Silence of Lambs at 30: Still Crazy After All These Years

By Steve Evans

Having seen more than 15,000 films in a lifelong love affair with the cinema, I can say to a certainty that only four have truly terrified me and one of those is The Silence of the Lambs, released 30 years ago today. Like Alien (1979), Jaws (1975) and Psycho (1960), it is difficult to convey the sensation of dread that Silence of the Lambs invokes in the first-time viewer. You have to experience it for yourself.

Most people know the picture. Fewer know that the film runs 2 hours and 18 minutes or that Anthony Hopkins is on-screen for a mere 16 of those minutes, yet his presence is felt constantly. B-movie producer Roger Corman, who gave director Jonathan Demme his start in the business, makes a cameo as the director of the FBI. A professor of mine in grad’ school went to college with Ted Levine, who plays serial killer Buffalo Bill. The professor told me it wasn’t a huge acting stretch. Michelle Pfeiffer turned down the role of Special Agent Clarice Starling, claiming the material was too violent. This, from the woman who co-starred in Scarface (1983). Gene Hackman was originally slated to direct and play a supporting role as Detective Crawford, the part that ultimately went to Scott Glenn. But Hackman pulled out and Demme took over in the director's chair.

Hindsight being 20/20, what makes Demme such an interesting choice to direct Silence of the Lambs is he got his start making sleazy, sexist women-in-prison flicks in the early 1970s, but in Silence he created one of the greatest feminist motion pictures of all time. As Clarice, Jodie Foster is ogled by men within the first 10 minutes of the movie and continuously thereafter until the end credits. She works for the FBI, one of the most patriarchal organizations in existence. She elegantly rebuffs the repugnant advances of a criminal psychologist in the insane asylum where she interviews Hannibal Lector and is met with further indignities by the inmate-patients in the dungeon-like hospital. And, of course, she is in pursuit of a monster who murders and skins women in order to become a woman himself within the twisted corridors of his pathology. Quite the ordeal. Yet Clarice prevails.

Let’s see…one other bit of trivia I can offer: in the climactic scene, when Buffalo Bill is stalking Clarice in a darkened room, he uses night vision goggles to observe her (the male gaze again) and you can see the shadow of his pistol on Clarice’s back – a revealing mistake that they were using green lighting effects and dialing down the aperture on the camera to make the room appear pitch-black (where there should be no shadows). A minor quibble from a film obsessive. C’est moi.

Certain crime stories and subsequent film adaptations like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are the direct descendants of The Silence of the Lambs. So enduring is the character of Clarice that CBS recently launched a television show centered around her FBI career. I’ve read the reviews and do not plan to watch it.

Silence also holds the distinction of being the last film – and only the third in history – to sweep the Holy Quintet of Academy Awards – best picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay. The best picture win alone makes it unique among horror films.

Rich, multilayered and scary as hell, The Silence of the Lambs became an instant classic. So pull the cork on a nice Chianti, serve up some spicy buffalo wings and watch the film tonight with someone you love. It is, after all, Valentine’s Day.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2021 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

 

Ridin' a Carousel with Gerry and the Pacemakers

By Steve Evans

Famed composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein created the Broadway musical Carousel in 1945 when a little fellow named Gerry Marsden would have been three years old. The musical was adapted 11 years later into a major motion picture filmed in a stunning, ultra-widescreen process known as CinemaScope. Carousel also features, hands-down, the greatest composition to be heard in any American musical. It is the only song I know of besides Danny Boy that can leave strong men crying in their beer.

Gerry went on to form a band called The Pacemakers. He covered this great tune in 1963 when he was 21 years old and had just signed a contract with Brian Epstein, who by then had added a little band called The Beatles to his stable of groups under management.

Gerry and the Pacemakers never achieved The Beatles’ stratospheric heights of success, but they cut some damn-fine singles and You’ll Never Walk Alone is one of them.

Marsden died yesterday. He was 78.

Seek out the 1956 Hollywood adaptation of Carousel as well. It’s the best musical the studio system ever produced. An absolutely devastating cinematic experience.

The expression of encouragement in this song is so powerful it is almost overwhelming.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2021 by Stephen B. Evans. All rights reserved.

A nod to Murnau, who'd be 132 today

 By Steve Evans

Remembering F. W. Murnau, German expressionist director born on this day in 1888. He is perhaps most famous for directing Nosferatu (1922), the original Dracula film. For my money, Faust (1926), pictured here, is his masterpiece. It is an adaptation of Goethe’s famous tale of a kindly man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for curing his village of plague. Except nothing ever works out the way it’s supposed to. Stunning chiaroscuro cinematography, wild set designs and innovative special effects combine to create an eerie and irresistible film experience. Walt Disney shamelessly lifted several sequences for the Night on Bald Mountain climax of Fantasia (1940).

Murnau later immigrated to America and made three films before dying in Los Angeles in a car accident. His driver, a 14-year-old servant, crashed into a utility pole. Murnau was 42. More than a third of his cinematic output is lost to the ravages of time, but you can still see Nosferatu and Faust. And you should.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2020 by Stephen B. Evans. All rights reserved.

