I only ask because everything associated with summer is gone. I remember a summer four years ago in Vancouver, by a pool, with friends; we were at a theatre conference together. These were people I had known for many years — mostly women — we bought food and shared it. I don’t do this often — that is attend a party — I’m mainly alone in groups with strangers. (I don’t know why, because I like parties — but then I don’t, because meeting new people is perilous, being trapped with a bore even more so— I know, awful of me to say— and worse yet is being ‘Sky Gilbert,’ that is, meeting someone who won’t tell me their name, so awed are they by talking with ‘a star.’ I’m not bragging, it’s just a reality and crazy and wrong. I won’t speak to such a person if they don’t identify themselves. And then there is the awful memory of my first gay parties — because in my imagination it was there I would meet men. What frigid condescension and high-school cliquishness! I was immediately excluded, and hurt — no wounded. I only seem to enjoy parties when I am the centre of them, which is sad, I know.) Anyway, here is Lewis Carrol on the end of summer days: “Dreaming as the days go by, / Dreaming as the summers die: / Ever drifting down the stream— / Lingering in the golden gleam— / Life, what is it but a dream?” I’m talking about touching, cavorting, swimming (naked?), being less than six feet away from each other, sharing food, kisses, drink, drugs, and who cares what else? I don’t see the new normal ever disappearing as this paranoia about human contact is not only related to our increasingly digital lives, but to increasing paranoia about disease. I do not see the world getting less infections, but more so. (Not in reality, in fantasy. But, fantasy is all that matters.) Who knows whether we will be living in a more or less ‘infectious’ time, nevertheless living and breathing will be perceived as essentially dangerous, and other people perceived as potential agents of harm. We are biologically wired to fear difference, so it’s a hop skip and a jump to this particular brand of madness. We can talk about anti-racism forever but if we are pretending to embrace the ‘other’ but simultaneously viewing every stranger as a potential carrier of the plague, our pious social justice platitudes will have no effect. The 50s notion of the ‘family’ — has also made a return. One is safe in it’s ‘bosom,’ while God knows what kind of abuse, at worst — or emotional manipulation, at best — is going on there. But it’s all misery. We are ordered to love our families though they are often more strange to us than those with whom we are not yet acquainted. The bond of ‘blood’ is insidious and the very source of hatred. But all this valorization of the family heralds our upcoming winter; it’s best to scurry home every night, and not look about. We’ll turn on the lights and start the fire in our little safe cave — a bulwark against the dangers of touching, drinking, carousing, singing, and dancing. I echo Nashe’s sentiments from “Summer’s Last Will and Testament”: “Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year; The earth is hell when thou leav'st to appear.” Summer is gone, we must try and forget it ever happened. But I’ll always remember that party by the pool where we laughed quite cruelly, viciously even, at others, we laughed at Brendan Healy and his gang of beautiful boys who swam nightly and didn’t seem to want to talk to us, we laughed at anyone who was not there and was our perceived enemy, and we also knew of course that we were wittier and more profound than anyone, for nothing seems quite as charming as that which happens on a summer night. Last night ‘beauty’ visited the baths. I was in my room minding my own business, and I saw him approach. Was he a stripper who had gotten lost somehow? What was he doing there? And why was he looking at me? He entered and I was all over him; doing things he very much wanted to have done to him — if I was to believe the noises he was making. I won’t go on — but it was heaven and then after getting into a few of odd positions and situations, he was very nicely and apologetically gone. I went to shower a few minutes later, but I could not take one, because he was about to get into into it with someone else. And this is the image that will stay with me — the future smile from this summer night: because whoever he was climbing into the shower with was not, obviously, protesting. Why would they? It was a minute epiphany: this is what it means to be young and gay and beautiful (for I never was) and to know that if you are in a sexual environment (and even sometimes not) you have absolute license to invade anyone’s personal space, to start kissing anyone, because quite simply everyone not only wants you, but can’t get enough. So partly it’s never having been that young man and never having had that experience, but it’s also knowing that’s the way things should be — for everyone — at some time or other. And if not, that’s somebody’s fault. What a crime to tell you my dirty stories in the middle of a COVID Summer of suffering! But remember, it’s not really summer, if you’re not gathering freely (shall we call it) if you’re not getting into some sort of mischief, even if it’s just badmouthing somebody with a drink in your hand under the stars. It will all be a dream, some day, a remembrance, so I wanted to say goodbye. It’s not easy. Lewis Carroll again: ‘Still she haunts me, phantomwise / Alice moving under skies / Never seen by waking eyes.” We shall not be awake but we shall know that summer exists always in our minds eye — not just to help us cope — but so that we might enter it through a private door, when are sitting home, snug and cozy, content with the morally approved loneliness of society’s chosen eternal winter.
Friday, 31 July 2020
Thursday, 30 July 2020
To call it the end of reason
is too dramatic; let’s just call it — ‘Sky doesn’t want to write essays anymore.’ This means I am announcing my abhorrence for a certain structured, cohesive, argument that is persuasive, but only to the extent that it is logical. No, that’s not for me. So you can hold it against me if and when I write one; but I really never want to again. I didn’t want to end my endless Plague Diary either, but I didn’t know what to do. So I’ve settled for this —which is something else, certainly not the same — but inspired by it somewhat. I feel that ‘reason’ is over, for me. Much the same way it was over for the Dadaists after the World War I; they saw the carnage, so many young men exterminated, and why? Has ‘reason’ led us here? We must have something else, the unreason; the ‘unart.’ But I don’t think art has anything to do with our present dilemma, or rather it has everything to do with it but in a very sly way. Art — as I knew it, is over — the dream, the fantasy, the made-up concoction, the candy floss or perhaps nightmare artificiality, we will have none of that. We demand a lecture on environmentalism, preferably delivered from a podium by someone who is perhaps grandmotherly, and reassuringly inept, but well intentioned. We demand right-mindedness. Indeed we want to be corrected and art must scold us, it’s all ‘teach’— the delight has never been so far away. So just as art has become a statement of truth, our real life has become fiction. We consume it every day, it’s what constitutes most of our so-called lives, in the form of pornography, Netflix, Apple News, and social media. COVID-19 has taught us the digital world is the only safe place, and that it is a very appropriate replacement for reality. This is the truth, it must be, because our computers are the only place we dare to live. So consequently to write a well-reasoned essay on the subject of COVID-19 — or anything else — is no longer helpful. As I am a Covid Radical (I think shutting down our whole society is a big mistake) you will disagree with me; but most likely you will not argue. That is something people used to do, when there was ‘reason.’ You will be shocked, or most likely just laugh at me in a shocked way — ‘that’s ridiculous, you’re ridiculous, I won’t even dignify your idea with a response.’ Oh yes and: ‘What you’ve said is dangerous, do know that?’ — the requisite distrust of my actual person. Perhaps I am a child molester —certainly I am causing danger to others by having such ideas, or at least ’mentally ill’ in a very unbenign way. The argument from intimidation is the only argument we trust; ‘if he says that, he must be bonkers.’ All this is a very reasonable excuse for being unreasonable, but to speak frankly (why not?) I’ve never really been very fond of reason, and felt I was masquerading as a boring, predictable, ‘nice’ person — very unlike my real self — every time I wrote an essay. (But Shakespeare doesn’t count; I will write essays about Shakespeare, but not here, because Shakespeare is sacrosanct, don’t ask me to go on about it, that’s just the way it is.) No. The writing of ‘articles’ is a ‘hat’ I don’t want to wear. It just won’t work anymore. (Truth be told it always felt kind of ‘heterosexual’ to write an essay that made a whole lot of sense.) All media has become underhanded, no one is reporting news or presenting arguments (or if they are no one is listening). What we have is much more eloquent: photos — or better yet videos — of children with inflamed limbs from COVID-19 (a fantasy that doesn’t exist). This speaks much more eloquently than any rational argument. So what will I put in place of an essay? Not art (that’s not what this is) instead a kind of unexpurgated, unwanted, un-asked-for, ultimately unnecessary and certainly not in any way useful regurgitation of my personality, my feelings, impressions, hopes, fears, what turns me on (God help us!). It will quickly separate the adults from the children. It will be a kind of spilling of myself — yes orgasmic (sorry). It will be like Jack Kerouac’s endless typing on a scroll — I think it was Capote who called in typing not writing — so this may be just that. And inevitably, it will be very personal and very self-incriminating. Because it’s time for self-incrimination; writing which does not do that no longer has any value. Reasoned criticism has become character assassination, so let’s get my self-immolation out of the way. I hereby assassinate myself, I am an untrustworthy narrator, I am not a ‘good’ person, I have endless faults, I am narcissistic and insensitive, I love very unwisely and not very well. There is no reason to admire me (but I’m sure you’ve figured that out) best to be suspicious, I have my own motives, and could be — in fact am — trying to put one over on you. I think this is how we should approach every piece of writing, and especially anything that purports to be truth or dispassionate observation. This writing is not the truth, it is simply my truth (unless I’m lying, or even when I am). I was sitting in Union Station yesterday looking at the tiles on the columns. This was after having discovered that the humungous men’s bathroom (there must be 20 toilets in there —counting the urinals) is only — by order of the Covid Police — to have 2 people occupy it at a time. Anyway, so I was idly staring at the tiles, thinking about this, and the ceramic tiles reminded me of something else very tedious — the time my father invited my sister and I over to his house to meet his second wife. She was much younger than he was, and more beautiful, and my father had decided that in order for us to have something to do and mitigate the awkwardness, we would all sit around together and glue ceramic tiles to his new coffee table. I needn’t tell you, it didn’t work. Whenever I see ceramic tiles I think of that evening of terrifying, fraught dullness. So now I am in Montreal and the night is endless and mysterious, and it’s not at all like Ontario. There are no ceramic tiles anywhere to be seen — except those that someone has either thrown at the wall in a rage, or vomited there, and all I can hope for is that the possibilities here are endless.
Sunday, 19 July 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 122: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
The first of the Philip Marlowe movies — with the oddly cast Dick Powell (usually a musical comedy star) as the lead. When Claire Trevor coos over his slender body in a t-shirt it’s a bit hard to take; but it’s important to remember that notions of physical perfection —especially male ones — change over time. The plot is as impenetrable as most film noir, and there is a ‘McGuffin’ — ‘jade’ instead of the famous ‘Maltese falcon.’ There is a certain masochism about the hero; it is a requisite of masculinity. Regularly being beat up and nearly killed is a sort of badge of honour for a real man, but only if he makes wisecracks about it (007 does this too). I’ve never read a Raymond Chandler novel, but it seems to me this aspect of Murder, My Sweet is the most literary aspect of the movie, and hints at its depth. Some lines seem very Raymond Chandler, or at least beyond philosophically witty, as when Marlowe says, in response to a call for silence — “Remarks want you to make ‘em. They’ve got their tongues hanging out waiting to be said.” And good girl Anne Shirley sizes up bad girl Claire Trevor with remarkable alacrity: “I hate the big league blondes: beautiful expensive babes who know what they’ve got, all bubble bath. dewy morning. and moonlight. Inside blue steel, cold — cold like that only not that clean.” But it is the dream sequence that marks the profundity of Chandler’s world view (filmic though the sequence is — not perhaps as nakedly surrealistic as the one in Hitchcock’s Spellbound — but arty in it’s own way). Otto Kruger plays Jules Amthor — a pathological psychiatrist, and the scene where he drugs Marlowe with what appear to be psychedelic chemicals is truly horrifying. But Marlowe staggers out of it with unbelievable good humour -- in search of his next adventure. This kind of residence I don’t understand. Coward that I am, I kept wanting to tell Marlowe to go home and hide. This kind of attraction to violation — throwing one’s body into the nexus of brutality — seems almost like an addiction for Marlowe, and the only conclusion one may draw about the universe — from Marlowe’s compulsion to be destroyed, as well as the opportunities offered for him to have it happen — is that it is beyond chaotic. Life’s vicissitudes are merely nonsensical and not only is something rotten in the state of Denmark but it just seems at every moment, for no discernible reason, to get rottener still. And it was never so clear to me before that it is the femme fatale that sits at the heart of this chaos, because she represents an evil so paradoxical and so alluring that it’s irresistible. There is no defence. Leaving the misogyny aside for a moment — and also acknowledging that to outlaw the femme fatale is to outlaw opportunities for actresses like Claire Trevor to be evil, beautiful, feminine, tempting, heartless and vulnerable — a great test for a thespian of any ilk — Dick Powell's conflicted response to her is the essence of every person’s perceptual confusion. She is like a psychedelic drug; on the one hand as much a tantalising escape from the relentless numbness of the day to day routine as a treacherous stairway to madness, morbidity, blindness, incoherence, and living hell. She says to Marlow “I find men attractive” and he responds “I bet they meet you halfway.” How could they not, as the femme fatale breaks the first rule of being a woman: that she is not at any cost to desire openly, and certainly must not ever be more desiring than a man. Trevor crumbles in his arms, Marlowe’s nostrils disappear in her too blonde curls, and she cries “I haven’t been good not halfway good, I haven’t even been smart, but I need help — please I need you!” — and he is like putty in her hands — or perhaps something firmer than that. A thug called Moose (Mike Mazurki) calls her “cute as lace pants” and when she’s dead “cute as lace pants, always.” But Marlowe is not a force for good, he just happens to be in the middle of this chaos called life, just trying to make a buck; after all it feels like people have to bribe him to investigate anything. When Anne Shirley accuses him of not taking sides he says: "I don't know which side anybody's on. I don't even know who's playing today.” I’m trying to quit smoking, and the cigarette is as toxic and yielding as Claire Trevor, it’s always throwing itself in front of me and acting vulnerable, as if it might die if I don’t smoke it, and what it’s offering me is everything I don’t want to miss. I screamed at the man I love today —“this is a nightmare” and it certainly seemed that way to me, after a sleepless night and an anxious morning; addiction is certainly as appealing as Claire Trevor and just as scary. So what do we do about this chaotic mess called life, where evil often masquerades as good, or just the grandest pleasure? Philip Marlowe seems to be saying the best you can do is just roll with the punches and make caustic remarks, because, as he explains, those caustic remarks are lined up just waiting to be made. The appeal of the myth of COVID-19 is the appeal of all latter day thinking; an obsession with a binary, any binary. (I’ve been told it’s simple-minded to blame digital technology — which as I understand it, is based on a binary—especially since human history tells us the notion that the world is evenly divided into good and evil, that both are recognisable, and that evil, once identified can and will be punished — is just too appealing even for words.) This chaos is too much; we want answers. But reason, is, I’m afraid, woefully inadequate to sort this out. COVID-19, on the other hand, offers so many reassurances: climate change, populist politics, economic decline — the answer is in your mask. You are good if you wear one; you are making the world a better place, because you care for your fellow man. I don’t so much oppose masks, I just wonder why bother? As there is as much proof that they work as they don’t? (See https://hugsovermasks.nationbuilder.com/) But it’s a moral question; and I just don’t want to get involved, and it won’t work anyway, to even try. I can only do my best to be an obedient masochist who manages now and then to offer a wry remark; I may even switch sides, as Marlowe does, because the only way to ally oneself with truth is to assert that there is none.
