Stories from Twitter: What’s in a name?

Posted on March 24, 2025 by sheila

Back when Twitter wasn’t a gathering of Nazi misogynists run by a mad-hatter oligarch, I used to do these long story threads and people seemed to like them. I’ve mainly stopped writing personally here but I’ll re-create some of those threads here (expanding them, of course) because they’re stories I haven’t told here. In general I don’t write in detail about my personal life right now in the moment, but the past is up for grabs. The stories are ancient history, and many of them don’t have a moral. They’re just Things That Happened.

So here’s the first one.

Man #1

Let’s just say, I was in love with him, although “In love” doesn’t describe what went on. It took me years – years – to get over him. And I did a pretty poor job of it. That piece is the only thing I’ve written about him. It was years ago and I’m okay and – unfortunately – he wasn’t a jerk or a user or careless with me. If he was those things, I might have gotten over him faster because I could have turned the loss to rage. I could have been mad at him. Instead, I was like a 19th-century literary character, suffering and making myself sick. Listen, I don’t connect with many men. Not like that. We were basically at ESP level in terms of communication. We literally had identical dreams about each other on the same night. It was spooky. Never had this before or since. I certainly never want it again. When he ended it – and he had his reasons, none of which were “I’m not into you” – it was like being abandoned in the middle of the ocean. A picture of me, taken the day after he cut things off, tells the whole story.

You got all that? It’s far enough in the past that I am able to say I wish I never met him. Not because he was bad or a jerk (I’ve got a couple of those), but because the impact he left was way out-sized, maybe because I was undiagnosed with you know what, and my tendencies are fatalistic and suicidal. Not anymore but I just have tools now to avoid those paths. Back then I didn’t. I struggled for years.

Our relationship never was a real thing. It wasn’t an “affair” in the normal sense of the word. If I were a normal person, we would have gone on dates and then shacked up and done the regular things. But we didn’t do that. It was a big “what if …”, a road not taken. Another reason why I just couldn’t get over it.

In retrospect I wonder what would have happened if we did the normal thing. We might have spontaneously combusted from the excitement which … I looked forward to then but now think it might have been actually dangerous for me. I’m being serious. (Ironically, if I had gone into psychosis, I might have been diagnosed way back then. Oh well.) Maybe we weren’t built for the the everyday. Probably not.

Welcome to my world. I had to start with the Doomed Gothic Romance of my mid-20s.

That’s Man #1.

Man #2

What I just described above may give you the impression of a single-minded all-or-nothing passion. It would be him or nobody. I could only love one man. I mean, sure? But … not quite.

I was seeing him through the whole entire thing. I met him first, on my first night out in Chicago. I met Man #1 later that year, and actually the circumstances were kind of similar. I first saw Man #2 onstage. I first saw Man #1 onstage too. I mean, I was an actress. I wasn’t meeting people at an office happy hour, for God’s sake. I ended up being “a part of” Man #1’s weekly shows, I’m on one of his albums, he wrote songs for me, I performed at a massive regional music festival with him, and etc. It was intense, but I was hanging out with Man #2 the whole time. Once I passed the “Tsk Tsk” Rubicon with Man #2, we sort of settled in to a regular thing. I could rely on it and him. We went through some heavy shit together and … just like Sally Rooney writes at the very end of Normal People … I think we did each other some good. I shiver to think who I would be now if I hadn’t met Man #2. If you had said to me back then, “This sexy cranky guy right here? The one you’re lending money to so he can get his car out of hock at midnight after playing pool for hours in a total dive where you were the only woman present? You’ll still be seeing him over a decade from now” I would have laughed in your face. Turns out, he was the “normal” thing. The stable thing. The real thing, even.

So. To paint the picture. I’m starting to fall for Man #1 who is also falling for me, and I’m hanging out with Man #2 simultaneously. And, just to keep things interesting, I was also doing the “normal” thing, and going out on dates with guys who asked me out, and sometimes even seeing them for a little while. It was a mad swirl of men. I’d go out to dinner with a guy on a first date, we’d have a nice time (or not, whatever), I’d get home and I’d call Man #2 (on the landline of course) and say “I’m coming over.” I’m sure Man #2 was seeing other people too, although I’m guessing he wasn’t having an 1820-style Jane Eyre/Marianne-in-Sense-and-Sensibility doomed Love Affair.

Worlds Collide: Man #1 and Man #2 meet

About a year into the thing with Man #2, the thing with Man #1 started up. I was performing every week with him and I generated my own following. It was this weird anomaly. I worked temp jobs in corporate offices, but every Monday night I was at this legendary little music club, sometimes performing, sometimes not, wearing my outrageous riot grrrl clothes, plastic barrettes, combat boots, teeny nightgown-dresses, and a derby hat. Monday nights were everything and even more so when Man #1 and I finally just acknowledged what was going on subliminally. We would talk about it. What should we do? He didn’t live in Chicago. He was (much) older than me. If we went for it, his whole life would have to be overturned. There was a lot up in the air. So we circled each other. Meanwhile he was writing these crazy songs about me and what was happening between us. It was all-encompassing and total. And fun, too. Exciting. I wasn’t looking for love – like, at all – but here it was.

I can’t remember when it happened but one Monday night, I’m at the show and suddenly Man #2 walks through the door. He knew where I would be every Monday so I guess he just decided to come join. In the world before cell phones, you had to do stuff like that. He was so out of context I didn’t know how to deal with it. A total meeting of my two worlds. And he – a star in his small world – walked into my small world, where I too – was a star. He sat there next to me and listened to people literally chanting my name, demanding I go onstage. He just looked at me. I was like, “I know. This is what’s happening, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Man #1 notices me in the audience, sitting with Man #2. And he was totally thrown off. He kept looking over at us, blatantly, and then forgot some lyrics. I sat there watching him fumble thinking, “Is this about me? It can’t be, right?” I’m not smart about these things. I don’t think he ever considered I’d do something like this, or even have another guy in my life. I’d never brought a date to one of these shows. Man #1 had no game face with it. He was rushing through songs, perfunctory. There was no free-form monologues in between songs. He just wasn’t feeling it. I knew why and I couldn’t believe it. He was jealous. I’m not very smart when it comes to relationships and so I didn’t even think of what it might have looked like to Man #1, that I brought Man #2 just to fuck with him, even though … I didn’t. Man #2 just showed up without an invite. Besides, my thing with Man #2 pre-dated whatever unrequited-mutual-crush thing we’ve got going on here. The show ended, and Man #2 was like, “He is incredible. I have to go talk to him and tell him!” I couldn’t stop him. He went backstage. I followed, wondering What is about to happen??. I was a spectator.