Hanging Out with D.A. Pennebaker

 By Steve Evans

When I met one of my idols about four years ago, documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker, we talked for a bit about his film Monterey Pop, which chronicles the legendary rock music festival in the summer of 1967. It’s my favorite concert film, the template by which all others are judged. The vibe really resonates in my spirit. And the music is fantastic. Woodstock has flashier editing and offers marginally better sound. Gimme Shelter climaxes with an on-camera murder while the Stones crank out Under My Thumb. Zeppelin’s Song Remains the Same, while wall-to-wall with great performances, will clear out your sinus cavities and possibly pluck on your nerves due to the amateurish filmmaking and sloppy editing. Scorsese’s The Last Waltz is beautiful, but elegiac and at times melancholy. Demme’s Stop Making Sense has the coked-up freneticism and weirdness that were hallmarks of The Talking Heads in the mid-1980s. All are good, each in their own way, but….

Only Monterey Pop really nails the scene with its cinéma vérité style (sometimes referred to as “fly on the wall” – observing subjects as unobtrusively as possible). There are absolutely amazing moments peppered throughout this picture. We see that rock stars are as human as everyone else, with all their flaws and foibles, until they hit the stage and become transcendent. I find that fascinating.

The Mamas and Papas were unraveling as the event was happening, even as band leader John Phillips was producing the entire festival with famed rock impresario Lou Adler. The tension shows. John’s wife and fellow band member Michelle had been fired and rehired less than a year earlier after she was caught screwing Gene Clark, lead singer for The Byrds. Mama Cass was in unrequited love with fellow band member Denny Doherty, who also had a fling with Michelle before Monterrey Pop, which would be their penultimate appearance in concert as a group. Improbably, their performance is still a knockout. David Crosby makes political statements while onstage with The Byrds (Gene Clark had quit the band by then), dares censors to censor him, then later appears onstage with Stephen Stills in a set by Buffalo Springfield, a move that got Crosby fired from the Byrds soon after. Cutaway shots to the audience clearly show most of them are tripping balls & titties, and eating a lot of corn on the cob on a stick. In one of the outtakes, comedian Tom Smothers introduces Paul Simon by making a joke about his height. Simon is not amused. Janis Joplin and Ravi Shankar bring down the house with their respective sets. The Who and Jimi Hendrix aren't too shabby, either. Country Joe and the Fish act like they've just arrived from another planet. For background texture, you’ll see a parade of rock royalty roaming through the crowds and backstage. It's bittersweet. At least 7 of the musicians glimpsed in the picture would be dead in less than a decade. Otis Redding was the first to depart. Monterrey Pop made him famous. Six months later, he was dead in a plane crash. Many, many more have left us in the half century since.

I'm babbling about all this to express my love of documentary film, which to me is the best time capsule of all.

D.A. was generous with his time while we were hanging out at the University of Virginia’s Culbreth Theater. At the end of our conversation he declared me “family,” which was an honor only a true cinephile can fully appreciate. I was touched.

One of things we talked about was the challenge of condensing a three-day music festival into a fleeting 79 minutes and 22 seconds of documentary film. D.A. said the editing decisions were among the toughest of his career.  Technical problems in the wild, like film jamming in a camera or the sudden death of batteries in a tape recorder, rendered the footage of some of the bands’ sets unusable. Several of the groups were so stoned that they later objected to being included in the film. So they landed on the cutting room floor. D.A. sculpted miles of footage into a finished film, plus nearly two hours of outtakes left over, and he edited, but did not use, the complete performances of Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding, running about 45 and 20 minutes, respectively.

D.A. explained that because the project was originally planned for television on the ABC network and consequently the film had to run under 90 minutes to allow for commercial breaks, he had to make some difficult choices on what to include. ABC executives apparently were not prepared for what they would get. Jaws reportedly dropped when the finished film was screened. By the time they saw Hendrix humping his amplifier and setting his guitar on fire, the TV people decided to pass on broadcasting the picture. So Monterey Pop ended up getting the theatrical release it always deserved. It was heralded as an instant classic of the documentary form. But by the time the TV executives walked away from the project, it was finished and in the can. So much material had to be left out.

D. A. Pennebaker died last year in August. He was 94.

I was mulling these thoughts last night when I pulled my boxed set of the documentary off the shelf. Like a monkey playing with a bone in Kubrick’s 2001, it dawned on me that I have nearly 6 hours of material on discs, plus access to additional clips here and there online that could be downloaded.

I found the original Monterrey Pop set list for the entire 3-day festival posted on Wikipedia, song by song.

And then it hit me.

By Gawd, my weekend entertainment will be spent in my editing suite. I am going to disassemble the outtakes into individual clips, organize them into the proper sequence as originally performed and cut them together with optical transitions to smooth out the finished product. I have wondered for decades what it must have been like to attend that ungodly music festival. This is as close as I am ever likely to get. 

I don’t expect many or even a few to understand these obsessions of mine, but I believe D.A. would. We are, after all, family.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2020 by Stephen B. Evans. All rights reserved.

Wither the Theater?

