“I was never totally involved in movies. I was making someone else’s dream come true. Not mine.” — Mary Astor

Posted on May 3, 2026 by sheila

“The reminder that there are people who have worse troubles than you is not an effective pain-killer.” — Mary Astor

It’s her birthday today. Her memoir is great, by the way. Her story was told – by everyone else – most notoriously during one of Hollywood’s most memorable “sex scandals” – and so it’s interesting to really hear from her.

From the calculating dangerous Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon …

… to the tender warm matriarch of Meet Me in St. Louis…

… this was Mary Astor’s flexible range.

To those who “knew her when”, Astor’s transformation into playing good-hearted mother figures must have been quite an interesting sight. Mary Astor, with her Gibson-Girl profile, womanly figure, romantic features, was completely believable as treacherous, cold as ice tough hard dames. Perhaps her specific brand of beauty – idealized, a 19th-century kind of beauty – made her even more effective in these complex roles. She didn’t “look the part.”

She won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the poisonous Sandra in The Great Lie, opposite Bette Davis, who played the “good” woman, by contrast. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen The Great Lie.

You also haven’t lived until you’ve seen her as a butch pants-suit-wearing desert matriarch in the overheated noir Desert Fury. Desert Fury is rare, and rarely shown. Keep your eyes peeled, because it is GREAT, and she is great in it.

Plus, there’s this moment between Astor and Lizabeth Scott.

Astor’s personal life was tumultuous. Her first husband (brother to Howard Hawks) died in a plane crash. She got married again and the couple had a child. Eventually, the couple divorced, a very messy and public divorce, complete with nasty custody battle. Mary Astor’s private diary, where she wrote in explicit luxurious X-rated language about her sex affair with George Kaufman, was entered into evidence, basically to show she was an unfit mother. Having the diary entered into evidence meant it was available to the public. This was the Sex Scandal to end All Sex Scandals. The diary was quoted in mainstream newspapers, her “sin” broadcast around the world. Mary Astor was shooting Dodsworth at the time, and then showing up to court, fragile and tear-streaked, and every second of it was photographed. Tabloid field-day.

Astor was a bundle of contradictions, and when she was good, there was nobody better.

In 2017, illustrator Edward Sorel came out with a book about what was known as Mary Astor’s “purple diary” and I absolutely fell in love with it.

It’s filled with Sorel’s whimsical illustrations: he is a FAN of Mary Astor, but he had no idea about the “sex scandal of 1936” until he discovered a bunch of newspaper clippings underneath the floorboards of a new apartment. He became fascinated. Riveted. A lifelong obsessive. His book, Mary Astor’s Purple Diary, is the result of that life-long obsession. I wrote about it for Ebert.

Happy birthday, Mary Astor!

 
 
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.

Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day | Tagged , | 7 Comments

“Fear and the absence of hatred may go well together.” — Niccolò Machiavelli

Posted on May 3, 2026 by sheila

machiavelli

Prologue, The Jew of Malta, by Christopher Marlowe, written in 1589. Machiavelli died in 1527. You can see his posthumous reputation had ballooned, just 60 years after his death.

Enter MACHIAVEL.

MACHIAVEL. Albeit the world think Machiavel is dead,
Yet was his soul but flown beyond the Alps;
And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France,
To view this land, and frolic with his friends.
To some perhaps my name is odious;
But such as love me, guard me from their tongues,
And let them know that I am Machiavel,
And weigh not men, and therefore not men’s words.
Admir’d I am of those that hate me most:
Though some speak openly against my books,
Yet will they read me, and thereby attain
To Peter’s chair; and, when they cast me off,
Are poison’d by my climbing followers.
I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
Birds of the air will tell of murders past!
I am asham’d to hear such fooleries.
Many will talk of title to a crown:
What right had Caesar to the empery?
Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure
When, like the Draco’s, they were writ in blood.
Hence comes it that a strong-built citadel
Commands much more than letters can import:
Which maxim had 14 Phalaris observ’d,
H’ad never bellow’d, in a brazen bull,
Of great ones’ envy: o’ the poor petty wights
Let me be envied and not pitied.
But whither am I bound? I come not, I,
To read a lecture here in Britain,
But to present the tragedy of a Jew,
Who smiles to see how full his bags are cramm’d;
Which money was not got without my means.
I crave but this,—grace him as he deserves,
And let him not be entertain’d the worse
Because he favours me.

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, on May 3, 1469

We first had to read The Prince in high school. It made no impression whatsoever. Now, as a politically aware and power-politics-obsessive, it’s one of my favorite re-reads in my entire library. I visit it on practically an annual basis. It became especially relevant with all of my reading about the Founding Fathers, who – of course – knew their Machiavelli inside and out. The Founders were not optimists or idealists. They knew man was infinitely corruptible and so they tried (tried) to limit the possibilities of corruption.

Man is not to be trusted with power. Ever.

But in order to get to that understanding, you have to understand power in the first place.

