After a 5-hour voting session today, we at the NYFCC have announced the winners. I haven’t done as much writing here about current releases this year as I’ve done in the past, outside of my monthly viewing diaries, because I just haven’t had as much extra time this year. I’m hoping to do some year-end roundups here in the next couple of weeks. The only thing on our list I’ve actually reviewed is Eighth Grade – which of course I think you should see. At any rate, here’s our list of winners. I’m pretty excited about our choices. Of course everyone comes in with lists for each category, and there were many many finalists – but, unlike the Oscars, or other awards, we don’t share the finalists. We don’t choose a winner from a set number of nominees, like the Oscar voters do. The field is wide open. That’s the fun of it. We also voted on giving a special award to the curator of the Museum of the Moving Image, here in New York, who is stepping down after 33 years. And we’re also giving an award to Kino Lorber, for their extraordinary box set, Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, a real breakthrough to have this stuff available and beautifully restored. It’s been a very rich year for film (documentaries, especially), and our list includes “not the usual suspects” in many cases, and that’s always a treat. Congratulations to all the winners. Our awards ceremony will be in January, 2019.
Best Picture: “Roma”
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón, “Roma”
Best Screenplay: Paul Schrader, “First Reformed”
Best Actress: Regina Hall, “Support the Girls”
Best Actor: Ethan Hawke, “First Reformed”
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, “If Beale Street Could Talk”
Best Supporting Actor: Richard E. Grant, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
Best Cinematography: “Roma,” Alfonso Cuarón
Best Non-fiction Film: “Minding the Gap,” director Bing Liu
Best Foreign Language Film: “Cold War,” director Pawel Pawlikowski
Best Animated Feature: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”
Best First Film: “Eighth Grade,” director Bo Burnham
Special Award For Career Achievement: David Schwartz, Chief Film Curator at Museum of the Moving Image for 33 years
Special Award: Kino Classics Box Set “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers”
“Thankfully, there are so many more interesting things about me than my being deaf.”
Ella (Hillary Baack) says this to a well-meaning person at a party who has been asking questions about her deafness. Ella has answered the questions. She doesn’t seem insulted by the curiosity of the person, but her comment – polite and yet firmly stated – is one of the keys to You & Me, a new romantic comedy directed by Alexander Baack. Ella is deaf, but that is hardly the most interesting thing about her. She’s recently published a collection of short stories, and she’s also a literature professor, specializing in women’s literature. She’s a recent transplant to Los Angeles, and has a busy dating life. She’s not really looking for a husband, or even a boyfriend. She’s too busy. But then she meets Tony (Paul Guyet), a recently-blinded man, just getting the hang of his new life with a disability. Their connection is instantaneous, and it’s based mostly on a shared sense of humor. Both are very funny people. But Ella isn’t sure if she’s into Tony, in that way. She’s also not sure if Tony is ready to get into a relationship, not so soon after his accident. Is he clinging to her as a port in a storm? She knows that wouldn’t be a good basis for a relationship! But maybe she’s over-thinking things? It’s possible!
Alexander Baack and Hillary Baack are married, and they wrote the script together. You & Me is a charming funny story about two eccentric individuals who find themselves in one another’s lives, and – almost before they’ve realized how it happened – can’t imagine life anymore without each other. They are surrounded by a strong support system, friends, relatives, parents. Because Tony’s blindness is recent, his family is still in an adjustment period, although his hoot of a mother – played by Sally Struthers, in an amazing performance – has taken it in stride. You & Me bucks all kinds of stereotypes and in that respect alone it’s like a heaving breath of fresh oxygen. It’s extremely funny, first of all, without ever sacrificing its sense of sweetness, its soft heart. Both Baack and Guyet are wonderful actors, but – because Baack is actually deaf, and because Guyet is actually blind – the issue of “playing the disability” – so often the case in big Hollywood films featuring disabled characters – is off the table, which then changes audience reaction and experience. Once “playing the disability” is no longer an issue for an actor, once you don’t have big stars pretending they are blind, for example, all kinds of other things become possible. This is not to say that abled actors haven’t given incredible performances playing a variety of disabled characters. But you don’t even realize how much you’ve been missing until you see it in action in a film like You & Me.
I was actually surprised at how moved I was by You & Me. By the time the final third of the film came around, I was so invested in these two characters it was devastating to watch them face their first real challenge as a couple (a challenge that has nothing to do with either of their disabilities). I was a puddle by the end of the film. I’ve watched it twice since, and it works every time. [Full disclosure: My brother Brendan O’Malley plays Tony’s best friend.]
You & Me portrays people’s often awkward reactions to disabilities, and it does so with a sense of humor. (When Ella speaks, people often ask her where she’s from because they assume she’s speaking with an accent. Her response is always, “I’m from Estonia.” This, apparently, is taken from Hillary’s actual experience. Unfortunately, one time the person who asked Hillary where she was from was actually from Estonia, so she got busted!) But there’s a critique embedded in these moments in You & Me, a critique of abled people who are uncomfortable with disability, and say stupid shit, like the guy in You & Me (played by Alexander himself) who screams in Ella’s ear at a loud nightclub, “IT’S SO LOUD IN HERE IT’S LIKE WE’RE ALL DEAF. EXCEPT YOU REALLY ARE DEAF SO YOU HAVE THE ADVANTAGE!” (Again, this really happened!) Or Tony’s aunt, who weeps when she sees him because he’s blind. She cries as though he’s died, when, no, he’s standing right there in front of her, blind, sure, but perfectly alive. The film is filled with such moments of insight and observation.
Baack has a light touch as a director, and a good feel for the rhythms of natural conversation. This is a film filled with conversation, and Baack keeps it loose so the talk feels very spontaneous. When Tony makes Ella laugh, or vice versa, it feels 100% genuine. Falling in love with someone’s sense of humor is so common, and yet it’s so rarely shown on film! Being funny for your partner is one of the joys of being in love. Someone who gets your sense of humor? Hang onto that person! You & Me really understands this!
You & Me has played at a bunch of festivals, and won the Audience Award at Cinequest 2018. You can read more about Alexander and Hillary’s careers on their site. You & Me has a strong point of view and acts as a necessary corrective to the reductive portrayal of disability in most cinema (or, worse, the total erasure of disability in the stories being told). This is a beautiful and funny film, and will be available on streaming platforms, including iTunes, on December 4th.
Recently, Alexander took some time out of his day to speak with me over the phone about You & Me.
Sheila O’Malley Talk to me about the conception of You & Me, and I also want to hear about your writing process with Hillary. How was the project born, and how did you figure out all the story elements you wanted to cover? How did that process work?
Alexander Baack: Hillary and I often come up with fun ideas when we’re driving and the kids are quiet in the back. We had just watched the behind-the-scenes of Ricky Gervais’ The Office, and it was the hardest we had ever laughed in our lives. Ever. We were just watching the making of it and we were dying. Hillary, because she’s deaf, is always taken very very seriously by people. Also, probably because she’s really good at crying, in life, and in acting. She’s deeply connected to her feelings and humanity in general. But after watching that making-of of The Office, she said, “I want to do something fun like that.” And she should because she is hilarious. So I immediately said, “How ’bout a deaf girl and a blind guy? Ba-dum-ching.” But then we thought, Okay, why not?
