Since I don’t really go on Twitter anymore (oh, excuse me, I mean “X” – the secondhand embarrassment for the whole “X” thing is so strong I don’t feel I can participate. It’s so STUPID) … but anyway. Because I’m not on there, I missed my own news. I found out about it when someone reached out and congratulated me. So this happened.
Proud to be in such illustrious company – also, many of these people are dear friends of mine. Charlie, Farran, Stephanie … Plus, colleagues I really like, like Nic and Michael K, and Michael Phillips whom I see every year at Ebertfest – plus legends like Molly and Dave K. So I’m pleased!
This movie is creepy and disturbing, and … honestly it turned my stomach. Not just because some of it is gross, but because … well, because … by thinking it gross, I am thinking of my own body, womens’ bodies, and their processes as gross. I bring to this all of my experience being a woman going to the doctor. I had such a mean gynecologist once that I’m still shaken by it. I was very ill then, so I have often wondered if … any of it really happened? Did that c-word actually say the fucked-up shit she said to me? (This is why I am very cautious about choosing a gynecologist. I prefer a male doctor, solely based on this experience. Bitch.) So many of the scenes here were upsetting in a personal way. Beyond this though, it’s an interesting and sometimes even funny Frankenstein story!
In one of those weird twists of life, Maria McKee – whom I have absolutely loved since her Lone Justice days – I have all her albums, solo and otherwise – is now someone I consider a friend. She attended the first workshop performance of my script, held at my cousin Mike’s house in Los Angeles. It was such an honor that she came – it was the first time we met in person, after corresponding online – and she was such an attentive beautiful presence, listening very closely to the script, and giving insightful comments afterwards. She also, at one point, picked up a banana from a nearby bowl of fruit and pretended to make a phone call. I loved her immediately.
I wanted to point the way – first of all to her music and her extraordinary once-in-a-generation voice – but to the two films she created with her husband Jim Akin. He directed, they produced, they created, she starred, she composed the music. They’re gorgeous pieces of work and I cannot recommend them highly enough. I’ve written about both of them:
My pal Jason Bailey and his pal Mike Hull host a fascinating podcast called A Very Good Year, which they describe as: “Each week we invite a guest (filmmakers and actors, critics and historians, comedians and musicians) who loves movies, and ask them to select their favorite year of movies. Some pick a year from their movie-going past; some go deep into film history. Whichever the case, we spend (about) an hour talking about that year: we ask them to share their top five films of the year, and tell us why they love them; we look at the year’s news headlines, award winners, and box office champions; and we finish with a lightning round, where we talk about as many films as possible in as few minutes as possible.”
It’s SUCH a fun format, because you get good movie talk – old faves and probably some you’ve never heard of, but are happy to learn – and you also get the year’s headlines, an attempt to put the film into the larger context of the world. I love it! So I was happy to come on board as a guest.
I chose 1953 as “my year”. It’s not in any way “my favorite year” but it’s an important and interesting year and I thought it would be fun to dig into why.
Juliette Binoche is a perfect actress, she does everything right. Her instincts are so pure, they always have been. She’s wondrous.
And she is in Between Two Worlds too, but the film has some big problems, mainly the story being told and how it’s being told. Insurmountable, really. I reviewed for Ebert.
We’re saying goodbye to so many legends. This one’s hard. I immediately thought of the interview Robbie Roberson gave at the very beginning of the documentary Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World. The documentary starts with Link Wray, and Robertson’s memories of seeing him on television in the late ’50s and being blown away – not just by his music – but that …. he was an indigenous person too. Robertson couldn’t BELIEVE it. He came from a musical family, everyone played music, but here was a guy on TELEVISION, rocking harder than anyone else ever had before him, changing the sound, changing the way guitars were played – and … the world opened up to this young boy. If Link Wray could do it, if an “Indian” could make it big, then he could make it big too. Anyway, I looked for a clip of that interview on YouTube and couldn’t find it, although the film’s trailer starts with him.
All of tributes pouring in from his friends and colleagues and fans are beautiful and sad: Martin Scorsese, Joni Mitchell … I love his collaboration back in the ’80s with my pal Maria McKee. She’s been sharing some of her memories on Instagram. He seems to have been universally loved.
What are we supposed to do now? Someone like Robbie Robertson leaves a big hole when they go. The hole can’t be filled with a replacement. But the music he made will play on forever.
William Friedkin was “there” in my life before I even really put together that movies were a thing made by humans. As a kid, they were just full-immersion stories beyond my wildest dreams. I’m sure that’s true for most people. It wasn’t until later, as a college student, that I put things together, and learned who he was, what he did, the trajectory and timeline. It’s great to acquire context, but something is lost when you gain more knowledge, one of the ironies of life I treasure, rather than reject.
I saw “The Exorcist” at a sleepover when I was a kid. In other words, way too young. My friends’ parents were far more lax in what they allowed their kids to see. As a young Catholic child, the movie rocked me to my core, terrified me so much I couldn’t sleep that night, and I can say, without too much exaggeration, I was never really the same again. Something had shifted, something broke. Looking back on this first viewing, trying to remove the ballast of intervening years and knowledge-gaining, I remember how the camera angles and sudden cuts jolted me, scared me SO MUCH, even if nothing particularly terrifying was happening onscreen. I now know this is a tribute to the power of Friedkin’s filmmaking. I didn’t watch the film. I feared it. I had no no protection from material like this, no distance. It is still one of my most memorable movie viewing memories.
I feel like it’s the best way to see The Exorcist, if possible. Come to it when you are a credulous child, and way too young for the material. Your faith will tremble, your foundation will never be quite so stable again.
Now THAT’S a movie.
Friedkin’s films would imprint themselves on me more times after that. I saw The French Connection in high school as well as Cruising, when I was falling down my Al Pacino rabbit hole at age 13, 14. Similar to The Exorcist, I was not ready for Cruising. I had no protection and/or context to grapple with it. It was so grownup I knew I shouldn’t be watching it, but I couldn’t look away. I didn’t even know it was directed by the same guy who scared me so much as a grade-schooler with The Exorcist.
The things you come to “too early” have a way of sticking. These films set a kind of standard in my head, a bar by which I would judge other films, even though I was a sophomore in high school and much of what was happening to me, the relationships I formed with these films, was in the subconscious.
Once I was in college, I started getting conscious about the films I watched, the artistic figures I felt I needed to know about to understand filmmaking, this “thing” I was immersed in since before I even had a memory. Friedkin was a major part of my development as a movie-goer: he showed me things I wasn’t ready for, things I didn’t really want to see and yet felt I had to experience. He was always in a category all his own. His vision was wide and deep. His filmmaking is energetic and visceral: it’s from the guts.
I imagine the car chase scene in Bullitt holds the top spot for “car chase scenes” and it’s deserved. But Friedkin was responsible for not one, but two, of the car chase scenes by which I judge all other car chase scenes. The first, of course, is the famous one in The French Connection, where Gene Hackman, beneath the elevated train tracks, chases the train above him. Crazy scene. But the second car chase scene REALLY sets the bar: Friedkin tops himSELF with the car chase scene in To Live and Die in L.A..
The chase feels like it goes on forEVER (and also features a car chasing a train). The chase includes a car driving the wrong way on a crowded Los Angeles freeway. The stunt driving in this sequence is second to none.
Not every filmmaker introduces you to the joy of cinema while simultaneously ruining your childhood.