The first of the Philip Marlowe movies — with the oddly cast Dick Powell (usually a musical comedy star) as the lead. When Claire Trevor coos over his slender body in a t-shirt it’s a bit hard to take; but it’s important to remember that notions of physical perfection —especially male ones — change over time. The plot is as impenetrable as most film noir, and there is a ‘McGuffin’ — ‘jade’ instead of the famous ‘Maltese falcon.’ There is a certain masochism about the hero; it is a requisite of masculinity. Regularly being beat up and nearly killed is a sort of badge of honour for a real man, but only if he makes wisecracks about it (007 does this too). I’ve never read a Raymond Chandler novel, but it seems to me this aspect of Murder, My Sweet is the most literary aspect of the movie, and hints at its depth. Some lines seem very Raymond Chandler, or at least beyond philosophically witty, as when Marlowe says, in response to a call for silence — “Remarks want you to make ‘em. They’ve got their tongues hanging out waiting to be said.” And good girl Anne Shirley sizes up bad girl Claire Trevor with remarkable alacrity: “I hate the big league blondes: beautiful expensive babes who know what they’ve got, all bubble bath. dewy morning. and moonlight. Inside blue steel, cold — cold like that only not that clean.” But it is the dream sequence that marks the profundity of Chandler’s world view (filmic though the sequence is — not perhaps as nakedly surrealistic as the one in Hitchcock’s Spellbound — but arty in it’s own way). Otto Kruger plays Jules Amthor — a pathological psychiatrist, and the scene where he drugs Marlowe with what appear to be psychedelic chemicals is truly horrifying. But Marlowe staggers out of it with unbelievable good humour -- in search of his next adventure. This kind of residence I don’t understand. Coward that I am, I kept wanting to tell Marlowe to go home and hide. This kind of attraction to violation — throwing one’s body into the nexus of brutality — seems almost like an addiction for Marlowe, and the only conclusion one may draw about the universe — from Marlowe’s compulsion to be destroyed, as well as the opportunities offered for him to have it happen — is that it is beyond chaotic. Life’s vicissitudes are merely nonsensical and not only is something rotten in the state of Denmark but it just seems at every moment, for no discernible reason, to get rottener still. And it was never so clear to me before that it is the femme fatale that sits at the heart of this chaos, because she represents an evil so paradoxical and so alluring that it’s irresistible. There is no defence. Leaving the misogyny aside for a moment — and also acknowledging that to outlaw the femme fatale is to outlaw opportunities for actresses like Claire Trevor to be evil, beautiful, feminine, tempting, heartless and vulnerable — a great test for a thespian of any ilk — Dick Powell's conflicted response to her is the essence of every person’s perceptual confusion. She is like a psychedelic drug; on the one hand as much a tantalising escape from the relentless numbness of the day to day routine as a treacherous stairway to madness, morbidity, blindness, incoherence, and living hell. She says to Marlow “I find men attractive” and he responds “I bet they meet you halfway.” How could they not, as the femme fatale breaks the first rule of being a woman: that she is not at any cost to desire openly, and certainly must not ever be more desiring than a man. Trevor crumbles in his arms, Marlowe’s nostrils disappear in her too blonde curls, and she cries “I haven’t been good not halfway good, I haven’t even been smart, but I need help — please I need you!” — and he is like putty in her hands — or perhaps something firmer than that. A thug called Moose (Mike Mazurki) calls her “cute as lace pants” and when she’s dead “cute as lace pants, always.” But Marlowe is not a force for good, he just happens to be in the middle of this chaos called life, just trying to make a buck; after all it feels like people have to bribe him to investigate anything. When Anne Shirley accuses him of not taking sides he says: "I don't know which side anybody's on. I don't even know who's playing today.” I’m trying to quit smoking, and the cigarette is as toxic and yielding as Claire Trevor, it’s always throwing itself in front of me and acting vulnerable, as if it might die if I don’t smoke it, and what it’s offering me is everything I don’t want to miss. I screamed at the man I love today —“this is a nightmare” and it certainly seemed that way to me, after a sleepless night and an anxious morning; addiction is certainly as appealing as Claire Trevor and just as scary. So what do we do about this chaotic mess called life, where evil often masquerades as good, or just the grandest pleasure? Philip Marlowe seems to be saying the best you can do is just roll with the punches and make caustic remarks, because, as he explains, those caustic remarks are lined up just waiting to be made. The appeal of the myth of COVID-19 is the appeal of all latter day thinking; an obsession with a binary, any binary. (I’ve been told it’s simple-minded to blame digital technology — which as I understand it, is based on a binary—especially since human history tells us the notion that the world is evenly divided into good and evil, that both are recognisable, and that evil, once identified can and will be punished — is just too appealing even for words.) This chaos is too much; we want answers. But reason, is, I’m afraid, woefully inadequate to sort this out. COVID-19, on the other hand, offers so many reassurances: climate change, populist politics, economic decline — the answer is in your mask. You are good if you wear one; you are making the world a better place, because you care for your fellow man. I don’t so much oppose masks, I just wonder why bother? As there is as much proof that they work as they don’t? (See https://hugsovermasks.nationbuilder.com/) But it’s a moral question; and I just don’t want to get involved, and it won’t work anyway, to even try. I can only do my best to be an obedient masochist who manages now and then to offer a wry remark; I may even switch sides, as Marlowe does, because the only way to ally oneself with truth is to assert that there is none.
Saturday, 18 July 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 121: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Mark of the Vampire (1935)
It’s a very strange thing. It’s necessary to give it all away, or else what else would there to be to talk about. It undoubtedly inspired Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein — i.e. big candles (torches), a stoney basement, and a bookcase that twirls to reveal a passageway (though these may be in other horror movies; I’m no expert). And this is not a horror movie it is a comedy; except it isn’t the least bit funny. Tod Browning, who also made Freaks (see blog 42#) was obviously somewhat of a freak himself, and not a very good filmmaker (though he somehow got James Wong Howe to be the cinematographer and two Lionels — Barrymore and Lionel Atwill — to act in it). So, you think you’re watching a horror movie, and it’s pretty straightforward fare; the best thing about it is the mechanical bats that are flying at you now and then — in mists of bat fog — or whatever, they really are kinda scary, and apparently Browning was a bit too concerned about getting them right (the crew complained). There are also what appear to be number of real live bats squirming on the floor, attached to the ceiling etc. They are very creepy. And then there is Bela Lugosi and Carroll Borland as the ‘terrifying’ vampires. They mainly just try to transfix you with hilariously frigid stares (esp. Borland) and over-the-top clown white makeup, and march around like robots. It’s difficult to get caught up in it; Elizabeth Allan is quite convincing as the beautiful young heroine, and it’s fascinating to see Lionel Barrymore actually erect (not in a wheelchair) — and he’s not looking as old as usual, and is almost handsome. But here’s the trick; the vampires are not really vampires. You find this out about two thirds of the way through the movie. Just as Barrymore seems to be hot on the trail of Bela Lugosi, he suddenly hypnotises Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) and we are plunged into another film. It turns out Elizabeth Allan’s father was not killed by vampires but by Baron Otto, and this whole vampire thing is just a plot to hypnotize Baron Otto, and get him to re-enact his crime -- to prove he’s guilty. The one thing that’s not really clear about all this is why you need to hire people to pretend to be vampires in order to get a murderer to confess— perhaps that says more about Tod Browning’s oddly organised pre-frontal cortex than anything. I personally don’t believe that Browning actually knew what he was doing, I believe he made it up as he went along. I say this because apparently he didn’t tell the actors that the vampires were fake vampires until it was time to film the final scenes — Lugosi and Borland thought they were in an ordinary vampire film. And Lionel Barrymore really thought he was playing Professor Zelin, a very brilliant and earnest scholar convinced that vampires do exist — when he was playing Professor Zelin (?) who hired a fact a bunch of actors (?) to play vampires in order to ‘force’ a killer — under hypnosis — to re-enact his crime and ergo confess. It’s kinda almost maybe funny at the end, momentarily, when Lugosi and Carroll (the sign on her truck says ‘Luna The Bat Woman Theatre’) are packing up their vampire gear. Lugosi has a line with huge camp resonance: “I gave all of me, I was better than any real vampire.” One wonders of course, is Lugosi speaking about his whole career? And it brings up a fascinating question with epistemological, ontological and metaphysical ramifications, do vampires exist? Well we needn’t go there because this tacked on ending doesn’t mean anything in the context of the film; like the Freaks gimmick this is Tod Browning fooling himself that he was a ground-breakingly original filmmaker. What is interesting, to me, is that Lionel Barrymore is really quite earnest as the vampire killer, actually I found him oddly good — and he had all the appearance of an actor deeply believing his part. So did Browning’s ruse work? Did he get a great performance out of Barrymore who seems to be acting his tits off in a very stupid movie? What’s even odder is that audiences were apparently grossed out and frightened by this movie, and wrote letters to the papers about how vampire movies should be banned. God bless lousy filmmakers like Todd Browning and Ed Wood (Plan Nine from Outer Space) who suspended their own disbelief to such an extent that they were actually convinced they were brilliant. Now that’s beautiful. The Greek sophists said (something to this effect that) ‘he who is fooled is wiser than he who is not.’ I am too wise to believe in COVID-19 -- but I do earnestly envy the ecstatic complacency of those who believe that, because they wear a mask, they will live forever.