At Ebertfest some years ago, Chazz Palminteri’s wonderful film A Bronx Tale was screened. I had forgotten its repetitive mention of Machiavelli (especially in one key monologue from the gangster Sonny, played by Palminteri). During the audience QA afterwards, a high school teacher stood up and said, “I just want to thank you because I teach Machiavelli to 10th graders, and A Bronx Tale has always been a great ‘hook.’ All I need to do is show them that scene and they get it.” Wonderful! Mr. Palminteri talked about the gangster he knew as a kid, the one on whom Sonny was based, and he said that, yes, that guy talked about Machiavelli all the time. The gangster had read Machiavelli while “away at college” (i.e. prison), and the quote in the title of this post, as well as the excerpt below, from the sequence called “On Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better to be Loved or Feared” was one of Sonny’s “take-aways” from The Prince.

The edition that I have starts with an introduction about the history of responses to The Prince, and how “Machiavellian” became a descriptive term meaning brutal selfishness and single-mindedness. This one-to-one association occurred pretty much during his lifetime. The work is often misunderstood. (Machiavelli is similar to Orwell in that respect. Christopher Hitchens, in Why Orwell Matters, analyzes how “Orwellian” became a descriptive term, and how so often Orwell is associated with totalitarianism, as though he endorsed those views, instead of being the man who could lay them out them so accurately. An almost total mistaking of the messenger with the message. It’s an age-old problem: If you show reality so clearly, with no apology, does that mean you endorse the reality? Well, of course not, but that doesn’t stop dummy critics, then or now.) Machiavelli’s very name now means something malevolent, it is a signifier, a shorthand. Maybe the only thing people remember from The Prince is the famous “the ends justify the means”, which, taken out of context, is of course terrifying. Even in context it is terrifying. But context is important.

photos_نيكولا_ميكافيللي_-_فيلسوف_شهير_14482

Machiavelli was a political insider with a cushy government job. All of that changed when the Medicis took power. Machiavelli was imprisoned, tortured, and exiled. During his exile, he wrote The Prince, as a hopeful gesture to get in the good graces of the Medicis. A gift, a presentation: “Here is all that I know about politics. You shouldn’t exile me because I can help you. Let me be of service to you.” In that light, the book is a groveling piece of sycophancy. This is what “context” provides. It’s important to remember those fascinating levels when you read some of the more cold-hearted sections of the book.

In a letter he wrote to a friend while he was in exile, he says:

I am living in the country since my disgrace. I get up at dawn and go to the little wood where I see what work has been done …

Then comes a long section where he discusses sitting outside on a hill, reading Dante, Petrarch, Tibullus, Ovid. Then he goes to spend the afternoon at the inn, with the miller, the butcher, a cook, some bricklayers. The letter continues.

[Spent the afternoon] with these boors playing cards or dice; we quarrel over farthings. When evening comes I return to the house and go into my study. Before I enter I take off my rough mud-stained country dress. I put on my royal and curial robes and thus fittingly attired I enter into the assembly of men of old times. Welcomed by them I feed upon that food which is my true nourishment, and which has made me what I am. I dare to talk with them, and ask them the reason for their actions. Of their kindness they answer me. I no longer fear poverty or death. From these notes I have composed a little work, The Prince.

I find all of this extraordinary. My favorite image of him is changing into his old court robes whenever he went into his study to write. The man was exiled from the court at the time, but the court robes gave him a sense of humility, awe, and respect when sitting down to contemplate Dante or Ovid. (The astronomer Tycho Brahe, apparently, used to put on his court robes every time he looked through a telescope. A sense of ceremonial OCCASION.)

The Prince didn’t win over the Medicis, and Machiavelli remained an outsider for the rest of his life. But the document stands as one of the greatest books of political philosophy ever written.

Here’s an excerpt from The Prince:

From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined; for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service. And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a chain of obligation, which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose; but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.

Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred; for fear and the absence of hatred may go well together, and will be always attained by one who abstains from interfering with the property of his citizens and his subjects or with their women. And when he is obliged to take the life of any one, let him do so when there is a proper justification and manifest reason for it; but above all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. [I guess Marx and Lenin didn’t read their Machiavelli, huh?] Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more fleeting.

But when the prince is with his army and has a large number of soldiers under his control, then it is extremely necessary that he should not mind being thought cruel; for without this reputation he could not keep his army united or disposed to any duty. Among the noteworthy actions of Hannibal is numbered this, that although he had an enormous army, composed of men of all nations and fighting in foreign countries, there never arose any dissension either among them or against the prince, either in good fortune or in bad. This could not be due to anything but his inhuman cruelty, which together with his infinite other virtues, made him always venerated and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, and without it his other virtues would not have sufficed to produce that effect. Thoughtless writers admire on the one hand his actions, and on the other blame the principal cause of them.

And that it is true that his other virtues would not have sufficed may be seen from the case of Scipio (famous not only in regard to his own times, but all times of which memory remains), whose armies rebelled against him in Spain, which arose from nothing but his excessive kindness, which allowed more licence to the soldiers than was consonant with military discipline. He was reproached with this in the senate by Fabius Maximus, who called him a corrupter of the Roman militia. Locri having been destroyed by one of Scipio’s officers was not revenged by him, nor was the insolence of that officer punished, simply by reason of his easy nature; so much so, that some one wishing to excuse him in the senate, said that there were many men who knew rather how not to err, than how to correct the errors of others. This disposition would in time have tarnished the fame and glory of Scipio had he persevered in it under the empire, but living under the rule of the senate this harmful quality was not only concealed but became a glory to him.