AB: We had never really written together. She’s written things that I’ve helped her with or edited, and she puts in her two cents with things I write, but we had never sat down and written together. I’m always like story story story. I’m very detailed about the characters and the events and once we had that down and we were clear we knew what it was about, then we just sat together and wrote it all out. There were certain scenes where I was like, “You need to write this one because it needs a deaf person’s point of view.”
SOM: Like which scenes?
AB: Any of the girl talk scenes with her and her friend.
SOM: I loved the friend.
AB: Isn’t she wonderful? Natasha Ofili. Most of the cast are friends or friends of friends, which is how I’ve always worked. Hillary knows everyone in the deaf acting community. It’s a small community, everyone knows everyone. And that’s how Natasha really is. To mix a metaphor, she’s a breath of sunshine. I think one of the things that would not be in the movie if I had written it is that there is a strong woman’s point of view. It’s been interesting, both in the reading of the script and after seeing the movie, we had quite a few men say, “I don’t understand why she doesn’t get with him right away.”
SOM: Wow, no way.
AB: And the women don’t question it.
SOM: Of course they don’t.
AB: The women aren’t confused at all by why she doesn’t pick him right away.
SOM: She has an active social life. She is not waiting around for Mr. Right. She’s dating like 4 people, that we know of.
AB: It’s a real ego-killer for men. In the reading of the script, we had quite a few men say, “I don’t know why she doesn’t get with him right away or sooner.” Or even, “Why doesn’t she want to at first?” Since the movie’s been finished, I’ve had a few especially older men say, “I love the movie except for the sex scene, where she has sex with another guy.” I go, “Oh that’s interesting, why?” And they can’t articulate it, or they don’t want to admit why. There’s an instinct to shame her as soon as people see that sex scene.
SOM: I loved the fact that Danny (James Tang) is a good guy. It makes sense that they would hook up. There’s chemistry there. You didn’t write him so that we would think, “Oh he’s clearly not the right guy.”
AB: This is, again, about movie tropes we didn’t want to fall into. We’re writing a romantic comedy and it’s amazing how many tropes there are. Just doing the opposite of those tropes bring up so many truths about how we feel about not only our relationships to other people, but our perceptions through the movies of how we’re supposed to connect ourselves. So we wanted Danny to be a perfect option for her. She could end up with him and it would be great.
SOM: I mean, this is mating. There are always multiple options. It was interesting the way you wrote it, because she was clear with Tony almost immediately. She liked him and wanted to hang out with him, but she sensed he wasn’t ready for a commitment – and that’s valid.
AB: It’s a valid barrier to attraction even. I’m not sure she even knows if she finds him attractive at first.
SOM: I’m fascinated by this reaction from men. Did it surprise you?
AB: Not necessarily. One piece of evidence of our anticipation of it is we did write and shoot a sex scene between Ella and Tony that was to take place after she met his family and she decides, “Okay, we’re going to be together.” And we did it because we were like, “Okay, Tony deserves hot sex, too.” We thought we needed to counterbalance the sex scene with Danny, because people won’t be able to handle seeing her have sex with the wrong guy and not have sex with the right guy. But then, after their first kiss and the scene with the family when she reads his lips saying “I realize I’m glad for the accident” – that’s the moment she falls in love with him for real. And it just didn’t fit in to have a sex scene there. It wasn’t necessary. That moment says everything we need to know without seeing the sex, so we took it out again. And we were like, “People will just have to deal with it: She has sex with the hot guy and we don’t see her have sex with her husband.” And a couple of men can’t deal with it.
AB: It’s been a great learning moment for people, too. Going back to the question: a lot of this is because of Hillary. Hillary has spent the last few years learning about her preconceptions of herself and what is expected of her as a woman – in terms of sexuality and confidence – what she’s allowed to ask for. Just yesterday, my good friend Kate Newman from the Barrow Group had an article in the New York Times about women being empowered to be the one to say what they want. There’s this day at school where the girls can chase the boys and ask them to the dance –
SOM: Sadie Hawkins.
AB: Sadie Hawkins! Kate used Sadie Hawkins as a jumping off point for the article for how she’s just realizing now that she wasn’t allowed to ask a man for what she wants – sexually, emotionally, everything – ask him out, propose to him. So Hillary brought a lot of that point of view to the script, not only as a woman but as a disabled person, because disabled people are very much desexualized in the movies.
“Coming Home” (1978)
AB: When Hillary and I saw Coming Home – she had never seen it – it has the most beautiful sex scene. He’s a disabled man teaching a woman how to have sex with him and it was so beautiful and so sexy too – and it’s so rare to see someone who’s not “perfect” get to have sex – or have sex that doesn’t have a negative consequence or judgment on the part of the storytellers.
SOM: Tell me a little bit about your process as a director. You made a couple choices I really liked. I would say the film is simply shot, but it’s clear a lot of care has gone into every choice.
AB: I like that you said it was simply shot. I know that that’s an effort to find balance between simplicity and budget restraints. I’m always trying to avoid simplicity that looks and feels like that was our only option, as opposed to that was my choice.
SOM: Something like the dinner scene must have been very complex! You capture the vibe of a chaotic dinner where everyone’s talking at the same time, and you laugh out loud every time you drop into a separate conversation. It doesn’t feel like schtick. It feels like you’re eavesdropping.
AB: The crew was dreading the dinner scene. Everyone kept saying, “Dinner scenes are the hardest thing to shoot.” I’m like “What’s the big deal, you point the camera at who’s talking and then you move on.” And it went really smoothly, actually! I love scenes like that. Like the party scene in Annie Hall when they go to Hollywood, and it cuts around to bits of conversation. I love that scene. I’m constantly ripping off that scene. My biggest influence as a writer and as a director is Diner. When I saw that movie when I was 11 it was a revelation. It was the first time I realized how entertaining real life could be. It feels very loose. People think that stuff is improvised but it’s not.
“Diner” (1982)
AB: It’s shot in a way that is unobtrusive but with an energy to the editing. I’m really really organized. Not only do I have to be because of low budgets but I can’t stand the stress of not knowing what I’m going to do. Something’s going to go wrong anyway, and I’ll have to change the plan, but the more organized I am the more I have a foundation and a clarity as to what the intention is – the visual intention, the thematic intention. I always have a specific shooting plan and how scenes come out of other scenes – so when it came to the dinner, I was very organized. We’ll start here, move the camera to those guys, to those guys, and we’ll go in a circle … and that’s how we did it.
AB: I also knew I didn’t want to be up close all the time. I wanted to get some distance. So we have the scene where the two of them are walking across a field, and he’s been humbled, and they’re being careful with each other but still really enjoying each other’s company. I’m really far away from them and I literally had them go from upper left frame to lower right frame for the whole scene. It’s the simplest thing in the world and people have such a strong reaction to it.
AB: I feel like so many movies now – regardless of budget – are either terrified of losing your attention so they amp up the editing speed, or they’re terrified of coming off as not art – so they let things play out on and on and on without any feel of cinema. I’m always trying to balance the two.
SOM: How did Paul Guyet come into your orbit?
AB: We had a hard time casting the role of Tony, and I have to give Hillary credit. She was insistent that the actor really be blind. I should have known better. I’ve lived with her for years. I’ve seen Hillary lose deaf roles to hearing actors, and not even because the hearing actor was a name. So she was like, “No. He’s gotta be blind,” but we couldn’t find the right actor. There was one guy who was wonderful, but he just didn’t get the humor of it, it wasn’t translating. Meanwhile, Hillary’s high school friend Paul was giving us advice on the script. He lives in New York, he’s this big goofy guy, and he’s got 30% vision left in one eye – which is similar to Hillary’s hearing loss, she’s got some residual hearing in lower frequencies. One day, Hillary says, “What about Paul?” I said, “Paul’s great, but if we cast him it’ll be like Beauty and the Beast.” The next day, I was thinking about the story and I thought, “It kind of IS Beauty and the Beast.”