It’s a very strange thing. It’s necessary to give it all away, or else what else would there to be to talk about. It undoubtedly inspired Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein — i.e. big candles (torches), a stoney basement, and a bookcase that twirls to reveal a passageway (though these may be in other horror movies; I’m no expert). And this is not a horror movie it is a comedy; except it isn’t the least bit funny. Tod Browning, who also made Freaks (see blog 42#) was obviously somewhat of a freak himself, and not a very good filmmaker (though he somehow got James Wong Howe to be the cinematographer and two Lionels — Barrymore and Lionel Atwill — to act in it). So, you think you’re watching a horror movie, and it’s pretty straightforward fare; the best thing about it is the mechanical bats that are flying at you now and then — in mists of bat fog — or whatever, they really are kinda scary, and apparently Browning was a bit too concerned about getting them right (the crew complained). There are also what appear to be number of real live bats squirming on the floor, attached to the ceiling etc. They are very creepy. And then there is Bela Lugosi and Carroll Borland as the ‘terrifying’ vampires. They mainly just try to transfix you with hilariously frigid stares (esp. Borland) and over-the-top clown white makeup, and march around like robots. It’s difficult to get caught up in it; Elizabeth Allan is quite convincing as the beautiful young heroine, and it’s fascinating to see Lionel Barrymore actually erect (not in a wheelchair) — and he’s not looking as old as usual, and is almost handsome. But here’s the trick; the vampires are not really vampires. You find this out about two thirds of the way through the movie. Just as Barrymore seems to be hot on the trail of Bela Lugosi, he suddenly hypnotises Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) and we are plunged into another film. It turns out Elizabeth Allan’s father was not killed by vampires but by Baron Otto, and this whole vampire thing is just a plot to hypnotize Baron Otto, and get him to re-enact his crime -- to prove he’s guilty. The one thing that’s not really clear about all this is why you need to hire people to pretend to be vampires in order to get a murderer to confess— perhaps that says more about Tod Browning’s oddly organised pre-frontal cortex than anything. I personally don’t believe that Browning actually knew what he was doing, I believe he made it up as he went along. I say this because apparently he didn’t tell the actors that the vampires were fake vampires until it was time to film the final scenes — Lugosi and Borland thought they were in an ordinary vampire film. And Lionel Barrymore really thought he was playing Professor Zelin, a very brilliant and earnest scholar convinced that vampires do exist — when he was playing Professor Zelin (?) who hired a fact a bunch of actors (?) to play vampires in order to ‘force’ a killer — under hypnosis — to re-enact his crime and ergo confess. It’s kinda almost maybe funny at the end, momentarily, when Lugosi and Carroll (the sign on her truck says ‘Luna The Bat Woman Theatre’) are packing up their vampire gear. Lugosi has a line with huge camp resonance: “I gave all of me, I was better than any real vampire.” One wonders of course, is Lugosi speaking about his whole career? And it brings up a fascinating question with epistemological, ontological and metaphysical ramifications, do vampires exist? Well we needn’t go there because this tacked on ending doesn’t mean anything in the context of the film; like the Freaks gimmick this is Tod Browning fooling himself that he was a ground-breakingly original filmmaker. What is interesting, to me, is that Lionel Barrymore is really quite earnest as the vampire killer, actually I found him oddly good — and he had all the appearance of an actor deeply believing his part. So did Browning’s ruse work? Did he get a great performance out of Barrymore who seems to be acting his tits off in a very stupid movie? What’s even odder is that audiences were apparently grossed out and frightened by this movie, and wrote letters to the papers about how vampire movies should be banned. God bless lousy filmmakers like Todd Browning and Ed Wood (Plan Nine from Outer Space) who suspended their own disbelief to such an extent that they were actually convinced they were brilliant. Now that’s beautiful. The Greek sophists said (something to this effect that) ‘he who is fooled is wiser than he who is not.’ I am too wise to believe in COVID-19 -- but I do earnestly envy the ecstatic complacency of those who believe that, because they wear a mask, they will live forever.
Friday, 17 July 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 120: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939)
It took an Andy Hardy movie. I don’t know if I’ve ever really watched one from beginning to end.