Man #1 was still so thrown off by Man #2’s presence … in my life … that he couldn’t pull himself together. Man #2, having no idea the Gothic Doomed Romance he just barged into, put out his hand, and said, “Man, that was such an incredible show, I just had to tell you how amazing it was …” Unwillingly, Man #1 shook Man #2’s hands but didn’t look him in the eye. Refused. I stood in between them looking from one to the other, gob-smacked at what I was seeing. I hadn’t anticipated Man #1’s rudeness! He didn’t even try to hide it! Oh my God! It was so weird! Man #2 felt the awkwardness and his excitement sort of subsided. I was the only one who didn’t feel awkward. I was too engrossed with watching and thinking, “Holy shit, and what’s HE gonna say? Oh my God, what will be the response?”

I remember this moment vividly, probably because of what came after. As Man #2 basically forced Man #1 to shake hands, I said to Man #1, “This is [Man #2’s name].” Man #1, eyes to the floor, reluctantly shook hands, and said, almost to himself, “I like that name.” Grudgingly.

What? “I like that name”??

I wanted to say, “Why are you being SO WEIRD?”

Of course he’s “being weird”, Sheila. It’s concerning that you don’t get why this whole thing is weird.

The conversation dwindled down because obviously it wasn’t going anywhere and Man #2 and I walked away. We were barely out of earshot when Man #2 said, “Jesus, he wouldn’t even LOOK at me. That was so weird. Like, he couldn’t even look at me!” I said, “I know, that was really weird. I’m sorry.” Suddenly, Man #2 understood. “Ohhhh okay. I get it. He’s into you.” “I can’t help it.” “So I’m just a pawn in your SILLY GAME.” “Listen I didn’t INVITE you tonight. You just SHOWED UP.” “Now I get why you’re here every Monday.” “I perform with him. You saw me.”

This was happening as we walked away. It was not serious. We bickered like this all the time. I enjoyed it. I never felt comfortable with anyone. You have to know someone’s not going away to bicker with them. I knew he wasn’t going away.

Man #2 turned it into a joke. He said, “I understand now my role in all this.” “Oh my God, stop it.” “He wants you but I have you so I WON.” He tossed back a shot of Jagermeister. He kept saying, “I WIN.” “Yes, okay, yes, you win.”

Man #2 kept coming every Monday night, which completely changed my dynamic with Man #1, which was a good thing, as you can probably imagine. I got some distance. Man #1 hated it when I showed up with Man #2. But it’s not like I was cheating. I wasn’t. Sometimes Man #2 wouldn’t come to the show but he’d pull up in his muscle car to drive me home after the show. There were windows right out onto the street, so I could see when he pulled up. I’d race out the door to go off on some adventure with Man #2. Who, by the way, was my age. Not a decade and a half older. Honestly, in looking back, I think me being with Man #2 probably made Man #1 feel old. He was middle-aged, I was young.

One of those Monday nights, after the show, Man #2 and I were lying in bed, post-whatever, holding each other, not speaking. I was falling asleep. Then, suddenly, through the darkness, Man #2 said, as though picking up the thread of an earlier conversation, even though we hadn’t been talking about it at all: “You know, Man #1 has the love of thousands. He plays to packed shows. He has a fan base like nothing I’ve ever seen before. But every Monday night? He’s wishing he were me.” I burst out laughing. Man #2 was so proud. He turned it into a little song, with a kind of Irish jig cadence, and the chorus was “But EV-ery Monday night he’s wishin’, oh he’s wishin’ he were me.” He was so proud and I was crying with laughter, and also at the absurdity of it all.

Welcome to my 20s. When I didn’t realize I was playing with fire, playing for keeps.

So he likes the name, so what?

Five or so years later, everything has changed. Man #1 dropped me. I think now he was trying to save himself from what could have been a potentially destructive situation. He said as much to me. Whatever, it messed me up. I would lie in bed and my heart hurt so bad – literally – that I thought I should go to the hospital. It was like stabbing hot pains in my chest. I moved to New York to go to grad school, tearing myself away from the mad swirl. I was still seeing Man #2, although it was less frequent. I would go back to Chicago three or four times a year, and he came to New York to teach workshops. If we were in the same location, we’d get together.

Man #1 and I wrote tortuous letters to each other. By hand. So we didn’t “break up”. The timing “wasn’t right”. I shouldn’t have been in contact with him at all. He wrote a song about our goodbye (the song’s title was the exact date we said goodbye). In the song he described my outfit. He wrote this horrible song – I mean, it’s great, but it put me out of commission for a week – where the chorus ends with: “You’ll always be my great lost love.” It was Marianne and Willoughby, the ’90s version. There was a lot of this kind of thing. Like I said, we tortured each other. We saw each other once or twice and it was always awful and I always regretted it. It was like relapsing on drugs after being in rehab for a year. I’d have to get over it all over again. I wanted to go back in time, re-order things around, make us say the things we should have said, tell us what to do to avoid the catastrophe. I’m older now. I hear the drama of this language. I can argue with my younger self’s interpretation and I do. But this is what it was like for me then.

For the 40th time, thank God for Man #2. He and I kept going. Our bond deepened, and it happened without me even noticing. We were very alike. Un-tameable kids. Everyone was always judging us and trying to get us to calm down and color between the lines. We couldn’t do it. On our third date, we barely said a word to each other, because he was playing pool and he was such a genius at pool that everyone wanted to play him. So I watched. And he was a spectacle in his blue bandana, white T-shirt with cigarette pack rolled up in the sleeve unironically, cigarette dangling. I was riveted. He came over at one point and gave me a kiss. We still didn’t know each other at all. He looked at me with this sudden assessing expression, taking me in. He said, with a tone of wonder, “You don’t seem to have a problem with me.” I said, “I don’t even know you, why would I have a problem?” He said, “People have problems with me. Girls have problems with me. For their own reasons. But you … don’t seem to have a problem with me.” He still had that tone of wonder. Who is this girl in the babydoll nightgown and Chuck Taylors who is perfectly happy watching me play pool?? Maybe other girls were hurt he wasn’t talking to them? I get it, I do. But I learned more about him watching him play pool than I would have if he monologued about his childhood. So I think he found me relaxing: I had no problems with him. We didn’t try to change each other. We helped each other grow up.

I haven’t told the half of it, even though I’ve written a lot about him. And I never will tell all. It’s private. I may wish I never met Man #1, but I shiver to think of who I would be without Man #2. I’d been hurt by men. Men were careless with me. They took me too personally. He didn’t take me personally at all. Which isn’t the same thing as not being involved. But his ego wasn’t fragile. He didn’t get passive-aggressive, he somehow didn’t make things about him, he didn’t freak out when I was abject with despair (he was there for that too, the rhythms of my moods. I remember sobbing so hard one night I don’t think I’d ever made such sounds. It wasn’t about him. I don’t think it was about anything. I was beside myself. Retrospect shows the mental illness at work and I was probably crashing from a manic period. He didn’t even ask me what was going on. He didn’t try to fix it. He just said, “Come on now”, put his arm around me, patted my shoulder and turned on the television. He watched Creature from the Black Lagoon and I cried until I passed out on his chest. And I felt better and also safe. I’m just telling you how it was. I can say, with 100% certainty, that Man #1 would not have been able to deal with any of this. He got freaked out if one tear-drop welled up in my eye. He would beg me to stop crying, and then try to fix it, whatever it was, anything to make me stop crying.)

