Before we get down to brass tacks, let’s take a moment to list just how much this episode accomplishes in 41 minutes.
1. A continuation of the two season-wide Arcs – Dean’s crossroad’s deal and Sam’s dangerous alliance with Ruby. They are not central but they are present, already in motion.
2. Gordon returns.
3. Introduction of a major new character. (One of my favorite character introductions in the history of the series. It can’t top the introduction of Death – the best sequence the show has ever done – or of Castiel – another stunner – but it’s up there.) It’s even more of a surprise than Death, because we have been prepared for “Death.” Nobody prepared us for Bela.
4. Entertaining one-off episode.
That’s a lot, but it doesn’t feel like a checklist of events needed to push the plot forward (I’m looking at you Season 12). I will try not to keep referencing Season 12, but sometimes comparisons are an important object lesson. It’s HARD to be as good as “Bad Day at Black Rock”, it’s hard to be as good as Season 3 (especially since it’s truncated) and the fact that it looks so effortless is fuel for that same fire. It’s HARD to do this much this well.
In all the “ink” spilled already about the series, there’s been nothing like this essay. I got legitimate goosebumps at the last line. (I have seen the movie in question, but did not know David Lynch’s connection to it.)
Act II of “Groundhog Day: The Musical,” opens on a surprisingly mournful note, when a side character named Nancy (Rebecca Faulkenberry), who barely had any lines in Act I, steps downstage center and sings the ballad “Playing Nancy”, where she shares her sadness about the role life has assigned to her: She is a perpetual one-night stand, a “detour on the journey of some man.” Until this point in the production, Nancy has been seen only in passing as a sexy snow-bunny leered at and seduced by trapped-in-time weatherman Phil Connors (Andy Karl). She is what she appears to be: an easy party-girl. But suddenly, with no preamble, the stage is hers. We learn what life is like for her, her awareness of how she is perceived, her participation in that perception, her hopes that someday she can stop “playing Nancy.” “Playing Nancy” is just one of many moments in this innovative production where the story shifts and allows us to do what the original film did: slow time down enough to consider the implications.
This radical choice is a perfect example of what the Broadway adaptation, directed by Matthew Warchus, with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin (collaborators on “Matilda”), and book by Danny Rubin (who wrote the screenplay for the iconic 1993 film), has done extraordinarily well: dig into what is commonly called “the human condition,” not just for the selfish Phil Connors, but for everyone. As Phil becomes more engaged with life, the people around him – people whom he sneered and leered at from the get-go – start to become three-dimensional.
“Groundhog Day” is the story of a misanthropic weatherman who gets stuck in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on February 2nd, while covering the annual Groundhog Day celebration. Stranded in the town by a blizzard, he wakes up the following morning, eager to flee, only to find that it is yet again February 2nd. He is caught in a time loop, doomed to live the same day over and over again.
The original film, directed by Harold Ramis, starred Bill Murray at his deadpan dry best. An unlikely classic, perhaps (a woman sitting in front of me said to her friend as they took their seats, “You must be the only person in this whole joint who’s never seen the movie.”) but classic films are not created by marketing departments gunning for Oscar gold. There are prestige films that don’t begin to approach the profundity of “Groundhog Day’s” philosophical exploration.
As imagined by Warchus and Minchin, “Groundhog Day” uses the typical format of musicals to illuminate the theme of the story (as opposed to just attaching songs at appropriate points). A musical has artifice built in. Entire town squares burst into song, and every citizen suddenly knows how to tap dance or do the cakewalk. We accept these devices if the story works, if the music is good. Here, songs repeat. Endlessly. The big opening number, where the perpetually happy residents of Punxsatawney take to the streets with balloons and marching bands to celebrate Groundhog Day, keeps repeating as the day repeats, and with each repetition, each time that marching band swarms the stage, the situation seems more and more lunatic. The music tilts into mania and nightmare, minor chords and discordance proliferating, and the jubilant bouncy choreography (by Peter Darling, co-choreographed with Ellen Kane) starts to seem frankly psychotic the third or fourth time you see it, as Phil realizes with horror that this moment – this day – this damned SONG – will be his life now. Forever.
Andy Karl (“Rocky,” “On the Twentieth Century”) has not tried to step into Murray’s shoes and give the audience what they already know via imitation. Instead, with an infectious and dazzling sense of freedom (physically, emotionally, vocally) he obliterates the memory of Bill Murray, giving a performance that shows nothing less than a man’s total transformation, from cranky contemptuous observer to emotionally engaged humanist-romantic. It’s hard to make something look this easy. As talented as Karl clearly is, it is still a surprise at just how deep this performance goes. His baritone voice can do anything, including a Robert-Plant-esque scream at the end of the Act II ballad “Hope”.
