Excerpted from Camille Paglia‘s discussion of her book, “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism“, at the Brooklyn Public Library on 3.16.17:
Day: August 3, 2023
Opposites Attract At The Beach
This evening I’ll finally be submitting to Christian Petzold‘s Afire, a reportedly not-bad film about an unlikely romantic current between characters played by the fleshy Thomas Schubert and the much thinner Paula Beer (Transit, Undine). A 7:25 pm show at the Jacob Burns Film Center.
Boilerplate: “While vacationing by the Baltic Sea, writer Leon (Schubert) and photographer Felix (Langston Uibel) are surprised by the presence of Nadja (Beer), a mysterious young woman staying as a guest at Felix’s family’s holiday home. Nadja distracts Leon from finishing his latest novel and, with brutal honesty, forces him to confront his caustic temperament and self-absorption. An encroaching forest fire threatens the group as Nadja and Leon grow closer, and tensions escalate when a handsome lifeguard and Leon’s tight-lipped book editor also arrive.”
Journalist friendo: “It’s a relatively intriguing film. Works on two levels as a (very) slow-burning romantic drama between the budding writer and summer housemate (at least on his part), and equally on LGBTQ level between the other two guys, plus a bit of a bait-and-switch on audience expectations. [Chubby guy] is annoying throughout. It gets quite convoluted by the end.”
Long Time Gone
Before I launch into yet another Exorcist article, the latest of several I’ve posted since HE’s launch nearly 20 years ago, please listen to this Nixon-era testimony from a senior National Theatre usher. It was recorded roughly 49 and 1/2 years ago.
And here we are nearly a half-century later with another Bluray re-issue and David Gordon Green‘s The Exorcist: Believer (10.13.23). I don’t want to know about this stuff. How many times can our faces be sprinkled with the same old holy water?
I own a superb-looking Bluray of The Exorcist (’73). I rewatched it last year on the Sony 65″ OLED, and it was pure heaven. So there’s really no need at all to own the upcoming 4K 50th anniversary Bluray (streeting on 9.19.23). None whatsoever.
“Bygone Sensibilities,” posted on 5.26.15: A few days ago and for no timely reason at all A.V. Club‘s Mike Vanderbilt posted a piece about original reactions to William Friedkin‘s The Exorcist, which opened in December ’73. It reminds you how jaded and cynical the culture has since become. The Exorcist gobsmacked Average Joes like nothing that they’d seen before, but you couldn’t possibly “get” audiences today in the same way. Sensibilities have coarsened. The horror “bar” is so much higher.
But there’s one thing that 21st Century scary movies almost never do, and that’s laying the basic groundwork and hinting at what’s to come, step by step and measure by measure. Audiences are too impatient and ADD to tolerate slow build-ups these days, but Friedkin spent a good 50 to 60 minutes investing in the reality of the Exorcist characters, showing you their decency and values and moments of stress and occasional losses of temper, as well a serious investment in mood, milieu and portents.
In short, the first hour of The Exorcist is wrapped in the veneer of class — a genuinely eerie score, flush production values and the subdued, autumnal tones in Owen Roizman‘s cinematography. It’s only in the second hour that the brutal stuff begins.
The best parts of The Exorcist don’t involve spinning heads or pea-soup vomit. I’m talking about moments in which scary stuff is suggested rather than shown. The stuff you imagine might happen is always spookier.
Such as (1) that prologue moment in Iraq when Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) is nearly run over by a galloping horse and carriage, and a glimpse of an older woman riding in the carriage suggests a demonic presence; (2) a moment three or four minutes later when Merrin watches two dogs snarling and fighting near an archeological dig; (3) that Washington, D.C. detective (Lee J. Cobb) telling Father Karras (Jason Miller) that the head of the recently deceased director Burke Dennings (Jack McGowran) “was turned completely around”; (4) Karras’s dream sequence about his mother calling for him, and then disappearing into a subway; (5) that moment when Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) mimics the voice and repeats the exact words of a bum that Karras has recently encountered — “Can you help an old altar boy, father?”
My favorite bit in the whole film is that eerie whoosh-slingshot sound coming from the attic.
Listen again to this senior usher at Westwood’s National Theatre talking about people fainting and having to be brought around by smelling salts, and also to another employee, Cathy Hewitt, talking about the resilience of audiences as they stood in line for hours on end, sometimes even in the rain. They’re describing a culture and a sensibility that seems as quaint and bygone as that opening narration in Orson Welles‘ The Magnificent Ambersons when he talks about how people used to get around by horse and buggy and took their time and never seemed to be in too much of a hurry.
Memory Enhancement
Prevagen comes highly recommended by none other than Sasha Stone. I’m starting the regimen today…a double dose for starters.
“Don’t Eat The Fucking Thing Then!”
If an all-powerful cosmic wizard stepped into my life and told me “you will never again eat a perfectly grilled and seasoned T-bone steak,” I would be sad but unbroken — I would push on. If the same wizard came back the next day and said “you will never again eat a perfectly barbecued hot dog with a little mustard and chopped onions,” I would be devastated.