Once, Man #2 took care of me when I was sick, when I was very sick. I needed to be taken care of and he was there. One night, I considered him too drunk to drive and I tried to take his keys, and he refused, holding them up in the air, laughing in my face because I couldn’t reach that high, and saying the immortal words, “My car has traction issues you could never understand” and we ended up literally wrestling in a snow drift for the keys. I refused to get in the car with him and walked home, even though it was 2 degrees outside, seething out loud as I walked, “That was RIDICULOUS. Screw HIM … NEVER AGAIN … NEVER AGAIN…” Incandescent with anger! It kept me warm during the five-block walk home in the frigid night. I didn’t speak to him for a week even though I was totally over it by the next morning and then he called me and said, “I’m sorry” and I said, “Oh it’s fine” and I went to meet up with him. This kind of thing happened a lot. Nobody held grudges. He said stuff that made a difference, long-term. “You shouldn’t feel insecure when you’re with me. Tell me what to do so you can calm down.” “I don’t think you realize you’re perfectly fine just as you are.” Like, he said crazy shit that literally changed how I thought about myself and made a difference in how I saw myself to this day.

It’s important to lay this out. If it took me years to get over Man #1 then it took me years to look at the decade-plus relationship with Man #2 and realize … Oh. That was the real thing. It might not have looked like other people’s relationships but honestly a traditional and/or conventional relationship was clearly – CLEARLY – not my thing.

So a couple years after I leave Chicago, Man #1 gets married. I am somehow devastated even though it’s been over for years. Then, I get an email from an old friend in Chicago who used to go to those Monday night shows, and still went. He had some news. Man #1’s wife just had a baby. One of the things Man #1 said to me repeatedly was, “I don’t ever want kids.” And I wondered at the time … huh, is that okay for me? because I want kids eventually … I didn’t feel “betrayed” or anything. I mainly felt sorry for myself. I felt like I was living the wrong life. That something went really really wrong back there that I would now be getting such an email. But this news wasn’t what stopped me dead in my tracks. Here’s what did:

My friend went on to say, “He named the baby [Man #2’s distinctive name].”

Recall: Man #1, eyes on the floor: “I like that name.”

Okay, so, calm down, he did say “I like that name”. It makes sense he would name his kid that.

But.

I maintain it’s a little bit fucking weird to name your child after the Other Man in your “great lost love”s life. It would be like Willoughby having a child with his new wife and naming it “Colonel Brandon”. Wouldn’t that be just a little bit … weird?

Man #2’s name is not John or Jim. It’s not a RARE name but it’s certainly not common. Maybe Man #1 didn’t remember that it was the same name. (I doubt it.)

So.

I cavort with another man under Man #1’s nose for two years, driving him crazy. And he names his child after that guy. After my guy.

He just liked the name, as he said. It doesn’t mean anything at all.

Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the Berkshires

Posted on March 24, 2025 by sheila

Re-posting my lengthy piece on the production I saw of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 2016, in honor of the anniversary of the play premiering on Broadway.

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On the evening of July 4th, I took the Mass Pike west, far west, to the Berkshires to see the Berkshire Theatre Festival’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by David Auburn (not only a gifted director but a Pulitzer-prize winning playwright for Proof). He’s directed a couple of productions in the Berkshires, including Sick and Anna Christie. The main stage is nestled in the middle of the green mountains, trees curving in around the theatre (the theatre has been there since the early 20th century.) It’s a beautiful space.

The production starred Rebecca Brooksher as Maggie, Michael Raymond-James as Brick (he’s mostly known for his role on True Blood, but also the great and unfortunately short-lived series Terriers – and here, he’s coming back to the stage after 8 years away) as Brick, Linda Gehringer as Big Mama, and Jim Beaver (from Deadwood and Supernatural) as Big Daddy. Filling out the cast of characters was Jenn Harris as Mae (that “monster of fertility”, as Maggie calls her), Timothy Gulan as Gooper, and David Adkins and Brian Russell as the tipsy preacher and the doctor, respectively.

Continue reading →

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“We just always did what we fucking wanted to.” — Kevin Seconds

Posted on March 24, 2025 by sheila

“We had all types coming to our early gigs – new wavers, stoners, Rocky Horror Picture Show kids, bored and rowdy native kids who lived in the nearby Indian reservation and colony. We always kind of related to a mixed bag of people.” — Kevin Seconds

It’s Kevin Seconds’ birthday. Front man of 7 Seconds, the influential punk band from Reno, part of the “straight edge” sub-genre of punk – for their so-called idealistic and positive messaging. The band featured two brothers (Kevin and Steve), a passionate fan base, and a hefty nonstop touring schedule that lasted for three decades.

They were off and on as a band, as Life happened to all of them, and they announced about 5 years ago that 7 Seconds was no more. But I just checked Kevin Seconds’ Twitter feed and lo and behold he announced that they were up and running again and going on tour. I also came across a really interesting interview with Kevin Seconds, where he reflects on the last 30 years, and what the experience of 7 Seconds was like.

As I periodically like to do, I’m resurrecting a piece my brother Brendan wrote on his old blog, which I rescued (as I did all of his music writing). Brendan was a massive 7 Seconds fan and he wrote about seeing them live at The Living Room in Providence. The essay has a killer last line. (Bren is very good at last lines, which is not a small skill!)

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.” – Joan Crawford

Posted on March 23, 2025 by sheila

Today is Joan Crawford’s birthday. Some links first:

World-Class Acting: On Joan Crawford and Sudden Fear

Here are the re-caps of Feud: Bette and Joan I did for The New York Times. Lots of discussions of Joan Crawford’s career and acting woven throughout.

A while back, Mitchell and I had a discussion about her. Well, we discuss her all the time. But this time I recorded it.

The setup of the conversation went as follows (an ongoing series): I throw names of famous people at Mitchell, and ask him to describe each person in only “one word”. Then we both take it from there. Enjoy.

JOAN CRAWFORD

Sheila O’Malley: One word.

Mitchell Fain: I’m looking for a word that means “of an era”. I guess I’m going to say Of Her Time. She invented film acting. She was this girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and a dancer, it was the flapper era, she was a wild girl. Talk about a chameleon. Fuck Madonna.

MF: (continued) She was the flapper girl, she was the good time girl, she was the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who makes good, she was the modern businesswoman, and then she was the hardened older woman, and then she was the grotesque. Very few people have careers who last as long as hers.