A charming Barrett Doss plays Rita, the sometimes-vulnerable and sometimes-tough producer assigned to the “Groundhog Day” spot, exasperated by Phil’s superior attitude towards the people of Punxsatawney, towards her, towards life in general. As Phil’s attraction to her grows, he tries to become a man worthy of her (there’s one hilarious sequence reminiscent of David Ives’ one-act “The Sure Thing,” when one scene is played multiple times in succession as Phil course-corrects his earlier snafus.) Rita’s character is deepened by her introspective diary-entry song (“February 2nd”) as well as her Act II grunge-rock rager, “If I had My Time Again.”
The cast is rounded out with smaller characters, each of whom have their moment in the sun: Ned Ryerson (John Sanders), the overly happy insurance salesman who accosts Phil every day with grating joy, before he – like Nancy before him – shows just what his outward pose is covering up in “Night Will Come,” Gus and Ralph (Andrew Call and Raymond J. Lee), two sad-sack barflies who sing a sad-sack country & western tune (“Nobody Cares”) before going on a joyride with Phil (a sequence that has to be seen to be believed). Even poor Larry the beleaguered TV cameraman (Vishal Vaidya) has a small character arc with a sensitive payoff.
An interviewer once asked Tennessee Williams, “What’s your definition of happiness?” Williams replied, “Insensitivity, I guess.” Minchin’s score understands this difficult sentiment, tapping into the darkness beneath the wintry sunshine of Groundhog Day, the repeating songs underlining the nagging question: “Is this all there is to life? Marching bands and joyful choruses?” Happiness is downright alienating to those who don’t feel it. There’s a dark fatalism here that the production does not shy away from. Phil’s suicide-attempt sequence (featuring a number of visual illusions where there appears to be no less than 4 or 5 Phils onstage at any given time), is a red-lit nightmare from hell, and the cut-outs of Punxsatawney village are placed all cockeyed on the sidelines, making it look like Whoville tilting off into an abyss.
We all play roles in life, many of them not chosen but imposed. Phil sees other people as though they are two-dimensional cut-outs. He writes them off at a glance. We all do this. “Groundhog Day: The Musical,” in ways thoughtful and funny and deep, forces the question: Can we stop writing other people off as this or that “type”? Can we stop thinking about ourselves so much? Can we slow down time just enough to really see each other?
My friend Larry Clarke had some great screentime in this episode! The shared-laughter about the tail-light between the detectives. Who the hell ARE these guys? The way they all answered in unison when the deputy came in saying, “Detectives?”
Also: Sky Ferreira showed up in the final scene, the girl who can’t stop scratching her armpit. Haunting. I fell in love with Sky Ferreira’s album Night Time My Time, with the album cover considered too ugly by the record company – they balked at it – but she won the battle, thank goodness.
I love her.
I have no idea what is going on with her character but it seems to be that the youth of Twin Peaks continue to be into some heavily dark shit. Not much has changed. All of the kids have that haunted terrified fake-blase look. They speak in code. There’s something going on nobody dares to address, but everybody knows the score.
WHERE IS AUDREY. I YEARN FOR AUDREY.
I think my favorite moment might have been when Diane and Albert stared at one another for what felt like 20 minutes on the steps of the morgue, as she smoked her cigarette. And he KEPT looking at her face, back to the cig, back to her face, back to the cig … It was endless! Fabulous!
Matthew Lilard is giving an Oscar-worthy performance. When he sobbed, “I WANT TO GO SCUBA DIVING” I started laughing. Not at his pain but because I was exhilarated at his performance, at how far into that moment he went, how IN it he was. Totally absurd, totally real.
Calvert Morgan advanced his theory on Agent Cooper over on Twitter and I’m so in love with it I’m posting it here. I’m mainly bummed I didn’t pick up on this. The best thing about this theory is that it doesn’t mean anything! That’s the best kind! It’s a subconscious tweaking, something hitting that dreamspace where human beings put stuff together.
All photos of Sun Studio in this post were taken by me.
“That’s All Right”, what would be the first single, which went off like a bomb (at least in Memphis, although other regions of the South would follow) was recorded on July 5, 1954, by Elvis Presley, Bill Black (on bass) and Scotty Moore (guitar), with Sam Phillips in the control room. Elvis was 19 years old.