 By Steve Evans

Never thought I’d live to see the demise of movie theaters, though now that it’s on the horizon the prospect bothers me much less than I would have imagined. This observation comes on the news yesterday that Warner Bros., the second-largest movie studio in the world (behind Disney), will simultaneously release all its films next year both in theaters and on the streaming service of sister company HBOMax. This is said to be a temporary maneuver related to the COVID pandemic, but get real: there’s no putting this genie back in the bottle.

When people realize they can see new movies at home for no additional cost beyond their monthly streaming subscription, it’s game over for movie theaters. Consumers want choices and, increasingly, instant gratification. Nobody wants to wait the customary 90 days from a theatrical release to the availability of a film for home viewing. Streaming on demand has spoiled us all.

The economics of movie going have also changed drastically since I was a kid, when $5 would get you into a matinee with money left over for popcorn and soda. Tickets were $1.75 when I was 10 years old. Today you’re looking at a nationwide average of $9 and it’s more like $11 where I live.

Charging $10 for 50 cents’ worth of popcorn also does not endear the theater experience to consumers. And $7 for a splash of Coke in an ice cup is borderline criminal.

Even these silly prices might not matter if going to the movies was actually still a pleasant experience. Last time I was inside a cinema, two giggling teenagers a couple rows in front of me were seated side by side – and texting each other, with little beeps and boops signaling the arrival of each new message. I wanted to knock their skulls together like coconuts, but I couldn’t move because my shoes were stuck to the floor, sticky with spilled soda.

I thought, why the hell should film lovers put up with this bullshit? The simple truth is that anyone with about $2,000 can set up a perfectly respectable home theater system with a 4K television and surround sound powerful enough to knock monkeys out of trees. If you’re accustomed to going out to the movies twice a month with a companion, pour the money into home theater; it pays for itself in under two years.

The only justification I can make for going out to the movies anymore is to see a genuine blockbuster. The latest James Bond movie can only be appreciated to the fullest when it’s exploding across a 50-foot screen. An Ingmar Bergman revival? Not so much.

I wouldn’t mind if drive-in theaters made a comeback. Not because movies look or sound good at an outdoor venue (they don't), but because scandalous things happen at a drive-in. It’s fun fogging up the car windows. But with home theater you can watch movies buck-nekkid with your date. That's fun, too.

So the Warner Bros. experiment, I predict, will prompt other studios to follow this new pattern. It's good business for the studios, which typically split ticket revenues 50-50 with theaters. Showing your own film on your own streaming service means you get to keep all the money.

Movie theaters, if they continue to exist, will likely become venues for “event” experiences. Blockbuster movies. Concerts piped in via satellite. Possibly specialty programming, like a week of classic films noir – especially rare titles that can’t be had online for streaming. This presupposes an audience exists for this type of fare. On reflection, I would probably be the only one in the auditorium. That suits me just fine. And th-th-th-that’s all, folks.

A Picture for a Dollar on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

By Steve Evans

About a decade ago I watched a wildly entertaining and mildly disturbing documentary called Confessions of a Superhero (2007). The film follows four street performers who dress up in costumes and prowl Hollywood Boulevard, offering to take photos with tourists for tips. Sometimes they get aggressive in their pursuit of those tips and police get involved.

Aside from the obvious mental problems many of these performers exhibit, what struck me was their unanimous determination to become movie stars, despite the absence of any discernable talent. They had convinced themselves that panhandling in superhero costumes would lead to discovery, movie offers, fame and fortune. In the 12 years since the documentary was released, the gal who roleplayed as Wonder Woman went on to marry B-movie star Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers; 1997), so you could say she came the closest to success.

Mostly, though, the documentary is a meditation on our cultural obsession with celebrity. And what is life without the pursuit of a dream?

To that I say there are dreams and then there are delusions, and some people cannot tell the difference.

I mention all this because Christopher Dennis, the street performer who dressed up as Superman, was one of the first costumed panhandlers on Hollywood Boulevard. Some say he bore an uncanny resemblance to Christopher Reeves, who played Superman in four movies from 1978-1987.

Dennis had been panhandling in costume more than 25 years when his body was found over the weekend head-first in a clothing donation bin in the San Fernando Valley, about 10 miles from where he plied his trade. He was 52. Early police reports say no foul play is suspected and that he was most likely rooting around for something to wear.

Dennis had frequently been homeless. A recovering drug addict, his wife left him after being unable to cope with the 15,000 items of Superman memorabilia he had packed into their trailer. A couple years ago, another homeless man nearly beat Dennis to death with a golf club, stole his Superman costume and set it on fire. With the help of a friend, Dennis raised some money with a crowdfunding campaign to buy another costume. The leftover funds paid for rent until the money ran out and he was back on the streets.

Dennis claims several times in the documentary that he is the son of Sandy Dennis, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). There is no record of Sandy Dennis ever having had a child. The actress died in 1992. Christopher Dennis stuck to his story and shared it with anyone who would listen until the day he died.

