(YouTube/DVD) THEODORA GOES WILD is a screwball comedy that not only features winsome repartee between leads Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas, but is also about liberating men and women from cultural shackles.
Dunne is Theodora Lynn, a Sunday school teacher by day, but racy, explicit romance author by night. No one but her publisher knows about her writerly habits, at least until Michael Grant (Douglas) the progressive cover artist of her book, discovers her secret and finds himself hellbent to convince her to come clean and live an open life, one where she be proud of her achievements and can actually spend her well-earned novel money. Consequently, he shows up in Theodora’s small town and weasels his way into her life posing as a gardener, and antics ensue.
It’s a tightly scripted, rollickingly good time from director Richard Boleslawski, based on a story from Mary McCarthy (who certainly pitched it as a story she wanted to see on screen). Yes, there’s some dated content, but it has aged remarkably well.
(DVD) This isn’t the recently completed BATES MOTEL TV series, but a made-for-TV film that was shot in-between PSYCHO III and PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING (which was actually shot after BATES MOTEL).
This isn’t a great film but an interesting curio. (Granted, one could say that about -all- of the sequels.) It’s worth noting that Anthony Perkins doesn’t appear in it; instead, Kurt Paul — Perkins’ stunt double in the prior Psycho films — portrays him. BATES MOTEL takes place after PSYCHO (ignoring PSYCHO II and III) and features Alex West (Bud Cort) who killed his step-father as a youth and was then thrown into the same asylum as Norman Bates. Bates befriended Alex and, upon dying, bequeathed him his hotel. Alex, along with the assistance of Willie (Lori Petty) a plucky young woman, fix up the hotel while fending off fears that the place is haunted by Mrs. Bates.
Meanwhile — and slightly jarringly inserted — a woman (Kerrie Keane) checks into the hotel, as — feeling old, alone and unloved after a recent divorce — plans on killing herself. As she’s about to do so, she’s is interrupted by a teen girl (Khrystyne Haje) who invites her to an after-prom party where she woos a young Jason Bateman and realizes there’s still some life in her bones after all. Then — hardly a spoiler, as it’s telegraphed from the get-go but letting you know just in case — it’s revealed that the teen killed herself in the very same room years ago.
If you read the above and thought: ‘Hey, that sounds like a story I’d see in a 80s TV anthology!’ you can pat yourself on the back. BATES MOTEL was a feature film masquerading as a TV pilot, where each week would tell the dovetailing tales of troubled hotel guests. While BATES MOTEL takes far too much time getting the hotel in Alex’s hands — including a lot of padding involving him simply trying to locate the hotel — and it is far too enamored with the Scooby Doo-ish pratfalls that occur afterwards, the B-story is satisfying enough that I wish they’d moved forward with the show. Obviously, they didn’t and we only have this TV film to show for it.
(Then again, I also unabashed love the TV anthology series FRIDAY THE 13: THE SERIES, which similarly has little to do with its namesake.)
(Criterion/DVD/BR) Unfortunately it’s currently not available to stream, but Criterion recently released a newly restored edition of SMOOTH TALK, a very dark coming-of-age tale from documentarian/director Joyce Chopra based on Joyce Carol Oates’ short story WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? It’s vintage 80s, very sun-kissed, featuring Laura Dern in one of first roles, plenty of mall shopping, bangles, and teen girl sexuality.
It’s also worth noting that the new Criterion release also contains a copy of Oates’ short, well-worth reading after watching the film, if you haven’t read it already. (Or you can read it here.) I simply love it when Criterion does this sort of thing. For instance, my Criterion copy of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK has a bundled copy of the source material.
(DVD/HBO MAX) I love Curtiz’s adaptation of James M. Cain’s MILDRED PIERCE — he certainly knew how to work the material to fit Joan Crawford — but it’s Todd Haynes’ (CAROL, FAR FROM HEAVEN) version that is truer to Cain’s novel. Yes, most of Cain’s works are lurid and pulpy crime tales, sensational enough to be banned, but MILDRED PIERCE is the exception. Cain paints a detailed portrait of a difficult mother with an even more difficult daughter, both of whom get wrapped up with a exploitative cad. It’s an epic character piece that deserves every minute of the approximately six hours that Haynes gives it.