I conclude, therefore, with regard to being feared and loved, that men love at their own free will, but fear at the will of the prince, and that a wise prince must rely on what is in his power and not on what is in the power of others, and he must only contrive to avoid incurring hatred, as has been explained.

 
 
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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“I only got a seventh-grade education, but I have a doctorate in funk, and I like to put that to good use.” — James Brown

Posted on May 3, 2026 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

I did not fully understand James Brown until I saw The T.A.M.I. Show, and I heard ABOUT The T.A.M.I. Show for years before I could actually SEE it. Such was the Gen-X kid dilemma. During The T.A.M.I. Show he literally destroyed the room. Okay, figuratively, he didn’t tear down the walls, but he DESTROYED the audience. I was an ’80s child and James Brown was everywhere. He had hits. He showed up everywhere. He was ubiquitous. I was a kid so I took him for granted. I had to catch up on him later once I started asking questions about all of these elders still WITH us. (This is one of the perks of growing up when I did: all of these people – or many of them – were still around, and many – like James Brown – were still big stars).

The T.A.M.I. Show should be a whole post in and of itself, but, you know, it’s been written about ad nauseum, there’s a DVD copy, with a great commentary track – it was produced by Steve Binder, who also produced/directed Elvis’ 1968 comeback special. So Binder was a finger-on-the-pulse guy. James Brown was placed second to last on the bill, with the new British invasion band, The Rolling Stones after him. The Stones closed out the show. James Brown took this – rightly – as a huge insult. Nobody FOLLOWED James Brown. The Stones were newbies. He was the ultimate headliner. His live act disintegrated human beings into swirling molecules and he’d been doing so for years. He SLAYED at the Apollo. He was a way bigger star than the Stones. So. He went out there determined to destroy the room and leave nothing left for the Stones. Which is just what happened.

Some years ago, I went on the Film Comment podcast, an episode devoted to concert films, and each guest brought a film they’d like to discuss. I brought The TAMI Show to the table.

This may be one of the best live performances … ever?

James Brown reflected on it later: “I danced so hard that night my manager cried.”

Years later, Brown ran into Steve Binder and embraced him emotionally saying, “Thank you – thank you – for capturing my act for posterity.”

There it is. His Apollo shows were sometimes captured on audio but never video. Now we have it. Now we see why he is James Brown.

You can’t believe the performance can get any bigger, you can’t believe he can commit to it even more … you can’t believe he has more energy … you can’t believe what you are seeing. Because then he digs deep and brings out MORE. He himself looks destroyed at the end.

Keith Richards said that deciding to do The T.A.M.I. Show was the worst career decision the Stones ever made.

The ultimate compliment. Nobody follows James Brown. And if anyone does, they’ll be sorry. Forever.

 
 
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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“It’s the sexiest toughest chord change in all of rock ‘n roll.” – Steven Van Zandt on “Rumble.” Happy Birthday, Link Wray

Posted on May 2, 2026 by sheila

When Link Wray wails “Have you heard the news? There’s good rockin’ tonight” in his version of “Good Rockin’ Tonight” … it sounds like a threat that could topple civilization. And when he goes up the octave? Forget about it. Run for cover.

Link Wray’s “Rumble” was considered so dangerous at the time some radio stations refused to play it. It was banned – literally – in New York and Boston. There was fear that just HEARING the song – an instrumental, no less – would cause chaos, riots, actual “rumbles”. It’s one of the only instrumentals to ever be banned from radio play in America. And you know what? The song IS dangerous. The people who were afraid of it weren’t wrong. Those who were afraid of “Rumble” sensed correctly that the song was part of what was shattering the status quo. You listen to “Rumble” and you are altered. Nothing will ever be the same again.

“The first time I heard ‘Rumble’ … it was something that had so much profound attitude …” In the documentary It Might Get Loud, Jimmy Page listens to “Rumble, and then discusses with Jack White and Edge.

His “Fever” is pure sex.

Link Wray’s guitar-playing opened the way for others. It was that radical. Once people plugged in their guitars, following in the footsteps of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other pioneers, “power chords” were always a possibility. But Link Wray is the one who discovered it, and pushed it, creating sounds that had never been heard before. He was playing around with interference in the late 1950s, a decade before Hendrix. Link Wray pushed those chords, the vibrato, the vibrations, the distortion, the interference and resonance, to their most extreme limits. In his hands, the sound becomes almost abstract, yet it never sacrifices power. Jimi Hendrix’s famous distorted version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” wouldn’t have been possible without Link Wray. Link Wray’s playing is aggressive. You can’t putter about watering plants when you’re listening to Link Wray. He will not stand for it.

