I Sing a Fruitful Conformity - PRIVILEGE (1967)

When I was a child my mother bought an old 16mm rental catalog to use for art projects.  Before home video schools and individuals could rent movies from the big studios to show with 16mm projectors, and the interest for me were the blurbs and screenshots of movies I had never seen but would be burned in my memory for years to come.  The selection was fine snapshot of the film landscape of the mid-70's, highlighting such now-obscure movies as Spielberg's The Sugarland Express and the Walter Matthau-Carol Burnett dramedy Pete 'n' Tillie.  It also had a lot of older movies that looked really cool, including the as-yet unreleased-on-video wacky comedy What's So Bad About Feeling Good? and the Anthony Newley vanity musical Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?  And one movie I searched high and low for once I got to college was Privilege, only to find it didn't get a video release in the U.S. until 2008.  I found out later that Universal essentially buried the film after its release due to its upsetting message.  How upsetting?  It's only directed by the man who made the most terrifying nuke documentary of all time.

Peter Watkins started as a documentarian for the BBC and first became known for Culloden, which "covered" the 1745 Jacobite uprising as a current news story.  That is, Watkins recreated the battle and had people of its time interviewed as if a TV crew was at the battle.  Watkins has used this technique many times, including in his 3-hour Edvard Munch and La Commune (Paris, 1871).  He also used it for The War Game, a speculative documentary commissioned by the BBC to educate the public on the real facts of nuclear warfare.  It's one of the most terrifying films ever made, showing the processes of evacuation, the effects of bombing itself, and life after the bombs in soul-crushing detail.  It was actually banned by the BBC for being too disturbing, later winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary.  His most ambitious film project is Resan (The Journey), a 14 & 1/2 hour documentary about nuclear war filmed over two years across several continents.  Privilege is thankfully only 100 minutes, and as you'll see at the bottom on YouTube.  Prepare yourselves for the performance of a lifetime.

Privilege is set in a near-future England where the whole country is obsessed with pop star Steven Shorter.  He is given the country's first ticker-tape parade, and there are 300 ghastly, tacky Steven Shorter Discoteques, built "to spread happiness throughout Britain."  Shorter has turned into an icon of anguished youth, capturing the admiration of countless young people through a stage show where he is taken out in handcuffs, beaten by stage police, and finally led off stage, followed by minor rioting in the audience.  The camera-work in this performance is crucial, capturing intense weeping on the part of the teenage girls present, probably a nod to the droves of screaming fans who flocked to the Beatles' American concerts.  We first get a good amount of time with Steven at one of his Discoteques, and it is obvious that he's deeply unhappy, saying almost nothing and wincing at laughter.  You would too if you were forced to walk through one of the 300 Steve Dream Palaces, a tin-foiled monstrosity blaring advertisements for various Steven Shorter-sponsored crap, designed "to keep people happy and buying British."

Steven's entourage includes: his galpal Vanessa Ritchie (Jean Shrimpton), who's been commissioned by the British government to make paintings of Steven and keep an eye on him; his manager Martin Crossley (Jeremy Child); his music publisher Julie Jordan (Max Bacon) who clearly knows nothing of music beyond chintzy lounge tunes; Alvin Kursch (Mark London) whose vanity is only outmatched by his disregard for Steven's feelings; and Andrew Butler, chairman of Steven Shorter Enterprises, ltd.  There is also the board of Steven Shorter Enterprises, ltd., who speak of Steven's grueling American tour (about 80 different appearances across 25 days, with 3 days off).  

We follow Steven through various photo shoots, including a tacky-looking apple commercial which the Apple Marketing Board and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is relying on to get the British public to eat "six apples a day for the whole of the summer."  If this doesn't happen 640,000,000 apples will rot on the tree, and their existentialist art director insists on people in fiberglass apple costumes and bizarre period reenactments.  Though I have no idea how the commercial is supposed to sell apples I am certain none of the actors have any idea what's going on.  The director screams like a John Cleese character and Steven looks as if he wants to shoot lasers from his eyes to kill all of England.

The real plot of the movie comes forth with the second board meeting, where the bring in Steven to discuss the new direction of his pop stardom.  Professor Tatham (James Cossins) speaks that the first phase of Steven's career was to appeal to the violent and ambivalent zeitgeist of British youth, and now, in order to curb "critical elements in youth," and undesirable elements (Communism and Anarchism).  His new phase is to repent, to accept law and order, and fuse with the M.O. of the Anglican church to transform the youth of England into an ultra-repressed, purified race (demonstrated by a pair of models in Hello Dolly-esque yellow attire).  We are also treated to a nameless rock band recording a psychedelic version of "Onward Christian Soldiers", complete with monastic shaved-top hairdos and bottles of milk to drink.  ("Excellent!  I think you've been influenced by Count Basie, but excellent!").  

