Paul Schrader's The Canyons, 2013

I couldn't find it free on streaming video, so I ordered a DVD of The Canyons. A sex movie like a lot of what Paul Schrader is known for. A porn star called James Deen is in it. 

It was very low budget, mostly dialogue, but Schrader said in an interview that, to make it more cinematic, he put in "transportation scenes":

...Talk is cheap. So a microbudget film is mostly people sitting around talking. And if you have good dialogue and a good kind of story and interesting people, that can work. But it can start to feel like a stage play because you’re not spending money on action sequences. So in order to keep it from feeling like a stage play, you have to walk and talk, although not at the same time. So this film, it’s walk, walk, walk, talk, talk, talk, walk, walk, walk. 

It was more like, walk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, walk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. They'd have a shot of a car parking, a guy getting out and walking to the front door. Eric Rohmer went much heavier on the transportation. 

So, in conclusion, I expected more walking.

They kept parking illegally, by the way. The cars would pull into the driveway and stop so they blocked the sidewalk. 

I realized I had no idea what Lindsay Lohan looked like. I had to do an image search to find out which one was her. 

Bret Easton Ellis wrote the script and I think he was the real auteur.

An actor's work in cinema

There was a guy I was acquainted with over twenty years ago. He's now in his 80s and has apparently moved away. I knew he was involved in community theater but I only recently learned he had bit parts in two movies that were filmed here. Now I've bought DVDs of both films, Jack Nicholson's Drive, He Said (1971) and How To Beat the High Cost of Living (1980).

Both had scenes filmed within a few blocks of where I'm sitting so they're of local interest. But how would the actor feel about some guy he probably has no memory of and will almost certainly never meet again seeking out his body of work in cinema? Would he be flattered or slightly creeped out?

I grew up with brothers and a sister who were all musicians. I had no interest in music but I was forced to attend every concert. It was cruelly drilled into me that had some sort of obligation to support people I knew.

I had this friend whose mental health was never good. He was a drug user since junior high, so he had been at it longer and was much more casual about it that his nouveau-druggie college-age friends he was sharing a house with. He took an acting class in community college. His mother, another non-druggie friend and I were the only ones who went to his class play. He was hurt that none of the drug addicts attended or even made an effort to come up with a plausible excuse. He briefly questioned his lifestyle choice.

Show interest in the work of people who haven't done that much. They'll appreciate it more and it's not much work for you.

 

Johnny Depp & Marilyn Manson

Johnny Depp looking less boyish that usual.

Attorney for Amber Heard: “Did you ever do drugs with Marilyn Manson?”

Johnny Depp:  “I once gave Marilyn Manson a pill so that he would stop talking so much.”

A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992)

I've known several Marines and ex-Marines and there was nothing special about them. Half of them were drafted, the other half joined for stupid reasons. One was promised training he never received, another intended to join the Army but switched to the Marines at the last minute because he heard they still had bayonet training.

A couple of ex-Marines I met were in the Communist Party. One had volunteered to fight in World War Two and one was drafted into the Korean War. 

I am not the least bit physically imposing, but I'm pretty sure I could have beaten up two of the Marines I knew. I was horsing around with one and lifted him up off the ground. He was light as a feather.

I never met anyone who was proud of being or having been a Marine. They all seemed to hate it. The one I knew who loved "the Corps" felt betrayed when they kicked him out for mental illness.

I remember when the Marines were the last branch of the armed forces you could join without a high school diploma. I don't know if not having a diploma would keep you from being drafted. Kids should look into that. I've never had anyone ask to see a high school diploma and not getting one could save your life.

So all the Marine-worship in A Few Good Men left me cold. If producers of the movie got any assistance from the military, they would have to have make changes in the script that made the Marines look good. I don't know if that was the problem or if Rob Reiner, now a neo-McCarthyite railing against "the Russians", has a thing for he-men. 

It reminds me of The Caine Mutiny with everyone enthusing over the Navy. Their defense attorney tells the court that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for a captain in the Navy to be a coward. So Humphrey Bogart must have been crazy. 