We could dwell on the sorrow & the pity of a life lived tragically along the boulevard of broken dreams, but that’s not what I’m about. No, I was shaking my head this morning at the outpouring of sympathy for Christopher Dennis in certain corners of the Internet. Condolences are all very nice and, yes, even obligatory. I merely wish that people who make a big deal over a troubled person’s death, especially people close to that person, would instead have done something helpful while the individual was still alive.

Rubbernecking is borne on the natural human instinct of satisfying our curiosity and to some degree that’s what documentary films deliver. Confessions of a Superhero is a fascinating glimpse into the lives of damaged people clinging to threads of hope. But on reflection, I see that if rubbernecking is all we do, then we’re not part of the solution; we’re part of the problem. So I’m delivering a case of canned goods this evening to Loaves & Fishes, the local food pantry. It’s not much, I confess, but perhaps it compensates somewhat for this lengthy post. Thanks for reading.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve B. Evans. All rights reserved.

Eddie Murphy is 0utta Sight in My Name is Dolemite

By Steve Evans “I believe in America.” That’s the opening line in The Godfather (1972). It’s also a sentiment I share. Because of that belief, I’ve always rooted for the underdog and embraced rags-to-riches stories. I’ve also been a fan of the late comedian Rudy Ray Moore since before I was old enough to buy and listen to his records legally. Rudy told absolutely filthy jokes in a wild, rapping rhyme style while wearing fluorescent tuxedoes and flaunting a gloriously defiant attitude. Rudy was a poor black dude who escaped Arkansas, made it to Los Angeles, and eventually recorded some top-selling comedy albums and shot a few films during the 1970s heyday of Blaxploitation cinema. We’re talking films with improbable titles like Disco Godfather and The Human Tornado and Dolemite, the name of Rudy’s signature character.
Dolemite was always persecuted by whitey and harassed by vicious drug dealers in the ‘hood. But he knew how to street fight and had an army of fabulous Kung Fu bitches at his beck and call. Plus some retina-burning fashions and an ungodly vocabulary. These movies were made on the cheap and are among the most entertaining motion pictures you’ve probably never seen.
Eddie Murphy transforms into this self-made entrepreneur in the new Netflix film, Dolemite is My Name. It’s dynamite. I have sorely missed Eddie Murphy doing what he does best – balls-to-the-wall street comedy. Having seen all of Rudy Ray Moore’s films, I can tell you unequivocally that Murphy nails the character and the man behind him. This is Oscar-worthy stuff. Also extremely foul-mouthed and hilarious.
Funnier still, the spot-on script about 1970s black culture was written by a couple of white boys: Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, perhaps best known for writing the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon (1999). They totally capture the era of urban cinema, of hustlers and hucksters, and give Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Snoop Dogg, Chris Rock and others some of their best material in years. This is a great film. Would make a terrific double feature with The Disaster Artist -- stories that reinforce the notion that determination, not talent, is often the greater key to success.
God, I love this country. I believe in America.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve B. Evans. All rights reserved.

Walking the Walk

By Steve Evans

When I was 10 years old, in 1973, I experienced the heart-stopping fear of vertigo during a visit to the observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. That terror of heights stopped only when I cured myself 12 years later by skydiving from the first plane I ever flew in.

It is nothing compared to tonight’s double feature, the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire (2008), which chronicles the death-defying tightrope stunt of Philippe Petit, and The Walk (2015), a fictionalized account of the same event. And what was this event, you ask?

Petit and several accomplices in 1974 rigged a cable between the Twin Towers in NYC under cover of darkness and at dawn he crossed that thin umbilical on foot multiple times some 200 feet between the skyscrapers, back and forth, at a height of nearly 1,800 feet over lower Manhattan, stooping on one knee to salute the cheering crowd far below and laying on his back along the cable minutes later, without benefit of safety equipment. He pranced on the wire for about 45 minutes before high winds and a police helicopter threatened to knock him off his precarious perch. So he returned to the north tower.

The police handcuffed the aerialist and read him his Miranda rights. Petit was taken to a hospital for psychiatric examination, then booked for disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing. Under details of the complaint, the arresting officer wrote only “Man on Wire.” The same afternoon, Aug. 7, 1974, Manhattan’s district attorney dropped all charges in return for Petit’s agreement to give a free aerial performance in Central Park, this time only a few feet off the ground. He did.

The Twin Towers are long gone. Inspiration, though, is forever.

I share this not so much in enduring astonishment at Petit’s titanium balls and divine madness in pursuit of an artistic vision, but because life is beautiful, great art should be breathtaking and fear is only a state of mind to be conquered.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Tarantino's Greek Chorus

By Steve Evans

Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino understand how to use songs in a film like no other living director. Take your pick: Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Casino, Jackie Brown, The Departed, Django Unchained. Brilliant music in every one. Great song selections underline the storyline without bludgeoning home the point.

Both men have new films coming out this year. Tarantino’s lands first. The full trailer for Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood dropped today and it promises amazing entertainment. A film about lost innocence along the boulevard of broken dreams. I encourage you to check out the new trailer on YouTube.

Back on point, one of the tunes he’s using on the soundtrack is by the obscure band Los Bravos. It’s a typical Tarantino choice: all but forgotten, catchy as hell, contemporaneous to the film’s setting and brimming with sly commentary about the onscreen action. Just like a great soundtrack should.