I spoke about Mickey Rooney — as a sex object at age 24 (see blog #75)— but here at age 19 I became him, he was me. I guess it’s always spring fever where I’m concerned. It’s always love, because I have not entirely discarded the breathless wonder I discovered when I first came out, when every man I had sex with was the real thing; like Andy Hardy I mistook each puppy-like obsession — even simple body worship — for the fulfillment of a hidden longing. What never ceases to confound me is the notion that one must have a feeling of emptiness after a promiscuous encounter. When a pale, tall, handsome youth walked into my room the other night at the baths —and this young God acted as if our intimacy was the most normal thing in the world — I felt as Andy Hardy feels about his teacher, Miss Meredith. (Played by Helen Gilbert — she has the same name as my grandmother, and my grandmother too, was a teacher.) I’m touched by all this (I’m somewhat ashamed to say) -- by a friggin’ Andy Hardy movie. And it isn’t just the foolish, fond early forays into lovemaking, it’s the ridiculous bravado he displays when he imagines he has grown up. What a treat to see Mickey Rooney come bounding down to dinner in a suit and tie with a bad British accent -- because he has been chosen to write the school play, and suddenly thinks he's Noel Coward. The voice Rooney takes out of his back pocket is very odd and very funny — a forced baritone his sister describes ‘like molasses running down the stairs.” Later too, after Mickey comes to terms with his unrequited love for Helen, he swaggers about in a very wise and world-weary way. He waves a rose in Helen’s face saying: “I’m going to keep this all my life. When it gets old and withered it will remind me of you.” And when he turns up at a party with friends his own age, he intones “I hope you children are enjoying your games.” All this, even in its ridiculous exaggeration, is accurate. But that's not what made me cry. Mickey Rooney writes a play, and it’s called ‘Adrift in Tahiti.’ He plays a ‘Rear Admiral’ while his usual adolescent paramour in these movies — Polly (Ann Rutherford) — plays ‘Tahoolah.’ The details of the play are beyond imagining; the best part is when the Rear Admiral rejects Tahoolah and she jumps into a volcano. There is a moon — which a boy with the unlikely name of ‘Stickin’ Plaster’ (Terry Kilburn) — is tasked with guiding smoothly across the sky; he messes it up, and is contrite, and the audience laughs. Mickey calls his masterpiece a ‘spiritual play of loves and renunciations.” His inspiration for writing it is scorn and rejection (I identify). He says: “A man isn’t altogether to blame when he finds he’s developing into the sensitive type.” (Again, I identify.) Mickey’s biggest problem though is the burning question — are there actually volcanos in Tahiti? This kind of question has plagued writers from the dawn of time; but Mickey doesn’t let something as frail and unconvincing as reality stop him. It is right that Tahoolah should jump into a volcano, and so she does. It is a fantasy performed in front of other people; it is as far from reality as anything can be, except that when we experience that fantasy with others, it becomes a reality of its own. You see -- in 1939 people still did that. Nothing makes me sadder than theatres in Toronto sending out press releases about the latest digital performances — "The Resiliance Project, "Alone Together""Let's Stay Together." I saw an image from Toronto of a bunch of people doing Yoga — all separately of course, in little plastic bubbles, each bubble with its own fan and Kleenex box, it really was too tragic. I don’t mean to be funny about this, because it really is ominous; watching us abandon experience as a necessary and redeeming thing. At the end of Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever Mickey and Helen sit outside. and there are crickets. Yes, there is nature, yes, you can always go up to the cottage and sit by yourself and have that. (And at this time of year I eat dusk, because dusks disappear -- the change of light in the afternoon on a cold winter day is not the same). But because we are human real experience involves live human beings who are, yes, no doubt, spraying their infectious germs on us. Those videos we keep seeing (often they are animations) in which masses of particulate are expelled when you speak or sneeze — or especially sing (singing apparently is the worst, far more toxic even than the COVID itself) — these images teach us to fear embodied experience. But it’s not just closeness — it’s shared experience in time. May I briefly, mourn for it? That’s what a play is, it only happens once in that particular way, and you experience it with other people, and the actors never do it the same way twice. (As actors know, some nights you are carried away by the audience, other nights you fight them. Either way, it’s alive, like Rosemary’s baby.) Last night I was standing outside Stock, a gay strip bar in Montreal. It was ‘ladies night,’ my favorite. There was the usual old guy dancing by himself — he just does that — from ecstasy (the feeling, not the drug). Only this time some of the patrons were gesturing for him to move away (COVID, you know). But nothing could stop all the crazy-screaming-out-of-control women in tiny leather skirts and shorts. They were in their element — ‘this is our place, is our bar, we’ve scared most of the men out for once!’ (Except the brave ones like me.) And outside was one of the tallest drag queens I have ever seen, she wore nearly foot-high platform heels. And she was beautiful, and she had a Chihuahua. And then another drag queen — not quite as tall, or quite as beautiful — joined her — and she too had a Chihuahua, and they spoke of them. Of Chihuahuas. In Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever, early on, there is a discussion about how to spell the word ‘weird.’ Well, one spells it like this.
It took an Andy Hardy movie. I don’t know if I’ve ever really watched one from beginning to end.
I spoke about Mickey Rooney — as a sex object at age 24 (see blog #75)— but here at age 19 I became him, he was me. I guess it’s always spring fever where I’m concerned. It’s always love, because I have not entirely discarded the breathless wonder I discovered when I first came out, when every man I had sex with was the real thing; like Andy Hardy I mistook each puppy-like obsession — even simple body worship — for the fulfillment of a hidden longing. What never ceases to confound me is the notion that one must have a feeling of emptiness after a promiscuous encounter. When a pale, tall, handsome youth walked into my room the other night at the baths —and this young God acted as if our intimacy was the most normal thing in the world — I felt as Andy Hardy feels about his teacher, Miss Meredith. (Played by Helen Gilbert — she has the same name as my grandmother, and my grandmother too, was a teacher.) I’m touched by all this (I’m somewhat ashamed to say) -- by a friggin’ Andy Hardy movie. And it isn’t just the foolish, fond early forays into lovemaking, it’s the ridiculous bravado he displays when he imagines he has grown up. What a treat to see Mickey Rooney come bounding down to dinner in a suit and tie with a bad British accent -- because he has been chosen to write the school play, and suddenly thinks he's Noel Coward. The voice Rooney takes out of his back pocket is very odd and very funny — a forced baritone his sister describes ‘like molasses running down the stairs.” Later too, after Mickey comes to terms with his unrequited love for Helen, he swaggers about in a very wise and world-weary way. He waves a rose in Helen’s face saying: “I’m going to keep this all my life. When it gets old and withered it will remind me of you.” And when he turns up at a party with friends his own age, he intones “I hope you children are enjoying your games.” All this, even in its ridiculous exaggeration, is accurate. But that's not what made me cry. Mickey Rooney writes a play, and it’s called ‘Adrift in Tahiti.’ He plays a ‘Rear Admiral’ while his usual adolescent paramour in these movies — Polly (Ann Rutherford) — plays ‘Tahoolah.’ The details of the play are beyond imagining; the best part is when the Rear Admiral rejects Tahoolah and she jumps into a volcano. There is a moon — which a boy with the unlikely name of ‘Stickin’ Plaster’ (Terry Kilburn) — is tasked with guiding smoothly across the sky; he messes it up, and is contrite, and the audience laughs. Mickey calls his masterpiece a ‘spiritual play of loves and renunciations.” His inspiration for writing it is scorn and rejection (I identify). He says: “A man isn’t altogether to blame when he finds he’s developing into the sensitive type.” (Again, I identify.) Mickey’s biggest problem though is the burning question — are there actually volcanos in Tahiti? This kind of question has plagued writers from the dawn of time; but Mickey doesn’t let something as frail and unconvincing as reality stop him. It is right that Tahoolah should jump into a volcano, and so she does. It is a fantasy performed in front of other people; it is as far from reality as anything can be, except that when we experience that fantasy with others, it becomes a reality of its own. You see -- in 1939 people still did that. Nothing makes me sadder than theatres in Toronto sending out press releases about the latest digital performances — "The Resiliance Project, "Alone Together""Let's Stay Together." I saw an image from Toronto of a bunch of people doing Yoga — all separately of course, in little plastic bubbles, each bubble with its own fan and Kleenex box, it really was too tragic. I don’t mean to be funny about this, because it really is ominous; watching us abandon experience as a necessary and redeeming thing. At the end of Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever Mickey and Helen sit outside. and there are crickets. Yes, there is nature, yes, you can always go up to the cottage and sit by yourself and have that. (And at this time of year I eat dusk, because dusks disappear -- the change of light in the afternoon on a cold winter day is not the same). But because we are human real experience involves live human beings who are, yes, no doubt, spraying their infectious germs on us. Those videos we keep seeing (often they are animations) in which masses of particulate are expelled when you speak or sneeze — or especially sing (singing apparently is the worst, far more toxic even than the COVID itself) — these images teach us to fear embodied experience. But it’s not just closeness — it’s shared experience in time. May I briefly, mourn for it? That’s what a play is, it only happens once in that particular way, and you experience it with other people, and the actors never do it the same way twice. (As actors know, some nights you are carried away by the audience, other nights you fight them. Either way, it’s alive, like Rosemary’s baby.) Last night I was standing outside Stock, a gay strip bar in Montreal. It was ‘ladies night,’ my favorite. There was the usual old guy dancing by himself — he just does that — from ecstasy (the feeling, not the drug). Only this time some of the patrons were gesturing for him to move away (COVID, you know). But nothing could stop all the crazy-screaming-out-of-control women in tiny leather skirts and shorts. They were in their element — ‘this is our place, is our bar, we’ve scared most of the men out for once!’ (Except the brave ones like me.) And outside was one of the tallest drag queens I have ever seen, she wore nearly foot-high platform heels. And she was beautiful, and she had a Chihuahua. And then another drag queen — not quite as tall, or quite as beautiful — joined her — and she too had a Chihuahua, and they spoke of them. Of Chihuahuas. In Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever, early on, there is a discussion about how to spell the word ‘weird.’ Well, one spells it like this.