Excerpt from Dave Marsh’s amazing Elvis about that day.
They hit the new sound while fooling around between takes. Elvis began to sing an Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup country blues, “That’s All Right”, and Scotty and Bill joined in. From the control booth came Sam’s voice, excited. “What are you doing?” They shrugged. “We don’t know.” “Well, find out …” Phillips commanded. “Run through it again.”
Every rock writer returns to “That’s All Right”, as though to the Rosetta stone. It’s not the greatest record Presley ever made, and it certainly is not the bluesiest. But it has something else: a beautiful, flowing sense of freedom and release. Elvis’ keening voice, so sweet and young, playing off the guitars, Scotty’s hungry guitar choogling along neatly until it comes to the break, where it simply struts, definitive, mathematical, a precise statement of everything these young men are all about. Is it art? Is it history? Is it revolution? No one can know, not anymore, unless they were there to hear it before they’d heard any of the other music Elvis made or any of the rock & rollers who followed him. Is it pure magic, a distillation of innocence or just maybe a miracle, a band of cracker boys entering a state of cosmic grace?
What’s most remarkable, given how assiduously pursued this sound had been, is its spontaneity and unselfconsciousness. “That’s All Right,” like the best of the later Sun material (its B side, “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” “Milkcow Blues Boogie,” “You’re a Heartbreaker”, and, most of all, “Mystery Train”), sounds casual, the kind of music you could hear any day or every day, the kind of sound that has always been familiar but is still surprising. These men are reaching that elusive noise and once they have it in their grasp, they simply toy with it, flipping the thing back and forth among them as if they have been playing with it all their lives.
They listened to the song afterwards. Bill Black said, “Damn. Get that on the radio and they’ll run us out of town.”
Let’s listen to Arthur Crudup’s version, the version Elvis had listened to and absorbed.
The take Sam Phillips, Elvis, Scotty and Bill got was the take that went out. It’s a live take, all three guys playing at the same time,nothing added. What we hear is what happened in that moment. There is one alternate take in existence. But this, what you hear, is not engineered, manufactured, planned, or edited. That’s how it came out, when they were “fooling around”.
Let’s back into it. Because, of course, there was a preamble.
Elvis Presley, September 1954, 19 years old
On July 18, 1953, 18-year-old Elvis Presley walked into the Memphis Recording Service on 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, a recording outfit that had been created by Sam Phillips in 1950 to record new artists and find new (mostly African-American) sounds, something that obsessed Phillips. For a small fee, you could record a song at Memphis Recording Service, and you would be given a two-sided acetate disc upon completion, with a little label on it, just like you were a real recording artist.
There are varying theories as to why Elvis Presley, who had just graduated from high school, would choose to do this.
He himself said in interviews later that he wanted to give a present to his mother. He also said that he just wanted to hear what he sounded like. But more likely, he had ambition. More likely, he wanted to throw his hat into the ring. He had moved to Memphis with his family when he was 14, and he found himself swept away by the Beale Street scene as well as the rocking music from black churches. He had sung in a talent show in high school and did very well. He was painfully shy and dated a girl he met at church. It’s all a bit of a mystery what was going on with him, although there are numerous stories about how, when he was 16, 17, he started bringing a guitar to school, he started dressing in a distinctive manner to set himself apart, but in general his dreams remained private. Who knows why he walked into that studio.
Marion Keisker’s desk, the foyer of Sun Records
Marion Keisker, Sam Phillips’ devoted business partner, remembers vividly the teenager walking into the office for the first time, and how he asked her if they needed any singers for anything on the fledgling Sun label. He was holding a child’s guitar, and he stood in the doorway, looking ready to flee at any moment. At the time, he had a job at a machinists’ shop. Keisker knew why he was there, she could see the look of hunger in his eyes, but she interviewed him a bit to try to find out more.
She asked him, “What kind of singer are you?”
He replied, “I sing all kinds.”
She asked, trying to draw him out, “Who do you sound like?”
And Elvis replied, in a now famous statement, “I don’t sound like nobody.”
Marion was skeptical (wouldn’t you be?) She asked if he sang hillbilly music (he certainly looked the part) and he said that he did.
Then she asked again who he sounded like, in hillbilly? Elvis replied again, “I don’t sound like nobody.”