So if you know the fate of Sharon Tate and listen to the lyrics of Bring a Little Lovin', you’ll discover that Tarantino still brings a positively wicked sense of ironic counterpoint to his song selections. There’s a reason he has a rep as one of the hippest cats in the movie bidness. As for Sharon and bug-eyed Charlie Manson, whether Tarantino attempts to rewrite history à la Inglourious Basterds will be determined July 26. Unless you're among the fortunate who got to see the premiere at Cannes this afternoon, after which Tarantino and his cast received a six-minute standing ovation.


Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Want to Live? Then Die in L.A.

By Steve Evans

Summer blockbuster season is upon us and I am mostly unimpressed with the cinematic slate. I’ll go see Scorsese’s latest and Tarantino’s, too, but that’s about it. Summer is a time for action films, and for my money, the more violent the better. Many terrific action films have been made over the last half century and you’d best believe I’ve seen ‘em all. The Bond films hold up and, well, Die Hard (1988) is still the gold standard for Christmas movies featuring terrorists and machine guns and exploding helicopters. Yippie-kai-yay, etc.

But now and again I revisit the work of William Friedkin when I want a textbook refresher on how to shoot an action film. His early success, Best Picture winner The French Connection (1971), made a star out of Gene Hackman and delivers what remains one of the great chase sequences in all cinema. I watched it again the other night. Brilliant flick, infused with the influences of the French New Wave. Friedkin’s horror-film follow-up, The Exorcist (1973), never did anything for me except trigger a fit of the giggles. Why that flick scared anyone remains a mystery to this day: “Your mother sucks cocks in hell!” “Oh? Here’s a puke bucket, you little harlot.” Friedkin faltered after that for nearly a decade with several misfires. Then he turned 50, got serious, and directed another masterpiece.

I’m talking about his 1985 thriller To Live and Die in L.A., about a brooding counterfeiter and the secret service agent determined to take him down. This is a damn-near perfect action picture, with credible, well-developed characters performed by a sterling cast that includes Willem Dafoe, William Peterson and John Turturrro in an early role. The action set pieces are many and memorable. There are beautiful babes – the kind you trust and the kind you sleep next to with one eye open. The band Wang Chung delivered their best-ever work for the soundtrack. Almost everyone in the film has a nasty attitude. And what is an action flick without balls-to-the-wall violence? Here the brutality is potent, bloody, abundant and unapologetic. This may be the most nihilistic action movie ever made, outside of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, which Friedkin himself remade in 1977 as Sorcerer.

Oh. You want a chase sequence in downtown L.A.? Friedkin outdid his own previously best effort in The French Connection. Ask yourself what it would be like to fly down a freeway at 80 mph. Going the wrong way. With cars coming head-on. To Live and Die in L.A. answers that question.

This film exudes effortless style. It’s an outrageously slick piece of entertainment with enough throbbing testosterone to make Big Arnold Schwarzenegger cry like a sissy with skinned knees.

I first saw the picture in a theater 34 years ago. Back then, it blew my mind at the possibilities of action cinema. Leaving the theater, I recall breaking several land speed records driving home, such was my lingering excitement. I am still waiting for someone to surpass the pure adrenaline this film delivers.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Thoughts after a church fire in France

By Steve Evans

Yes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) was filmed entirely on the RKO Studios backlot. Yes, they actually built the front of the cathedral to scale for the film, which is the essential cinematic version of Victor Hugo's immortal classic -- the novel that is directly responsible for saving the Notre Dame Cathedral in the early 1800s during but one of the many threats to its existence over eight centuries. Hugo's book shamed the French government into restoring the cathedral in the 1830s when it was already almost 500 years old.

Nearly a century later, Lon Chaney gave the title role an admirable whirl as Quasimodo the bell ringer in a 1925 silent film. So did Anthony Quinn in '56 and Anthony Hopkins in '82. But the '39 film is the one that unfailingly transports me to medieval times when life, as Tommy Hobbes liked to say, was nasty, brutish and short.

So I'll revisit this one tonight. Charles Laughton delivers one of the greatest performances in film history. A cast of thousands. The finest production values available at the time. This movie puts the hook in me from the opening credits and orchestral score; I will watch it without interruption until the fade to black. First saw this picture on television as a teenager and wept with joy, such was its impact. Wore out a VHS copy from my late 20s to early 30s. Still have a DVD. Bought a restored print on Blu-ray mere months ago. Lest the point be lost, I love this film. Essential viewing.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Half of the Coen Bros. to Direct Another Macbeth

By Steve Evans

Most intriguing film news of the day... Joel Coen, sans brother Ethan, is set to direct yet another film adaptation of Macbeth. He is also writing the screenplay, again, without his brother. This represents a first in their 35-year collaboration. Two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand, Joel's wife, is to play Lady Macbeth. Two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington is in talks to co-star in an undefined role. Would be interesting if Denzel played Macbeth, as that would represent a refreshing reversal of so many white dudes playing Othello in blackface through the years. Conversely, Denzel playing Macbeth will inevitably raise questions, like, what's a brother doing in 11th century Scotland? That would be in keeping with Coen's Dutch-angle sensibilities. 