MF: (continued) It’s hard for me to talk about her because I know so much about her personal life, or what I think I know about her personal life. This was a person who loved being famous more than she loved anything else. And being famous meant she had to get good at her job so she became a fabulous film actress but it was about being famous. It was about saying “Fuck You” to the trashy weird place that she grew up in, living in the back of a laundry with her mother on a cot. But as an actress, she really did perfect a kind of film acting. First of all, the camera loved her face. Interestingly enough, she was a blue-eyed freckled girl with red hair. We’d never get that from black and white movies. Her freckles were covered. We never got the sense that she had blue eyes. Cinematographers loved her for her angles.

MF: (continued) So she learned the art of film acting while it was being formed, and everybody has benefited from Crawford’s discoveries.

My favorite Joan Crawford performance is in The Women.

MF: (continued) It’s a great example of her work because she’s surrounded by women who were her contemporaries. You look at Joan Crawford now and we see her movies and the acting may seem archaic in the way that people don’t understand that style anymore, which I get. But you put her around her contemporaries, like Norma Shearer, and she is so utterly real and contemporary. Crystal Allen, the woman she plays in The Women, is so going to get what she wants. And she’s so funny. The scene in the dressing room where she says to Norma Shearer, “Whenever so-and-so doesn’t like what I’m wearing, I take it off.” She is sexual, she is a sexual threat. That role is the personification of Joan Crawford. Working girl, clawed her way to the rich side, she’s stunningly beautiful, she’ll do what she has to do to get there, she knows what she looks like and how that works, she’s brutally honest with herself. To me, it’s her perfect role, because she’s funny and she’s real and she’s stunning and she is the kind of woman that we want to judge, but that we all secretly want to be. It is the way we hope we would be, that kind of tenacity, that kind of “Fuck you, I’m getting what I want.”

SOM: You know what else I love about her is how smart she was about material for herself. The story of Crawford, on bended knee, begging Otto Preminger to put her in Daisy Kenyon. She knew: This is mine. Nobody else can do this. She courted projects, she courted directors. She was in it for the long haul from the beginning, which I love, because she was a jazz baby dancing on tables. Who knew where the movies were gonna go?

MF: There were no VCRs. They didn’t know we were going to study these films with a fine-toothed comb. There weren’t film studies classes. That’s my whole point about what they did back then. When I try to explain to people about old movies and how fabulous they were, my point is they were making these films as entertainment. The idea of the auteur, the artist/director wasn’t really in play, not at the beginning. Roger Ebert does that thing where he watches a film frame by frame with an audience. Back then, there wasn’t even the possibility for people to do that, there was no thought that that was going to happen. So the kinds of movies that were made back then have an unconscious level of artistry to them. We now can study the unconscious intentions, the unconscious moments that came from all of these very conscious decisions. For example, watching Meet Me in St. Louis.

MF: (continued) Vincente Minnelli chose every moment specifically, maybe more so than any director who was a big director at that time. But he made so many different kinds of films that to see him as an auteur is almost difficult because he seemed to be a workman, a journeyman. However, the story that emerges from the details he chose back then then tells the story that we can look at 60 years later.

Then there’s a story that really warms my heart and that is Joan Crawford’s relationship with Billy Haines.

MF: (continued) Billy Haines was a number one movie star in the silent era, he was openly gay, he had a partner. Louis B. Mayer said, “You have to fake a marriage like everybody else or I’m going to fire you” and Haines said, “Would you leave your wife?” And Mayer said, “Make a choice, Hollywood or your partner.” They fired him and put it out that his popularity was going down because of sound, which wasn’t true. He was a top box office person in the country for three years running, and then they kicked him out of Hollywood. He decided to become a designer, which had been his hobby. Joan was a really good friend of his. They had worked together in silent films. In fact, he named Joan, I think. Anyway, she stuck by him. She would have him decorate her house, and would have people over, and people would ask, “Who decorated your house?” He became one of the most influential interior designers in American history and it was partly because of Joan Crawford’s loyalty.


Joan Crawford in her living room, designed by Billy Haines

MF: (continued) So the idea that she was a monster who used people and threw them away is not true. There were people who very loyal to Joan. And she was also a loyal friend for many many years.

Unfortunately, because of Mommie Dearest, which may or may not be apocryphal but which Christina Crawford has certainly dined out on ever since, the book and the movie has made Faye Dunaway‘s impression of Joan Crawford into Joan Crawford.

Nobody’s watching Possessed and no one’s watching The Damned Don’t Cry and no one’s watching Daisy Kenyon, which is one of my favorites. It’s such a beautifully ambiguous movie. Dana Andrews, Henry Fonda, it’s so beautiful. You have no idea who to root for.

SOM: Exactly.

MF: Who’s the good guy here? You don’t know. It’s so brilliant. I also think that she, like Elizabeth Taylor, although Taylor was more hit or miss, Joan was best when she was pushed, when she was challenged. If she had a director like Otto Preminger, who expected her to be an actress, she pulled it out. If she had a weaker director, she was just going to play Joan Crawford. Like with Elizabeth Taylor, when she was working with Rock Hudson or James Dean or Richard Burton or Mike Nichols or Monty Clift, she gave some serious performances.

MF: (continued) When she was working with Paul Newman, she was like, “I gotta bring my A game”. But left to her own devices, when she was the one who was calling the shots, just because she was the biggest star on the lot or the biggest personality, she phoned it in a bit. I think Joan was a little bit like that. For Elizabeth Taylor, it was like she was a little girl trying to prove something, and Joan Crawford was a poor girl trying to prove something.

But like Cary Grant, I am not sure anyone else has known how to use a camera better than Joan Crawford to tell a story. Her face and the camera working together, understanding what that meant, and how that tells a story.

There’s that scene from Sudden Fear where she’s in the closet.

SOM: The slant of light across her eyes.

MF: She knows exactly how much to do with the camera, and what it is, and what the lighting meant. That’s what I mean about film acting. They were creating film acting. In movies now it’s mostly natural lighting, and realistic acting, and we don’t have to worry about those elements so much anymore, it’s not the same artform in a lot of ways. The idea of moving the pictures forward is now all in the director’s and cinematographer’s hands, except for people like Meryl Streep who is still doing that old-school kind of acting work. But back in the day, your face WAS the architecture of the movie. Your face, your body, your shoulders. Look at how Bette Davis walked. The stars were the architecture, their shape meant something to a camera, and I think they knew it and I think they were making it up.

MF: (continued) She’s so fabulous-looking. The image of her will always be jarring and beautiful. There are certain images of her, from the 1940s, with her hair in a snood, and the cheekbones and the lips, and the light across her face, that noir lighting that they perfected on her, that is just so iconic. And then Adrian, the designer, who created the big shoulder thing for her, which made her look like an Amazon.

SOM: She was probably very tiny.

