Two Of My Favorite Writers

Kim Morgan on movie meltdowns in cars. A must-read.

But suddenly I thought — what if Robert Loggia (Robert Loggia from Lost Highway) was rolling in front of me? I’m not one to tail gate, but god forbid two motorized mental meltdowns collide (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about). Which got me thinking further about something I’m always pondering — movies — specifically, movies in which characters suffer similar vehicular flip-outs. There are so many: Kirk Douglas going spectacularly speed demon nutzo in Two Weeks in Another Town, Lana losing her cool in The Bad and the Beautiful, Lana and John Garfield losing their nerve in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Alice enduring Tommy’s endless joke in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Bette drunk driving with her Oscar atop the dash in The Star (drunk driving laws should be exempt if you’re clutching an Oscar you won 15 years ago), Anthony Perkins scaring the hell out of Diana Ross (and taking Helmut Newton meets Weegee meets mental hygiene photos at the same time — in the car) in Mahogany, Rip Torn chucking that woman out of his car, throwing money at her, then backing up and snatching the money right back in Payday, Max doing essentially, anything in Mad Max or Ann Savage and Tom Neal simply breathing behind the wheel in Detour — movies can express motor-psycho moments perfectly. So with that (and among many others, there are too many to list all) here are five big screen freak-outs I especially love.

The Self-Styled Siren on the documentary The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff.

The film sticks almost entirely to the professional aspects of Cardiff’s life; the one personal revelation is a brief discussion of his actor parents and his stint as a child actor. The Siren confesses to disappointment with this approach, although she knows she’s supposed to pretend not to care. Cinematography is, to the Siren, the sexiest job on a set, and plenty of stills attest to the fact that Cardiff was a handsome devil. There must be more to tell than the old story about Ava Gardner wanting to be well-lit when she had her period. Oh well; Magic Hour didn’t have much of the off-set life either.

There are certain writers whose writing is so pleasing that I would say that it “tastes good”. Kim and The Siren are two of those. Their writing is delicious.

This entry was posted in Movies. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.