AB: It’s about this girl who knows what she wants, comes to a new town, meets this big beast of a guy and eventually she has no choice, this is who she loves. So she and Paul read a couple of scenes together over Skype – and the chemistry was amazing. He was so funny. He’d never sang before –
SOM: Are you kidding me??
AB: No.
SOM: Wow.
AB: So I had him do a little recording of “You’re So Little” and I told him not to worry about singing, to just tell the story of the song – and he got it, and it was so beautiful. So that was it. He was just magnificent in the role. It felt effortless. I also had a hard time casting the sidekick part. I couldn’t find the right guy and I turned to Hillary and said, “I just want someone I love and trust. I want Brendan.” And that was it. It was as simple as that.
SOM: Their friendship was very believable from the second you see them together in the grocery store.
AB: They had great chemistry! I had them read over Skype together and they hit it off right away.
SOM: I’m clearly biased, but Brendan is so good in this.
AB: Isn’t he great in it? People LOVE him in this.
SOM: I love how you call out the cliches in the role, like “Yeah, I’m Bruno Kirby, I’m the sidekick.” You’re commenting on it but you undercut it at the same time.
AB: I hope so. I’m so aware of movie tropes when I’m writing, and do I avoid them by calling them out or does calling them out call more attention to it? So I wasn’t sure. Every character in not only my movies but every movie I watch … I wonder about their whole life. When I watch Die Hard, the whole time I’m thinking, “Where is his mother in all this?” If I was in Nakatomi Plaza with terrorists, my mother would be on the news screaming, “THAT’S MY SON UP THERE.” I find movies unrealistic when there are no parents. Everyone’s parents get involved in some way, if they’re alive. Something happens, and someone’s parents show up and they’re gonna be a pain in the ass somehow, because how can you avoid it? And that’s the thing with the sidekick. He’s not a sidekick. He’s got a whole life offscreen somewhere.
SOM: You allowed the sidekick to be pissed off about being a sidekick.
AB: We also wanted to express this feeling that Hillary and I always have. She used it in her one-woman show too.
At one point you start to feel guilty about complaining about whatever affliction it is that you have in your life. Yes, I’m disabled, but there are lots of people who are disabled, who have all kinds of problems. And also if you have problems of the heart, they’re yours and they hurt, and so we wanted to acknowledge: yes, we have these problems but we’re not the only ones. There’s something almost comofrting about remembering you’re not the only one. Everyone is going through something. Even the sidekick. It sounds like it should be a slap in the face to have that thought, but I find it to be the opposite.
SOM: Let’s talk about the music and your collaboration with D.D. Jackson.
AB: D.D. Jackson is my secret weapon. We have known each other for over 30 years. He was my assistant basketball coach when I was 12, and he was 17. His family lived around the corner from my family. His brother Charlie and I did musicals in high school together, our moms were good friends. D.D. and I were not friends, but we were aware of each other, and we both moved to New York at the same time, him for music and me for acting. Our moms made sure that we got together. D.D. is a brilliant jazz musician and composer. He’s considered one of the great jazz pianists of his generation.
D.D. Jackson
AB: When he was releasing his first album, he had an album release gig and I went to it and when we hung out after, that’s when we became friends. I always knew when I made my first film that he would score it. For my first film, Untitled A Love Story, I had him do a solo piano score. It was the first time he scored anything and it was so beautiful. He has now gone on to all kinds of things beyond his jazz career. He’s an Emmy-winning composer for children’s television. He arranges and performs with The Roots all the time. But whenever I have something, he’s my first call. My last movie was a musical, Hollywood Musical. Hollywood Musical came about because I was really depressed about my non-career and D.D. was playing the Hollywood Bowl in Bill Cosby’s band at the time, and we were hanging out after, and I was sharing my depression with him. He said, “Why don’t you just go shoot another movie?” So I started thinking and thought, No one’s done a musical in a while, really. This is an example of D.D. and I collaborating from the very beginning. It was the first time we had written songs together. I came to him with the script and knew basically what I wanted. I’ll send him different songs that have a feeling or a style I’m interested in, I’ll write some lyrics, and then we’ll get together. I’m not a musician but I feel like a musician when I’m with D.D. because I push the button called D.D. Jackson and out comes what I want. We had an amazing experience making that musical together and then when it came to You & Me I wanted Tony to do something post-blindness that would be fun and visceral and potentially cinematic. I don’t want to say ironic, because of Ella being deaf – because both Ella and Hillary love music – but I thought it would be interesting to include music in their dynamic.
AB: So D.D. and I wrote 4 songs together over a weekend for the movie. And, as always, the actors go to the little studio in his house and record the vocals and he puts everything together. I was concerned that the songs were going to feel like a musical number, so we lit it and shot it as concert film-y as possible. I think my favorite scene in the movie is when they sing the duet, before they go into the first kiss.
SOM: For me, that was when I saw her fall in love with him.
AB: The song kind of forces her to say the words she doesn’t even want to think. It pushes her, almost against her will.
SOM: Which was smart thinking on his part.
AB: Oh, he was clever! But he didn’t even get to see the look on her face.
SOM: You edited the film as well.
AB: I’ve edited everything I’ve ever done. I don’t even know what it would be like to work with an editor, which is probably terrible, but I love editing. I shoot as an editor, and it really helps. I hate to keep talking about budgets but even at the high budget level, if you’re making The Avengers – there’s never enough time or money. Limits are a gift. I learned very quickly to not only be okay but be happy when something is not possible. It forces me to go, “Oh, there’s a solution that’s better than my idea, I wonder what it is.” I come to set knowing exactly how I’m going to edit the scene. The AD will be like, “We don’t have time to cover this,” and I’ll be like, “Well, we’re not covering it, all we need is this, this, and this” and we move on. The first half of every shoot I’ve ever done is always the same. The crew is constantly going, “I don’t think we have enough time for what you want to do.” And then halfway through the shoot, everyone’s going “I think we’re gonna pull this off.” Every time!
SOM: The look of the film is very romantic. Could you talk about your collaboration with your cinematographer, Leah Anova.
AB: I think I found my Sven Nykvist. We had such a great collaboration. She won’t walk away if the lighting’s not right, I won’t walk away if the performances aren’t right, and neither of us will walk away if the shot isn’t right. She’s brilliant. Hillary directed a short of You & Me about 5 years ago. Her DP couldn’t make one of the days and she recommended Leah. Leah came in for one day on the short and Hillary loved her and recommended her for this. When I met Leah, we immediately found we had these mutual points of reference – Mary Ellen Mark – and The Conformist – which we both think is the best shot movie ever. I finally met a DP I can really communicate with. I can’t wait to do the next one.
SOM: Please talk to me about Sally Struthers.
AB: I think this is her best performance.
SOM: She is absolutely fantastic. She made me laugh out loud at times and she also made me cry.