All of this is leading up to Christian Crusade Week, a massive cultural reeducation project of which Steven has been made the opener, at "the largest staging of Nationalism in the history of Great Britain."  We are shown every stage of its mounting, including the first glimpse of a concert poster featuring Steven with outstretched, semi-stigmata hands.  Steven has been put in the color red, a symbol of his release from bondage, and at a press conference he appears with handcuffs that are temporarily taken off (we had seen earlier his real bleeding from the cuffs).  Afterwards, he asks Andrew, with enormous quavering, to stop all this madness.  This is met only by a chilling speech on Steven's "importance to society" (which I won't dare spoil).  At a meal it is apparent that Steven is close to losing his mind, reverting to a childlike state with a request for hot chocolate after an unrelated question.  And then, at the National Stadium in London, we get to witness one of the most spectacularly mounted and chilling pageants this side of the North Korean Mass Games.


I cannot begin to tell you how frightening this film is.  As outlandish as some of the content may seem, all the critical imagery hits home in its dissection of the intersection of British cultural values and the rise of revolutionary rock, and makes a good point of the fine line between one totalitarian regime and another.  The opening ceremony to Christian Crusade Week is the spectacular centerpiece, and I imagine Universal shelved the movie because the production was too harsh and terrifying.  The pseudo-documentary technique here is crucial, putting us in the center of the action and making us feel like one of the crowd.  The narrator is cool and silken, more fit for a documentary on the life cycle of salmon than a man's life.  I can't speak for Jean Shrimpton, but aside from her the acting is perfect, with special mention to Paul Jones as Steven.  Jones is incredibly vulnerable, saying little and ready to crack into fits of weeping at any second.  Steven's handlers are brilliantly placed in their self-absorbed coldness, and the hundreds of extras and side figures give their all to a very risky cause.  

Privilege  may have been the first of a series of irreverent examinations of the British psyche, paving the way for If...., A Clockwork Orange, and Monty Python's Flying Circus in one way or another.  It also acknowledged the full circle effect of the British Invasion coming home and bringing American counterculture with it.  Watkins has said that he suspects A Clockwork Orange lifted design and content elements from Privilege, and I can certainly see that in the use of hideous interior design and plastic clothing.  It's also been noted that Privilege was heavily influenced by the 1962 National Film Board of Canada documentary Lonely Boy, which followed the growing hysteria surrounding Paul Anka.  I'll admit that some of the message in Privilege may seem blunt or overstated.  I would point out that one of the greatest strengths of the film is its mounting dread, a kind of catharsis through inevitability, and as all the elements come together at Christian Crusade Week the viewer is paralyzed by the possibility that this could happen here.  I once saw a filmed interview with Margaret Atwood, and when asked about The Handmaid's Tale, she said she found it interesting how different English-speaking countries reacted to its dystopian, misogynistic future.  She noticed that the British asked "Can it happen here?", the Canadians "Will it happen here?", and the Americans "How long until it happens?"

~PNK

Special Report - LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS (1980-1982)

The rise of punk scenes on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 70's saw a fascinating change in how music was marketed, not just what kind of music but how.  Media was turning its focus towards a bottomless underground collective, each group as exciting as they were nameless.  As marketing teams noticed the sheer mass of talent and joyous rage, the film industry saw the opportunity to capitalize not only on a couple artists but a genre, and ever since The Blank Generation punk, new wave, and no wave movies were churned out and sold based on their soundtracks.  Some movies employed punk rockers as actors, such as Richard Hell in Susan Seidelman's acidic debut film Smithereens (1982).  Many of them were documentaries (such as Urgh!  A Music War (1982)) and others were just movies that crammed every aural nook and cranny with cheaply-licensed songs (such as Get Crazy (1983)).  You'll notice that both of those movies came out after the initial explosion of punk had died off and post-punk and new wave had taken over (which may have been better music but more distanced from the raw emotion that started the movement).  Many of these movies have been locked up in copyright issues for years, such as those two, because of how cheap music licensing was in the 70's and 80's and how expensive it is now.  The technique rose again in the early 90's once grunge, college rock and jangle pop came to the fore, with movies like Singles and Reality Bites doing good business because of their OST's (lasting into the late 90's, when straightforward rock music giving way to rap rock and nu metal).  It's an interesting reminder that subcultures are generated by corporations just as much as genuine volition.  It came back in the mid-2000's, with Garden State being the maidenhead of the indie-rock soundtracks (and actually having some good music on it), and is still going to a certain extent.  I'll return to the first wave in good time (I've got the intriguing Incident at Channel Q coming in the mail), but for today we've got one of the rarest and most legendary: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains.