On the other hand, I had an uncle who was in the Army in World War Two. He went nuts when his daughter wanted to join the Army because the WACs had way too much sex back then. He warned his sons not to join the Marines because it had "more dead heroes" than any other branch of the service. But he tended to be overly agreeable. He went with his son to the recruiting office and they gave him their sales pitch. They'd teach my cousin to be a truck mechanic. My uncle smiled and nodded and signed him up for the Marines. When he got home, he thought, What have I done??

Dirty Harry (1971)

I find it so strange that my 90-year-old mother is sitting here watching Dirty Harry.

I was aware of this when I was a kid and saw the movie for the first time on network TV---that in a real case, if they caught a serial killer and the evidence against him was seized in an illegal search, they would let it in anyway, convict him, then the appeals court would turn down any appeal without comment. There had just been a case like that in the news at the time.

Years later, during the O.J. Simpson trial, some lawyers on Geraldo Live talked about courts doing this so I had that confirmation.

I guess it's nice that Dirty Harry killed Scorpio. Andy Robinson did pick up a loaded gun and was pointing it at him at the time.

There was a later movie, Dead Pool, which I haven't seen anywhere in years, a Dirty Harry movie which ends with Clint Eastwood simply murdering a man.

"He murdered him!" my friend said as we watched in a theater. "He just murdered him!"

He was like that guy in Magnum Force at the shooting competition. "A good guy! That last one was a good guy!"

We sat through the movie Sudden Impact twice, the second time counting how many people were killed, keeping track of how many were killed by criminals and how many by the ostensible hero. I concluded that, in a movie, the hero should kill fewer people than the villains, except maybe in a war movie. I don't think having a gunfight erupt every time you arrest someone is a sign of competent law enforcement.

And why was Sandra Locke raped in every movie Eastwood directed?

Land of the Pharoahs (Howard Hawks, 1955) The Ten Commandments (1923)

Howard Hawks' answer to Cecil B. DeMille. 

 

Didn't pay much attention to it, to be honest. I just had it on TV while I did some other stuff. With Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins, and Dewey Martin, and I don't remember who else. It looked amazing. Had thousands of extras. Technicolor. Filmed in Egypt and Italy. I heard it did poorly in theaters but was an early success on television.

 

The Ten Commandments (1923)

 

I had watched the silent version of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments a few days earlier. It wasn't what I expected.

There was nothing uplifting or inspirational about the Ten Commandments themselves, but the movie takes several minutes spelling out each one, like no one ever heard of them before. Then Moses murders three thousand of his followers for worshiping a golden calf. It was the most innocuous pagan idol imaginable, but they had to make it look depraved with a big giant calf-induced orgy.

At that point, the story switches to what was then the present day. We see a dour old woman reading the Bible to her two adult sons. It becomes a Gallant and Goofus story. One son listens piously. The other acts likes a normal person having this forcibly read to him for the umpteenth time. The deranged old women yells at him that he'll get what those three thousand murdered Israelites got!

"Laugh at the Ten Commandments all you want, Danny," the good brother says, "but they pack an awful wallop."
 

The non-believing brother violates each commandment and does pretty well for himself. I assume something happens to him later, but I lost interest by then.

 

The Pharoah's son meeting Moses. They try to make him look like a jerk so we'll be glad when The Lord murders him along with all the other firstborn children of Egypt, but I'd say the kid was proven right. It's like an Iraqi child meeting Madeline Albright.

Legend of the Boy and the Eagle (Disney, 1967)

I think Lenny Lipton mentioned this in his 1972 book, Independent Filmmaking, that movie theaters would clear people out by playing terrible documentaries between shows. I only experienced that once. I like to think I was no more than 11-years-old and I'd go to some Disney movie and sit through it at least three times to get my dollar's worth. But they showed this terrible documentary about a railroad worker. We see him walking around the train making sure there were no obvious problems. Then he climbs in. He starts it up. The train goes through the desert. Everything is flat so it goes in a straight line. He waved to some people. 

I think that was the first time it occurred to me that staring at a blank wall would be better than sitting through some movies. At least you could form your own thoughts.

I remember imagining the poor guy excitedly telling his family they were making a movie about him only be humiliated when he took his friends and loved ones to see the finished production.

"They used me!"