Thursday, 16 July 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 119: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Marty (1955)
I remember this movie as the touching tale of a lonely, ordinary guy — the brutally realistic story of a man who is — well Marty himself says it — “just a fat ugly man!” One of the problems is that it is unlikely that a ‘fat ugly man’ would say that — but even more importantly for Paddy Chayefsky (the writer )— Marty would be a more interesting character if he didn’t. Chayefsky’s characters have a habit of describing themselves accurately directly to other people. Faye Dunaway (in Network) says “I apparently have a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely.” All this is unlikely, but the problem isn’t so much Chayefsky’s faults as a writer -- or even the fact that Marty is so proud of its class condescension — these are poor Italian people after all and we can’t help congratulating ourselves that we are open-minded enough to be watching a movie about them. I want to be on side; especially when everyone tells Marty to dump Betsy Blair because she’s too old and skinny — but nevertheless Marty asks her out on a second date because it means (unlike his superficial male pals) he‘ll always have a date for New Years. Yay Marty! — love who you wanna love, screw who you wanna screw. But I’ve been in lock down for four months, and I finally get to Montreal, and suddenly there are men everywhere, men who are — well, just the same as before — because men don’t change, they want it all the time and they want it now. But in Ontario I have been living in an alternate universe where suddenly the boys on GRINDr are posting signs that say “Stay Home, Stay Safe” -- instead of dic pics. I know that’s supposed to be admirable. But that’s the only reason they do it, to be admirable (or else they’ve been looking for an excuse to stop having sex for a long time and this is it). Marty’s male friends at the end of the movie are trying to get him to have fun: “Lets go down to 72nd street. We’ll walk around, we'll end up with something.” And -- “There’s a burlesque at Union City.” This is my life: boy strippers and yes, knowing that at the end of the night I’ll end up with ‘something.’ But Marty says “Burlesque, Louie’s Paradise — miserable and lonely and stupid - I gotta something good here, what am I doing here?” And he runs off to Betsy Blair. My first question is, why the ‘Sophie’s Choice’? Why does it have to be Betsy Blair or the Burlesque Palace? Why can’t she go with him? (She might learn something from -- or hook up with -- a fabulous sex trade worker!). Well I’m tired of this. I disagree with Peter Knegt. I read the stupidest article by him on the CBC website yesterday. I hardly know this guy at all. When I met him he looked like he was about 12 (but I’m ancient). This was about 15 years ago, and he was putting together some sort of gay guide to Toronto, and called me up and asked me to write something for it, as I was ‘pretty knowledgeable' about the Toronto gay scene. So I did. I didn’t hear much about him after that until he wrote a huge article about Buddies 40th anniversary (’40 Years 40 Queers’). Someone asked me if I wanted to be interviewed for the article— as one of the 40 people who had 'some association’ with Buddies. And I, prima donna that I am, said: ‘I founded this friggin’ theatre with my bare hands 40 years ago, and I’m not going to be interviewed along with 39 other people, could I have my own special interview please?” (I know, hate me, I deserve it). Anyway Peter Knegt subsequently published this damn article about Buddies and did not interview me. (I’m not sure if that was his decision; but I helped him out long ago, the least he could have done is reach out to me!) And then yesterday I had to read this smelly-pile-of-bilge-crap called ‘Gay culture has grown toxic with unchecked privilege. It's time for us to reset.’ Knegt ignores many issues that face gay men, including class, AIDS criminalisation, and homophobia, saying gay men are too privileged. Okay, can I tell you why Peter Knegt wrote this? Why any gay man goes around these days saying: “I’m so sorry I’m so privileged?” Why are gay men on the front lines on Facebook shaming people for not wearing masks? It’s a career move. Listen honestly, I’m not trying to demonise Peter Knegt. It’s not his fault — he’s a victim of circumstance -- caught in a paradigm. He’s got to have a career like anybody else, and the best way to get one these days — if you’re gay — is to apologise for being gay, deny there is a ‘gay sensibility’ and demolish gay culture (i.e. camp) -- and people like me who helped create it. Yes I am promiscuous, Yes, I love sleaze, yes I like to imagine my life is a film noir movie — and yes — a different man every night — bring ‘em on! I’ve lived this way for 67 years and I don’t expect to stop until I have to — (which I’m sure will happen soon). But what I’m saying is I think you can have that and still have love too, because if you like sex and/or promiscuity you are not a bad person-- and people will still love you. Years ago, a beautiful young man (the lover of my best friend at the time) cursed me. He hated me (truth be told he kind of hated everybody) so when I was whining about not having a lover he turned to me and said: “you’ll never have a lover because you’re a slut.” (His curse did not come true, and he’s the one who ended up alone, not me.) I go to a public pool occasionally in Montreal and there’s a young woman there who I am platonically in love with. She is some kind of demented Marilyn Monroe. She has humungous breasts and long straight platinum blonde dyed hair. She wears sunglasses and hat, and carries a little clear plastic purse. She kind of toddles across the pool deck, causing much rolling of eyes among the fashionable young hipsters. Today, on top of her red bikini top and thong, she wore a translucent-black-lace-nighty-sort-of-thing. She appears to be stoned. I love her, but I don’t know her story — so I'm making it up. To me she seems a tragic slut — because someone has cursed her too, and told her that she will never in this lifetime find true love. Yes you will, honey — I guarantee it! I am living breathing proof that sluts can be happy, and that only the very best men love them. But I’m worried about Peter Knegt. In his his latest article, he says he's looking to ‘find the love of his life.’ I gotta tell you, Peter, for your own good, if you don’t start getting slutty fast, it might just not ever happen.