I call this article a "special report" because I had the extraordinary privilege of seeing this at a midnight screening at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA.  The theater had secured an extremely rare print from a private collection, and I can't think of a better way to get acquainted with this movie than the original print with all fading, dirt and grain.  Set for a theatrical release, Stains had a troubled production and spent a year in editing, being pulled from wide release after a disastrous test screening in Denver.  Aside from scattered festival screenings it's studio, Paramount, dumped the movie to late-night cable, where it slowly gained a cult following and the admiration of rock figures such as Jon Bon Jovi and Courtney Love.  It didn't get a video release until 2008 with Rhino Entertainment.  I can't begin to tell you how lucky I was to see this movie on the big screen, and tonight you can too, at midnight at the Coolidge.  It's the last night they're doing it, so let me give you all the reasons to see the thing right here, right now.

Diane Lane (only 14 when she auditioned!) plays Corrine Burns, whose mother has just died from lung cancer.  She keeps smoking.  She had been interviewed for a TV news special on teens in her backwater mill town, and in the process blew up at her fast-food boss and lost her job.  Being interviewed for a follow up on her now broke and basically homeless state, she says she's going on tour with her band, The Stains.  It's just her, her sister Tracy (Marin Kanter) and their cousin Jessica (Laura Dern), who prefers to be called Peg, to the chagrin of her mother Linda (Christine Lahti).  At a local show they see The Looters (an electrifying Ray Winstone as Billy and members of the Sex Pistols) and are transfixed, only to see that they are merely the support group for the washed up Metal Corpses headed by Lou Corpse in terrible makeup (Fee Waybill of The Tubes).  Corrine gets a deal with Billy to play on their American tour, despite the Stains only having three rehearsals, and they hop on the bus, driven by a fascinating Rastafarian (Barry Ford).

Their first show is some 70's styled club in Pennsylvania (though the movie was shot in British Columbia), and from the first note it's apparent the Stains can't play.  At all.  After being laughed off stage, Corrine storms back on and takes her outer clothes off, revealing an outrageous hairdo and a see-through blouse with no bra.  Though catcalls erupt, some of the women are awestruck.  What follows is a brilliant anger catapult, with Corrine verbally abusing a man in the front row and espousing the Fed Up Teenage Girl manifesto ("I'm perfect!  But nobody in this shithole gets me, because I don't put out!").  She tears of stage, and Billy recognizes her raw spirit, encouraging her to practice more and hone her music.  Unfortunately, tragedy strikes - the guitarist for the Metal Corpses, who spent the first part of the movie hiding behind hilarious sunglasses and sleeping off highs, is found dead in the ladies' room*.  Sent into scramble mode, Billy calls his agent to get them a support group, as he's not interested in the Stains opening for them despite his supportive words.

Something curious happens in the wake of the death of the Corpses's guitarist.  The female newscaster who did the interviews on Corrine from the beginning of the movie covers the scene and gets Corrine's take on events, which are complete lies made to impulsively grab attention and notoriety.  The newscaster gets a grand idea.  She begins following the Stains and encouraging young girls to see them in makeup, creating a feminist movement out of thin air.  Corrine gets Tracy and Peg/icca to dress like her, and the band does improve dramatically, but she remains stupid and impulsive.  The problem arises in that a Stains fanbase, calling themselves Skunks, is erupting at an alarming rate, fueled by the media coverage following the tour, and neither Corrine, the Looters or the bus driver know what to make of it.  Things only get more insane as Billy's slimeball agent gets involved, but I shouldn't spoil the rest.

The plot is familiar, now much more so from the parade of fallen music idol movies and Spinal Tap imitators over the years.  However, the strength of the movie isn't just in the set-up but rather in the conflict, density, and character depth that drive the film towards its loaded conclusion.  The character dynamics in Stains are terrifically rich, and both Corrine and Billy, as well as many of the lead supports, are deeply drawn and entirely engaging.  Diane Lane is astounding here, this being only her second movie, energetic and completely fearless.  The movie would have been a lot less compelling if she didn't completely sell her vitriolic, kick-in-the-pants role.  I'm not sure Thora Birch has ever seen this film but I wouldn't be surprised if she based Enid in Ghost World off of Corrine.  I've always loved Ray Winstone and he's perfect as the pissed-off leader of a second-tier punk outfit far from their home.  His presence and assured movement radiates from the screen, and he adds a great deal of depth to a role that could have easily been one note.  Fee Waybill is excellent as Lou Corpse, turning in a simultaneously repulsive and fragile performance for a non-actor.  Barry Ford's Rastafarian bus driver is perfectly placed, and I wouldn't dare spoil his character's secrets here.  And Christine Lahti, though not in much of the movie, brings a lot of sober heart to a somewhat out-of-control story.  I've only seen her in three movies (the others being Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty and Bill Forsyth's Housekeeping, which I'll get to in good time) and already I'm entranced by her worldly sensitivity and appealing down-to-Earthyness.  She's something of another Catherine O'Hara (another actress I don't see nearly enough), and if they played sisters in a movie I'd pre-order tickets before it was even filmed.