AB: I am comfortable with drama and deep feeling but I don’t trust drama that has no comedy. Whenever I’m aware that things are getting serious … it’s not that I’m trying to inject something goofy, it’s just that I think about real life, and some funny shit happens in life, man, even in the worst or most serious moments. I’ve been acquainted with Sally for years. She does a lot of theatre and she’s very supportive of young people. I have some friends who did the Broadway tour of Grease with her, and when I came to do Hollywood Musical I wanted someone who was somewhat of a name – because it’s Hollywood – to play themselves in the opening scene. I asked a friend to ask Sally for me and Sally immediately said Yes, and she came and did this one scene, which is the opening scene of Hollywood Musical. She was so generous with her time. She appreciated that I was organized and I didn’t waste her time. When we were writing You & Me, I turned to Hillary and said, “Sally has to play this part.” I was really lucky that Sally agreed to do it. We had no money, she brought her own wardrobe.
SOM: She’s such a pro.
AB: She’ll throw in extra things that you can’t even believe. It was when I was editing the film that I fully appreciated what she brought to the role. I’d suddenly realize, “Oh my God, I didn’t realize HOW funny that was at the time.” I was really struck by the scene she has with Hillary when they go out to tea. Sally was really really connected to the scene, and her feelings. I watched her, thinking, “Wow. She’s been doing this a long time and she’s still so IN it.”
AB: After she saw the movie at Cinequest, she sent me a lovely text about how ever since she was a little girl, all she wanted to do was make people laugh and that’s still the thing that brings her the most joy. It’s wonderful to provide a venue for that, because she really really wants to do it. When I watched All in the Family as a kid, she reminded me of my mom. The character in You & Me is based on my mom, so I did have some surreal moments where I was like, “Sally Struthers is playing my mom.” I hope other directors see the film and cast her in stuff. She’s an untapped comic genius.
SOM: So let’s go back to what you were saying earlier about Hillary losing parts to hearing actresses. How has this formed what you have written? Or has it?
AB: Hillary is a brilliant actress who wants to work. At its core, writing You & Me is no different than Stallone writing Rocky or Matt and Ben writing Good Will Hunting. Hillary wants a great role. And everyone has a hard time finding great roles.
SOM: My cousin Mike always says, “You have to write stuff for yourself.” Otherwise, you’re just subjected to the cruel whims of the industry. This film feels like a strong corrective.
AB: I equate so much to music. Actors are constantly going to other people and saying, “Will you let me do what I want to do?” And people say, “No”. Musicians don’t do that. They get together, they form a band, they write some songs, they get up and do it. Painters don’t ask for permission. Actors are the only artists who ask for permission to practice their craft. That being said, the fact that disabled actors who are perfect for a given role – not because of their disability only – but because of their acting and sensibility and physicality – are still not cast – I’m still trying to figure out why because I don’t want to immediately go to the idea that it’s prejudice or discomfort, but I have to say – once you exhaust all the possibilities, prejudice and discomfort is what you’re left with. If you look up any article advocating for disabled actors representing themselves onscreen, and then you read the comments – the comments are shocking. People are not only resistant but angry at the idea. Hearing actors are cast to play deaf all the time, and in the deaf community it’s almost akin to blackface. They call it “deafface,” and they’re putting up with it less and less.
AB: As we talk about more representation in the culture, this is on a lower rung, even though there’s no real ladder, everyone’s inequality is equal – but it’s something that the deaf community is trying to get more attention brought to. So the fact that there’s angry pushback at the very idea of disabled actors representing themselves points to something a little deeper psychologically. If someone sees Daniel Day-Lewis playing someone with cerebral palsy in an albeit brilliant performance – it’s almost like subconsciously somewhere we know that he’s not actually disabled. Whereas with a disabled character you are faced with the reality of what the disability is, and people just don’t want to go there. Another thing, too: disabled people are usually portrayed in very serious tragic environments, everything’s doom and gloom. Not only that, but the character’s whole life is about the disability. One of the things I love in our movie is the scenes between Hillary and her deaf friend. They’re talking about boys, they’re not sitting around talking about being deaf.
AB: I don’t want to name other films, but there’s a movie by a great director that’s very well-respected and got Oscar nominations, and there’s a deaf character, a teenage girl walking around a city and she doesn’t know how to deal with people, or communicate and she’s scared to cross the street. Hillary and I went to see it in the theatre, and she turned to me at one point and said, “Is this her first day being deaf?” This is an example of someone writing a story and including a deaf person without finding anything out about the actual experience of deaf people. With You & Me, we are trying to have fun, we aren’t trying to make a message movie, but what we’re also trying to do in the big picture is get not only Hillary but everyone to the point where a deaf or disabled actor can play a role that does not have to be disabled. But very few directors and casting people and producers have the imagination – not to mention the will – to do it. In creative circles, it would be nice if people started thinking of disability when creating stories, and start showing disabled characters just living their lives, instead of living the disability every second. I have seen at the studio level actual resistance to people on the creative level who want to include a disabled character in a story – and that’s a huge problem. Hillary was in The East, written and directed by Zal Batmanglij – who recently did The OA.
AB: Zal had the imagination to write a character who was deaf, a character who didn’t need to be deaf, story-wise. This is really really rare. The studio financing his movie didn’t want him to do it. They said, “First of all, you’ll never find an actor to play the part. We don’t want to deal with subtitles. It’s too much, we don’t want you to do it.” But when Zal saw Hillary’s tape he got excited. He had her audition again, and they showed that tape to the studio and they said, “Okay, we’ll let you cast her.” There’s other times where the studio still says No, and the director just wants to get his movie made, and so he changes the role. We’ve been seeing that happen a lot. Or they don’t know what they’re getting into because they haven’t done the research before they wrote the script and then they get to the casting process and realize that they can’t just cast anyone. They can’t expect someone to learn sign language in 5 days. Sign language is a language. It would be like casting someone who’s not Chinese and expect them to be fluent in Chinese. If people want to tackle disability, they have to know what they’re talking about, and do their research. Storytellers make this mistake a lot because they think, “Someone can just learn the signs and it’ll look authentic.” But anyone who speaks sign language can tell if someone has just learned something phonetically.
AB: One of the things I want to say about people’s pushback to seeing disabled roles played by abled actors. You know what it comes down to for me? It’s an acting question for me. I’m at the point now as a director, as a person, that if I see an actor playing a disability, I’m just thinking about the performance and it makes me question if that’s what I’m supposed to be experiencing. People will argue, “But that’s part of the fun of art, watching a performance, experiencing people create things” and I think that’s all totally fine. But it brings up the question of what acting is, or what it’s supposed to be. I, personally, love seeing actors where you can’t tell they’re acting. When it comes to the issues of disability, if I see an actor playing a disability, all I’m thinking is: I’m supposed to admire what great acting this is, as opposed to learning about the character in the story and thinking about the ideas in the story. Breaking Bad would have been very different if RJ Mitte, who played the son, was playing the disability.
RJ Mitte, “Breaking Bad”
AB: What I loved about that character was that he didn’t have to be disabled. His story wasn’t about that. Disability is just part of our world, and so it should be part of the stories being told. In casting diversity, I think representation is important, I think people seeing themselves onscreen is important, but as a filmmaker the most important thing for me is to not be bullshit. Any time I’m casting a role, I’m thinking: If this is America now, and I have a bunch of white people with no disabilities, that’s bullshit. It’s not what I see when I walk out the door. I don’t want to be caught being full of shit. I am hoping that people will see You & Me and enjoy it. I am hoping directors see it and realize you could put Hillary into just about anything and she’d be great. She doesn’t have to just play “the deaf person.” She can do anything.
You & Me will be available to rent or own on iTunes and other streaming platforms on December 4th.