I love Kim Morgan’s story of seeing Link Wray: “The crowd consisted of die-hard Rockabillies, a smattering of older people, varied Wray fans, me and my little sister. I stood in the front, hands on stage, and watched one of rock n’ roll’s most influential guitar Gods work his power — taking all that is raucous and dark and soulful and yes, light, and hypnotizing us. There were no bad vibes in that cramped crowd of potential rowdies. Moving on stage like the half-Shawnee he was, he worked us as if performing some kind of Native American rock and roll rain dance, while still playing down and dirty — music that made us feel alive and real and raw. And then dreamy — a seedy, sexy, soulful, demonic, beatific dream.”

I’m trying to picture just turning on the TV in 1959 and hearing … this.

Link Wray tells the story of how “Rumble” was born. (Naturally, I am happy about the shirt he is wearing). The song started as improvised “filler” at a record hop … but the kids heard the threat in the sound, the power of it, the sheer aggressive drive of it – they felt it immediately. Link Wray: “Now the kids are screaming because now something is happening.”

Speaking of Elvis, here’s Link Wray grinding out “Mystery Train,” live, in 1974. Even now, when his influence has so permeated our culture, and music, you can still pick his guitar out of a lineup and say “That. That’s Link Wray.”

“It’s the sexiest toughest chord change in all of rock ‘n roll.”

If you haven’t seen the documentary, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, I highly recommend it!

 
 
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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“I still get a chill when I sing, ‘You Don’t Own Me.’ I find some new feeling in it every time.” –Lesley Gore

Posted on May 2, 2026 by sheila

FILE - In this May 5, 1964, file photo, singer Lesley Gore hugs a flowered record at her 18th birthday party celebrated at the Delmonico Hotel in New York. Singer-songwriter Gore, who topped the charts in 1963 with her epic song of teenage angst, "It's My Party," and followed it up with the hits "Judy's Turn to Cry," and "You Don't Own Me," died of cancer, Monday, Feb. 16, 2015. She was 68. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, File)

It’s her birthday today.

Below you will find a clip of Lesley Gore, performing “You Don’t Own Me”, on the now-mythical 1964 T.A.M.I. Show, directed by Steve Binder (who also would end up directing Elvis Presley’s phenomenal 1968 “comeback special”). There’s tons of commentary out there about what went down on the T.A.M.I. Show (and you can rent it on Netflix – worth it to see the whole thing, although many of the clips are on Youtube.) All of these bands gathered for a live audience and performed. No biggie, right? But what ended up happening was a Musical Rumble, a death-match. Each band competing with each other, white British bands competing with Black American performers, inspirations to the Brits, but … it’s all fun and games but it’s kind of not, too. The concert becomes stressful and you can SEE the stress. My pal Trav SD has a great post about Gore on that show.

For example:
James Brown was placed second to last in the lineup, and the show closed out with The Rolling Stones, who were, of course, initially inspired by people like James Brown (Mick Jagger was one of the producers of the recent Brown biopic, Get On Up.) Brown was furious that he was placed second to last (“NOBODY comes after James Brown!”). James Brown came onstage and performed so well (understatement – it is a performance For the Ages), that he brought the house down for 20 straight minutes. Brown said later, “I danced so hard that night my manager cried.” And the Stones, watching him tear it up from backstage, started feeling incredibly uneasy and anxious, watching Brown. How were they supposed to follow that? No one should have to follow that. When they finally take the stage, they actually look … anxious. Richards said later that the T.A.M.I. Show was one of the biggest mistakes of their career. They don’t flop or anything, and they are riveting in their young 1964-glitter. But … following James Brown was an impossibility. Brown makes the Stones look derivative, and they know it.

All that fascinating background aside, I love Lesley Gore (she was one of the few women in the lineup – she and The Supremes!). And it’s important to remember that of all of the Macho-Rumble guys on that stage, SHE sold more records (at the time anyway) than all of them. I mean, “It’s My Party,” you know what I’m saying? She was the #1 female recording artist of 1964. She sang 4 whole songs on The TAMI Show, evidence of her star-power, but “You Don’t Own Me” is the standout.

Do not mess with this woman.

She’s not just singing the lyrics. She MEANS it, all of it.

The song is a feminist anthem, 10 years before “women’s lib” went mainstream. The song is a declaration of independence. It is also a WARNING.

I cannot tell you how happy I was that Eminem sampled it so heavily in his untitled track off of Recovery. (In doing a little research for this post, I came across the following quote from Lesley Gore: “I’ve listened to Eminem rap. That’s not daily fare for me, but I can’t help but admire how vivid what he does is. My own taste goes a little more toward Norah Jones.”) I love that.

More Lesley Gore Clips

 
 
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.

Posted in Music, On This Day | 45 Comments

“If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.” — Lars von Trier

Posted on April 30, 2026 by sheila

It’s his birthday today. So … happy (?) birthday to this provocative sometimes-maddening always-fascinating auteur.

Question mark due to the doubt that “happy” has anything to do with the Danish film director, who has been poking the bear from the jump, outraging people (sometimes including myself), and then saying shit that puts him “way beyond the pale” – like his notorious press conference at Cannes which got him banned. If you watch that press conference, he’s got this little smirk on his face as he’s saying the shit about Nazis. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. He wasn’t “accidentally” making those comments as a “slip”. He knew they were provocative. It’s why he said them.

