of some of her peers, but Cusack has the talent to convincingly portray everything from misfits to mothers to murderers. Every movie she is in is certainly not great, but I insist that every movie she’s in is better because of her. Producers, find this woman more great roles!
SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984)
WORKING GIRL (1988)
ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1993)
GROSSE POINTE BLANK (1997)
IN & OUT (1997)
ARLINGTON ROAD (1999)
SCHOOL OF ROCK (2003)
FRIENDS WITH MONEY (2006)
TOY STORY 2 (1999) and TOY STORY 3 (2010)
I LOVE the score to the 1947 movie THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR by Bernard Herrmann. This is magnificent music, dramatic and emotional, a thrilling peak for the maestro responsible for some of the best movie music ever created. Herrmann’s work here is as tempestuous as the sea crashing against the rocks and cliffs of the English seaside town … and as intensely yearning as the impossible love between the ghost of a long-dead sea captain and the young widow who moves into his once quiet cottage.
I LOVE this insane trailer for a crappy little 1968 Japanese/U.S./Italian science fiction movie. (And for crazy trivia, the groovy theme briefly heard at the end of the trailer — Green Slime! Green Slime! Green Sliiiiiiiimmme! — is a snippet of the full song written by Charles Fox, the composer who wrote Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly”.)
The movie is more of the same, so … HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. And the poster is pretty damned wonderful also.
I LOVE the first Winkie’s Diner scene in David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE. This is a deeply unsettling and endlessly fascinating movie, one that on first viewing can seem stubbornly enigmatic, even meaningless. Open your eyes and your mind, drop your defenses, allow yourself to fall into Lynch’s vision. MULHOLLAND DRIVE is a disturbing and frequently funny descent into crushed dreams, disappointments, delusion and shame, the dark side of the fantasy of Hollywood fame and fortune. This is one of my favorite moments in the film, an odd and increasingly creepy scene that seems totally unconnected to the narrative that precedes it. Don’t be fooled … this quintessential Lynchian weirdness is actually working with the narrative, commenting on things that have happened … or will soon happen … or …! Watch how the camera moves while the two men talk in the restaurant. Note how objects very subtly disappear. Why does the camera linger on the pay phone for a second when the men leave the diner. Why does the frightened man react to the entrance sign? What happens in the two later scenes set at the same diner? This dread-laden clip contains many clues to help unlock the mysteries of the movie.
I LOVE this movie:
It’s astonishing to remember CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was only Steven Spielberg’s second theatrical film, following JAWS by two years. He was barely 30 when he made it! This movie speaks directly to me because I grew up on a steady diet of Hitchcock thrillers, mid-century science fiction movies and the Disney animated classics … just like Spielberg did. And CE3K is a loving tribute to all three of those influences. Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST is all over the middle section of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, with Devil’s Tower subbing for Mount Rushmore. The song “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Disney’s PINOCCHIO floats through the movie, underlining Spielberg’s themes. And the excitement and mystery of visitors from other worlds fueled the plots of those Saturday afternoon science fiction repeats. But more than that, Spielberg’s epic made me believe in extraterrestrial life and made me believe in movies. I was 13 when my family saw CE3K at the cinema in 1977; I was dazzled, I was hooked. The term “jaw-dropping” has become a cliché, but I remember vividly the expressions of nearly everyone leaving the theatre that night — wide eyes, big smiles, one-word proclamations of “Wow!” And, like any classic movie, I’m still spellbound when I watch it, 37 years later. This is one of the movies that made me the movie fanatic I am.
The Most Beautiful Fraud 