Some movies don’t just “stick with you.” They insinuate themselves into your bloodstream, they become a part of you, they imprint themselves on you. Or in you. You can’t shake them. You are – quite literally – haunted. Don’t Look Now – a movie about what it feels like to be haunted – was that kind of movie for me. I wrote a little bit about it here. I came out of Don’t Look Now altered. I know I am not alone in this. It has been observed that Roeg’s style is so strong – so unique – that it can’t be imitated. Or, people have tried to imitate it, tried to do what he does … but they can’t, because they are not him. They don’t put things together the way he does, they don’t have his point of view. How did he see the world? You can point to his films. There it is. Other films – like Walkabout, Performance, The Man Who Fell to Earth – created equally sui generis impressions. My pal Glenn Kenny’s post on Nicolas Roeg is well worth a read. And Matt Zoller Seitz’s tribute is also great.
One of my major projects earlier this year was writing essays on four of Ingmar Bergman’s actors, for the Criterion Collection “channel” on FilmStruck (which will cease operations in a couple of weeks, despite an outpouring of protest). It was an enormous undertaking and so much fun. Peter Cowie, noted Bergman scholar/historian, and I split up the actors. So far, two of the videos I wrote/narrated have gone up, the joint video on Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, and a video on Ingrid Thulin. (There will be one more). Unless you had a subscription to FilmStruck, you couldn’t see these videos. Now, Criterion has moved them all over onto a landing page on their own site.
When Indie Memphis senior programmer Miriam Bale asked if I wanted to give a talk on Elvis during my time in Memphis, I was excited, but when I heard it was going to be in the Circuit, it felt almost unreal. The Circuit is a theatre in Memphis, now used for theatrical productions, but which was once a movie theatre – dating back to the 1920s – called The Memphian. I’ve visited it before, just a quick driveby, because it was a place Elvis loved. In the 60s and 70s, he’d rent it out for an entire night, so he and his posse could go and watch movies. They’d be there all night, with Elvis sitting down in front, same seat every time. The same movie would be played over and over, if Elvis loved it. The Memphian was a space of peace for Elvis, a place where he could relax in his hometown, where he felt safe. Being asked to give a talk on Elvis in that venue was unbelievably special.
The level of excitement increased when Miriam informed me that Robert Gordon would be introducing me, as well as moderating an audience QA afterwards. Robert Gordon is a Memphis-based award-winning author and filmmaker, whose book It Came From Memphis is essential reading. Written from the midst of Memphis, his home turf, It Came From Memphis is an indepth three-dimensional portrait of Memphis’ cultural life, music, of course, but also art and painting and photography and wrestling. Instead of focusing on “the usual suspects,” like Stax or Sun or Elvis, you get to know Furry Lewis, Jim Dickinson, Alex Chilton, plus many more eccentric figures in Memphis’ cultural scene. I can’t recommend this book highly enough! Gordon is also the author of the definitive Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters, and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion (which I haven’t read, but I am so looking forward to it.) Gordon is also an award-winning film-maker, who has directed documentaries on Memphis subjects – B.B. King, William Eggleston, Big Star, to name a few. He also produced Best of Enemies, the excellent recent documentary about the explosive televised debates of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley. He also produced Very Extremely Dangerous, a documentary about Memphis rock ‘n roll outlaw (literally) Jerry McGill, which had its premiere at Indie Memphis in 2012. Purely coincidental, Very Extremely Dangerous was directed by my pal Paul Duane, whom I interviewed about another one of his films Barbaric Genius. (The world is very small.)
This only scratches the surface of Gordon’s fascinating and rich career. I have admired him for a long time, so it was such a thrill to hear he would be introducing me. In the old Memphian no less!
Indie Memphis is a really special festival (my roundup here), jampacked with events and music and interesting people. It was a blast hanging out in Memphis for 5 days, meeting new people, reconnecting with the city, and – finally – gathering at the Circuit – once upon a time called the Memphian (neon sign inside the lobby) on a chilly Sunday night to talk about Elvis. Elvis and the movies.
A small crowd showed up at the Memphian that night, and I met a lot of nice people, a couple of whom have been reading my stuff on Elvis for years. That felt really good. Brad Jenkins, who ran the lights, and Joseph Carr, who would be manning the Elvis clips (I had forgot to bring my laptop, but Joseph made it work – thank you!) – were awesome, basically pulling things together – the podium, getting the mic hooked up, etc., arranging to have all the lights go out for each of the clips I played (projected on a screen on the side of the stage). It was all very exciting – so exciting that I had to remind myself a couple of times to actually ENJOY it. And I did. I’ll write later about the QA session afterwards, which was – like the rest of the night – really special, and went in a very interesting direction.
Here’s the talk I gave at Indie Memphis, and I thank Robert for giving me permission to print his beautiful introduction! (It gave me goosebumps just listening to him.)
Thanks to all who came out to the talk! To quote one of Elvis’ sexier songs, “It means so much, so much.”
Robert Gordon’s introduction
Tonight we will reassess Elvis Presley. Memphis has had a long and perplexed history with Elvis. While city fathers in Dixie days fancied themselves highly cultured and well educated, it was the poor white trash kid from Mississippi who tapped into the region’s subculture full of latent power. Cotton men wore pinstripes and their women wore chenille and they breathed stale air in their mansions, but Elvis felt the rumble of the power that drove the machine. He was a child of the streets, wrangling the muscle of hard work and the passion of hard play, the hope of the faithful and the abandon of the faithless. He captured an energy that, arguably, had a wider social impact than the toppling of the Bastille by the working people of Paris. The two are certainly related.
Memphis hated Elvis until he died. I remember the city then, 1977 — florists sold out of flowers, phone lines kept going down because of the international calls pouring in, and fans from around the world spontaneously descended, overflowing the hotels.
That was when the provincial men of cotton lucre took a new look at Elvis and at the African-American influenced rock and roll he created. They still hated him and it, but they saw what they’d previously missed: There was money to make off that awful man.
Tonight, I’m looking forward to another new look at Elvis. Tonight is about Elvis the actor. He made 31 movies during his 13 years in Hollywood. If it sounds like a factory, it pretty much was. How did the same guy who put the working man in the cultural driver’s seat wind up on a Hollywood set singing a love song to a bull in Stay Away, Joe?
Elvis’ Hollywood years are often considered his low point. But Sheila O’Malley has returned to the films unbothered by the years of denigration and has looked with fresh eyes at what many see only through layers of ridicule, shame, and embarrassment.
We all have alternative worlds of which we dream, like Gore beats Bush in the 2000 election. Another one of mine is Elvis accepting the role he’d been offered, starring across Barbra Streisand in A Star is Born. Would Elvis still be alive if he’d gotten a good role? That we can’t know, but what we may yet learn is that as bad as many of Elvis’s movies were, Elvis the actor had more talent than we ever realized.
We are, right now, in Elvis’s actor’s studio. When this very room was the Memphian movie theater, he’d regularly rent it during late night hours, his personal big screen where he could study the moves of his favorite actors. I think it won’t be hard to feel his presence in the room. If you see him at the concession stand, be nice and let him buy you a large popcorn.
Now, let’s get to it. You may know Sheila O’Malley from her popular and insightful blog, the Sheila Variations, or you may be among the many who follow her on twitter or at Roger Ebert.com. She’s written for The New York Times, Film Comment and the Criterion Collection.