He first came to my attention with Breaking the Waves, which every single person in my circle of friends FLIPPED over and I …. really REALLY hated. I don’t normally hate things, so even I was surprised by my reaction. I think the public fawning over it (as I saw it anyway) was partially why I rebelled against it so strongly. And so I was done with Lars von Trier. I proceeded to ignore him for a decade. He came out with films. Everyone talked about them. I ignored it all. (By the way: if your opinions have never changed over the years … you scare me.) I wasn’t working as a film critic back then so I felt no obligation to “keep up” with anything that irritated me so MIGHTILY as the guy who directed Breaking the Waves. There were plenty of other directors I loved and admired. He just wasn’t one of them.

Then … I saw Melancholia at the New York Film Festival (by that point I was working as a film critic), and …

I was flattened. Melancholia spoke to me in a way few films have … and it’s strange, but I didn’t get my proper psychiatric diagnosis until two years later, but I was already struggling – MIGHTILY – by 2011 (and had struggled since I was a kid). It was no longer even a crisis (in my mind anyway): this was just how I lived, how I saw the world, and I couldn’t make anyone understand. I couldn’t describe what it felt like. John Keats’ poem on melancholy helped. That Sylvia Plath poem where she describes what her son must see when he looks up at her from his crib: a “ceiling without a star”. That comes close to it. Emily Dickinson’s “slant of light”. These are all things which help to explain the experience – the experience which is beyond words.

Then came Melancholia. Not only is the story of a rogue planet on a crash collision course with Earth a perfect metaphor for what the approach of madness actually feels like – this is the thing sane people just can’t “get” because they are sane! – but on a more earth-bound level (heh), it’s almost a clarion call of respect for those who suffer – respect, not pity – because those who suffer are better able to face reality, the “melancholic” are WAY better equipped to face catastrophe than sane people. I mean, there’s not even a contest. Tennessee Williams’ plays are all about this: the “sensitivies”, the “fragiles”, the “broken” … they’re the strong ones. They’re the ones unafraid to face the truth of the matter. The healthy ones cringe and close their eyes.

Here’s what LVT had to say about “melancholy”:

“True values entail suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we?…Longing is true. It may be that there’s no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It’s part of our reality.”

Sane people believe the world is logical. And they call US delusional. And so logical people refuse to accept harsh reality, they push it away, saying “No No, this can’t be true.” Just like Charlotte Gainsbourg, the “stable” sister does in Melancholia. So responsible, so capable, she falls apart when the end of the world arrives. While Kirsten Dunst’s character, debilitated by depression, stares unblinkingly at the catastrophe and even – in one stunning scene – welcomes it, seduces it.

Melancholia is worth it for the insights provided in that scene alone. I don’t know if anybody is ready to listen. It’s a dangerous truth, which is why it is so rarely spoken. Nobody wants to hear the truth, that madness is sometimes preferable to sanity. That welcoming it is the only option.

The other psychological insight of the film, and the one that really matters, is: Those of us who have been drenched in psychological catastrophe since childhood, know how to accept – and endure – reality. You will just have to trust the word of the insane on this one. When things fall apart, come find the sufferers, come find the people you’ve been irritated by and have been telling to “cheer up” for 20 years. We won’t be freaked out at all when shit goes down. We’ve endured far worse in our own heads.

This is the element of Melancholia that REALLY got to me, and I suppose healthier people would think it’s a dangerous message. Like, don’t let anyone tell you there’s ANYTHING good about “melancholia”. It’s UNHEALTHY to admit that mania is sometimes fun. It’s DANGEROUS to think mood swings are sometimes productive. And etc. But Melancholia says: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, you healthy happy people have an easier time of it, but when the chips are down, when shit gets real … WE will be the ones who can face it. You will disintegrate. Your world view is WRONG. You have ALWAYS been wrong.

It’s not a particularly socially acceptable viewpoint, but … I fucking RELATE to it.

To say Melancholia changed my mind about Lars von Trier is a bit too simplistic. I still don’t care for Breaking the Waves. And there are aspects of his work I find extremely irritating. But I now understand he is a great artist. And like a lot of great artists, he is a complicated and not-always-great human being. (Who is always great, though? Please. Introduce me to that paragon because I’ve never met one.)

I have to come to things in my own way and in my own time.

I find consensus-driven thinking stifling. And always have. It’s why I quit Girl Scouts the day they had us make duffel bags and we were all supposed to be excited. I just felt my own difference too strongly and I couldn’t “fake” excitement. So I walked. I was 10. So consensus around people I’m “supposed” to like – or not like – just does not work on me.

I will make up my own mind. There are those who despise Lars von Trier. I get it. I was that person too.

I changed my mind. I went into Melancholia resistant – an important thing to remember, considering the strength of my response to it. I didn’t grudgingly concede anything to the film. I unabashedly loved it. And I continue to love it. Other people loathe it. I find it glorious, and funny and almost uplifting. Like, I get it. This is madness told from the inside.