On the face of it, they may seem like arrogant remarks, but Keisker’s memory of the moment is that he was sincere, shy, and could barely speak above a whisper. There was something about him she found intriguing, so he recorded two songs on that day: “My Happiness” and “That’s Where the Heartache Begins”. She typed out a little label, put it on the record, and sent the pimply teenager on his way. Sam Phillips, in the control booth, had said to Elvis, “You’re an interesting singer”, an ambiguous statement, and he didn’t seem compelled to leap right up and record more with the boy. (I also would like to point out that it is no surprise that it was a WOMAN who first saw the potential in Elvis.)
And that was that. For some time. Elvis joked that his “overnight sensation” actually took a year.
Nobody was blown away by that first acetate. It was a conventional sound, a pop sound, and Sam Phillips was not interested in pop music. However, Elvis’ claim that he “don’t sound like nobody” is actually borne out a bit, if you listen to those two tracks. There’s clearly something there. But he still is trying to fit into a mold. You can hear it. He’s so young, a virgin, no experience in life except his vast love of music, and the eclectic nature of his musical interests (country, bluegrass, gospel, he loved it all).
Compare “My Happiness” (recording below) and “That’s Where the Heartache Begins” (recording also somewhere below) in 1953 to the songs he cut just a year later with a two-man band put together by Sam Phillips, the songs that would make Presley famous, and it’s like a different person. It’s actually unbelievable that it’s the same guy, and you wonder: Wow, Elvis, what did you DO during that year?
“My Happiness” was a hit song from 1948, which already made it an “oldie”, and Presley plays it straight, in a quavering tenor that sounds very very young. He also shows no hint of the “Is he black or white” confusion that would come just a year later, when he suddenly found a raw rough energy in his voice. You can just imagine Sam Phillips in the booth listening to this, thinking, “Well, at least recording shit like this pays my bills for the time being, but honest to GOD.”
Then he recorded a very pretty ballad the Ink Spots had made famous, “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin” (sound clip below). It has one of those long bridges for a narration in it (similar to what Presley would do later in “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”). The narration part is obviously meant for a deep and manly voice, as per the style of the day. Presley sings the song and you can tell his guitar playing is rudimentary at best. He also does the narration during the bridge. I find it hysterical, because he is so completely out of his depth. He’s a teenager, and there he is pontificating on heartache in a phony deep speaking voice, totally making fun of himself (you can actually hear it in his voice), pretending he’s some grizzled middle-aged dude holding a cocktail looking back on the vagaries of youth. It’s quite funny. But you can also understand why Sam Phillips didn’t immediately leap from the booth and proclaim the kid his next big star. Elvis doesn’t seem to complete the song, either. He doesn’t go back to the song after the narration. Instead, he, maybe feeling foolish, it’s hard to tell, says, “That’s the end” and that’s that. The song has a strange intensity (I like it better than “My Happiness”) and he sings it with an ache to it, cut up by his goofing-off Sam Elliott narrator voice. It’s a bizarre recording.
After cutting those tracks, nothing much happened for a year.
He got a job driving a truck. He went to church. He started dating a girl named Dixie Locke from his church, and they hung out all the time. They would go to gospel revival meetings together, and Elvis would tell her how much he enjoyed this musical group, or that one, and how the quartet format of religious music was something he loved. Maybe he could get into that. Maybe he could join a group or something. And he kept stopping by the Sun Studio. Like clockwork. He would chat with Marion, she came to look forward to his visits. He would hang around, check out who was there, talk to people. He was a pest, although always polite. This also tells me that “I wanted to record something to give to my mother” was certainly not the whole truth. Sam Phillips was making a name for himself by recording black artists. Presley chose to hang out there. Unfortunately, later in his life, Presley never really gave interviews, or wrote anything, or wrote a memoir, so we don’t know what was going on with him, but he just kept stopping by. It eventually paid off. But for that long year, he coasted. He dated Dixie, mainly, and they shared a love of gospel music, it was one of their bonds.
Elvis and Dixie Locke
The whole Dixie thing is actually quite fascinating, because it is the relationship that straddles the not-famous/famous divide. She knew him as deeply religious, they pledged to one another to “remain pure” until marriage, and I suppose she may have had some expectation that should he become a singer he would go the gospel route. She was still dating him when all hell broke loose a year later, and she would go to see his shows with Elvis’ parents – who loved her – and she felt nervous about what was going on in those stands with the screaming girls. Not that what he was doing was bad, but it seemed to be taking him far away from her, from his roots, from who she thought he was. She was shocked by it. He began touring, he was away for long periods of time, Dixie found herself hanging out at the Presley’s house all the time, as she reminisced with Elvis’ mother about how awesome Elvis was and how much they both loved him. He went as her date to her junior prom. Out on the road, girls were ripping his clothes off backstage, and he had most probably abandoned the promise to remain pure until marriage, and yet there he is in the prom photo, in a tux, holding Dixie’s arm. They were good friends.