Well, the movie didn't drive ME out. I don't remember what the main feature was---Herbie Rides Again maybe---but I didn't budge. 

It was part of my cinematic education. I could recognize Keenan Wynn and Helen Hayes after that. It would be a few more years before I could tell Ken Berry and Dean Jones apart.

The Legend of the Boy and the Eagle 

Starred a little fellow named Stanford Lomakema. It was his only credit on IMDb, although I googled him and found he's an important figure in the Hopi nation. His father, Charles Lomakema, was a codetalker in World War Two.

Silent with music and narration. It presented itself as a Hopi Indian legend, but I'd need confirmation.

You know how 4H Clubs have farm kids raise animals, win prizes for them at county fairs and then sell them for slaughter so they'll learn not to become attached? In this movie, the kid is given the job of caring for a captive eagle they're preparing for ritual sacrifice. They warn him it's not a pet, but he saves it by setting it free. The community shuns him and he's cast into the desert where he only survives with the help of the grateful eagle. 

48 minutes. They showed it as a second feature with some other Disney film. I was sort of bored by it at the time---I'd gone in to see The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or some such thing---but I saw it again on a streaming channel, Movieland TV. People on IMDb loved it. 

Kind of depressing. About a child who's not treated well. They're in the desert. There aren't really edible plants so hunting is about all they do. I remembered the scene of the kid having fun sliding down a stream into a pond, like it was Nature's Disneyland, but I didn't remember him nearly falling to his death.

The version showed on streaming video was with credits from The Wonderful World of Disney TV show and had Russian subtitles.

It's free. See what you think.

Very last Will Smith thing

There've been a couple of movies I've heard of with scenes where an adult slaps a kid and the child actor told them to just go ahead and slap them. It's hard to fake and it'd make their performance more realistic. Perhaps surprisingly, Frank Sinatra was horrified and didn't want to do it when Eddie Hodges said to hit him in A Hole in the Head. Jodie Foster did the same thing in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. She told the woman to hit her hard, which was probably better than having to do a retake.

Child actors should be warned, DO NOT DO THIS IN A SCENE WITH WILL SMITH!

They can probably use some kind of CGI now anyway.

They talked about the Oscar incident on the Thought Spiral podcast with J. "Elvis" Weinstein and Andy Kindler.

"I thought of you," Weinstein said, "because it's your worst nightmare, to tell a joke about somebody and have them come and punch you."

Ironically, Kindler tended to sympathize with Smith.

Roughly transcribed from the podcast, Kindler's side of the conversation in bold:

"There's no reason to [unintelligible] this but my--my sympathies are with Will---not to punch people---"

"Yeah."

I mean...you don't do that.

Sure.

But, but the fact that he made--he made this joke about her that was like a really horrible joke back, I remember he made it when he hosted that year, he goes, uh, You know Jada Pinkett Smith is, uh, says she's gonna---you remember it was the Oscars Too White--Oscars so White? Yeah. So, I'm gonna--she said she's going to, uh, boycott the Academy Awards. You weren't invited! How could you boy--now here's the thing. These types of jokes--the reason why Chris Rock--he has, he does these jokes a lot that don't work...

But he has more of a joke to it than that.

The addition wasn't better!

'It's like me boycotting Brianna's panties' thing.

Yeah. Her panties. Josh. You're defending--but, no, not fight. We'll be in a fight soon.

Okay, good.

I don't like Chri--I think I don't like Chris Rock. I think I like Will Smith.

All right.

So, I don't know why in that moment---I couldn't figure out---I mean, it was wrong, but anyway, you [unintelligible]. I'm a little confused. 

Well...if one is to believe that Chris Rock knew that Jada Smith had--

Had alapicia.

--had alapicia, then it was a super dick move to tell the joke.

Right.

You know. It's a dick move to tell the joke about someone's hair anyway at the Oscars, you know, especially someone who produced a movie about Black women's hair.

That's right and I was online last night and apparently, in the Black community, people don't like when you make fun of their hair. 

But, you know--

Still it's not the end of the world.

you can separate those issues in any number of ways.

Right.