The script is dense and full of emotion, coming from Nancy Dowd (Slapshot, Coming Home), who actually took her name off the film because of her dissatisfaction with the production and sexual harassment issues.  She didn't see the film in its entireity until she caught it on cable years later.  Her story of punky teenage girl rebellion has similarities to Times Square (another wonderful and hard-to-find movie from the early 80's), where two runaways amass a small cult of defiantly-dressed followers, though that movie was more naive in its message and at least got released properly.  The director is record producer Lou Adler, turning down Airplane! to make this and coming off of Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke.  For somebody who wasn't trained in film school and had only directed one movie prior, Stains looks great.  The shots are knowing and sensitive to the drama of the story and characters, and the movie does a great job of making rainy, dismal British Columbia stand in for rural American doldrums.  He also does a great job of filming the music performances, of which there are naturally many.  Adler spent about a year editing the movie by himself, and the continual trouble shows its face now and again.  I normally don't want movies to be longer but this is one that could have used a few more establishing scenes and another edit from an industry professional.  The only other problem I can think of is the slimeball agent, whose character is completely stock and could have been much more interesting, though everything else in the movie is so captivating I didn't care all that much.

Despite it's production trouble, unlikely talent (including producer Joe Roth, who went on to head Disney!) and somewhat rushed pacing, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains is one of the wisest, richest, and most engaging movies I've ever seen about music.  The central conflicts between teenage feminist rebellion, the dark side of rock stardom, and the pains of growing up are brilliantly played out and could inspire endless discussion.  The performances are marvelous and Lane and Winstone should have won awards for their work.  The fact that Paramount pulled the movie from release angers me immensely, considering how everybody involved with the film thought it was going to be a hit.  The DVD release is a godsend to fans of punk on film, and there are plenty of cheap used copies on Amazon if you're curious.  And for those of my friends still in Boston the Coolidge is doing one last screening of the super-rare 35mm print tonight at midnight, and if you have any interest I would suggest supporting their excellent series and coming out to the show.  I couldn't find the movie for free on YouTube but I did find this 11-minute documentary of the movie and its impact, so have a look.  Perhaps we can all love Stains, but nobody in this shithole will get us because we don't put out.

~PNK 

*One of my favorite moments in the movie is really subtle.  Once Jerry Jervey is found dead, most of the time is shots of people looking into the bathroom.  A bunch of people come by, look into the bathroom, talk about how he's dead, and have diverse reactions.  We only see Jerry for about five seconds at the end.  It's a nice reminder that, in a fame-driven world like rock, the fact that people are looking at the subject is more important than the subject itself, which is more often tragic than not.

The Lurk of Mr. Wrong: DARK OF THE NIGHT (1985)

You may have noticed that there's no title in the above poster.  That's because the title I gave above, Dark of the Night, is the American re-titleling for the VHS release; it was originally released in its native New Zealand under the title Mr. Wrong.  While this is a bit more plot-specific, it isn't helpful at all as the title to a horror movie, hence the generic retrofit.  Then again, pitching this movie as a horror flick isn't helpful, either.  Allow me to elaborate.

One of the most interesting details in Shaun of the Dead which nobody talks about is its deftness at telling a quarter-life crisis story.  Its protagonists are all in their late 20's and early 30's, still reeling from college B.S. and stuck in unimpressive jobs, unsure of why they got there or where they're going.  This point in a person's life is actually quite ripe for a horror tale, with a heap of uncertainty and anxiety surrounding one's life and doings.  There's a lot of moving around and uncomfortable decision making, and it's entirely possible for one of those moves to wind the protagonist up in a haunted house.  Dark of the Night is just like that, except it's a fabulous Jaguar sedan.


Meg (Heather Bolton) has just moved out of her parent's house, and snaps up the grand old car for a suspiciously nice sum.  There's a nice montage of her admiring all nearby bells and whistles (apparently she'd never seen a dashboard cigarette lighter before), and other drivers give props from the other lanes of the road.  Hunky-Dory-ness is quashed soon enough, however, as she hears mysterious wheezing from the back seat, and has dreams of being chased by the car and a woman walking through the rain.  Her mother is fond of the car and wonders if Meg has found a boyfriend yet, just in time for Meg to meet Wayne, an old High School classmate of hers.  The sprightly woodwinds on the soundtrack as she races down a hill after their meeting should tip the viewer off the movie is still far from blood-curdling terror.