Whatever he's up to, Coen will need to jazz it up a bit, because Orson Welles and Roman Polanski, who made their own versions in 1948 and 1971, respectively, will be tough to beat. Yet another version with Michael Fassbender in the title role was released just four years ago.

I mention all this because why Joel Coen would want to make his solo directing debut with a Shakespeare adaptation -- a play that's been filmed more or less definitively many times before -- has got to be one of the great curiosities of the cinema in the last 25 years.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Remembering Kubrick

By Steve Evans

I remember exactly where I was 20 years ago today when I learned that Stanley Kubrick had died. First order of business was to phone in a bogus illness at the office and squander a sick day. I spent the balance of that morning and afternoon watching Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, 2001 and A Clockwork Orange, his four greatest films. Over the remainder of that week I watched the rest of his films, developed a newfound appreciation for the artistry of Barry Lyndon, discovered some interesting symbols and subtext in The Shining, and marveled at how the man managed to make such a sly and gleefully perverse film of Nabokov’s unfilmable novel, Lolita, considering the censorship restrictions of the day. I watched The Killing for the umpteenth time, once again shaking my head at how Tarantino shamelessly lifted the non-linear plot structure and adapted it for use in his film Reservoir Dogs. In-between these screenings, I endured a dial-up Internet connection to glean any information I could find about Kubrick’s swansong, Eyes Wide Shut, which would be released four months after his death. He made only 13 films in a career spanning 45 years, mainly because he spent years making them. The man was meticulous.

The world was a more interesting place when Kubrick was alive, making films and cultivating an air of mystery about his methods. I believed then as now that wherever he was at any given time, he was always the smartest guy in the room. His films positively pulsate with intelligence, with trenchant observations on the human condition. The jackals of bourgeois sensibility often criticized Kubrick for what they perceived as a cold misanthropy in his work. Nonsense. No intelligent man would devote so much time and obsession to the perfection of his life’s work – and then share it with millions – unless he had a passionate concern for the fate of humanity. If there is a connective thread woven throughout his films, it is this: every single one of them follows a protagonist whose fate is impacted by the random insanity of a world beyond his comprehension or control.

Existential fatalism is the dominant theme in all of Kubrick, except one film that turns the idea upside down: A Clockwork Orange. This is the only Kubrick film (and it is his best film) where the antihero gets his life back, albeit through a pitch-black paradox. Here, the film itself is a meditation on free will raging against the forces of fate in a dystopian future where everyone is unpleasant. The protagonist loses his freedom of choice due to government brainwashing only to regain free will through that most ironic of choices, an attempted suicide. “I was cured alright.”

Stanley Kubrick. July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999. Irreplaceable. Sorely missed.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Bad Cinema for a Happy New Year

By Steve Evans 

It’s something of a tradition for me to start off the first week of the New Year by watching a bad movie. Bad, as in incompetent. Poorly produced. Ineptly acted. Lousy direction. Ridiculous special effects. The idea is my film watching can only improve as the year progresses. Not really. I just have a dangerous and evidently incurable addiction to really dreadful flicks.

So today we’re gonna spin I Eat Your Skin (1964), a longtime fav in the disreputable genre of Le Bad Cinema. As is my nature, I must first share some backstory about this motion picture.

It was made as Voodoo Blood Bath and sat unreleased for seven years until an exhibitor, the aptly named Jerry Gross, bought the picture for pennies on the dollar to use as a double feature with his movie I Drink Your Blood. To enhance the alliterative exploitation effect, Voodoo Blood Bath was retitled I Eat Your Skin.

No skin is actually eaten.

Our story: A sexist-pig novelist, his publicist and a shrill woman with a powerful thirst for cocktails decide to visit a mysterious island for research on a new book. The island is home to a sketchy scientist, his smoking-hot daughter and assorted natives who practice voodoo rituals. Eventually zombies show up with makeup that resembles fried eggs for eyes. I am not making this up. On-screen talent includes nobody you ever heard of, which in a strange way makes the story more involving since there are zero celebrity distractions.

The movie opens at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach – the same hotel used in early scenes for the James Bond adventure Goldfinger, also made that year. There all similarities end, as I Eat Your Skin flies off the rails almost immediately. It is wildly entertaining and will leave you incredulous. A full 80 minutes and 47 seconds of WTF?

Directed by the incomparable Del Tenney, who was a busy man in the early 1960s. The same year he wrapped up I Eat Your Skin, Tenney also managed to complete The Horror of Party Beach, which is likewise essential viewing if you enjoy movies about bikers, beach babes in bikinis, surf rock and rubbery bug-eyed monsters with bratwursts for teeth.

As a public service, a full and uncut copy of I Eat Your Skin is available below. Learn to see the worst films; they are often sublime.