Alright then, a little less conversation, we’re gonna love him tender. It didn’t happen at the world’s fair, it happened here at Indie Memphis: We’re very proud to have, please welcome Sheila O’Malley.
Elvis in Hollywood
Elvis’ career as an actor is ignored. Not just dismissed or mocked, but ignored. Between 1956 and 1969, Elvis Presley appeared in 31 feature films. They are extremely strange films. They make no sense without Elvis. They barely make sense WITH Elvis. They aren’t referred to as “movies.” They’re referred to as “Elvis movies.”
Film critics ignored his movies and ignore them still. Music critics are angry that the whole thing happened at all. They hate the movies, they resent that Elvis even wanted to be an actor, they hate the soundtracks, they hate that Elvis stopped touring for almost a decade – especially since Elvis’ movie career coincided with the British Invasion, so Elvis – who had inspired so many of these British bands – sat on the sidelines, playing a ukelele on the drive-in screens throughout the land, watching as he was left behind. Music critics are not WRONG in their feeling of how much Elvis’ movie career damaged his status in the music world – it still damages his status.
Because these movies are ignored – except by the fans, of course – they exist in a weird never-never-land. It’s assumed that all the movies are bad. Roger Ebert said Elvis never made a good movie. Now I love Roger, and I’m grateful to him for giving me a job, but this is just not true. In almost no rubric you can come up with is King Creole a bad movie. But there are many good movies in this bizarre pantheon – and he’s always good. He’s even good in the dumb movies – maybe even particularly in the dumb movies, because, my God, what other actor could survive such silliness? He’s charming and funny and he singlehandedly justifies these movies’ existence. Elvis brought to the screen an understanding of his unique persona. He never took himself too seriously. This is a HUGE plus, and WAY easier said than done. He was very open about how unhappy he was about his movie career – how he wished he had been allowed to make better movies. There are many missed opportunities and many What Ifs, the most famous being A Star is Born, but there are many more.
But let’s focus on what DID happen as opposed to what DIDN’T happen.
I see the movie career as having 4 separate phases.
The first phase: Pre-Army: the 4 movies he made before he left for Germany in 1958 to do his military service.
Hal Wallis, legendary producer, had seen Elvis in his first television appearance in early 1956, on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, and before the performance was even over, Hal Wallis was making plans to have the kid come out for a screen test. Elvis signed with Hal Wallis.
Hal Wallis and Elvis Presley
Because Elvis had no acting experience, Wallis wanted to ease Elvis into the movies, and so the first movie Elvis was put in was an ensemble drama, where he played a secondary role, surrounded by experienced actors. Elvis wouldn’t have the burden of having to carry the film. This was Love Me Tender, a Western slash family melodrama.
One of my favorite anecdotes about Elvis as an actor comes from the Oscar-nominated stage and screen veteran Mildred Dunnock, who played Elvis’ mother in the film. Elvis had no experience. He was totally green. In one scene, Elvis’ character grabs a gun and charges for the door. His mother cries out, “Put that gun down!” and he’s supposed to ignore her and race out the door. On the first take, when Dunnock said her line, Elvis, one of the most famous mamma’s boys of all time, obeyed her. He put the gun down.
This anecdote has been told in a mocking way about Elvis’ lack of experience, or in a kind of “Poor Mildred Dunnock having to work with this AMATEUR” way. But let’s listen to what Dunnock had to say about it.
“For the first time in the whole thing he had heard me, and he believed me. Before, he’d just been thinking what he was doing and how he was going to do it. I think it’s a funny story. I also think it’s a story about a beginner who had one of the essentials of acting, which is to believe.”
Mildred Dunnock knew what she was talking about.
Elvis was naive. He didn’t want to sing in his movies, and believed he wouldn’t have to sing. He was a huge admirer of James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando. He wanted to make movies like that. But of course, the studio made him sing. Love Me Tender has 4 songs in it, including the famous title track. The songs have a kind of hoe-down-y Hollywood-hillbilly sound – corny, for sure. His movements are anachronistic but it doesn’t matter at all. He performs these songs without self-consciousness or embarrassment, even more amazing when you remember that he did not want to sing in the movies, he was embarrassed by it, he was disappointed. None of that shows in the end result. What you see, instead, is how he brings to the table joy in what he is doing, joy he is happy to share. He has a kind of easiness that lets you know he’s in on the joke.
The next three movies in this first phase attempt to DEAL with the phenomenon of Elvis’ fame, which was so huge at that point it was barely fame anymore, it was something else. Nobody had been that famous before. Love Me Tender was a traditional movie in a recognized genre, Elvis fitting into a story set up long before he came along. The next three movies are all versions of Elvis’ story, different “takes” on his rags-to-riches overnight story. A couple of these films use well-known events from Elvis’ actual life as plot points, things the public would recognize. Elvis’ movies got Meta, almost instantly. Loving You, the first of the bunch, is about a delivery guy who sings at a county fair and is discovered by a big-time manager – played by the great Lizabeth Scott – who looks at him and sees twirling dollar signs.
Elvis Presley and Lizabeth Scott, “Loving You”
Loving You is basically Elvis-Lite – a Hollywood version of the pandemonium he caused – but still, you can feel the movie struggling to get a handle on the cultural phenomenon. It was like trying to control a wild animal.
Jailhouse Rock came next, and Jailhouse Rock is interesting because he plays a jerk. The character is a jerk at the start and he’s a jerk at the end, only now he’s a rich jerk. He’s super sexy in it, and his hair was never taller.
Judy Tyler and Elvis Presley
The jerkiness of the character is such a bizarre choice – he’s not even a sympathetic jerk – but you can tell they were trying to loop Elvis into the “bad boy” rebel without a cause juvenile delinquent thing, so dominant in 1950s culture. Meanwhile, Elvis was a guy who drank milkshakes and loved his mother. And so this is important to keep in mind, and it is almost never mentioned: what he does in Jailhouse Rock is an acting performance, because if there’s one thing Elvis was known for personally – it was his politeness. His good boy Southern politeness. His Yes Ma’am, No sir, manners were compulsive. But here in Jailhouse Rock, he plays an ex-con who tramples over anyone who gets in the way of his music career, including those who helped him get started. Elvis doesn’t push, or overplay. At all times, he’s slightly irritated, arrogant, casually cruel, and he makes it feels organic, like he’s letting us in on a secret, of just what his politeness might cover up. It’s brave to play such an unsympathetic character so believably. In one scene, his record label promoter, played by Judy Tyler, takes him to a party where snooty people talk about jazz. It’s one of my favorite Elvis scenes.
King Creole is the best movie Elvis made. This one is on the radar of film critics, because the director was Michael Curtiz, who directed a number of classics, the main one being Casablanca, but he also directed The Adventures of Robin Hood, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Mildred Pierce, it’s a long list. Curtiz was the best director Elvis ever worked with, and in King Creole he’s surrounded by a cast of really good actors – Walter Matthau, Carolyn Jones, Dolores Hart, Paul Stewart, Vic Morrow. Everyone is amazing in it, including Elvis.
Why King Creole is important, though, is it shows what Elvis’ career might have looked like if directors had treated him like a major star, as opposed to a novelty act (or, worse, a joke). Curtiz took a lot of care in how he framed Elvis. He filmed Elvis like he was Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, Joan Crawford, he had fun with shadows and light on the face, he was fascinated by Elvis’ look, and found a lot of diversity in how he filmed him. This would not be true in the later films in the 60s. These films take Elvis’ presence and star quality for granted. King Creole is also filled with good songs, many of which were written by eventual rock ‘n roll Hall of Famers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Here he sings “New Orleans”, accompanied by his regular backup group The Jordannaires. And watch how Curtiz has created a powerful mood for Elvis to just go up there and be Elvis, with his huge shadow behind him.