Haynes enlists Kate Winslet who plays the role with a muted air — not quite the hysterical, over-protective mother that Crawford portrayed — while Evan Rachel Wood brats it up as her daughter, and Guy Pearce gleefully tears into inhabiting a genuine shitheel playboy. As you’d expect from Haynes, the cinematography is lush, the production design department spared not one piece of patterned wallpaper, and everyone’s stitched to the nines.
Most importantly, Haynes knows how to let scenes breath. Cameras track contemplatively, gazes wander, and characters sit with themselves, processing the ramifications of their actions. While it may not be as fondly recalled as the initial adaptation, or even any of Haynes’ prior works, it’s a mini-series that merits the extra time.
(DVD/YouTube) A quintessential 90s oddity, this was a six-episode show that aired on IFC and Bravo (back in the day when Bravo aired foreign films and ballet), and featured John Lurie heading out on a fishing trip with a famous friend each episode, such as Tom Waits or Dennis Hopper. Whether they caught anything was beside the point — well, perhaps except for the shark expedition with Jim Jarmusch.
Incredibly low budget with high travel aspirations, this was a bizarrely pioneering show that blurred the lines between reality, scripted comedy, and absurdity. A prototypical -adult swim- show, if you will. For those that witnessed this on their CRTs in the 90s, it was a strange, downbeat revelation.
I have high hopes that his new series, PAINTING WITH JOHN — which hits HBO MAX on January 22nd and feels like the flip side of a JOE PERA TALKS WITH YOU coin — will improve on the formula.
(DVD/YouTube) Apologies in advance for the lengthy entry — please bear with me.
I moved to Chicago to attend film school, specifically Columbia College Chicago (not to be confused with NYC’s Columbia College). Back in the 90s, Columbia College Chicago was known as a film trade school: folks who worked in the industry taught you the basics to become another cog in the industry, and you were immediately able to get your hands on a camera, sit behind an AVID deck, rig lights, etc., as opposed to say UCLA or NYU, which taught you film history and theory for two years before you could shoot a single frame of film.
Freshmen CCC film students were required to enroll in FILM TECH I, and your first exercise was to shoot a three-minute silent film in Grant Park, an iconic Chicago space carved out in the mid-19th century, and was never to meant be touched by developers’ hands. It’s also basically Columbia College Chicago’s backyard.
Grant Park also happens to be the location of the protests that occurred during 1968 Democratic National Convention, the time and place of Haskell Wexler’s (best know as the Oscar-winning cinematographer of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOS NEST, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) hybrid fact/fiction documentary MEDIUM COOL, a film primarily concerned with the ethics (or lack thereof) of documentaries and photographic/filmic journalism, but whose captured footage of the DNC protest turned the film into an evergreen historical document.*
If you aren’t familiar with the events of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, here’s a primer.
(If you can’t view it, basically: a peaceful protest was turned into a bloody warfield by Chicago cops abusing their authority, all approved by the first Daley mayor.)
I didn’t see MEDIUM COOL until about a year into my CCC education, but I was still shell-shocked to see it, shot in the very same field I filmed a terribly pretentious, very slight short film. I admit, I felt a bit dirty, despite the fact that yes, it’s a public space but, after watching MEDIUM COOL, it felt like hallowed ground (even if it hosts Lollapalooza and the Pitchfork Music Fest every year).
Watching the events unfold yesterday (January 6th 2021), witnessing folks storming the US Capitol, watching a coup so dumb it felt like Christopher Morris penned it, immediately brought me back to when my wife and I travelled to DC for the Women’s March in 2016 which was definitely a clusterfuck of a protest, but still: it was a peaceful, indelible protest.