 However, while stopped at a light in the rain, she sees the woman from her dreams coming towards her car, getting in the back just as a man gets in the passenger seat without asking.  While Meg is concerned about the silent woman the man makes thuddingly obvious passes at her - until the woman vanishes, followed by the man.  He eventually emerges from far off (though we don't know why he left), and Meg is rattled enough by this to look into the car's history, eventually uncovering its previous owner: Mary Carmichael, a woman about Meg's age who vanished years ago.

I'm going to lay it straight for you: this movie isn't particularly scary, but I don't think it was supposed to be a terrifying thrill ride to begin with.  Dark of the Night uses the set-up of a haunted car to paint a picture of twenty-something uncertainty, with Meg wrestling with life on her own and trying to deal with the poor purchase of the car.  Actress Heather Bolton is excellent as Meg, somewhat modest and awkward but with a real drive to enjoy her newfound freedom.  Her character is expertly written and realized, and the other performances and other aspects of the film are very well done.  It's the first (and apparently only decent) film by New Zealand writer/director Gaylene Preston, and it's a unique and absorbing personal project that was funded by the New Zealand Film Commission.  I've gotten the impression that film boards in Australia and New Zealand work like Canadian film funding agencies, whereby project get support if they're deemed as a valuable contribution to their country's art establishment.  Canada is usually not too interested in funding flat commercialism, and I'd bet that New Zealand has a similar policy.  The good news is that Dark of the Night is much more than that, observant, charming and beautifully filmed.  If you weren't warned beforehand you may have ended up turning the movie off after 10 minutes, which is what I did the first time I tried watching it, but I'm glad I gave it another chance, and it has a cozy spot on my VHS shelf to this day.  That's the only way to see the movie in an America-friendly format (with a chintzy-looking replacement title card), and I wasn't able to find it on YouTube.  I did find a promo for its revival in a film festival, so enjoy and let this appealing little movie into your life, if you're so inclined.

~PNK

Weaving Family Across the Land: TRAMP AT THE DOOR (1985)

When I was taking Music History in undergrad, we were visited by a Canadian composer for a special lecture on the classical tradition of the Tundra Not Unda.  Her general thesis was that being a composer in Canada (or any other artist seeking state funding) meant that government financiers were mainly interested in two subjects that theoretically made up the “Canadian Experience”: space and identity.  Space may have come from the wide open spaces of the Canadian wilderness, and how the pioneering spirit still lingered through the generations and built a foundation for country life.  Identity seems to come with living in North America, as the histories of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico were rich with the trials and tribulations of colonialism and immigration.  I can’t speak for all Canadian arts as to whether anybody producing art explores these concepts by choice or by necessity, but I can attest to the late writer Gabrielle Roy and director Allan Kroeker, whose combined arts made this wonderful TV movie from the mid-80’s that occupies that interesting slot of videos that have been out of print for decades but are very cheap to acquire online.

Tramp at the Door is set in the Manitoban Prarieside in the mid-30’s, following Gabrielle Roy herself (newcomer Joanna Schellenberg), her Justice-of-the-Peace father (August Schellenberg, Joanna’s real-life father) and her mother (Monique Mercure, who has been in things I’ve seen but I’ve never recognized her).  Her father was born of an immigrant family in Quebec, and forged a new existence for himself in early adulthood, away from his family.  His only connection left with his roots are his stories and memories, as was common with people living far away from each other in those days.  That is, until the Roy’s (called the Fornier’s in the film) are approached by a strange visitor (Ed McNamara, who died within a year of this film’s release), who we had recently seen conning a train conductor into thinking he had bought a ticket by wearing a stranger’s coat while he was in the  bathroom and getting the ticket punched before the coat’s owner returned.

The stranger approaches one rainy evening and introduces himself as Gustav, a cousin from Quebec.  Gabrielle is the one to answer the door, and she doesn’t believe him at first, because he gets her name wrong (calling her Agnes) and saying Fortnier instead of Fornier.  He is only invited inside and to the table because of the father’s curiosity in meeting a cousin from the old home.  The news of family developments spill forth, but Gustav seems to only speak of cousins as their names and details are offered to him by the family (my favorite is when he insists that a cousin who had lost his legs in the war ended up running the family farm).  Gabrielle and her mother immediately suspect that Gustav is a liar, but the father is in the mood of fool-suffering because he likes the illusion of family connection across the horizon.  Despite grumblings from his wife, he attempts sending Gustav off in the morning.  This is unsuccessful, with the father claiming that the roads are unsuitable for horseback riding.

