Review: The Last Rodeo (2025)

Posted on May 23, 2025 by sheila

Not to be confused with The Last Showgirl … I reviewed The Last Rodeo for Ebert.

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The Power Playbook

Posted on May 22, 2025 by sheila

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“When I aim at praise, they say I bite.” — Alexander Pope

Posted on May 21, 2025 by sheila

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
-— Alexander Pope, from “Eloisa to Abelard”

Alexander Pope was born on this day in 1688.

He was so huge in his day, so talked-about, so hated and feared by some writers – and so loved by other writers – that his lapse into total obscurity for over a century – until he was rediscovered in the 20th century, is one of those fascinating – and alarming – literary phenomena. People are “in style” and then they aren’t. They are so much NOT in style that they are forgotten. A link in the chain of cultural continuity is broken. It will take reparative work to connect the chain. It’s good to keep in mind that nothing is forever.

Pope was so famous, so dominant, so feared, it’s not surprising he was a huge target. Writers reacted against Pope – and against the whole Neoclassical era – for 100 years. Every “movement” creates its own counter-movement. Reacting AGAINST something is how the culture moves forward. After Pope’s generation came the Romantics, and we still live in the world made by the Romantics. The Romantics changed everything. The 18th century Enlightenment yielded to subjective Romanticism which morphed into late 19th-century curlicues, which was then demolished for all time by Modernism.

But let’s get back to Pope.

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“Boredom is very important in life. It helps you feel when something is wrong.” — John Strasberg

Posted on May 20, 2025 by sheila

It’s John Strasberg’s birthday today. I told this story before on here years ago, when I used to write like this on here, on occasion. Figured I’d re-post it. He is very very important to me.

Back in the late ’90s, I took an intense acting workshop with John Strasberg, son of Lee Strasberg, and author of one of my favorite acting books/memoirs, Accidentally on Purpose. The workshop lasted 4 or 5 days but I came out of it altered. The quote in the title to this post is one of the things he said during the workshop. I never forgot it. Going into it, I was tense with excitement and anticipation, because Lee Strasberg was so important to my own development and growth, particularly as a teenager, and Lee’s influence was so vast – considering the Studio circle in which I ran – that being connected, in some small way, to Lee’s legacy was really exciting to me. I did not know much about John Strasberg at the time, although I had read his sister Susan’s books, in which he is often quoted, and exists as a peripheral figure to the main triangular drama going on between Susan and her parents (Lee and Paula). John came off as a troubled young man, resisting his parents’ domination, and hurt by their affectionate tender relationships with the actors they coached (in stark contrast to their rigid displeasure towards him). But I didn’t know much about him as an acting teacher. How does one become an acting teacher if you are the son of one of the most famous acting teachers who ever lived? How do you begin to come out from underneath that shadow?

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“There’s nobody as good as the Ramones, never will be.” — Joey Ramone

Posted on May 19, 2025 by sheila

“To me, John Lennon and Elvis Presley were punks, because they made music that evoked those emotions in people.” — Joey Ramone

It’s Joey Ramone’s birthday today.

Nothing I can say will top my brother Brendan’s essay on seeing The Ramones at the Living Room in Providence. So I’ll pass the mike. It’s one of my favorite things Bren has written – with a HELL of a final sentence – JESUS. Not only does he describe that show – and the extraordinary nature of it – but he evokes that whole entire time, and what it meant to be a fan of “that kind of music” in the ’80s, and what the Ramones signified and embodied.

The Living Room, Pt. 3: One Two Three Four, by Brendan O’Malley

And I’ll leave off with this: Joey Ramone’s painfully exuberant cover of “What a Wonderful World”.

 
 
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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Supernatural re-watch, Season 5

Posted on May 18, 2025 by sheila

If you’re following along:
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5
Season 6
Season 7
Season 8
Season 9
Season 10
Season 11
Season 12-15