On the basic human decency thing? You don't fucking hit somebody. Even if you're offended. You don't stand up and hit---And from a professionalism standpoint, if you're going to hit him, you wait until the commercial break to hit him....

He also didn't hit him---he didn't try to knock him out.

Well, who knows?

He slapped him, didn't?

He did slap him, but pretty fucking hard. And pretty unexpectedly.

...Here's how I could relate to Chris Rock. When he first--he goes Oh, look, he's coming up! He didn't know at first it was going to---so I can relate to that. Hey hey! This guy's coming!

Oh, we're doing a bit! is what Chris Rock thought.

That's right.

And...and...it was really funny as a comic, you could see that Chris Rock, once that initial--you know--that ringing in his ears left, as a comic he knew what just happened was fucking hilarious on some level because he just said, That was the greatest piece of TV ever. He didn't have the joke yet. He didn't have the joke formulated because I'm sure he was going wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa. But you could tell that it's just like he knew that the moment was bigger than just him getting hit. But, you know. We all tell jokes that don't work. You've been telling jokes about celebrities for thirty years. And there's a hit percentage involved with any of these things.

I think so. Just to address my own things and get it out of the way, I think my own thing come from my own issue. Like if I was going to, under any other circumstances, I happen to like Will Smith. I think he, like, I've always seen him as a positive influence.

I kind of see him more---I see him as a sort of seemingly nice guy, but I also see him as a Scientoligic megalomaniac.

Right, but now I did some research and he's not in Scientology anymore. He hasn't been in Scientology since 2015, they say. I'm not saying that's good... What did you read about that? Or is that not---did you read that he's still in Scientology?

No, I haven't. I'm just saying that's my overall---that's not yesterday's opinion of him. That's what I walk around with, is, you know. Seemingly a nice guy, and I know people who've worked with him and can back up that he's a nice guy to work with.

Right, right.

But if you look at the sort of weird sort of guru-like thing that he's taken on over the last several years---

Yeah, what's happened?

---he and his whole family have taken on this, you know, almost Cosbyesque role-modely bizarro version of it.

You're saying Cosby 'cause he's Black.

No, I'm saying it because it's sanctimonious and preachy.

And by the way, in defense of Jaden Smith---I've seen a couple of things talking about his acting career drying up. Hollywood doesn't want him anymore. It may just be that he's 23. In his age group, there are more roles for girls than boys. He can play high school kids or he can wait till he's in his 30's to make a come back. Who wants to watch a movie about a 23-year-old? I certainly don't.

Time to end the war

From article by Patrick Cockburn on CounterPunch:

I feel frustrated with those who condemn war atrocities, but then use them as a reason to go on fighting a war that will inevitably produce even more such atrocities. If saying that “war is an atrocity” is to be any more than a platitude, then the only way to end the killing is to end the conflict. This is not to let the perpetrators of war crimes off the hook, but a recognition that wars makes such crimes inevitable – though no less culpable.

Yet there are a growing number of politicians and pundits willing to fight to the last Ukrainian to defeat the Russian bear. Some of this is fueled by popular outrage at Russian brutality against civilians, which is on television every night. Politicians, particularly in Washington and London, relish the thought of Russia being trapped in a Ukrainian quagmire without much concern about what happens to more than 40 million Ukrainians living on this battlefield.

Ukraine needs to declare its neutrality, end the war against Donesk and Lugansk, and give up any claim to Crimea which never should have been theirs to begin with. They should have done this in the first place. The war could have been easily avoided.

Will Smith resigns in disgrace

Will Smith has resigned in disgrace from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. I can't see how this would make the slightest difference to anyone, but I guess they take it seriously. Smith said he would accept any other "consequences" from them. I don't know what those would be. They can't do anything.

Berlin. Will Smith has embarrassed us in front of the Germans.

I never followed Smith's career. It took me years to start seeing Tom Hanks as a movie star after Bosom Buddies, but Will Smith was a rapper AND a sit-com star so there was more for me to overcome. 

I knew his children were odd or that they wanted everyone to think they were. I didn't know about his wife or that she assumed they had an open marriage. I knew they opened a Scientology-oriented school. Their son became "emancipated" at fifteen and I assume they went along with it because they thought he was billions of years old and kept being reincarnated.