It made me recall all of the times I’ve seen protests in the news, and how when I was in D.C. my mind blurred into all of the prior D.C. protest footage I’ve seen in film and news over the years. It was a surreal moment then, and seeing a locale turn into the shitshow of domestic terrorism we witnessed on the 6th, of cops simply opening the floodgates into the US Capitol, allowing these racist, seditious assholes run rampant through the building, looting it as if the Patriots just won the Super Bowl, fried my brain.
To say we haven’t resolved the issues that spurred the police abuse in 1968, events that occurred ~fifty years ago., would be an understatement. But this is why MEDIUM COOL exists: to visually document historically important events, to reflect on them, and to force the viewer to reconcile the events in the film with the events in their current lives.
(DVD) While I have a favorite Thanksgiving film (PIECES OF APRIL), and a favorite New Year’s Eve film (AFTER THE THIN MAN), I don’t have a favorite Christmas film. However, I do have a favorite Christmas TV episode, and MILLENNIUM’s -Midnight of the Century- is it.
MILLENNIUM is about Frank Black (Lance Henriksen), an offender profiler who has astounding intuition. Also, he can see angels and demons. In the second season of the show, he’s joined by Lara Means (Kristen Cloke) who also suffers from being bestowed the same ‘gift’. These are people who feel too much, feel too hard, who have insight and empathy they don’t want, but feel they have to utilize their gifts to help others.
MILLENNIUM’s holiday episodes, including the Halloween episode -The Curse of Frank Black- (also my favorite Halloween episode of all time) hit pause on the machinations of the Millennium Group that Frank Black is involved with, and instead focuses on Frank Black reflecting on his past, present, and future. -Midnight of the Century- features him mulling over the ramifications of passing along his ‘gift’ to his daughter, reminiscing about how his mother struggled with the same ‘gift’, and confronting his father (Kolchak himself, Darren McGavin — although I suspect most know him as the father in A CHRISTMAS STORY) about his mother holing herself up in their spare bedroom until she died.
It also includes a terrifically poignant story that involves a barely disguised Red Rose Tea figurine, the likes of which I grew up with.
It’s not all devastatingly sad, though: Frank Black takes a bit of time to detail why the killer in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is a spree killer, not a serial killer.
A hallmark of second season MILLENNIUM episodes are their exceptional music programming, and this episode doesn’t disappoint as it utilizes Tchaikovsky’s Arabian Dance (from his Nutcracker Suite – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPuf9krTR4w) as a haunting refrain.
It’s a quiet, contemplative episode that’s not only a substantial character study, but also perfectly captures the many facets of Christmas. While it is certainly not the most uplifting Christmas episode of a TV show, it is one of the most remarkable.
(DVD) I love adaptations. Give me an adaptation of a work I’ve previously seen or read, and I’ll always glean something interesting from it. Consequently, I was curious about Billy Wilder’s THE FRONT PAGE, which has its roots in the 1928 stage play of the same name about a Chicago newspaper writer trying to escape the business and get married and the boss who tries to thwart him, all under the umbrella of a hanging. THE FRONT PAGE became a reasonably successful film in 1931, but then Howard Hawks and Charles Lederer gender-swapped newspaper writer Hildy Johnson, threw away half of the script and let the cast riff, and created the classic screwball rom-com HIS GIRL FRIDAY.
Wilder’s FRONT PAGE is a glossier, overtly bluer, more expansive Cinemascope version of the original 1931 film — as you can immediately tell from the gorgeously crafted title sequence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwuo9NjflGs — and that is not a compliment. The tightly-wound anarchic feeling of both the original FRONT PAGE and HIS GIRL FRIDAY is what made them feel vibrant, and that’s missing from this production due to its over-produced adherence to the initial film.
While there are a few grander comedic moments and set-pieces, Wilder’s version often feels hum-drum and sluggish, completely antithetical to what one should expect from a FRONT PAGE adaptation. However, it includes one notable bit of interplay between boss Walter Matheu and writer/Wilder regular Jack Lemmon: Lemmon says ‘Cigarette me!’ and Matthau obliges by popping a cigarette into his own mouth and lighting it for his favored employee. He then slips it into Lemmon’s mouth, all while Susan Sarandon — Lemmon’s fiancée — watches. It’s is a cute Hays Code callback back to when swapping cigarettes was shorthand for fucking, but it doesn’t resonate nearly as much as Wilder thinks it does.