Plus: my season recaps from back in the day:
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 1 “Sympathy for the Devil”
Written by Eric Kripke
Directed by Robert Singer
It’s good to be back in the original Kripke Arc. Actively ignoring/rejecting Chuck as God is going to be crucial for watching these early seasons, which I love so much. I love this Chuck. “This sucks ass,” his delayed comment from the side. Season 5 is the most explicitly rapey of this often very rapey show. Will Sam and Dean give their consent to be ridden – hard – by two archangels? Will they or won’t they? It’s a really great structure and I’m looking forward to watching it all play out.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 2 “Good God, Y’all!”
Written by Sera Gamble
Directed by Phil Sgriccia
The amulet. It makes me want to weep. The Castiel-Dean closeups are intense, man. The hangover from the Sam-Demon-Blood arc is forefront, and Dean can’t let it go. (Why should he? It literally just happened.) The eerie town filled with “demons”, the shot of Dean and Sam slowly walking into town to the blasting of “Spirit in the Spy” from a totalled car window … the red Mustang – the horsemen arriving (I love the horsemen, and how they’re conceptualized, and I love the whole ring motif. Like I said; this is a really intricate season-wide arc, so well done.) Kind of shocking “breakup” scene at the end, with the brothers parting ways (in that gorgeous setting). Dean thinking it’s best to part ways is really something! This relationship is in process, and the good writing teams kept that relationship at the forefront, so we could watch them grow (or regress). I mean, think about it: it’s episode 2 of the season and it ends with Sam walking away. Writing themselves into a corner like that is where they got the really good stuff.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 3 “Free to Be You and Me”
Written by Jeremy Carver
Directed by J. Miller Tobin
Opening montage artfully done, showing Dean and Sam living separate lives (it’s similar to the montage opening Season 6). Sam has to deal with the pushiest nosiest waitress ever born and Dean takes Castiel to a brothel. Then there’s all this Raphael business – still in operation in season 6, and as boring now as it will be later, plus it’s mostly off-screen so it’s hard to care about, even though Cas rants about Raphael turning the world into a graveyard. Like, okay? But we’ve got other problems already, Cas. Here the Raphael thing has a little bit more urgency, due to the new-ness of it and also the quest to find God. It’s wild to hear Dean say he’s “happy” without his brother around. That he had more fun with Castiel than he had with Sam. The manifestation of Lucifer, and his pitch to Sam: “You’re my vessel.” We’re only in episode 3 and the season is laid out: both brothers are being stalked by rapey archangels. I’m so burnt out from seasons 12-15, where they brought Pellegrino back and decided to give NICK – Lucifer’s VESSEL – a sub-plot. They were desperate. Watching this now is bringing back my first experience viewing it, and how frightening it all was, how cosmic and yet how grounded. The fear, the unknown, the big-ness of it, was so palpable. Eventually, the show got way too cosmic (alternate worlds, etc.) – but at this early stage, Kripke and team knew how to give it that sense of mystery and doom and portentousness while also centralizing the brothers’ importance. Gotta say, too: Mark Pellegrino is magnificent.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 4 “The End”
Written by Ben Edlund
Directed by Steve Boyum
One of my favorite episodes in the whole series. Here’s one of the reasons why these early seasons worked so well: they knew the power of suggestion. They HAD to because they didn’t have the money. They had to suggest things (sound effect of flapping wings – angels disappearing/appearing. Simple. Cheap. Etc.) They don’t have a budget to show a post-apocalyptic world, so they give us a glimpse – in a “dream” – one that hangs over the action for the rest of the season (and series). They hinted at it with “Croatoan”, and here it is, full-blown. Compare this to the alternate-world bullshit in Season 13, with all the special effects and explosions and none of it matters or ever feels real or ever touches the real action. But “The End” casts a long shadow. This is what will happen. There is another aspect that works so well and it’s the emotional: I am getting used to season 5 Dean, who thinks he and Sam are stronger apart. And so what we see in “The End” is a Sam-less Dean, who Dean would be if it weren’t for Sam. It’s so well thought out, so well conceived, and if the world were just or sane Ackles would have won an Emmy for what he does here. And let’s not forget to mention Jared. That SCENE in the garden. It’s so well-written, it’s filled with so many concepts and themes – and it’s airtight: it expands forward into the future, and makes sense when you look backwards. It is The End. Jared is so creepy, but his creepiness comes from the warmth and almost tenderness he brings to it, the unflappable attitude, all as Dean spins out, completely breaking down. Bah, it’s so good. And finally: I don’t like Dean’s blue jacket.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 5 “Fallen Idols”
Written by Julie Siege
Directed by James L. Conway
The fist fight with Gandhi makes me cry with laughter. It’s so absurd. The point here, though, seems to be the motel room scene at the midway mark, where Sam basically says “You have to stop punishing me, this has to be a two-way street, our relationship didn’t work before, we have to change.” And Dean literally has NO idea what Sam is talking about. Dean has NO self-reflection, especially not when it comes to this primary relationship, where he has been trained his whole life to be the dominant one, and etc. Dean is SO confused by literally everything Sam is saying. It’s such a good scene! I’m thinking ahead to Season 9 when they are STILL having this argument. And somehow it doesn’t feel repetitive, it feels like … oh, this is how it can be with siblings. You don’t “change the dance step” overnight. Dean’s bulky 1-5 jacket! Before it vanished into thin air. It’s such a Dean staple and it’s really good to see it.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 6 “I Believe the Children Are Our Future”