Cinema Uprising Copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

At 2 1/2 Hours 'Infinity War' Earns Its Title

By Steve Evans

I’ve long since outlived the core demographic for superhero films, yet when I find out such-and-such a movie is one of the most expensive ever made, I’m drawn to it like moth to flame. So I squandered more than 2 ½ hours of life watching Avengers Infinity War on Netflix. This is a movie that cost almost $400 million to make and has so far recouped more than $2 billion – with a B – worldwide. Big Business, this. So I wanted to see what $400 million looks like burning up on a screen. My screen, as it turns out, since I had no desire to drop $15 on a theater ticket when the flick came out last April. Sitting in a packed auditorium with 13-year-old boys chattering like monkeys is not my idea of fun. So what does $400 million look like on fire?

It looks like a lot of computer-generated imagery supplemented by noise, more characters with speaking parts and convoluted backstories than I care to count, planets where anyone can breathe without oxygen tank assistance and phenomenally powerful, mystical devices with names I am ill-prepared to pronounce.

No way I could summarize the plot here, beyond the observation that the antagonist looks like an oak tree covered in shit and he wants magic stones to fit in his metal glove (or "gauntlet," if you want to be particular about it) so he can obliterate half the life in the universe by snapping his fingers, which makes him marginally worse than Hitler. Or possibly Trump. When his glove is fully tricked out, this tuff guy looks like he's been accessorizing at boutiques favored by George Michael. The villain’s name is Thanos, which I do know is derived from the Greek word for “immortality,” suggesting he’ll be a tough bastard to beat when the next installment of this franchise opens in April 2019. Marvel excels at cliffhangers; keep 'em coming back for more.

You can read this film as an anti-capitalist screed, as some have, though that seems ludicrous given the amount of money these Marvel films make. You can read the film as a dire warning on totalitarianism, though I’m skeptical the world really needs such another warning, given the prevalence of mad would-be tyrants running amok these days.

Was I entertained? Marginally. I have a kickin’ surround sound system and it got quite a workout from all the booms and bangs. For my own troubles, I got a three-Aleve headache and a bunch of questions I suspect can only be answered if I watch earlier Marvel films and get caught up on who’s who and what’s what, which I am not wont to do. I also wonder how much good could be done in the world with $400 million, rather than give Robert Downey Jr. profit participation so he’ll have money to go buy another bong.

At 2 hours and nearly 40 minutes, calling the film Infinity War almost seems like truth in advertising.

Behold the churlishness of a middle-aged man, a film snob whose preferences run to black & white foreign films with beautiful women and subtitles. I should have known better.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

No Rush, Thanks

By Steve Evans

I love rock documentaries. Any chance I get to learn context and meaning behind the music, I jump on it. Sometimes I get lucky and encounter an unintentional comedy disguised as a rock doc, leaving me sputtering with laughter. Rob Reiner’s great mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (1984) relentlessly skewered rock and roll pomposity and stupidity, of which there remains no shortage.

Sometimes, though, you don’t need a work of satire to help high-minded musicians look foolish. Often, they don’t need any help.

This set the scene for my viewing of Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, a film about the Canadian power trio’s 40-odd year career. The picture came out eight years ago, though I had successfully dodged it until last night when, in a fit of tedium, I cracked into a six-pack of particularly good beer and cued up that Rush doc. Eons ago, when I was in high school, Rush was an anomaly. If you listened to them at all, it was just to tide you over in-between Zeppelin albums. From the first time I heard the band, I thought a root canal could be no more painful. Or a spinal tap. Not even sure why I watched the damn documentary last night, except beer was involved.

But I’m glad I did. This is a band that should be slapped for writing a song titled By-Tor and the Snow Dog, which still makes me giggle decades on. Their early success, 2112, is a ponderous space-rock concept album that devotees say is best experienced, if not understood, under the influence of vodka and Quaaludes. From my high school days I recall the band’s biggest fans were people you wouldn’t want to be alone with.

The stumbling block for me was always Geddy Lee, the band’s bassist. His banshee-shrieking, kicked-in-the-balls vocals could resurrect a cemetery of skeletons who’d abandon their graves in mute protest. Tunes like Tom Sawyer and Freewill (a wince-inducing ode to whack-job Ayn Rand) were staples of MOR classic rock radio stations. Still are, for all I know. My best recollection of Rush in their heyday was making fun of them with my own band of hooligans out at the lake, blasting the local FM station on a boombox and striking absurd rock-hero poses on the sand whenever a Rush tune was played. Some music ages well. Some music does not. Some sounds just as ludicrous as the day the tunes were pressed into vinyl.

What elevates this documentary to comedy gold is the occasional interview with one of the band’s celebrity fans. When a no-talent peanut head like Jack Black starts using the words “Rush” and “intellectual” in the same sentence, it’s time to pop another beer and stare in amazement that absolutely no one, except me, is laughing. And Sweet Baby Jeebus laff I did, until my tears fell like rain.

Cinema Uprising Copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Keeping Four Wheels on the Road at High Speed

By Steve Evans

I love learning new bits of film history. I live for it. Better than birthdays and Christmas. So I was reading about the short career of James Dean, which got me to thinking about the guy’s death 63 years ago, which led to the discovery that on his fatal drive in that Porsche Spyder he was the lead car in a caravan of friends heading to a race track. About two minutes behind him was Dean’s racecar-driving mentor, an occasional actor named Bill Hickman, who arrived at the crash scene in time for Dean to expel his final breath of air in Hickman’s face. By his own account, Hickman was so haunted he didn’t sleep for five days.

