On one level Larry Cohen‘s Q (a.k.a., The Winged Serpent) is a ludicrous crap-level B movie about a prehistoric flying dinosaur wreaking havoc upon Manhattan from a perch atop the Chrysler building. On another level it’s one of the wittiest genre goofs ever made — a kind of loose hipster comedy that almost lampoons the monster-threat aspect — with an almost mystifying performance by Michael Moriarty as the ultimate doofus-dweeb protagonist.
There’s a legendary bit when Moriarty, a part-time scat-singing performer, spazzes out as he watches the serpent attack an unsympathetic victim, nearly frothing at the mouth as he yells “eat ‘um! eat ‘um!” (The way Moriarty yells this over and over is especially delicious, like he’s some hyper retarded child.) David Carradine plays it dryer and more low-key, but delivers hoots of his own.
This trailer is hilarious but it doesn’t begin to suggest the subversive sophistication in Q. By emphasizing the obvious and the ludicrous it makes it seem like one of the stupidest monster movies of all time. The crucial difference when you watch the film is that Cohen clearly knows this, and has decided to play with the absurdity the way a cat plays with a captured mouse while letting Moriarty pull out the geek stops.
It’s an almost certain fact that Q‘s producer Sam Arkoff was completely unaware of what Cohen was up to, and that he didn’t care.
Sample dialogue (all of it spoken by Moriarty): (a) “Maybe his head got loose and fell off”, (b) “I want a Nixon-type pardon!”, (c) “Eat ’em! Eat ’em! Crunch crunch!” (d) “Stick it in your brain. Your tiny little brain!”
I’ve just come out of a 4 pm public screening of Amy Rice and Alicia Sams‘ By The People: The Election of Barack Obama at Manhattan’s Sunshine Cinemas, and I’m sorry to say it’s a fairly bloodless portrait of one of the most fascinating, breathtaking, sometimes ugly, occasionally transcendent, up-and-down racial-tinderbox elections in our nation’s history. It’s up-close and somewhat intimate and sorta kinda dull at times. Not novacaine dull but glide-along, yeah-yeah dull.
You’d never really know what a heart-pumping ride Obama’s two-year campaign for the White House was by watching this nicely assembled but excessively mild-mannered doc.
Rice and Sams were given extraordinary close-up access to candidate Obama and his innermost circle (David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, etc.) as well as Michelle, Sasha and Malia. The co-directors caught some good stuff along the way (Obama tear-streaking when speaking about his recently-deceased grandmother, a ten year-old campaign worker patiently dealing with a contentious voter over the phone, etc.) but it almost seems as if Rice and Sams agreed to let Axelrod and Gibbs co-edit the film with an aim to de-balling and up-spinning the final version as much as possible.
This seems especially apparent given the overly-diplomatic and toothless portrait of Hillary Clinton‘s campaign. Her current position as President Obama’s Secretary of State obviously means it would have been very politically awkward for a documentary to bring up her frequently ugly, race-baiting campaign tactics and so — I don’t mean to sound over-cynical and pat-minded but how else am I to process this? — Rice and Sams have given her a near-total pass.
There’s no mention of Hilary’s incessantly playing rhetorical race cards, talking about how working white people support her, etc. There’s no footage or even a mention of Bill Clinton, and therefore no mention of his post-South Carolina primary remark that Obama’s victory in that state was somehow comparable to Jesse Jackson ‘s win there in the mid ’80s. There’s no mention of Hillary’s cynical campaign speech about how Obama “will bring us together and the heavens will part” speech, which she delivered, as I recall, during the Ohio-and-Texas primary campaign. There’s no mention of Hillary’s made-up Bosnia story about dodging bullets when she visited that country in the mid ’90s. There’s no mention of Samantha Power‘s “Hillary is a monster” comment. There’s no mention of Hillary’s bizarre refusal to concede when she should have (i.e., after Obama had his electoral-vote triumph sewn up) and how she had to be stern-talked into doing so by Congressional and Senatorial colleagues.
It’s even more bizarre that the racial resistance factor among white voters — surely the central hurdle of Obama’s campaign — is only faintly acknowledged. We’re shown a clip of a couple of younger Bubbas stating that Obama’s ancestry is a problem, but that’s just about it in terms of Rice and Sams catching the backwater attitudes that were brought up by reporters and the political talk-show crowd nearly every damn day during the primaries and the general election,
The Reverend Wright issue is raised (how could it not be?) along with Obama’s historic Philadelphia speech about racial relations. But there’s no mention of Michelle taking heat for saying that the positive response to her husband’s campaign was cause for her feeling proud of the U.S for the first time in a long time. There’s no mention of that idiotic terrorist fist bump flap. No YouTube clip of that West Virginia cracker lady on the back of that motorcycle expressing cultural shock at the sound of Obama’s name. There’s no mention whatsover of the fear of the Bradley Effect, a now-discounted concern that white voters might change their minds about voting for a black candidate in the privacy of the voting booth due to latent racism. And Obama’s decision to finally cut all ties with Reverend Wright is completely ignored also.