I remember this movie as the touching tale of a lonely, ordinary guy — the brutally realistic story of a man who is — well Marty himself says it — “just a fat ugly man!” One of the problems is that it is unlikely that a ‘fat ugly man’ would say that — but even more importantly for Paddy Chayefsky (the writer )— Marty would be a more interesting character if he didn’t. Chayefsky’s characters have a habit of describing themselves accurately directly to other people. Faye Dunaway (in Network) says “I apparently have a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely.” All this is unlikely, but the problem isn’t so much Chayefsky’s faults as a writer -- or even the fact that Marty is so proud of its class condescension — these are poor Italian people after all and we can’t help congratulating ourselves that we are open-minded enough to be watching a movie about them. I want to be on side; especially when everyone tells Marty to dump Betsy Blair because she’s too old and skinny — but nevertheless Marty asks her out on a second date because it means (unlike his superficial male pals) he‘ll always have a date for New Years. Yay Marty! — love who you wanna love, screw who you wanna screw. But I’ve been in lock down for four months, and I finally get to Montreal, and suddenly there are men everywhere, men who are — well, just the same as before — because men don’t change, they want it all the time and they want it now. But in Ontario I have been living in an alternate universe where suddenly the boys on GRINDr are posting signs that say “Stay Home, Stay Safe” -- instead of dic pics. I know that’s supposed to be admirable. But that’s the only reason they do it, to be admirable (or else they’ve been looking for an excuse to stop having sex for a long time and this is it). Marty’s male friends at the end of the movie are trying to get him to have fun: “Lets go down to 72nd street. We’ll walk around, we'll end up with something.” And -- “There’s a burlesque at Union City.” This is my life: boy strippers and yes, knowing that at the end of the night I’ll end up with ‘something.’ But Marty says “Burlesque, Louie’s Paradise — miserable and lonely and stupid - I gotta something good here, what am I doing here?” And he runs off to Betsy Blair. My first question is, why the ‘Sophie’s Choice’? Why does it have to be Betsy Blair or the Burlesque Palace? Why can’t she go with him? (She might learn something from -- or hook up with -- a fabulous sex trade worker!). Well I’m tired of this. I disagree with Peter Knegt. I read the stupidest article by him on the CBC website yesterday. I hardly know this guy at all. When I met him he looked like he was about 12 (but I’m ancient). This was about 15 years ago, and he was putting together some sort of gay guide to Toronto, and called me up and asked me to write something for it, as I was ‘pretty knowledgeable' about the Toronto gay scene. So I did. I didn’t hear much about him after that until he wrote a huge article about Buddies 40th anniversary (’40 Years 40 Queers’). Someone asked me if I wanted to be interviewed for the article— as one of the 40 people who had 'some association’ with Buddies. And I, prima donna that I am, said: ‘I founded this friggin’ theatre with my bare hands 40 years ago, and I’m not going to be interviewed along with 39 other people, could I have my own special interview please?” (I know, hate me, I deserve it). Anyway Peter Knegt subsequently published this damn article about Buddies and did not interview me. (I’m not sure if that was his decision; but I helped him out long ago, the least he could have done is reach out to me!) And then yesterday I had to read this smelly-pile-of-bilge-crap called ‘Gay culture has grown toxic with unchecked privilege. It's time for us to reset.’ Knegt ignores many issues that face gay men, including class, AIDS criminalisation, and homophobia, saying gay men are too privileged. Okay, can I tell you why Peter Knegt wrote this? Why any gay man goes around these days saying: “I’m so sorry I’m so privileged?” Why are gay men on the front lines on Facebook shaming people for not wearing masks? It’s a career move. Listen honestly, I’m not trying to demonise Peter Knegt. It’s not his fault — he’s a victim of circumstance -- caught in a paradigm. He’s got to have a career like anybody else, and the best way to get one these days — if you’re gay — is to apologise for being gay, deny there is a ‘gay sensibility’ and demolish gay culture (i.e. camp) -- and people like me who helped create it. Yes I am promiscuous, Yes, I love sleaze, yes I like to imagine my life is a film noir movie — and yes — a different man every night — bring ‘em on! I’ve lived this way for 67 years and I don’t expect to stop until I have to — (which I’m sure will happen soon). But what I’m saying is I think you can have that and still have love too, because if you like sex and/or promiscuity you are not a bad person-- and people will still love you. Years ago, a beautiful young man (the lover of my best friend at the time) cursed me. He hated me (truth be told he kind of hated everybody) so when I was whining about not having a lover he turned to me and said: “you’ll never have a lover because you’re a slut.” (His curse did not come true, and he’s the one who ended up alone, not me.) I go to a public pool occasionally in Montreal and there’s a young woman there who I am platonically in love with. She is some kind of demented Marilyn Monroe. She has humungous breasts and long straight platinum blonde dyed hair. She wears sunglasses and hat, and carries a little clear plastic purse. She kind of toddles across the pool deck, causing much rolling of eyes among the fashionable young hipsters. Today, on top of her red bikini top and thong, she wore a translucent-black-lace-nighty-sort-of-thing. She appears to be stoned. I love her, but I don’t know her story — so I'm making it up. To me she seems a tragic slut — because someone has cursed her too, and told her that she will never in this lifetime find true love. Yes you will, honey — I guarantee it! I am living breathing proof that sluts can be happy, and that only the very best men love them. But I’m worried about Peter Knegt. In his his latest article, he says he's looking to ‘find the love of his life.’ I gotta tell you, Peter, for your own good, if you don’t start getting slutty fast, it might just not ever happen.
Wednesday, 15 July 2020
PLAGUE DIARY 118: SKY WRITES REVIEWS OF OLD BAD HOLLYWOOD MOVIES TO KEEP HIM SANE DURING THIS TIME OF HORRIFIC INSANITY
Point Blank (1967)
I wasn’t prepared for this one. It’s an art film masquerading as film noir (shot in Technicolor). I was distracted by one irritating aspect of John Boorman’s sensibility. (He directed Deliverance, after all.) The content of this film is so incredibly macho — so misogynist — it made me feel like an uninvited guest at an stag party. However the form of the film is quite the opposite. It has a diffuse artiness that flirts, flits and dawdles over the images in an almost masturbatory way. Yes, it’s very sexual, but that’s because it’s all about power. (I just wish the power wasn’t all in the hands of the men.) Sharon Acker -- Marvin's wife and his buddy John Vernon's sexbuddy -- appears briefly and muses: “How good it must be, being dead…….is it?” and promptly commits suicide. The only other women in this movie are Angie Dickinson and a fat woman at a cocktail party who says “Lunches, dinners — I’m getting as fat as a pig.” I’ve never understood the appeal of Angie Dickinson — of course she’s sexy, but so what? To call the violence in Point Blank gratuitous would be an understatement, men are constantly overpowering other men. I often forget straight men are so obsessed with dominating each other. It seems to me to be about internalized homophobia, but I’m prejudiced. Why can’t they just leave that other big guy alone? Why do they always have to kill him or torture him? Here it’s about money; Lee Marvin wants the $93,000, now. In one pretty unforgettable scene he takes Michael Strong for a drive in a new car and proceeds to crash it into telephone poles and bridge abutments. Why doesn’t Marvin just punch him out? But no, Marvin is so macho he has to wreck a car. Later Marvin throws a nude John Vernon off a building. It’s the touch of sexuality — of naked humiliation — that I find a disturbingly erotic. There are three gay characters in the film. Marvin makes two guys tie themselves up together — one of them is obviously effeminate. And later Marvin is watching a movie on TV (I looked it up — the scene is from a movie called The Cobweb, with John Kerr -- who played the conflicted young homosexual in Tea and Sympathy. In the clip Kerr speaks of getting over his “neurotic inertia.” What could be gayer than that?). I know it sounds like I’m creating something out of nothing here, and I probably am, but to me when men dominate other men it’s kinda sick if it’s not just a sexual game. One of my favourite — but again nutty — moments? When Angie Dickinson gets so angry with Lee Marvin she flails at him, with her fists, her purse, her body. He just stands there and takes it. (Never has one image made it so clear that men are nightmarishly stronger than women.) Finally she collapses on the floor in an exhausted heap, and