While I wish Wilder had extended himself further, he’s never wasted my time. Sure, it’s the lesser of the three major versions, but it has its moments and worth a watch if you’re into scrutinizing the machinations of adaptations.
(DVD) ‘Improvised animation’ from Tom Snyder (no, not THE LATE LATE SHOW’s Tom Snyder — a completely unrelated Tom Snyder) featuring Jonathan Katz as a therapist to a litany of stand-up comedians, and father to man-child H. Jon Benjamin. While I think DR. KATZ is probably best known for the controversial SQUIGGLEVISION animation process (I’ve personally never had any issue with SQUIGGLEVISION) it still lasted seven years, and even had a syndicated cartoon strip, which was oddly antithetical to the premise of the show. I remember upon first moving to Chicago, I cracked open my first copy of the Sun-Times and was shocked to see it in print.
While the show’s built around extraordinarily deadpan jokes from some of the best era’s best stand-ups (Ray Romano, Joan Rivers, Steven Wright, Emo Philips, Andy Kindler, Mitch Hedberg, to name just a few), the animators always managed to insert more than a few amusing visual flourishes and gags, a stylistic tic that’s worked its way to future Snyder and Snyder-inspired shows, such as HOME MOVIES and BOB’S BURGERS. Additionally, while most of the characters — guests and otherwise — are stunted in many ways, there’s a warmth and acceptance that underlies the show.
The show’s endlessly re-watchable and perfect fodder to work or fold laundry to, especially if you love word play and stand-up.
No trailer, obviously, but in the spirit of the season, here’s their Thanksgiving ep:
(DVD) Before WAREHOUSE 13, there was FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES. This series — which has no Jason, no Camp Crystal Lake, absolutely nothing to do with the FRIDAY THE 13TH films whatsoever — has one of the earliest TV ‘cursed collection of objects’ storytelling engines I can think of.
The show’s conceit is easy enough: two cousins, Ryan (John D. LeMay) and Micki (pop musician and model Robey) inherit their uncle’s antique store and, after a brief interlude featuring Ryan acting far too lecherous towards his cousin, they start selling off every item in the store to anyone interested. Through a horrific incident, they quickly realize that each item was collected by their uncle for a reason: they’re all powerful artifacts that should be locked up. Thankfully, their uncle created a meticulous ledger, and now they get to go scouring to find all of the artifacts they shouldn’t have sold in the first place.
The first season features a litany of Canadian talent, including Sarah Polley in one of her first TV roles, classic character actor (and The Old Man from MILLENNIUM) R.G. Armstrong as the original antique store owner, the previously mentioned Robey, and more. They even snagged some top-shelf directors for the first season, including David Cronenberg (who clearly was given carte blanche to shoot whatever he wanted to, and of course he trotted out a shit-ton of cancerous tumors) and Atom Egoyan, both of whom inject a bit of auteurism into the traditionally staid field of 80s television.
The recognizable guest stars and directors ebb as the show grows older though, which is fine because it finds a comfortable groove over the first two seasons. Then, in the third season, John D. Le May exits the show via one of the strangest — and oddly affecting — character exits I’ve ever seen, only to be replaced by Steve Monarque as ‘Johnny Ventura’, who is exactly what you’d expect from someone with a name like ‘Johnny Ventura’. (John D. Le May would later go on to be a featured player in JASON GOES TO HELL, completing the circuit between the show and the film.)
FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES is a show that probably survived for three seasons based on faking out folks, luring them in with the promise of weekly Jason slaughters, but I fear it’s has been forgotten because of how many were burned by that very promise. While the show had few highs, it also had few lows — it’s solid comfort food and eminently re-watchable, which is more than I can say about the films.