MF: She was tiny. There’s ways that she used herself that they didn’t even know what they were doing, because there weren’t gender studies programs at the time. It’s like Johnny Guitar. Nicholas Ray may have known it on some subconscious level because he was dealing with those things in his own life, but Joan Crawford didn’t know it. But even before that, there was something masculine about the way she strolled across a film. The Bride Wore Red.

MF: (continued) Even though she’s very feminine and very beautiful in that movie, there’s something very masculine about how she goes about getting what she wants, and so the fact that her style became these huge shoulder pads, as though she had these crazy broad football player shoulders, was very deliberate and interesting, in terms of gender. And they put the shoulder pads in everything. It became ridiculous. She’d be wearing a dressing gown with shoulder pads the size of Gary Cooper. It’s also interesting that she did a lot of films with Clark Gable, successful in their time, although they weren’t as famous a duo as Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy or William Powell and Myrna Loy. But they were very successful, and there is something there in the dynamic that reminds me of what Robert Redford said about working with Barbra Streisand: She’s so masculine that you get to be your most feminine, and she’s so feminine you get to be your most masculine. Now, Clark Gable isn’t gonna say that, but that’s what happened with her and Gable.

MF: (continued) He ended up looking pretty compared to her. He had to use feminine wiles to win her over until he became “the man”. Her persona was masculine and feminine. She is a pre-gender-studies classic gender studies subject.

SOM: That’s what we were texting about with Johnny Guitar.

MF: That whole movie is a gender studies class. All of those roles existed, the lipstick lesbian, the bottom boy who was there to please and complement the top guy. It all existed. It’s just that nobody talked about any of it until there were gender studies classes and queer filmmakers and female filmmakers.

SOM: Most of the great movie stars, especially of that era before the sexual revolution, the ones who still resonate for us today, are the ones who have that mix of feminine and masculine. So Joan is hard, Clark gets to be soft. Or Cary is soft and Hepburn gets to be hard. But then they flip. And it’s all delightful. Who’s doing that now? It’s kind of out of style, I guess, but it’s so attractive.

MF: I mean, think about Kristen Wiig‘s persona in Bridesmaids . She’s so honest. And there’s something stereotypically male about her neuroses. She ends up being the female Woody Allen.

SOM: That’s more interesting than the one-note characters of uptight bitch, or an entitled Sex and the City Carrie Bradshaw type … maybe funny, but not attractive, ultimately, as a leading lady, at least in the classic sense.

MF: By the way, these are all Joan Crawford prototypes. I could pick a Joan Crawford movie that is the “entitled bitch”, that is the “uptight ice princess”. Crawford did them all. She practically invented them.

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Review: Being Maria (2025)

Posted on March 21, 2025 by sheila

This angry mournful movie tells the story of teenage Maria Schneider, plucked out of obscurity to play opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. It’s mostly about the trauma she endured during filming – which she tried to talk about then (no one wanted to hear it), and yet she continued to talk about it until the end of her life (she died in 2011). She never really could move past it. I think the film lays out the situation with welcome complexity and honesty. Matt Dillon plays Brando (the red turtleneck!) – and Anamaria Vartolomei is really really good as Schneider. The movie made me sad and mad. My feelings are complex. You’re not supposed to have complex feelings about Last Tango. I don’t let other people tell me how I’m supposed to feel. So I wrote about all this. I reviewed for Ebert.

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“Every choice I’ve ever made has been dictated by a formless hunch rather than by strict logic.” — Peter Brook

Posted on March 21, 2025 by sheila

“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space, whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.” — Peter Brook, born on this day

Peter Brook’s illustrious career earned him the right to be called a visionary. You’ll hear it a lot. He was one of the most influential theatrical directors of all time. Generations have learned from him, found inspiration in his work, his visions, his bold-ness. He died in 2022 at the age of 97.

He helmed so many groundbreaking and famous productions. He brought Marat/Sade to England for the first time. (He also directed a film adaptation of Marat/Sade.) His Shakespeare productions were talked about far and wide, often the hottest ticket on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as continental Europe. He brought his adaptation of Mahabarata to New York, and it caused a tremendous stir (positive and negative: this was not a new response to his work. He was so far “out there” he often went up against pushback. His bold style and “why the hell not” approach often drew complaints from more conservative theatrical establishments.) He leaned towards the abstract, the surreal. He was not linear or conventional.


Peter Brook’s “Mahabarata”, 1989

“The thing that I have a horror of is ideological theatre – Shakespeare never told us how to think.” — Peter Brook

Let’s start with the most important of his productions: his famous Midsummer Nights Dream, produced in 1970 at the Royal Shakespeare Company before moving to the West End. There is no recording of the production, so we have to just take the word of people who saw it. The few photos we have are striking: the set was a white box, no adornments: just a white clear pure space. His motif was the circus, and his production included clowns and gymnasts, trapeze artists – trapezes dangling over the stage and actors would swing, or slump, or stand on them, swaying above the action. These images have traveled through the decades.


Peter Brook’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1970

Actors know about this production. Or they should. People who saw it still talk about it 50 years later. There are very few productions like this in the theatre. Theatre is here today, gone tomorrow, unless it is captured on film. Orson Welles’ 1937 production of Julius Caesar, its set and costumes reflecting the rise of fascism in Europe. There is no record of it but it left a mark, it still inspires.


Orson Welles’ Julius Caesar

The original Glass Menagerie with Laurette Taylor is another production like this, where Taylor’s performance remains so influential – even though there is only a couple minutes of footage of it – you can say it changed acting forever, 10 years before Brando came along.


Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie, 1946

The Victorian-era’s Lyceum Theatre’s productions of Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing, with one of the most famous actors of her time, Ellen Terry – and innovative stage techniques, set design, lighting – caused a sensation which you can still feel over a century later. Those productions revolutionized stage lighting/set design.


Lyceum Theatre, Much Ado About Nothing, 1882

Midsummer Night’s Dream seems like it couldn’t generate much buzz beyond “we love this famous play” – but Brook’s handling of it was so distinct, it opened up a world of possibilities for other productions.

Word of Peter Brook’s Midsummer filtered down to us acting students in college, two decades after the production. The chairperson of our department saw Brook’s Mahabarata in New York and told us about it, how he designed it, its mood and set, she walked us through the whole thing. She gave us the context of who Brook was, the gigantism of his career and his impact. She passed this information on to us. The controversy around Mahabarata was par for the course, completely valid in many of its particulars, and yet also slightly irrelevant, considering the impact. The same was true of his Marat/Sade and also Midsummer. Purists resented him. C’est la vie.

Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often called “Peter Brook’s Dream“, that’s how singular a vision it was!