For a while, he had feet in both worlds – he still could do that – but finally, it just got to be too big and he left Dixie behind.
Listening to his plaintive delicate voice on those tracks in 1953 (Elvis? Delicate? Yes.), it is unfathomable that he would explode the proprieties of the day a year later, sending teenage girls into orgasmic public frenzies, and upending the traditional classification of music genres in one fell swoop.
Elvis Presley wasn’t some mythical God, he wasn’t a legend or something artificially put together like Frankenstein. The Image of Presley may have won the war, but individual battles for his artistry and his journey are still being fought along the way.
When Presley told Marion Keisker in 1953, “I don’t sing like nobody” – how did he know that? Because he doesn’t come roaring out of the gate with those first two tracks. So, alone in his room, was he messing around in the way he started messing around one night during his first real recording session at Sun on July 5, 1954, the moment when Sam Phillips said, “YES. That’s IT!” Did he feel in his bones that vast VOID that was in American culture at that time, a void that needed someone to come along and fill it up? Or … was he working on instinct?
It was probably a blending of both, conscious and unconscious. Sam Phillips was very interesting on his own yearning at that time, saying that he didn’t even know what sound he was looking for, he didn’t know how to describe it because it didn’t exist yet – but the search for it was what drove him on so tirelessly. However, in 1953, Sam Phillips didn’t hear it in Presley. A year later, he did. And then, almost by accident. It was Presley goofing off on this fateful day that made Sam Phillips shout, A HA.
And once that track went out on the local air-waves not too much long after, all hell broke loose. Elvis hadn’t even played a live show at that point. He was completely green. But you wouldn’t know that from “That’s All Right.” The fans in Memphis crowded around the radio station clamoring for more. Elvis’ first time in front of a live audience of any significant size was on July 30, 1954, at the Overton Park Shell in Memphis. He and Scotty and Bill only had two songs in their repertoire at that point. Elvis was so nervous that night that he actually shed tears on the back steps of the Shell before the show. Sam Phillips found him there, pacing and stuttering and panicking. Sam had to talk him off the ledge. And Elvis performed that night and the crowd went wild.
Where Elvis stood when he recorded “That’s All Right” on July 5, 1954
And here it is. The “Rosetta Stone”. The track that started it all.
July 5, 1954, during a moment of letting off steam during a frustrating and seemingly unproductive recording session, Elvis busted loose. As a joke really. As a way to relax himself. But also as a way to say, “Here is who I really am.” And Sam was there to record it.
That’s the explanation of what happened. There is still so much more that cannot be explained. It could have been a fluke. It could have been a one-shot deal. It wasn’t. They had tapped into the Mother Lode.
Mad Men, Season 2 – 7
Not sure why I decided to do a re-watch. I think what happened is I watched the pilot and then couldn’t stop myself. It’s been a terrible month. I needed the comfort of the familiar, even if … my God, sometimes this was an ugly show. Binge-watching it was a unique experience (and I binge-watched it the first time around too). I imagine if you watched it in real time it may have had a very different energy. Don Draper, seen in compressed fashion, comes off as pure empty-souled …. not sociopath, but just an Empty Man. He has sociopath-LIKE qualities, but it seems more that he is more compulsive than anything else. In love with novelty. Nostalgic for a life he never had. Completely moronic when it comes to other people. Sometimes. Because sometimes he is completely brilliant when it comes to other people. This is the benefit of being completely detached. The benefit and the curse. Blown away by the overall brilliance of the acting in the ensemble. I was bored to DEATH by Megan and Don. I had forgotten just how much their relationship dominated Season 5. Wayyyyy too much time! This past re-watch I was pretty much ALL. ABOUT. BETTY. That character HAUNTS me. January Jones gives a performance that she will never give again. It couldn’t happen again because … Betty Draper couldn’t happen again. Her REACTIONS. Her sudden spurts of meanness, pettiness, her childishness, her pathos. It is a great great performance. A very ODD performance. Unique. A commentary on a generation (generalization: my mother and my aunts were not like this) of women who had NOTHING TO DO. Child-rearing, sure, but that’s a couple of hours a day. The kids are in school the majority of the time. You are a pampered doll in a house with nothing else going on. Betty is eating her heart out with boredom and untapped potential.