The mother, also in the mood of fool-suffering (for her husband, anyways), gives Gustav an old work-outfit and sets him to help out around the house.  He throws himself into the help, tending to farm duties and even fetching mail from town on foot despite the great distance.  By night, he becomes a fountain of stories from the family, speaking of many cousins from the past: one who lived to be ninety after failed suicide attempts, a bootlegger who became a priest and another who killed her husband by putting glass in his soup.  Each story has a captivation to it, and Gustav often stops his stories right at a climactic point, ensuring that the family will keep him at the house for another day.  The mother is the most interesting in her reaction to all this, admitting that even though she doesn’t trust Gustav or believe the stories for a second, all information she did get of her husband’s past was in the form of stories, anecdotes, comparisons, and fragments.  Her husband’s stories were in their own way no more or less real to her than Gustav’s.

This continues for some time, with the web of history that Gustav spins becoming more and more thick and emotionally grabbing for the family.  One of the most incredible was the story of Cousin Cleofas, who apparently died aboard the Titanic with his wife, and his family didn’t find out about it until a decade later.  It’s in these moments that a thick air fills the living room, an air of rapt fascination, one that is represented beautifully by the music and lighting.  Even more fascinating is a story that he tells to Gabrielle one day, about a cousin who pulled himself up by his bootstraps by giving bottles of a cure-all cough syrup to his townspeople, and became a well-regarded and wealthy man despite having no real credentials or medical skill.  Of course, the story of how he lost all his money is for another time, stringing her along with yet another cliffhanger.

Throughout all of this a strange balance is maintained, with Gustav’s illusion keeping the family looking the other way, even though they always question him implicitly, and internally.  In a curious moment, the father finds a notice of an older, possibly deranged older man being in town on the board next to his office.  He takes the notice down, and when a coworker questions him he claims the notice was for a team of horses he wants to buy (even though he already has one), and gets defensive when probed.  Gustav has become a member of the family through pure charm, a feat that may never happen again in this day and age, where people have to undo sixteen locks on the door just to pay for pizza delivery.  He is blessed with the enormous gift of observation, and knowing how to play on people’s needs.  At one point, he breaks through to the mother’s religious bent by spinning a story of a miracle-working Brother Andre at St. John’s Oratory (a Quebec basilica).  She sees the gift of compassion in his heart, a gift that seemed obvious to them all along, by his ability to weave tales for no other purpose than to fill his hosts’ hearts with joy.

And then, he's gone.

But, not really.  Merely, he has moved onward, further West, towards another town and another family.  Nothing was taken from the Fornier’s home, and no ill feelings were kept; he just knew that it was time to keep moving.  And then the letters start coming, as Gustav tells of more family members he supposedly visits in his journeys, each one having a kind word for Mr. Fornier.  The Fornier’s spend their evenings pawing through old photographs and correspondences.  One night they think they recognize Gustav’s voice in a radio serial, and realize that his Scheherazade-like technique of cliffhangerismo may have been lifted from them.  The letters start to create a trail across the Prairie, a line of experience and warm feelings that can’t be proven by the Fornier’s but are a joy to relish.  Relatives that the father had never heard of were seemingly happy to send their regards through Gustav.  And then, he is silent.  In a pivotal scene, Gabrielle forecasts her own future as a writer by re-telling the story of the cough-syrup cousin to her classroom.   And, in her own burgeoning talent, she weaves Gustav into the character, while wearing her teacher’s coat and hat.

Much more of the plot, I shouldn’t tell, but it might not be what you expect.  It is this film’s gift to create a warm, sprawling texture that engulfs the viewer during its tidy 80-minute running time.  I can imagine that the original TV broadcast was an inferior way to view the film, as the depth of the cinematography, design, and acting is far too much for the small screen.  The cinematographer Ron Orieux and art director Bonnie von Helmot have a love affair with natural light, and the way it plays across skin, wallpaper, and wheatfields (I suspect Days of Heaven was influential in the look of the piece).  The direction by Kroeker is superb at capturing the experience of hearing Gustav’s stories, often following his inflections and movements with a handheld camera, imitating the spectator.  I got the feeling throughout most of the film that I could simply walk through the screen and live the life of a Manitoban farmer in the 1930’s, as the rhythms and moods of this kind of life are made luminous and endearing by the director’s touch.  As for the acting, it’s just right, and especially excellent from the young actress playing Gabrielle.  Ed McNamara as Gustav is astounding, giving the huckster an enormous charisma despite his obvious façading.