I’ve written a couple of things about Melancholia, the first the review I wrote when it premiered at NYFF.

I also wrote about it in The Dissolve’s list of the 50 Best Films of the Decade So far (sadly, The Dissolve – a fantastic cultural site – has vanished from the internet). Here’s what I wrote about Melancholia:

In 1621, scholar Robert Burton published The Anatomy Of Melancholy, a mammoth study of the malady, in which he wrote: “And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free, no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself… more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality.” Such a grand topic requires a grand film, and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is an audacious masterpiece, operatic in scope and tone (and soundtrack: The film starts with a surreal prologue underscored by Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.) Early on in Melancholia, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), in her fluffy wedding dress, stops and stares up into the night sky. She asks her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), “What star is that?” It’s actually a planet on a collision course with Earth. Justine’s depression prepares her for mortality better than the stable Claire, who falls apart. In one of the most gorgeous scenes in the film, Justine goes out at night and lies naked in the grass, luxuriating in the bright glow of the oncoming planet. There has rarely been a better depiction of the siren call of melancholy. And so despite its grim fatalism, Melancholia puts into images an experience so difficult to describe that even great writers falter. “There it is,” the film says. “That’s what it’s like.”

I also posted something about it on Twitter back in 2018, and it generated such a discussion over there – mostly from people who hadn’t seen it and then saw it because of my recommendation – that I opened up a thread over here to continue the discussion. It’s a great one!

Then I reviewed his truly wacky and truly audacious (words fail) two-part erotic-intellectual manifesto, Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

The movie is everything at once: smart and silly, pretentious and simple, erotic and gross. After all of it, after watching both films … that last scene blew my hair back. I still think about it.

And I loved House That Jack Built, the movie deemed too controversial to be allowed in theatres, the movie people erupted in outrage over without having seen it … and where it was considered socially unacceptable to even SEE it, let alone have any reaction to it other than pearl-clutching horror. Fuck that. I thought it was amazing. Dillon gives one of his best performances in years, I wanted Uma Thurman to get SOME kind of award for her one scene alone, and it was also quite funny, in such a weird deadpan way.

Back in the day, with Breaking the Waves, I was so irritated at Lars von Trier’s views of women. Yeah, well, I was younger then. I get it now.

A humorous exchange around the time Nymphomaniac came out: at a film critic party, a younger 20-something male, who had barely let me get a word in edgewise as he talked AT me about the horrors of misogyny (being a good ally, you understand) – told me how offended he was by Lars von Trier’s misogyny. This guy was so sure of himself, so sure that I – the poor woman afflicted by such a harsh society (these guys truly don’t realize how Victorian they are in sensibility) – would be so GRATEFUL that I had an ALLY in my fight against nasty mean old Lars von Trier – that he looked totally dumbfounded when I said, “Misogynistic? Really? I don’t think he’s a misogynist at all! Why do you say that?” (I didn’t go to acting school for nothing. I played dumb. Like I had never before heard that critique. Like I had never once felt the same way myself. Like, I was TRULY surprised to hear him say those words.) This poor guy literally had no idea what to do. I suppose he could write me off as “retro” or “unenlightened” because I’m older, but I hope it at LEAST made him feel a little less secure in his hyped-up look-at-me-be-a-great-ally attitude, and hopefully a little bit more hesitant the next time he feels like lecturing a woman about who is or is not a misogynist.

People always talk about how they “feel seen” by this or that story, and how important it is to “feel seen” by something happening onscreen. It’s important. And no one, male or female, has expressed the experience of mental illness and madness and depression – visually or otherwise – the way he did in Melancholia – in a way where I felt “seen.”

He still irritates me sometimes. He says some stupid thing and everyone gets mad and I roll my eyes, thinking, “Oh, come ON, Lars.”

But all of that is fine and really beside the point. I’m here for the art, after all. Lars von Trier has earned my undivided attention.

I’m going to end with a quote from the great Chantal Akerman. Very gratifying to hear what she has to say. She echoes my thoughts about Lars von Trier and women:

Lars von Trier is very, very, very clever about women. He gives the woman a space that I don’t know any filmmaker does. Because in Breaking The Waves, protagonist Emily Watson is the Christ. Which man is doing that? I don’t know any man giving that space to a woman. No one.

Take THAT you self-satisfied “feminist” manboy.

“My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it’s a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it’s a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.” — Lars von Trier
 
 
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.

Posted in Directors, Movies, On This Day | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

“A woman came up to me after one of the screenings with tears pouring down her face and sobbed, You’ve defined my entire life for me on the screen.” –Jill Clayburgh

Posted on April 30, 2026 by sheila

This was part of a larger series. I would throw a name at Mitchell, ask him to describe that person in “one word” and then we would discuss. Here’s our discussion on Jill Clayburgh, whose birthday it is today.

SOM: One word.

MF: Awkward.