Twin Peaks: The Return, Episode 5 (2017; d. David Lynch)
One of the most unforgettable moments of the series thus far (and that’s saying something) happens in episode 5. I need this series right now like I need water and air.
Twin Peaks: The Return, Episode 6 (2017; d. David Lynch)
Beyond exciting character entrance. The already-legendary but never-before-seen “Diane”, played by Lynch-muse-extraordinaire Laura Dern. Also, Harry Dean Stanton – who was already old when he played the role in Fire Walk With Me, returns. The section where he sits on the park bench, staring up at the waving treetops, is just one of many examples why this series is like Balm in Gilead.
Speaking of Gilead …
The Handmaid’s Tale, Season 1, Episode 9, “The Bridge” (2017; d. Kate Dennis)
One of the strongest aspects of this series is its style, its color scheme, its setting. Using what seems to be very simple means – careful color choices, careful lighting choices – the team behind the series has created an entirely “Other” world, with recognizable elements to our own (houses and cars and sidewalks), but definitely off-kilter. Reed Morano, who directed the first three episodes, was largely responsible for establishing this style. I interviewed her in 2015 about her feature-film directorial debut, “Meadowland” (a film I reviewed when it played at Tribeca). Morano is a well-known and respected cinematographer (just check out her credits), and so her understanding of visuals (evidenced in Meadowland as well) is bar none. I am thrilled to see where her career has gone since then, and it was already an amazing career. I have some issues with The Handmaid’s Tale, though. Granted, it’s been a long time since I read the book. I understand why they have made some of the alterations that they have, but I agree with those who have pointed out the racial issues in the choices they’ve made. It brings up questions and aspects that are then totally not addressed. In the book, black women are sent to “the colonies.” That’s a comment on the middle-class white-girl feminism that has dominated since Day One, a “brand” of feminism that I never felt comfortable in anyway, because it was so middle-class aspirational, with the assumptions of regular careers, husbands, children, life-work balance, blah blah. I went to a community-organizing meeting once in my 20s, and the Head Honcho Lady started off by saying something like, “As women, we are naturally empaths …” We are? I’m pretty cranky. Also, don’t say “We.” I am the proud owner of a vagina, but you haven’t met me, you don’t know me, you don’t know my goals, my background, you are ASSUMING shit all over the place. She went on, “We are mothers and wives and partners …” NO. WE ARE NOT. I wasn’t any of those things in my 20s, although I hoped for it, assumed it would happen – no, I was more of a harlot wreaking havoc in my 20s, and I had a blast – My hopes for the future Me, once I got the Harlot out of my system (still waiting …) were shattered eventually and here I am and I’ve made peace with it – or, whatever, after literally going insane in my late 30s – I now accept my life has value even though I haven’t participated in the most IMPORTANT thing a woman can experience, apparently … BAH. This type of looping in all women under the title “We” is constant. We all want the same things, right? We’re all the same! You’d think that kind of rhetoric would only come from evangelical men. Nope. It comes from the Halls of Feminism too. And it’s gotten worse and even more alienating to someone like Yours Truly (Kelly Diels nails it.) My crowd has always been the bohemians, the outlaws, the weirdos, the artists, sometimes literally circus people, more diverse than a suburban/white-collar-office environment (often the focus of white-girl feminism) – not part of the capitalist structures at all. When you join Show Biz at an early age, you get used to the fact that you don’t fit in, and you don’t feel self-pity about it because you’re doing what you want to do – and office work is something you do to pay for acting classes – and once you find your tribe you’re all set. You’re outside the mainstream. Atwood acknowledged this disparity in her book in what is probably a pretty realistic way, at least in a dystopian universe, since white supremacy is clearly part of Gilead and patriarchy and all the rest. Anyway, there are problems with how the series is handling all of this (they’re ignoring it, in other words). Elizabeth Moss is amazing – no surprise there – and Joseph Fiennes, in particular, is great too. I’ve seen people interpret the Scrabble game as manipulative. I don’t see it that way, or at least not ONLY that way. Scrabble is a non-sexual chummy thing you can do with the opposite sex. Hanging out with a woman in a non-sexual way is one of the things that institutional patriarchy cannot understand, cannot countenance. It puts women in a box: Mothers, Sluts, Older Women so Who Cares About Them. That Scrabble scene shows the loneliness of MEN in a patriarchal society. My two cents. At first I didn’t like what “they” had done to Serena Joy. In the book she is a Tammy Faye Bakker evangelical-type. In the series, she is more of a conservative mouthpiece about woman’s rightful place. But it’s ended up working very well. She is now living in the world she helped create. It’s not so fun is it, Serena Joy? Maybe you should have just moved to Saudi Arabia and left your country-women alone. The main issue I have is opening up the perspective beyond Offred’s. The book is first-person only. Part of its terror. Outside of her perspective is the total Unknown. Here, that is shattered. It’s more of a thriller. I am hoping that they stick to their guns. The tragedy of Moira is that she doesn’t get away. She succumbs to the drugs, the sex. The Moira in the series is very different. Which is … gratifying, but kind of goes against Atwood’s point. Anyway, I’ll keep watching.