We need to understand we are in a continuum. We need to understand the tradition of experimental theatre is in Brook’s debt, although he did not get there first (which he acknowledged – Artaud’s “theatre of cruelty” was a major influence on Brook, as was the revolutionary career of Joan Littlewood, who brought Brendan Behan’s The Hostage to America). Brook was totally establishment – which was part of why his career was so radical and startling. He wasn’t some outsider. He was artistic director of the RSC! But he was also a dynamic and inventive storyteller.


Marat Sade, Peter Brook 1966

His book The Empty Space should be required reading for theatre major undergraduates (we read it in our theatre history class), and if you haven’t read it, there’s my recommendation! Like I said: the past has valuable lessons for us and it’s important to understand the continuum of the avant-garde, so that we can recognize it – and not instinctively reject it – when it shows up again. There is still a fear of the new, and not just in politically conservative circles. I see it all the time in film critic circles, and it’s true in theatrical circles too. New things are often rejected out of hand. Before they even have a chance to take hold.

There aren’t many pictures of Peter Brook’s Dream, but what we have is eloquent.

I have dreamt about going back in time so that I could see that production (among others).

“The meaning of a theater event is that none of us could see something so clearly as with the new energy that is brought with the meeting of a theme, actors living it, and an audience gradually entering it to live it with them. At that moment, a certain light appears, revealing what we would never have thought of on our own.” — Peter Brook

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March 2025 Supernatural Viewing Diary Season 11, working backwards