You know I have this whole thing about the 70s, and 70s filmmaking and 70s actresses. Jill Clayburgh, in much the same way Diane Keaton was, was so awkward. Even when she was playing women who were successful, she was still always a little bit awkward and unsure. She was this beautiful woman who wasn’t a knockout, she was a successful woman who wasn’t always competent. I think my favorite Jill Clayburgh movie is Starting Over with Burt Reynolds. It’s marvelous.

MF: Jill Clayburgh got to be famous in a very brief window of time that was tied to women’s liberation. She wasn’t famous for very long although she continued to work. She made An Unmarried Woman, and Starting Over, she played the first fictional woman on the Supreme Court in First Monday in October.

MF: She got to play grownups. She didn’t have to play child-brides or coquettish victims. She got to play grownup women with all of their power and neuroses intact, and not many people had that. Even Jane Fonda had to start as a sex kitten. Diane Keaton got to do it. The thing with Diane Keaton, of course, is that – not to take anything away from Diane Keaton – but she was Woody Allen‘s muse –

SOM: And Warren Beatty’s. She was tied to the two most powerful men in Hollywood at the time.

MF: She reaped the benefits of her incredibly interesting love life. Not that she didn’t deserve those parts, or that she slept her way to the top, but that the collaboration, emotionally, sexually, professionally, was fabulous, and she did it the way a man would do it. And she didn’t get shit for it. Like, “Look at Diane Keaton fucking to get a part.” She earned it. But that’s what Jill Clayburgh represents to me: the 70s woman. Diane Keaton, Jill Clayburgh, Jane Fonda… They got to play grownups. As the 80s came, and suddenly blockbusters came, and we had Tom Cruise, and Risky Business, suddenly an actress as beautiful and skilled as Rebecca De Mornay has to be a sex kitten for a horny teenager. We went backwards. Imagine if Rebecca De Mornay had become famous in the 70s. Imagine the roles she would have gotten.

MF: Jill Clayburgh escaped that. She started in the theatre, she was in the original Pippin, she comes up on my Shuffle every once in a while. And then she went back to the theatre, basically.

SOM: I loved seeing her in Bridesmaids.

MF: She’s so good and so real. It’s so sad that she passed away, in so many ways. Because, of course she’s playing Kristen Wiig‘s mother. Of course she is.

MF: In some ways, the character that Kristen Wiig is playing is the daughter of the neurotic “I hope I’m getting this right” character that Clayburgh played in the 70s. There’s a continuum there that I think is really great in Bridesmaids, and it would have been interesting to see her have that opportunity to play that in more dramatic parts. You know, play the mother of the daughter that she raised, in the Hollywood sense. There’s a daughter in An Unmarried Woman, and it would be interesting to see: where is she right now? How did her parents’ divorce and her mother’s response to it affect her life? It’d be interesting. One of the things I love about Catherine Deneuve‘s career is that she’s continuing to play interesting women who are the older versions of the women that we loved from her when she was younger.

MF: So many of Deneuve’s films are about what it must have been like to be such a beautiful woman. It is a part of her character. In France, they still revere her, and they revere women of a certain age, and in America we don’t. Jill Clayburgh wasn’t Rebecca DeMornay or Tawny Kitaen or Kelly LeBrock. She was a grownup woman playing grownup women, but after that brief window of time in the 70s, there was only room for Meryl Streep.

MF: Meryl Streep or Glenn Close but Glenn Close was sort of asexual in a lot of ways. She was either a sexual threat or she had no sex whatsoever. Except for the golden age of Hollywood when the studios made “women’s pictures”, there’s very little room for the female movie star.

MF: In a world that caters to blockbuster fan-boys, using the Kelly LeBrocks of the industry … in that world, there’s no place for Jill Clayburgh.

 
 
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.

Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day | Tagged | 12 Comments

“Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” — Tom Lehrer

Posted on April 29, 2026 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

Tom Lehrer was a staple in our household. Just like the Raunch Hands were. We had a Tom Lehrer songbook and we’d play it on the piano. I had no context for him. It was like my equal love around the same time of Max Shulman, another “relic” from the generation before, whom I tripped over by accident and adored. All that Cold War paranoia etc. I still understood something about that, Evil Empire “Star Wars”, etc. These people were MAD magazine people, still a force to be reckoned with at the time. I was drawn to the vibe just naturally, in the same way I was naturally drawn to P.J. O’Rourke later, without really connecting the dots. I was a child of the 80s and their anti-establishment nothing-is-sacred satire was in the air I breathed. I didn’t know Tom Lehrer’s background , but I loved his clever funny songs. “New Math”. Still cracks me up. I didn’t understand every reference but I certainly understood the objects of his mockery.

Which leads me to …

It was a tradition where I went to high school that the junior class would put on a variety show every year. It was meant to bond the class together ahead of the senior year. The show was student-organized, student-directed, with very little administration interference (can you believe this? Like, they did not oversee us and all kinds of insanely inappropriate things happened on that stage!) Its purpose was sound, though. The show was definitely a bonding agent for the class. We had to work together. Nobody was rejected. You want to come on and do a juggling act or a mime act? Go for it. Two of my good friends, Beth and Anne, were the emcees.