Presley left for Germany to do his military service after King Creole. He was gone for 2 years. No recording, no movies.
The second phase of his movie career comes when he returns to the States. There’s a flailing around feeling in the 3 films he did upon his return – G.I. Blues, which capitalized on his military experience – and two others – Flaming Star and Wild in the Country – nearly unknown today but they’re two of his best. Flaming Star was directed by Don Siegel of Dirty Harry fame, and had no songs except the title track. Elvis is fantastic in it. He gives a real performance.
Elvis in “Flaming Star”
Wild in the Country was written by none other than Clifford Odets, and is basically Good Will Hunting, the Elvis version – where Elvis plays a hothead juvenile delinquent who is court ordered to get some therapy. Through therapy he deals with his pain and alienation, the loss of his mother. Wild in the Country has a great trio of female co-stars: Hope Lange, Millie Perkins, and an explosive Tuesday Weld. He’s so good in Flaming Star and Wild in the Country but they didn’t make any money. Nobody wanted to see Elvis give a real performance in a real story, where he didn’t sing. The powers that be – Hal Wallis and his controversial manager Colonel Tom Parker – along with the studio – weren’t eager to repeat them. This is yet another What If in his career.
Then along came the juggernaut that was Blue Hawaii in 1961, ushering in Phase 3 – the Elvis Formula Movie.
When people say “Elvis movies” this is the section they’re talking about. The desire to recreate the success of Blue Hawaii led to the Formula, repeated in endless variation for the next 7 years. Elvis experienced this as a prison sentence. It was a vice of success. Norman Taurog directed Blue Hawaii, and became the go-to guy for Elvis Movies after that. He ended up directing 9 of them in total.
The Elvis formula is as follows:
1. It takes place in an “exotic” location, like Hawaii or Las Vegas or Acapulco.
2. Elvis plays a singer moonlighting as a race car driver or vice versa, because that’s a valid normal job for a person to have.
3. The “triangulation” of Elvis by numerous babes. It was never a one-on-one love story. There were usually three women vying for him.
Or, as in this clip from Blue Hawaii, five women.
Elvis is never the sexual aggressor in the Elvis Formula Movies. He is chased around by women in bikinis and in the end he has to choose. Or – as in the final scene in Spinout in 1966 – which has to be seen to be believed – he kisses each of the 3 candidates, all of whom are in wedding gowns, and then looks right in the camera and says, “I’m still single.”
If you watch these movies alone at home, you may feel like you’re having an out of body experience. Or like someone has spiked your drink. But my theory is: these movies were made to be played at a drive-in on a hot summer night. With someone losing their virginity in the car next door, and people getting drunk two cars down. If you imagine seeing them in that setting, they make perfect sense. The colors are bright, everyone is good-looking, nobody has a real job, the world is one long beach party … there’s no real sex in it, no real problems, there’s a song every 15 minutes, and Elvis is in every scene, every frame. These movies are unique cultural documents. They cannot be compared to anything else. They also generated a RIVER of money.
One other factor which I’ll touch on briefly: The 1960s saw the complete collapse of the old Hollywood studio system. Derailed by ballooning expenses, and also competing with television – and losing – the studios slowly began to implode, leaving a vacuum. That process had already started when Elvis signed with Hal Wallis in 1956, but by the early 60s, the writing was on the wall. Elvis was one of the last stars of the formal studio system, one of the last stars to be locked into a multi-year contract like that, one of the last stars who worked solely within the studio system. Elvis came from the 50s and 60s, but his contract was like Bette Davis’ contract, James Cagney’s contract, contracts which actors back THEN had found oppressive. By the time Elvis came around, his kind of career was already almost obsolete. He was a young man working in an old system. By the end of the 1960s, the independent film scene was starting to emerge – John Cassavetes’ Faces came in 1968 – and there was Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy and others – freedom was starting to be a possibility. So: as the studios collapsed, as the certainties of that old system vanished, one of the only sure things still left in town was an Elvis Movie. It’s an important part of the context of his career. Elvis wanted to get better material. But in such a precarious financial environment, there was no WAY Elvis was going to be allowed to deviate from the formula that sold tickets. Elvis felt trapped. He WAS trapped.
Of all the formula movies, Viva Las Vegas stands out. It’s different.
The director, George Sidney, had made a name for himself directing musicals: Showboat, Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me Kate, so he brought another kind of sensibility to the table. The musical numbers are really NUMBERS here. But the main reason Viva Las Vegas stands out is Elvis was paired up with a rising star who matched him in fire and sex appeal – Ann-Margret. In Viva Las Vegas, she has a couple of her own solo numbers too – with Elvis not even onscreen. The Colonel HATED this. He was very very annoyed at Viva Las Vegas, he didn’t care that the chemistry between the two stars was so insane you can still feel it today, over 50 years later. When Elvis had to WORK for one woman’s attention, as he has to do in Viva Las Vegas, he was activated in a very sexy way. Elvis was thrilled to work with someone who matched him in energy. He couldn’t coast with her. She’d steal the whole thing from him otherwise. They are amazing onscreen together.
Steven Spielberg has called Viva Las Vegas one of his favorite movies. You should listen to Spielberg.
Here’s just one of the many numbers Elvis and Ann-Margret do together. Look for Teri Garr. She’s one of the background dancers.
Now we come to the fourth and final phase – the end of the 60s, when the Elvis Formula breaks apart. Elvis was now 31, 32 years old, a married man with a daughter. Once the formula disappears, the movies get wilder. Unfortunately, by that point, nobody was paying attention anymore. These movies came and went without a trace. But they are well worth seeking out.
Stay Away Joe is a raucous free-for-all. It has no point but it’s fun, and it places Elvis in the middle of a rambunctious ensemble, one of many. Speedway costars Nancy Sinatra – and is a huge influence on Quentin Tarantino. Charro is a Spaghetti Western takeoff, with Elvis riding around in chaps and roping horses. In The Trouble With Girls, which I love, he’s not even the lead! Once the formula vanishes, he’s in a totally relaxed and loose space. He gets to behave, to ACT, even. I really must call out one in particular – Live a Little Love a Little – directed by Taurog again – a screwball comedy heavily influenced by Bringing Up Baby. This movie is almost totally unknown but it’s one of my favorite Elvis movies. He plays a fashion photographer chased around by a kooky woman who wants him BAD – played by Michele Carey.
What makes this performance unique in his career is that he is allowed to be cranky about a woman chasing him around. This is like Cary Grant in Breaking Up Baby. His crankiness is what makes the performance so funny. In Live a Little Love a Little he is allowed to have FEELINGS about being catnip for the ladies. It’s human. In the Elvis Formula Movies, Elvis was rarely allowed the opportunity to play anything remotely human. In Live a Little, he runs up and down staircases, he hides behind newspapers in crowded elevators, he shouts in people’s faces, he is embarrassed and irritable. And FUNNY.
There are only a couple of songs in Live a Little, and one of them would become an enormous hit for him – one that still gets radio play, “A Little Less Conversation”. Elvis goes to a party at what is obviously supposed to be the Playboy mansion, sees a woman, and basically demands she come home with him. The Elvis Formula movies were pretty coy about sex – one of the weird quirks of 1960s American cinema in general – and there’s more sexual energy in this number than in all the Elvis Formula Movies put together.