Big Little Lies (2017; d. Jean-Marc Vallée)
Holy shitballs this 7-part series was AWESOME. GREAT acting. I did a little Tweet-thread about Robin Weigert as the therapist, which I should turn into a post, because the work she does is important, especially as Exhibit A, B, C, and D in why Listening is the most important thing an actor has to do. And why didn’t anyone tell me that Elvis plays an enormous role in the finale? Seriously. I’m pissed nobody mentioned it to me. I would have tuned in for that alone.
Twin Peaks: The Return, Episode 7 (2017; d. David Lynch)
Finally my friend Larry Clarke makes an appearance, as one of the “Detective Fuscos” (I love how they’re introduced as “Detectives Fusco”) who questions Dougie and Janey-E about the missing car. Janey-E is very quickly becoming a hero to me. At first she seemed like one of those cranky constantly irritable wives (although if you consider what Dougie – her husband – has been up to, who can blame her?), but now she is emerging as a take-no-prisoners righteous Woman Warrior. She has NO idea what is going on but she will be DAMNED if they are taken advantage of. I love how the two head detectives (that’s Larry there on the right) reach for their notebooks at the same time. Go, Larry!
The Beguiled (1971; d. Don Siegel)
A re-watch in preparation for the obvious. I had almost forgotten how overheated the whole thing is. The lesbian sex fantasy!! The incest! Clint’s smooth exposed chest! The kiss with a 12-year-old in the first scene! WHAT?? I think it’s all rather fabulous, although it’s funny: if you look at it through the prism of male castration/emasculation anxiety (which is what Siegel said it was all about), the story appears one way. But switch the prism away from the male point of view, and all kinds of other possibilities emerge. They’re there in the original. Maybe Siegel wasn’t fully aware of what he was unleashing.
At any rate, this re-watch leads to …
The Beguiled (2017; d. Sofia Coppola)
… which I loved. I loved it for what it WAS. I did not judge it for what it left out, for what it was not. I haven’t said much on the controversy because – from the moment it arose – the lines were so clearly drawn that any conversation was impossible without being accused of bad faith. A very annoying aspect of social media. For me, the work stands – or doesn’t – on its own. Coppola is an artist. She is under no obligation to please anyone other than herself. It may not be to everyone’s taste, and clearly it isn’t, but NOTHING is to everyone’s taste. I loved how Coppola dug into the very elements in the original that were present and yet subconscious. The power of the female sex drive. The erotic possibilities inherent in the male presence. I realize that sensation may not be true for all. But it’s true in this film. I reviewed for Rogerebert.com.
The Little Hours (2017; d. Jeff Baena)
I had to go to the screening of this in the middle of a dreadful week where I thought I was losing my mind again. Literally. I was fraying at the edges. I didn’t want to go. It was 100 degrees outside. My mother was visiting. I was overwhelmed by the disaster unfolding, nationally. (Well. That’s still true. It’s been true for over a year now.) I had been assigned this film to review, and the screening just came up in the middle of the worst week possible. But I dragged my ass there. And to my absolute delight, the film almost single-handedly washed away my troubles. For the 90 minutes it went on, at any rate, and that’s all anyone can hope for. I LOVED this movie. And I trusted my reaction to it because I went into it so grumpy. It opened Friday. Go see it! I reviewed for Rogerebert.com.