We wrote skits and sketches. There were lip synch re-creations of MTV music videos. People dressed up as the teachers, we lampooned the administration, etc. There were musical interludes where kids from the band would play songs. A couple of girls did soulful duets.

I made a bold move on my own to sing a solo. My friend Peter accompanied me on piano. My song was not soulful. I did not, for example, sing the theme from Ice Castles. I chose to sing Tom Lehrer’s gleefully sarcastic anti-war song “So Long, Mom (I’m off to drop the bomb)”. I wore camo pants, combat boots and a military jacket. I marched onstage waving an American flag.

Who the hell did I think I was??

I belted out those crazy funny lyrics with maximum bombast and patriotic fervor. Did I even know what I was saying? Well, in the specifics, no, i.e.

While we’re attacking frontally
Watch Brinkally and Huntally
Describing contrapuntally
The cities we have lost

I mean, okay? But what?

But the rest of it? I knew exactly what he was saying. I lived in fear of war and nuclear winter. Sign of the times. So I belted out lines like

I’ll look for you when the war is over
An hour and a half from now

with rage powered by razzle dazzle jazz hands. And big exaggerated military salutes.

I brought down the house. I was very proud, especially since – I won’t lie – I had a couple of insecure moments backstage, holding my flag, wearing my camo, surrounded by girls in frilly mini skirts and heels, practicing their dance moves … wondering uneasily if I was way too out on a limb all by myself. The other girls all looked so pretty and cute! Whereas I …

Here’s the man himself, singing it:

I got the message.

Don’t believe the bullshit. Interrogate the propaganda coming at you from all sides. Resist it as hard as you can. Make fun of it. Be loud. Be smart about it. Upholding the status quo and submitting to consensus thinking is for control-freaks and scared bores. At the very least, question everything. Puncture the self-serious. ROAST them. If something feels like bullshit, it probably is. Resist the group. Very important lessons for a teenage kid!

Thanks for the music, Tom Lehrer. Thanks for your satirical bite. I “got it” at 15 and I’m the better for it.

Posted in Music, On This Day, Personal | 2 Comments

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” — Willie Nelson

Posted on April 29, 2026 by sheila

“Ninety-nine percent of the world’s lovers are not with their first choice. That’s what makes the jukebox play.” – Willie Nelson

Legend.

It’s his birthday today.

I will never ever forget his performance of “America the Beautiful” in the telethon on September 21, 2001. The date alone says it all.

It was heartbreaking to watch this then, when I was traumatized by what I had seen and experienced that day, and where I could see what I still call the hole in the sky out my bedroom window. But it’s even more heartbreaking to watch this now.

^^Photo by yours truly

I saw him in 2017 at Outlaw Fest, and it was such a thrill. One of the things that was a revelation, seeing him live, was the distinct jazz-like riffing quality of his guitar playing. His guitar speaks. It provides a counter to whatever is going on in the melody or in Willie’s voice. It has its own conversation going on, meditative, dreamy. Whatever is happening with the guitar is, of course, the melody – but it is a fractured prismatic version of it: Willie’s VOICE is the melody. It was unbelievable experiencing this live. It’s like he’s doing a DUET with the guitar.

This is one of the greatest Tweets/Pictures I’ve ever seen.

I also want to point your way towards Waiting for the Miracle to Come, a film directed by Lian Lunson, starring Willie Nelson and Charlotte Rampling. The film was shot on Willie Nelson’s ranch in Texas. Willie sings a song written by Bono (who executive produced the film) over the end credits. Soundtrack is also available. I interviewed Lian about Waiting for the Miracle to Come here – and there’s a great Willie Nelson/Bono anecdote included.

I’ll end, though, with a poignant tender duet he did with Dolly Parton for his album of duets in 2014. She had already recorded it, and she wrote it with Kris Kristoffersen – evidence I think of Willie’s humility. It’s so beautiful, so heart-achey.

I love Willie Nelson. I feel like I have to prepare myself for the next phase. Because it’s coming. I can’t imagine the American landscape without him being there. This obviously isn’t a career overview: I’ve written about him quite a bit, what he and Waylon Jennings did for country music – exploding the establishment and basically becoming establishment – how he continues to forget his own path. So many amazing songs (and films).

Posted in Movies, Music, On This Day | Tagged | 7 Comments

It’s (not) a beautiful day in the neighborhood …

Posted on April 28, 2026 by sheila

Michael, the “star” of a couple of pieces I’ve written here has a movie hitting streaming called Monkey’s Magic Merry-Go-Round (which … lol). I don’t post about all the cool shit he does, because I’ve got my own cool shit to deal with … but I DID thank Michael in the acknowledgements section of my Frankenstein book (along with a lot of other people), because we started out as young actors together, supporting each other in whatever cool shit the other one was doing and … somehow … we just kept doing that. To this day.So this is fun because he’s acting again, not writing or directing. The trailer is hilarious, perhaps because I know him – I was in tears the first time I watched it – him strolling around singing, etc. Mr. Rogers tormented by the puppets in the Land of Make-Believe? It looks scary too. I can’t wait!

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