Few films I’ve seen have been better at exploring the relationship between family ties and storytelling, perceived connection and realistic disconnection, than this one.  Gustav opened a world of life and love spanning across thousands of kilometers, allowing an extended family spread throughout the prairie to flood into a single household.  In a way, he also was hugely helpful to the family’s immigrant experience, as immigrants have to hold onto their connections in a new world; the Fornier’s were no stranger to this, even though their ancestral homeland is never truly revealed.  Another film that expounded on the importance of immigrant family ties was Barry Levinson’s Avalon, one of my favorite family epics and a movie you should see immediately.  Referring back to my earlier point on the nature of Canadian art, Tramp at the Door is a beautiful entwining of space and identity, as well as a loving ode to the power of storytelling.  Gabrielle Roy went on to become one of the foremost Francophone writers in Canadian history, and I’m of the opinion that this story is an expression of the birth of her love for the storytelling craft (she died not long before this film was made, and it is dedicated to her memory).  The best writers in the world are those who seep compassion from every pore, can see to the heart of people and make monuments to the human experience.  It is just this gift that Gabrielle’s mother sees in Gustav, noting that he was a creature of true grace.  I believe that an Amen is in order for everybody involved.

I was unable to find the movie on YouTube, but the good news is that the old VHS copies are pretty cheap used at the Amazonz: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000MC1FHS/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

~PNK

Philip Baker Hall's SECRET HONOR (1984)

Philip Baker Hall is a face whom you may recognize on a good day, appearing in a lot of movies and TV, and probably best known these days for appearing in three of Paul Thomas Anderson's movies, Hard Eight (as the lead), Boogie Nights, and Magnolia.  He's an actor a lot of people like but not many list among the greats, mostly because he's been relegated to small roles all his life.  I could count myself among this crowd, but that would have to be before I saw Secret Honor.  In fact, a lot of how I feel, not just about Philip Baker Hall but also film acting and speculative history, can be put into the categories of "before Secret Honor" and "after Secret Honor".

We're greeted with a text crawl:

This work is a fictional meditation

concerning the character of and events

in the history of Richard M. Nixon, who

is impersonated in this film.

The dramatist's imagination has created

some fictional events in an effort

to illuminate the character of

President Nixon.

This film is not a work of history or

a historical recreation.  It is a work of

fiction, using as a fictional character

a real person, President Richard M. Nixon--

in an attempt to understand.

The meditation is here more of a primal scream, pitting a solitary Nixon (Hall), holed up in his study with Scotch, a tape recorder, CCTV screens, a camera, and a revolver, against the world.  There are no other characters, and Nixon never leaves his study.  The only other faces we see are portraits of Lincoln, Washington, Eisenhower, Wilson, Kissinger and Nixon's mother.  He speaks to his assistant Roberto (who isn't there), issuing various instructions, including sending a manuscript to his publishers.  And then the dams break, beginning with the proclamation to "your honor" that the pardon given to "my client" was fake.  He dictates wildly, supposedly into the tape recorder but moving too much for it to pick up anything.  His speech is a vast swath, veering in numerous directions from his High School debate results to the dark secrets he carried with him through the Presidency.  Occasionally he stops and asks Roberto to erase everything he just said.  Though animated he appears under control (aside from four-letter words); this changes with the Committee of 100.

The above note on fictional events is no lie; Secret Honor rewrites Nixon's life to include a secret organization, one that attracted Nixon with the promise of pushing him into Congress and ended up forcing him to invent Watergate as a way out, to escape their plan.  There are many allegations, some odd and shocking (such as Marilyn Monroe's murder by the CIA).  It would help the viewer to have a good working knowledge of Nixon's life (I was fuzzy on some events, particularly his relationship to the Cuba Missile Crisis and the Alger Hiss case).  It is only a small part of the film's strategy to push Nixon away from a vilified public menace and more as a man trapped between external pressures and internal horrors.  And the horrors are deep and tragic, stretching from his brothers' early deaths to his mother's control.  All of this, truly everything, is delivered by Hall in one of the most unbelievable performances in all of film.

You've never seen a Nixon like this, working at articulation but swooping too fast between sideshow barker and raging lunatic.  There are small moments where he assumes the role of his own lawyer, and attempts presentability.  But there is no hope, as his absolute, manic passion drives him over natural expression and into hyperaction: waving his arms, using all the octaves available to his voice, cursing for anchor points, pulling childish faces, each turn in language gripping him to his very core.  He's at the end of all available ropes, and the fact we can understand him at all is a testament to his intelligence and purpose.  Through all of this, his mother keeps breaking through, not really there but there enough.

Based off a stage play by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone, the movie was directed by Robert Altman (Nashville, M.A.S.H., Gosford Park) while he was a professor at University of Michigan, using a largely student crew.  Altman always had an "actors first" method to direction and nothing less than that would suffice with a performance this complicated; he makes the eternally wise decision of staying out of Hall's way.  The camera roves on its own, making lovely moments amidst the sound and fury, but they are merely accentuations, never jarring, and I couldn't imagine seeing the film without them.  The music by George Burt (who I've never heard of before) is also unintrusive and essential, taking cues from the great 50's soundtracks by people like Bernstein and Herrmann.