Posted on March 20, 2025 by sheila

Working my way backwards …

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 2 “Form and Void” (2015; d. Phil Sgriccia)
Starting with Robert Mitchum’s “love hate” knuckles monologue from Night of the Hunter? I love this so much. I am so glad to be out of the foggy nothingness that was season 12-15. Because I am watching backwards I do not know why Castiel has red eyes and is being held hostage by two angels who look like they could be in a 90s teen comedy. What I love: real world locations. The car out in the world, Dean driving 40 miles this way and that. The empty town. Again, they’d already done this with Croatoan but it feels fresh, the way they’re doing it, and really eerie. No Rowena. I can’t tell you what a relief it is. She has her supporters. This is nothing against her as a person or as an actress. She’s clearly talented. But she – and the bunker – broke the show. And so I cannot abide her. Just watch any episode pre-Rowena and it is instantly obvious what having her around did. Back in the day they knew they had to “power down” Castiel somehow because he was apparently so powerful he could wrap up any episode in 5 minutes. They were smart: they muffled his power, they clipped his wings, because they prioritized the story structure as established. With Rowena, they said, “Fuck it, we need her magic to get the boys out of every scrape under the sun.” She was catastrophic to the DNA of the show. Final thought: the use of “Sugar Shack” – and when they use it – is psychotic and awesome. Sam’s journey in this episode might be one of the butchest things I’ve ever seen.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 3 “The Bad Seed” (2015; d. Jensen Ackles)
I spoke too soon. The episode opens with Rowena. There’s still a lot of Hell and Heaven stuff here but I don’t mind it as much because the balance clearly tips towards the brothers. They’re pushing it though. Watch Jensen’s wink and bright smile in the interrogation room after he says, “And I have a fake badge.” I do not know how he does it. So this feels more like what we get in the later seasons, an entire episode devoted to the seasonal arc – so we have an angel and a demon having a drink together and complaining about their bosses, like some low-rent Glengarry Glen Ross. There’s Crowley trying (and failing) to groom wee Amara. There are multiple boring demons. Rowena is a big factor. Castiel. Metatron. Jesus, the Heaven and Hell stuff is just so tedious. And there’s so MUCH of it. I do want to point out that the emotional arc of the season – i.e. Dean’s submission to Amara – has already begun, and it’s suggested in Jensen’s behavior – he’s playing it even if he doesn’t have text to suggest it. This is what a good actor does. The story is IN him. He IS the story – whether it’s focused on him or not. (This is what Samantha Smith could not do. I don’t think she even knew she should be doing that.) And so Rowena senses he’s changed and looks at him with curiosity and concern. That’s all we need to keep the EMOTIONAL thruline of the season intact – instead of just getting bogged down with nondescript angels and demons and thinking that’s the most important thing. This – it is THIS – that the next four seasons totally forgot how to do.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 4 “Baby” (2015; d. Thomas J. Wright)
It’s a masterpiece. That such a genius episode – genius in conception and execution – would come so late in the game series-wise – 11 years in and they come up with something that seems so obvious – an entire episode inside the Impala, from the point of VIEW of the Impala – and yet they had never done before … just warmed my soul at the time, and warms my soul still. I just put it together that the items left in the Impala – Piper’s hair pin and the joyriders’ Hello Kitty purse complete with handful of pennies – were left there by women. Maybe not deliberate but random women saving them – without even knowing they were doing it – is a pretty nice touch.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 5 “Thin Lizzie” (2015; d. Rashaad Ernesto Green)
This is an object lesson in what they used to do so well. There’s your basic case: axe murders in the vicinity of Lizzie Borden’s ancestral home. The brothers on the road. Quirky eccentric characters, played by character actors (meaning: good. Not young, not too pretty). Some humor. It’s a case. But then Amara suddenly enters into it and suddenly there is the larger arc: the show isn’t straining to include it. It was there in Baby too. So the threat and ingrigue of Amara grows episode by episode. And watching this again, watching how Jensen plays this … it’s fascinating and DIFFERENT from how he plays other “a-ha we’re on the trail of the Big Bad” moments. He’s more unnerved by it. he’s more drawn to it, it’s beyond his control. And of course he’s lying to Sam about it. Jensen is playing this strong disturbing pull and he does it for a whole entire season. It’s riveting.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 6 “Our Little World” (2015; d. John F. Showalter)
There are so many fist fights in this one. I always lose the plot when it comes to angels/demons battling it out. I just don’t care. Crowley helps but once Crowley’s Boredom Arc began in Season 10 it never really ended. This is a crime against one of the most consistently entertaining side characters in the whole thing. The scene between Dean and 14-year-old Amara … I kind of can’t believe they actually went for it.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 7 “Plush” (2015; d. Tim Andrew)
This is okay. A little rambly and top-heavy. The family in question and the little kid isn’t central enough, at least not with the third act revelation. I might be missing something. Again, though, considering whaat I just went through watching season 12-15, it’s such a relief to have your basic monster mystery.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 8 “Just My Imagination” (2015; d. Richard Speight Jr.)
One of my go-to episodes if I need a little comfort. I may very well have watched this single episode more than any other episode. It’s perfect.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 9 “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2015; d. Robert Singer)
I think this might be first intentional re-watch of Season 11, so it’s more obvious to me where this whole thing is going. I was so taken up by Dean’s helpless swooning throughout season 11 – I missed the ulterior motive. I was also distracted by Emily Swallow’s rather fabulous modern-interpretive-dance movements.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 10 “The Devil in the Details” (2016; d. Thomas J. Wright)
Here’s my take. The show is stronger when the brothers and their conflicts are central. What a shock. When the show started splitting off into side plots with side characters – and yes this includes Castiel – something essential and unique was lost. So we have a long fight with Crowley and Rowena (the beginning of their incredibly boring season=long arc of bickering), we have Castiel wandering in the woods with some random angel, we have Dean running around mostly by himself, and we have Sam in the cage with Lucifer – and the first two just cannot compete with the second two. We only get tiny chunks of each at a time. We’re starting to see the little cracks – in this episode and the last one – that will become gigantic fissures by next season, which grow until the whole thing is a void. Andrew Dabb wrote this one and you can see his tendencies. Some good stuff with Sam and Lucifer, and memory lane – and I like how the doorway to hell is in the back of a machinist’s shop in some small town. And the blue light in the cage was stunning.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 11 “Into the Mystic” (2016; d. John Badham)
Another late-season fave. I find it strangely soothing. And it has one of my favorite final-shots-of-tormented-Dean in that vast cannon. I think the final shot of The Purge is my favorite – it’s GRIM – but this … again, broken record: we haven’t seen THIS Dean before, and it was so exciting having something new to explore literally 11 years in.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 12 “Don’t You Forget About Me” (2016; d. Stefan Pleszczynski)
The creature-monologue here should win the prize for the longest in the history of the series. Swear to God it’s over 10 minutes. This whole found-family thing was soured by the Wayward Sisters thing later on, and Claire became more and more of a flat character, with more and more makeup on with each passing episode. (She makes a crack here about Alex spending an hour in front of the mirror every day when Alex isn’t the one wearing pounds of makeup and with long luxurious golden curls. But never mind.) I forget though … this is pre-Wayward. So it doesn’t have the WEIGHT to it it had later. Jody is adorable, and the dinner scene is a classic.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 13 “Love Hurts” (2016; d. Phil Sgriccia)
Really dig this one. Another object lesson in how to have it all: You have a pretty cool monster case- plus a truly weird motel room (it’s … gigantic? there’s a … tire theme?) and then swoosh Amara comes into it, and you never saw it coming, looping the single episode into the larger arc. It’s beautifully constructed.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 14 “The Vessel” (2016; d. John Badham)
I really love this episode: the premise is so out-there and ridiculous but somehow it escapes being STUPID like the later seasons, with all the alternate worlds and flashes of light, etc. There is a sense of gravitas, a sense of the stakes – not for Dean, but for the men (and woman) on the vessel. It was unexpectedly moving. Plus: the CASTING was excellent. Every single person in that submarine was perfectly cast, and they actually felt like they were from the past. They all looked real. Nobody was too pretty. Side note: the sidelining of Mark Sheppard is now complete, and here comes the humiliation rituals. Considering that bridges were somehow burned, this feels personal and I really do not like it.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 15 “Beyond the Mat” (2016; d. Jerry Wanek)
The pace is glacial. The Castiel/Lucifer/Crowley standoff is endless.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 16 “Safe House” (2016; d. Jerry Wanek)
Such a unique concept for a case. They really had to think this one out, and figure out the “rules”. And, amazingly, it was completely comprehensible. Also it was such a great way to let us “see” Bobby and Rufus again WITHOUT having to create a whole alternate world where the OTHER Bobby lives.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 17 “Red Meat” (2016; d. Nina Lopez-Corrado)
A superb episode. Maybe the best in the season. First-time director made a splash.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 18 “Hell’s Angel” (2016; d. Phil Sgriccia)
Moving towards the end of Season 11, I begin to feel the dread. “Red Meat” was the last oasis before the desert. We’re coming up on “Don’t Call Me Shurley” and the final three episodes where you could just feel the entire season – and show disintegrate. Endless scenes in corporate Heaven. Endless scenes in some hell warehouse with Rowena and Amara. After “Red Meat” it’s quite a shift. Cas as Lucifer is … a problem. It’s gone on too long. It’s effective in like “Into the Mystic”, when Dean confides in him about the irresistible attraction he feels to Amara – and he thinks he’s talking to Cas. There are a couple of moments like this and it’s good, it’s really the only reason why Castiel should “be” Lucifer (story-wise): how it affects Sam and Dean. But no, instead we get endless scenes of Castiel smirking in some heavenly boardroom for three episodes in a row. What was going on with Dean’s hair in this episode.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 19 “The Chitters” (2016; d. Eduardo Sanchez)
It’s certainly progress when a 16-year-old can be Sheriff of a small town. I really like “Ganja Girl” – she managed to create a real character and her scene with Dean was funny. Andy Maton, who plays the old tormented guy out in the woods, gives an Oscar-winning 5 minute performance that left me wrung dry.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley” (2016; d. Robert Singer)
The genesis of everything that went wrong. I will not forgive the retconning of the amulet, which already – already – had SO MUCH MEANING to … “the faithful” (oh God). Don’t put more meaning onto it. We wanted the amulet to show up again. But like this? No! It was such a travesty I actually blocked it out as it was happening. So now fucking fake-Chuck-God was responsible for the amulet – which had so much meaning between the brothers for their OWN reasons? Now it was placed in the story by the Divine? Thanks I fucking hate it.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 21 “All in the Family” (2016; d. Thomas J. Wright)
“The planets. Why are they round?” I heard that line come out of Sam’s mouth and red alarm bells twirled declaring Defcon One. For a second I thought Sam was possessed by a demon. The sinister bad nature of the show’s downfall is manifest in even the smaller moments: like giving the beloved Kevin Tran a happy ending and then taking it back two seasons later. I keep thinking back to the radical choices Sera Gamble made in her role as showrunner in Season 7. There was a deconstruction going on, a stripping away of the layers of familiarity/comfort: thrusting the brothers into unknown territory, and denying the fans the satisfaction of the familiar. But that was done with purpose and without hostility to the fans. It’s hard to describe. It just felt different. I LIKE when the Winchesters world is shook up. I LIKE when new elements come in and disturb the pattern. Like the Darkness. Like Amelia. I feel like I am the only person who actually appreciates Amelia, not in terms of whether she is likable or not (this is usually the response I get when I even try to discuss this: “she’s just so RUDE” etc). I don’t CARE whether or not she is likable, I don’t CARE that she’s “rude”, I don’t even care that she puts lime slices down the drain and who the fuck does that. (I do care that her sequences are filmed in a yellow-ish polluted tinge, rather than golden: the ugliest the show has ever been). Why I appreciate Amelia is her function in the story and how she REVEALS stuff about Sam. I don’t know how many times I have to say this. People are just mad that she’s rude and Sam chose her over looking for Dean. But I appreciate her because of that: it throws a wrench in what was expected and to me it made sense. What also made sense is the way the character was conceived: her bluntness, her awkwardness, her total messiness. Sam had the perfect girl. The cookie-baking hottie. Being drawn to someone like Amelia shows us where HE’S at. They didn’t try to present this as like some great love story. They positioned it as two damaged people basically hiding out with each other. No questions asked. It felt very realistic. If she were some perfect girl, madly in love with him, the damaged man, it would have been gross and cliched. This actually felt like … well, yeah, this is how it sometimes goes when you’re hurting. You find other people who are hurting. Someone in Sam’s state would find comfort in being with someone who’s just as much of a mess as he is, and won’t expect him to be some perfect guy. I digress, but like I said: I like when the story takes me unexpected places. Dean’s depression in Season 9. Sam’s willingness to say “No” to how Dean operates, throwing Dean back on himself. The sheer MISERY of Dean in Season 9 was glorious and represented actual GROWTH in the brothers’ relationship. I loved that the show was willing to make US uncomfortable in order to tell the story they wanted to tell. But what happened here – and through the next four seasons – isn’t that. The deconstruction wasn’t deconstruction. It was destruction. Not only did they rip the fabric of the show in the present, they ripped the fabric in the past – so we were forced to incorporate their new bogus interpretation, which basically ruined our own memories. Ugh, it’s still a travesty and it’s wild to watch the series backwards and watch what was destroyed be put back together in season 11, only to be destroyed in episode 20. We couldn’t come back from it. So about THIS episode: Sam fanboying out about God was the first clue that this new team really didn’t understand the show.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 22 “We Happy Few” (2016; d. John Badham)
So many people just standing around. You can change the camera angles all you want, it doesn’t matter. It’s still just a bunch of people standing there listening as one person goes on and on talking. Nobody read this and thought “This blows”? The biggest moment – Sam deciding to take on the Mark – happens off-screen and warrants just a 30-second exchange between Sam and Dean. Appalling.