And there’s very little mention of the general campaign against John McCain and Sarah Palin. It accounts for maybe ten minutes out of the film, which runs somewhere close to two hours. (I should have timed it but didn’t.) No right-wing stirring of the racial pot, no mention of McCain’s “The One” ad (and no clip of David Gergen explaining that the racial coding of that ad was clear to anyone who grew up in the South), no expressions of bone-dumb ignorance (“He’s…I think he’s an Arab”) and/or racial hatred at McCain and Palin rallies (“Kill him!”),
There’s some good B-roll footage of Obama playing basketball with friends, but the best photo-op basketball moment of the entire campaign — i.e., the moment when Obama made a near-perfect shot from outside the penalty circle in front of an audience of troops in Iraq — is missing. It leads you to suspect/presume that Rice and Sams didn’t cover last summer’s Middle East/European tour, and to ask why.
In sum, For The People comes pretty close to being a political chick flick. Which is to say it emphasizes emotionality and intimacy at the expense of the fierce melodrama and primal intensity that were fundamental aspects of the story. I could be mean and call it a puff piece and….you know something? It’s not being mean to say that because it more or less is that.
Because of these factors By The People is not likely to be seen as a contender for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar. Gentleness and a lack of edge don’t tend to stir people. You can’t be in bed with your subject when you’re portraying him/her in some journalistic form. I’m not saying that Rice and Sams were in fact emotionally entwined with the Obama campaign, but the doc makes it seem as if they were. And that’s a no-no. You have to step back and disengage and be merciless, if necessary.
There are several little things in the film that are pleasing or revealing in this or that minor way. But the fact is that most of the film is not focused on Obama himself as much as his campaign staff, and much of this footage feels like B roll. The narrative emphasis in the doc is somewhat akin to the kind of backstory you might pass along to your grandmother as you show her your family photo album and explain this and that. It’s too kindly and considerate and smoothed over..
It’s been pointed out by a friend of Rice and Sams that “the filmmakers made the film they wanted to make…it’s called By The People. And they captured the emotion of the campaign.” On this last point I respectfully disagree.
John Flynn‘s The Outfit, which screened last night at Manhattan’s Anthology Film Archives, played well to a full house. It’s the best kind of ’70s relic — a modest and unpretentious character piece that happens to be about guns, crime and payback. But the AFA’s projection was godawful. The projection lamp was so dim that half the images, which Flynn composed with low light and indoor shadows, were pure murk.
The trailer for Oliver Parker‘s Dorian Gray, slated to play next month’s Toronto Film Festival, indicates that the film may be mildly reprehensible. Oscar Wilde‘s tale of moral decrepitude among 19th Century London elite has apparently been coarsened into a semi-blatant sex-and-horror pic in hopes of reaching young horror hormonals. Wilde’s rotted corpse, lying inside a stone tomb at Pere Lachaise, is waiting for TIFF reactions before deciding what to do.
Say a prayer for the U.S. moviegoing culture. The public paid $22.5 million to see GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra on Friday, and indications are that it could earn anywhere from $55 million to $60 million by Sunday night. If there was any film this summer that screamed “crap, CG cheeseball, soul-killing, don’t see it!” it was G.I. Joe. And the empty vessels went anyway. This is an omen of desecrations to come. The bad people have won. We’ve all inched closer to the edge of the cliff.
Another visual thing — Uma Thurman‘s red hair, her eyes, the brightly colored pacifier, the yellow mustard background, etc. Katherine Dieckman‘s Motherhood (Freestyle, 10.16), which I don’t even remember having played at Sundance ’09, costars Anthony Edwards, Minnie Driver, Samantha Bee, Alice Drummond and Arjun Gupta.
Nothing to do with anything; purely an impulse post. I’m just in love with the moment when we reach the bridge and the camera pans right. Sometimes the visual is enough.
“I wrote the first sentence — ‘If Dad hadn’t shot Walt Disney in the leg, it would have been our best vacation ever!’ — and the rest was automatic,” recalls John Hughes in a piece about the writing of “Vacation ’58,” which became National Lampoon’s Family Vacation. I’ve always loved Hughes’ original story; I never liked the film all that much.
The original Griswold family
“I used the voice of a boy to cover my lack of skill, and to flatten the big moments. In Rusty’s prosaic language, a ruined vacation and an assault with a deadly weapon upon an entertainment legend enjoyed comparable importance. I called to mind a clamor of relatives, situations, catchphrases, and behaviors. I was mindful of my feelings as a child witnessing phony pop inventions go to hell. I understood that the dark side of my middle-class, middle-American, suburban life was not drugs, paganism, or perversion. It was disappointment. There were no gnawing insects beneath the grass. Only dirt.
“I also knew that trapped inside every defeat is a small victory, and inside that small victory is the Great Defeat. This knowledge — along with a cranky old lady; strange, needy relatives; a vile dog; and everything that could possibly go wrong on a highway — was enough to make a story, plug a hole in the magazine, and get on to the next issue.”