I suspect that this film's obscurity is due less to its low budget and independent status, but rather a polarizing effect from Hall's performance.  He took enormous risks, giving everything he had into every second, and one could make a case that nobody would really act like that.  It's a kind of litmus test for those who can only accept naturalistic acting, as Hall is neither naturalistic or surreal.  Either way, you can't take your eyes off him, not for a second.  The film's intent may have helped as well.  Made more than 10 years after Nixon's impeachment, it was released at a time when public opinion was only beginning to soften on Watergate, and I suspect that most people went in expecting something less sympathetic and complex.  I wasn't a huge fan of Oliver Stone's W.; ts conception seemed to be decided more by Stone's publicist than Stone himself, as if they wouldn't want the chance to get a cynical, left wing biopic pass in the small window where Bush was still in office but nobody would get mad.  There's no part of me that believed that film was "an attempt to understand" (and I'm saying this as a liberal).  I can certainly bet that nobody was expecting someone to make Secret Honor.

If you're not a fan of political drama, you may be left in the dust, but either way I'd say you shouldn't go another week without seeing this movie.  Hall's portrayal of Nixon should be held up as one of the greatest performances in any film, but nobody talks about it (though we are past the time when people talk about Altman movies).  Its inclusion in the Criterion Collection isn't enough.  So in order to sway you, I've included it here:

~PNK

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971)

I'd like you to do me a small favor.

There are times when you just need to watch a movie cold.  No blurb, no spoilers, no trailer, nothing.  And that's the problem with trying to get people to watch a movie: they need precedence in order to give up their 90 minutes.  But sometimes the experience only works without any foreknowledge.  Let's Scare Jessica to Death is one of these cases.

This movie is one of my favorite horror films ever, made in the early 70's to little recognition and slowly building in power ever since.  It's brilliant and strange, and works best if you know nothing about it beforehand.  Even seeing the poster is a bad idea (or the DVD cover).  The above image is my favorite still that entices without giving anything away.  I've seen the movie nearly 10 times and each time I watch it I find more to admire and soak up.  I can't guarantee you'll love it immediately, but let it sink in.

Look, I'll fully admit that I'm kind of ripping this post off from Bleeding Skull (with their brilliant post on the subject here, though you might want to put duct tape over the screencaps).  At the end of that post the review Dan Budnik said he intended the recommendation as a small gift, and that if he was goofier he'd buy everybody the DVD.  I'm not that goofy, but I do have something else to offer - the movie on YouTube:

~PNK (with special thanks to YouTuber Robert Buchanan)

Short-Order: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928)

There is a certain patriarchal, condescending feel to the lack of short film in the modern movie scene.  Aside from Pixar, the short film has largely gone the way of the dodo since the 1960's, as live-action shorts, cartoons and newsreels have been abandoned in favor of fitting more showings in a day.  However, the advent of YouTube has made a new boon for shorts, seeing as their length fits in well with the attention span of the internet.  Short-Order looks at great short films from across time and I couldn't think of a better one to start with than the great The Fall of the House of Usher by Melville Webber and J. S. Watson, Jr.

You really can't go wrong with Poe, and The Fall of the House of Usher is one of his most enduring and haunting stories, creating palpable dread from mere suspicion and obsession.  There have been many film adaptations over the years, including two excellent and very different takes: Roger Corman's 1960 version starring Vincent Price in one of his most affecting and subtle performances (also check out The Tomb of Legia), and the stunning, feature-length 1928 French silent version by Jean Epstein and Luis Buñuel.  An incredible telling that is often forgotten, aside from experimental and silent film scholars, is this 13 minute silent version, from the team behind Lot in Sodom (another high water mark in experimental film making).

It's a film that lives in kaleidoscopes: the opening shot is just a pan across the first page of the story, refracted to the edge of comprehension.  A traveler approaches a kaleidoscope castle, nothing but a many of spires against rolling clouds.  The stairs multiply as well, cutting like paper to see their walkers.  The Usher siblings, Roderick and Madeleine, live alone in their ancestral home, cast in Deco splendor and served by unseen servants.  A superimposed coffin is served on a silver platter.  Doors are built from Tangrams.  Hammers.  Top hats.  I'm in love in fright.

I'm being vague because it's only 13 minutes and is vague in itself, playing with the images of the story rather than initiating the poorly-read.  Because of its seeming public domain status, there are a number of uploads available and some of them have atrocious soundtracks.  Internet Archive has one with decent music, though the quality isn't too good.  I'd suggest taking this version and turning the sound off, replacing it with this.

~PNK