Supernatural, Season 11, episode 23 “Alpha and Omega” (2016; d. Phil Sgriccia)
Men of Letters enter. And we know how catastrophic they would be. Ugh. This is REALLY depressing. “You were right to let Lucifer ride shotgun. You stepped up. You helped. You’re a brother.” Random monologue from Dean that made no sense. Castiel was RIGHT to let Lucifer ride shotgun? Dean thinks that?

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“Reality is always extraordinary.” — Mary Ellen Mark

Posted on March 20, 2025 by sheila

It’s her birthday today.

My first job was as a page at a local library. I would go there after school, shelve books for a couple of hours, and then head home. I ended up working there all through high school. Because one of my jobs was to return books to their rightful shelves, I handled many many books that were far too mature for me, and were way beyond my years. One of them was Mary Ellen Mark’s Streetwise, an extraordinary book of photos detailing the lives of kids living on the street in Seattle.

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The photo above, of the little girl with the veiled hat, was on the cover, and the image didn’t just strike me, it stopped me dead in my tracks. I didn’t know what I was sensing, I didn’t know what that photo meant. She looked like she was around my age, she could be a classmate, but there was something in her face that seemed entirely … off the map of my own experience, let’s just say that. I didn’t understand. So before I put the book back in its rightful place, I looked through its pages. And the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

Continue reading →

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“I think my cinema is minimalist because so is my gaze: I’m very interested in people.” — Joanna Hogg

Posted on March 20, 2025 by sheila

It’s the birthday of director Joanna Hogg, who hasn’t directed that many films (comparatively) and yet what she has done really matters, so much so that when there are gaps between films, people who always have her on their radar wonder what she’s up to, when we will hear from her again. She goes years between films. Less is definitely more.

The anticipation around Hogg’s 2019 film The Souvenir was intense. Produced by Martin Scorsese, it starred Honor Swinton-Byrne (daughter to Tilda Swinton), Tom Burke, and Tilda Swinton. Hogg’s previous film – The Exhibition – came out in 2013. The Souvenir was ambitious and frankly autobiographical, about Hogg’s experiences as a young film student, but also her experiences in her first major relationship. Hogg is a fascinating case because her work holds you at a distance – she almost never uses closeups, and her camera almost never moves – but the overall effect is deeply emotional. It’s not “spare”. Minimalist is a word I wouldn’t use either, that seems like a film critic word. I’d just call it “focused.” And also very disciplined.

The Souvenir is a fascinating film and it was beyond thrilling that there was going to be a sequel. For me, it’s the only “franchise” I care about.

I was honored to write about The Souvenir for Film Comment, and – even more special – it was the cover story (my second for them. Listen, if I don’t blow my own horn, who else will.) I did the deepest of dives into Hogg’s career and if you’re interested I recommend you doing the same. She is also a GREAT interview. She seems incapable of giving a boring or rote interview.

Here’s my cover story on The Souvenir.

Then I wrote about it for Ebert’s 10 Best Films of 2019.

In a nice bit of symmetry, I reviewed the sequel – The Souvenir, Part II – which takes up right where the first one left off – for Ebert.

In 2022 came The Eternal Daughter, again with Tilda Swinton – this time playing a double role – the role her own daughter played in The Souvenir, as well as re-creating the mother role. So she was playing mother AND daughter. It’s a spooky fascinating film. I reviewed for Ebert.

Two final things: Sometimes I forget that this happened. That Tilda Swinton and her daughter, Honor Swinton-Byrne, posed on various red carpets, holding up the Film Comment issue with my cover story, or holding the magazine open to the story itself. Seriously. In a freelance writer’s career, you have to revel in the moments of triumph, because they are few and far between. This was a major moment for me. Very VERY proud of the piece I wrote on The Souvenir.

 
 
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“I got my first guitar at age of 7 and never laid it down. Momma taught me G, C, and D. I was off to the races son!” — Jerry Reed

Posted on March 20, 2025 by sheila

Jerry Reed was everywhere in the ’70s. He was on every variety show. He was in movies. He did duets. He popped up. He was a major star, and – better than a star – a CHARACTER. I miss CHARACTERS. Like, I miss Jack Nicholson being a regular presence at awards shows, irreverent, playful, reminding us all to not take this shit too seriously. Jerry Reed was like that.

And dazzlingly gifted. Crazy. The original “Guitar Man”.

Let’s talk about his songwriting too. He was the ultimate MAN, right? But he had this wary sardonic awareness of the sometimes SILLY behavior of men, which he lampooned in his songs – which people blind to irony would probably take as endorsements. Like “U.S. Male”, which Elvis did. Like, that song is not a celebration of the qualities on display by the speaker/singer. It’s sarcastic. It’s a lampoon of the dummy-dumb boring macho male. Elvis, who had a sharp sense of irony, clearly knew this in his version. His asides are hysterical: “That’s m-a-l-e, son.” The lyrics are clearly tongue in cheek.

It takes a free man to laugh at the ridiculous foibles men – especially randy wild men, of which Jerry Reed was one – get themselves into. No wonder he and Burt Reynolds got on like gangbusters. Roosters of a feather, ya know what I mean?

More celebration after the jump:

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