he turns on the TV. Another favourite moment - demonstrating Boorman’s ‘arty’ side — is when Marvin and Dickinson start making love. They keep rolling sideways, towards the camera, and after the first roll, Lee Marvin is having sex with Sharon Acker, and then they roll again, and it’s John Vernon having sex with Sharon Acker. Well it’s the 60s after all — but what a startling and eloquent visual equivalent of what — promiscuity? degrees of separation? a daisy chain? Point Blank is chockful of similar craziness — images that seem to remind the filmmaker (or Lee Marvin) of other images, and suddenly we are hurled back into a previous scene, or a future scene — where the same words or similar words — are spoken. Film Historian David Thomson calls it “a wistful dream and reflection on how movies are just fantasies.” Yes, but what also interests me is the girl inside John Boorman, the lady who drifts aimlessly from allusion to illusion — very unlike Lee Marvin who is out to get that money, period. Poetry is gendered. It is women’s work. (So why weren’t there more great women poets? It’s called oppression.) But since poetry is essentially feminine there’s always a certain amount of overcompensating going on. That’s why Hemingway had an obsession with big guns and lean prose. James Joyce, I am quite certain, was a sexual submissive, obsessed with cunnilingus — it’s apparent not only from his dirty letters to his wife, but also from his, excessive, complex, ornamented writing style. A dominatrix friend once explained to me the difference between a top and a bottom: ‘Do you want to decide what you’re going to do in bed or let somebody else do it?’ Well of course I’ve always left the decision up to my effortlessly masculine partner. She also said: ‘since you are a submissive — don’t let a lot of people know, or they’ll make you wait at the end of the line at movies’. Well this was obviously John Boorman’s issue, ergo the men in his flicks are always tying each other up and shooting each other, while, paradoxically, the images are allowed to freely associate, and hook up with whom and whatever they wish, promiscuously. After Marvin turns on the TV he watches a concert, an old movie, a cartoon, and than an advertisement for cosmetics. Then he hears noise coming from the kitchen. In her anger, Angie Dickinson has turned on all the appliances in the kitchen — which he then turns off one by one. Soon she starts speaking to him on a loudspeaker (it's a very modern, luxurious house). It’s all has the feel of a dream. But we know whether we're awake or dreaming, don’t we? But couldn’t we not only be dreaming when we are awake, but also dreaming that we are awake? It’s the kind of uncertainty Lee Marvin wouldn’t like. There is one moment that makes me want to forgive John Boorman for all his excesses — that’s when Dickinson’s hand wanders aimlessly but lovingly over Marvin’s furry, muscled abdomen — did Boorman’s free association triumph over his heterosexual content here? Here's the question: would we rather be Lee Marvin the decisive killer, or Lee Marvin drifting lost among the kitchen appliances Dickinson has deliberately left on? The choice that seems less free may just seem less free — that is, it may seem deceptively so.
I wasn’t prepared for this one. It’s an art film masquerading as film noir (shot in Technicolor). I was distracted by one irritating aspect of John Boorman’s sensibility. (He directed Deliverance, after all.) The content of this film is so incredibly macho — so misogynist — it made me feel like an uninvited guest at an stag party. However the form of the film is quite the opposite. It has a diffuse artiness that flirts, flits and dawdles over the images in an almost masturbatory way. Yes, it’s very sexual, but that’s because it’s all about power. (I just wish the power wasn’t all in the hands of the men.) Sharon Acker -- Marvin's wife and his buddy John Vernon's sexbuddy -- appears briefly and muses: “How good it must be, being dead…….is it?” and promptly commits suicide. The only other women in this movie are Angie Dickinson and a fat woman at a cocktail party who says “Lunches, dinners — I’m getting as fat as a pig.” I’ve never understood the appeal of Angie Dickinson — of course she’s sexy, but so what? To call the violence in Point Blank gratuitous would be an understatement, men are constantly overpowering other men. I often forget straight men are so obsessed with dominating each other. It seems to me to be about internalized homophobia, but I’m prejudiced. Why can’t they just leave that other big guy alone? Why do they always have to kill him or torture him? Here it’s about money; Lee Marvin wants the $93,000, now. In one pretty unforgettable scene he takes Michael Strong for a drive in a new car and proceeds to crash it into telephone poles and bridge abutments. Why doesn’t Marvin just punch him out? But no, Marvin is so macho he has to wreck a car. Later Marvin throws a nude John Vernon off a building. It’s the touch of sexuality — of naked humiliation — that I find a disturbingly erotic. There are three gay characters in the film. Marvin makes two guys tie themselves up together — one of them is obviously effeminate. And later Marvin is watching a movie on TV (I looked it up — the scene is from a movie called The Cobweb, with John Kerr -- who played the conflicted young homosexual in Tea and Sympathy. In the clip Kerr speaks of getting over his “neurotic inertia.” What could be gayer than that?). I know it sounds like I’m creating something out of nothing here, and I probably am, but to me when men dominate other men it’s kinda sick if it’s not just a sexual game. One of my favourite — but again nutty — moments? When Angie Dickinson gets so angry with Lee Marvin she flails at him, with her fists, her purse, her body. He just stands there and takes it. (Never has one image made it so clear that men are nightmarishly stronger than women.) Finally she collapses on the floor in an exhausted heap, and he turns on the TV. Another favourite moment - demonstrating Boorman’s ‘arty’ side — is when Marvin and Dickinson start making love. They keep rolling sideways, towards the camera, and after the first roll, Lee Marvin is having sex with Sharon Acker, and then they roll again, and it’s John Vernon having sex with Sharon Acker. Well it’s the 60s after all — but what a startling and eloquent visual equivalent of what — promiscuity? degrees of separation? a daisy chain? Point Blank is chockful of similar craziness — images that seem to remind the filmmaker (or Lee Marvin) of other images, and suddenly we are hurled back into a previous scene, or a future scene — where the same words or similar words — are spoken. Film Historian David Thomson calls it “a wistful dream and reflection on how movies are just fantasies.” Yes, but what also interests me is the girl inside John Boorman, the lady who drifts aimlessly from allusion to illusion — very unlike Lee Marvin who is out to get that money, period. Poetry is gendered. It is women’s work. (So why weren’t there more great women poets? It’s called oppression.) But since poetry is essentially feminine there’s always a certain amount of overcompensating going on. That’s why Hemingway had an obsession with big guns and lean prose. James Joyce, I am quite certain, was a sexual submissive, obsessed with cunnilingus — it’s apparent not only from his dirty letters to his wife, but also from his, excessive, complex, ornamented writing style. A dominatrix friend once explained to me the difference between a top and a bottom: ‘Do you want to decide what you’re going to do in bed or let somebody else do it?’ Well of course I’ve always left the decision up to my effortlessly masculine partner. She also said: ‘since you are a submissive — don’t let a lot of people know, or they’ll make you wait at the end of the line at movies’. Well this was obviously John Boorman’s issue, ergo the men in his flicks are always tying each other up and shooting each other, while, paradoxically, the images are allowed to freely associate, and hook up with whom and whatever they wish, promiscuously. After Marvin turns on the TV he watches a concert, an old movie, a cartoon, and than an advertisement for cosmetics. Then he hears noise coming from the kitchen. In her anger, Angie Dickinson has turned on all the appliances in the kitchen — which he then turns off one by one. Soon she starts speaking to him on a loudspeaker (it's a very modern, luxurious house). It’s all has the feel of a dream. But we know whether we're awake or dreaming, don’t we? But couldn’t we not only be dreaming when we are awake, but also dreaming that we are awake? It’s the kind of uncertainty Lee Marvin wouldn’t like. There is one moment that makes me want to forgive John Boorman for all his excesses — that’s when Dickinson’s hand wanders aimlessly but lovingly over Marvin’s furry, muscled abdomen — did Boorman’s free association triumph over his heterosexual content here? Here's the question: would we rather be Lee Marvin the decisive killer, or Lee Marvin drifting lost among the kitchen appliances Dickinson has deliberately left on? The choice that seems less free may just seem less free — that is, it may seem deceptively so.
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