One of the things Elvis brought to all of his roles was a sense of ease and openness before the camera. Mildred Dunnock saw it in 1956. The camera picks up honesty, and Elvis never lied. This was true in King Creole and it was true in Girls! Girls! Girls!. You try to act in a movie like Girl Happy and not look idiotic. As unhappy as Elvis was making many of these movies, you never get the sense that he was slumming.
Kurt Russell said, “I love Elvis movies because Elvis is in them.”
There aren’t too many actors you can say that about.
I just finished my friend Dan Callahan’s first novel, That Was Something. It is Dan’s fourth book. His first book was Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, part of the Hollywood Legends series. His second book was Vanessa: The Life of Vanessa Redgrave (I interviewed him about it for Ebert.) His third book, which also came out this year, is The Art of American Screen Acting, 1912-1960, which is so fantastic – nobody writes about actors like Dan Callahan. He is at the top of a very short list of writers/film critics who understand the craft and know how to talk about it. I interviewed Dan about that book too. Dan and I are friends and he has been trying to get his novel published for a couple of years. When the news finally broke that he found a publisher, you could hear the screams of congratulations from his friends in every New York borough (and those of us across the Hudson). This was a project close to Dan’s heart (although everything he does is close to his heart, part of his unique quality as a writer), and it was so meaningful that his novel had finally found a home. Equally as exciting, Dan was just interviewed by The Paris Review about the book. Very happy for and proud of my friend!
Bobby Quinn is the narrator of That Was Something, a transplant to New York from the Midwest, a college student in the mid-to-late 1990s, a closeted kid, in love with movies. He befriends a straight guy in his dorm named Ben Morrissey. It’s an intense relationship. Dan understands the complexities that can be at work in the all-too-rare straight-gay-male relationship, the sexual tension that exists, and that can be okay with a certain kind of straight guy who’s not afraid of it, who plays around with it even. This is not a tear-stained story, though, about tragic unrequited love (although the entire book is filled with a sort of melancholy yearning). It’s written with retrospective in play. Bobby is clearly much older as he’s writing, and looking back on that brief era – the 5 or 6 year pre-9/11 – with a kind of awe and wonder, at the intensity of it, the playfulness and magic, the newness of New York, its possibilities. Ben and Bobby end up in the orbit of a fascinating girl named Monica Lilac, a silent film obsessive, who throws elaborate parties where no one is allowed to speak, or where everyone has to come dressed up as either Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Monica and Ben are drawn to one another, and Bobby looks on, amazed, as these two powerful erotic muses (my own term) – two people he loves – hook up and sink into another kind of intimacy. He, meanwhile, is on his own trajectory, exploring the gay nightlife, liberating himself from the closet, having all kinds of adventures, some good, some awful. It’s a book about people who care about art: photographs, actors, literature, film.
That Was Something is beautiful and melancholy and bittersweet and very sexy. It captures so perfectly not only that time of life – mid20s, artists in New York – but also that era … the moment riiiiight before everyone picked up their cellphones, never to put them down again. An era where you looked at people and had to listen to them. It made my heart ache. It made me laugh! Why not? Nevertheless! Whatever! (Those three phrases are significant in the book, running through it like a subliminal theme.)
Callahan has created characters that live and his love for them is so clear. Dan writes from love – love that is almost indistinguishable from awe. He looks upon those he loves, at the mere FACT of love, and thinks, “My God, isn’t this interesting. Isn’t this an amazing experience? Look what happened on this one special night. I will never forget it. Isn’t it extraordinary that we did this that one time? How did we even bear it?” He understands how rare it is to connect with another human being. He also understands how rare silliness is, and how silliness is one of the most precious qualities of all. If you can’t be silly with someone, what’s the point? But the tone of the book is somewhat distanced, Bobby Quinn is older now, looking back on events, with the knowledge that love, connection, silliness, magic … is harder as you get older. People retract. Retreat. You lose the capacity for that kind of thing. (Which reminds me of my own thought that you might as well feel things as strongly as you can while you’re young. Because age does a number on us all.)
I knew someone like Ben Morrissey. And he really was “all that.” Other girls thought he was a user, a player. But I saw the truth. And I benefited so much from seeing him for who he was. And he did the same with me, by the way. It took me years to really get how clearly he saw me. Because I was WILD then. (Then?) Not too many men could deal with me. He did. Because he saw the reality of me, and he saw it early. (I did not know this until much much later, a decade and a half later, when he told me about his first impressions.) On my first “date” with “my” Ben Morrissey, I lay my head on his chest and listened to his heart beat and had such a strong reaction to it I babbled to my friends about it the next day. I wrote a 10 page journal entry about that heart beat. I felt connected to that heart beat and I had just met the man. Cuckoo! I was like a duck imprinting herself on her “mate”. BUT. I was not WRONG in what I sensed, and I was not wrong in my intuition that we somehow “had something to do with each other.” That that heartbeat had something to do with me. The ravings of an intense GenX 20something? You bet. But I repeat: I was not wrong. It wasn’t “love”. It was something else.
I over-identified maybe with the character of Ben Morrissey and Bobby’s reaction to him, but that was the strength of Dan’s character development and behavioral observations.
Dan’s book made me think of that whole madcap screwball season in my life … when adulthood had started but nothing had been decided yet.
But the heart knows stuff. If you’re open it finds “your people” for you.
I will miss these characters. I miss that New York too. That Was Something called it all back.
When I was a kid, I just knew him from Hee Haw, which my parents watched, and so we watched it too. He seemed like a nice and friendly man. His personality was huge and it translated to me, even though I was just a kid. His laugh seemed real. He was a grownup but he was playful in a way I related to. I had no idea what he was famous for. Later, I would learn.
The man was a virtuoso guitarist.
Member when he showed up on The Odd Couple?
Beautiful voice, too. Here he is on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Here, he goes from guitar to banjo to fiddle. It’s insane.
This duet with Clarence Brown is awe-inspiring. Clips like this are like blood to a vampire for me: duets between maestros, artistic appreciation between two giants.
is essential reading. Written from the midst of Memphis, his home turf, It Came From Memphis is an indepth three-dimensional portrait of Memphis’ cultural life, music, of course, but also art and painting and photography and wrestling. Instead of focusing on “the usual suspects,” like Stax or Sun or Elvis, you get to know Furry Lewis, Jim Dickinson, Alex Chilton, plus many more eccentric figures in Memphis’ cultural scene. I can’t recommend this book highly enough! Gordon is also the author of the definitive 
, and 
(which I haven’t read, but I am so looking forward to it.) Gordon is also an award-winning film-maker, who has directed documentaries on Memphis subjects – B.B. King, William Eggleston, Big Star, to name a few. He also produced Best of Enemies, the excellent recent documentary about the explosive televised debates of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley. He also produced Very Extremely Dangerous, a documentary about Memphis rock ‘n roll outlaw (literally) Jerry McGill, which had its premiere at Indie Memphis in 2012. Purely coincidental, Very Extremely Dangerous was directed by my pal Paul Duane, 
. It is Dan’s fourth book. His first book was 
, part of the Hollywood Legends series. His second book was 
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, which is so fantastic – nobody writes about actors like Dan Callahan. He is at the top of a very short list of writers/film critics who understand the craft and know how to talk about it. 