I didn't know that story until today, but I instantly recognized the name Hickman. His destiny was to become a legendary movie stunt driver. Steve McQueen chased him all over San Francisco in Bullitt (1968). Hickman did the high-speed driving for Gene Hackman in The French Connection ('71) and outran Roy Scheider in The Seven-Ups ('73), a little-seen thriller with an incredible car chase as its centerpiece. Hickman drove real cars down real roads, barreling along at speeds well in excess of 100 mph. No computer enhancements or image manipulation. One slip of the steering wheel and he coulda ended up like his pal Dean. Some of us like living on the edge. Hickman took it over the edge and came back to show us the real deal.

Hickman died of cancer in 1986. He was 65. French Connection director William Friedkin called him the greatest driver in the history of cinema. That’s Hickman in the photo below, at right, with Dean lighting a cigarette at left. I'm not sure about the guy hunched over the fateful Porsche. Could be Sal Mineo, Dean's co-star in Rebel Without a Cause. Mineo was murdered in a botched robbery in 1976, but that's another Hollywood story for another day.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Play Misty for Me at 47

By Steve Evans

Big Clint Eastwood's directorial debut, the moody thriller Play Misty for Me, was released OTD in 1971. Somewhat dated in tone, Misty explores romantic obsession and a woman's psychotic breakdown as the lover who spurns her, then comes under violent attack, struggles to evaluate his increasingly dwindling options.

I've visited many of the locations where Misty was filmed in Carmel-by-the-Sea, a lovely town where Eastwood was briefly mayor. You can walk the length of Carmel in 15 minutes. Its scenic beauty is the equal of any spot along the Pacific coast. The bohemians on the beach create the most elaborate sand sculptures I've seen. Come high tide, they're gone. The beach bums return the next morning and start all over again, hoping the curious might give them a few dollars. Such is the ephemeral nature of their art.

Misty was essentially remade in 1987 as Fatal Attraction, with a few yuppie twists to update the material. Eastwood's film stands out for its spot-on use of jazz on the soundtrack. For this reason and as a curio of Eastwood's early cinematic style Play Misty is recommended viewing.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Check Your Baggage for Destination Wedding

By Steve Evans

Destination Wedding, an experimental film now available on Video on Demand, is the best rom-com of the last 40 years. I mean this most sincerely; no hyperbole. It has an essential edginess that eluded Sideways, which had been the genre's gold standard since 2004, and before that, Annie Hall from 1977.

Sharp, acerbic, jet-black and cynical, Destination Wedding will appeal to anyone who has ever pulled out of a relationship and wondered: how the fuck did I ever get into that? But moving forward, it also poses that eternal challenge: why not try this thing called love again? Two terrific stars, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves, who have the only dialog in the film (toldja it was experimental). They play hugely unlikable characters thrown together under standard rom-com tropes that director Victor Levin turns upside-down. Imagine a farcical romance written by David Mamet.

I laffed. I cried. I damn-near died. This is a great movie.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

"No, I did not borrow Laura's Mercedes"

By Steve Evans

Alfred Hitchcock’s immortal classic North by Northwest premiered 59 years ago today. I first saw the picture on television in the ancient pre-Internet year of 1982 and was instantly smitten. Time has done nothing to diminish my love for this film, still my favorite out of some 15,000 movies I’ve seen in a lifelong affair with the cinema. North by Northwest is close to a perfect film. It delivers everything I want in a movie and does it with class. It’s thrilling and comical and elegant, delightfully sophisticated and often darkly cynical, with some of the best writing you’ll ever encounter in a film. The set pieces build in excitement and preposterousness in equal measure, but I never care because I get swept up in the pure joy of it all with every viewing. The early James Bond films owe a stylistic debt to this picture, though it is far better than any of them.

Cary Grant taught me how a gentleman should dress, how to light a lady’s cigarette, mix a proper Gibson cocktail, deliver droll & smartass remarks, run from biplanes and scramble across the actual faces of national monuments while saving the love of your life in a literal cliffhanger ending. The final shot of Cary and Eva Marie Saint embracing, with a smash-cut to their train roaring into a tunnel, is an amusing bit of impudence to conclude a film that is so damn good I usually want to spin it again from the beginning, right then and there, soon as I finish clapping.

I wrote a 30-page paper about the film in graduate school. I’ve owned two videotape copies, a DVD and a Blu-ray. A digital copy of the complete film exists on my phone, tablet and laptop. I’ve visited many of the locations where it was filmed. I have a photo of Eva with her autograph tucked away in the case of my DVD copy.

The common question to this sort of blathering enthusiasm is “What the hell is wrong with you, Steve?” There’s really no satisfactory answer except that I love the movies, especially this one. The very best films take us on an exhilarating ride through experiences many people can only dream of. We fly in the darkness, cheer our heroes, fear for their lives, exalt in the bewitching power of story and eventually come cruising down, down, down, rolling across the runway, returning at last to the seats we never left. And that’s enough.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.