Groundhog Day (1993; d. Harold Ramis)
I went and saw the Broadway production. It was on assignment. So far, that potentiality has not come through, although maybe it will. At any rate, I went to go see the big Broadway musical of this beloved film, a film that I think will be watched 100 years from now, when all other Oscar-winners – important movies so-called – have faded into the vaults of memory. I walked into the production skeptical. Almost rolling my eyes. And I was blown. AWAY. Again, I trusted the strength of my reaction because I walked in there totally closed to it. It is so damn good. Profound. As profound as the film, if you can believe it. The production really digs into the aspect of Time, as well as the potentially-life-changing – if we could just accept it and act on it – realization that other people are struggling too, that everyone around you has hopes/dreams/specificity. There IS no “Other.” Until other people become Real to us, we are lost as a human race. The Broadway production really gets that. My mother and I watched the movie during her visit. It was so much fun.
Spotlight (2015; d. Tom McCarthy)
A re-watch. I reviewed for Rogerebert.com. I felt like celebrating the free press right now. Gee. I wonder why.
Twin Peaks: The Return, Episode 8 (2017; d. David Lynch)
Bliss. An hour of pure BLISS.
The Putin Interviews, episode 1, 2, 3 (2017; d. Oliver Stone)
It’s pretty challenging to breathe the air of pure propaganda. It’s gross, actually. But I felt I needed to watch, to get my bearings on what we – meaning all right-thinking-people – are up against. The man’s eyes are like a shark’s. I am embarrassed at how often he mentions how great he is at Judo.
The Bachelorette, Episodes 3, 4, 5 (Part 1 and 2) (2017)
I am so #TeamKenny I want to put it on a bumper sticker. I’m upset at the show with its handling of a clear racist run amok, especially since this is the first time there is an African-American bachelorette. Total missed opportunity to really deal with a white supremacist attitude, which is exactly what was on display. That nasty Southern piece of shit got inside Kenny’s head and Kenny could not recover. It put him between a rock and a hard place. If he fought back, he would just be confirming that bigot’s preconceived notions. If he didn’t fight back, he was betraying his own sense of his dignity and worth as a person. It was painful to watch. He was my favorite from the moment he emerged from the limo in episode 1. And now he’s gone. And now the majority of African-American men are gone from the lineup. Only nonentities are left. I’m angry at the show. Kenny, you are too good for this show. Best of luck to you. I’m sure, based on the show you will be deluged with offers – and whomever you choose, she’s a lucky woman.
Supernatural, Season 3, Episode 3, “Bad Day at Black Rock” (2007; d. Robert Singer)
First three steps of my re-cap process complete:
1. Re-watch. Take copious notes.
2. Go through again and get screengrabs.
3. Opening paragraphs written.
This takes me forever. Supernatural people, I salute your patience. This is such a good episode.
Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, Season 1, Episode 9 (2017)
Season 1 ended in January. It is a powerful document. I could not be more impressed with Leah Remini if I tried. As someone who has been obsessed with this cult for almost 2 decades – so much so that – on occasion – I have TRIED to get recruited, just so I could understand the inner-workings from a first-person point of view – I cannot believe I have lived to see the day that this series would actually be running on a major network. Seriously. I thought the South Park episode was a revelation. And it was. The first real sledge-hammer to the public mythmaking (helped along by Cruise’s insane public behavior). But this? This is real advocacy. She tackles every aspect of the abuse, going at it from every side. The stories told are horrific – not new to people like me – but new to others not so obsessed. Important. This was a follow-up episode that aired in May but I’m only getting to it now. A group discussion with 6 different people, each of whom have gone after the cult from different angles (authors, lawyers, researchers). This is major. I am so glad there will be a Season 2. At this point, the cult is basically a real estate agency. That’s it. Except for those still trapped. There is more work to be done. Thank you, Leah Remini. I cannot imagine the Fair Game shit you are experiencing. You are brave.
Citizens Band (1977; d. Jonathan Demme)
It’s been years since I have seen this film. I saw it at the height of my Paul Le Mat crush, which came flooding back into my soul during this re-watch. He’s such a positive presence. Almost … earnest? Charles Taylor devoted a chapter to Citizens Band – about one town’s obsession with CB radios – in his new book, Opening Wednesday at a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American ’70s (I interviewed Charley about that book here), and that was the impetus to give it a re-watch. (It’s on Amazon video.) I love how everyone is kooky. And everyone – even the Nazi – is redeemable. “HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FIND HIM IF I DON’T KNOW WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE?” Jonathan Demme has always been really good at this kind of gentle ensemble work, and he revels in the small moments, the grace notes, the human comedy of it all. Like this gesture.
about that day. 
(I interviewed Charley about that book 