Written by Andrew Dabb and Daniel Lofin
Directed by Charles Beeson
“We don’t have a fridge!” is a fave of all of Jensen’s line readings. So to recap: he had a wank and then he ate some ham. Sam’s been working the case and that’s what Dean’s been doing. Why is this so funny to me? This goes back to the thing I wrote about over and over in my pieces about Dean: he does not take pleasure for granted, he revels in it in the little free time he has. Pleasure-hound. This is unexpected. At least how it’s presented (or WAS presented in these earlier more sensitive seasons). In later seasons, they “gestured” at this by having Dean go on a bender and wake up with a bra wrapped around his face. No shade on this behavior but that’s ….. not quite it, sorry.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 7 “The Curious Case of Dean Winchester”
Written by Sera Gamble and Jenny Klein
Directed by Robert Singer
We’re in the world again of deep dark shadows, dimly-lit hospitals, stray shafts of light the only means of illumination (like Bobby’s face in the first scene). Jensen’s skin is freckly and soft-looking in this type of light, with the slight shadows contouring their faces, they look alive, that LOOK which distinguishes the early seasons, where lighting – camera work – framing – all designed to be about the faces and the mood. I am so happy to be back here again. Watching Dean maneuver through the world, the interactions he has, how he operates, is so interesting. It’s always flirtatious, even when he’s being either threatening or very firm. It’s just who he is. Sam just doesn’t operate like that. Dean is in the zone. He peeks for the guy’s birthmark under the covers and clearly checks out the guy’s dick in the process. Doesn’t even hide that that’s what he’s doing. Dean is WILD. Our hustling man-witch is a Dean Surrogate: he operates exactly the same way. So he meets Dean’s wild overtly sexual personality with his own, and so Dean is put off by it – this always happens to him, lol, because he doesn’t quite realize how “out there” he is with this stuff. People are just meeting him where he’s at. Unexpectedly moving denouement between the witch and his girlfriend: good actors, both. I mean, he is clearly not Irish in any way, but I appreciate his performance.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 8 “Changing Channels”
Written by Jeremy Carver
Directed by Charles Beeson
It’s never not funny. The doctor repeatedly slapping Sam across the face, weeping about his bravery. Dean’s crush on Dr. Sexy. “Jackpot!” “I don’t want to get it in the nuts!” And on and on. On a deeper level: the whole trickster-is-Gabriel thing yields the extra-long conversation at the end, when Gabriel lays out for them their “destiny”. This is not your garden-variety monologue, though. It explains the episode, but it has a deeper thematic purpose. He keeps saying it’s their “destiny”. Both Sam and Dean look taken aback by this. How can they be so important, so central? It’s creepy to realize they’ve been watched all this time, that they’ve had no choice in the matter, that their choice has been removed. Sam already got a taste of this during his psychic-children-demon-blood era. The whole Free Will discussion basically became a meme in the fandom, and an annoying one, but it was super important in seasons 4 and 5.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 9 “The Real Ghostbusters”
Teleplay by Eric Kripke
Story by Nancy Weiner
Directed by James L. Conway
I can only enjoy this extremely enjoyable episode if I ignore that Chuck is supposed to be God. If you have a ‘reveal’ like this, shouldn’t it make you go, “Ohhhh God that makes so much sense, how could I not have seen it?” We just saw that with Gabriel-Trickster in the previous episode. You look backwards and it makes sense. But Chuck as God was an add-on, CLEARLY, and it shows. It’s just annoying. Getting the Croatoan virus “down there” … creepy Becky … the little flash-spark of chemistry at the bar (“You aren’t afraid of women”) and the wonderful cosplaying “Sam” and “Dean” (I get so excited when I see those actors show up in other things) … The meta episodes have always created fan-divisions but I enjoy them (when they’re good, that is, lol).

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 10 “Abandon All Hope”
Written by Jeremy Carver
Directed by Phil Sgriccia
Enter Crowley! In our first glimpse of him he is tonguing a disgraced CEO. Wild to imagine a pre-Crowley time and I’m just sorry it all ended the way it did. Love all the silent reapers standing everywhere. You don’t need purple Rowena lightning bolts. Just place a bunch of people on a street, and it gives you the chills. This episode hurts my heart. Now HERE is a character exit worthy of the characters. As awful and tragic as it is, they go out heroes, they go out with courage. Dean randomly hitting on Jo and Jo laughing in his face … see this is what I mean about Dean’s pleasurehound-ness. I think the thing I’m trying to get at is there’s an innocence in it. Dean was definitely known to leer, and sometimes give fake name and/or jobs (“investment banker”), but he didn’t feel it was owed him, it’s just that the possibility might be there so he might as well take a crack at it. I’ll tell you one thing: the show really MISSED Ellen and Jo. The replacements we got paled in comparison.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 11 “Sam, Interrupted”
Written by Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin
Directed by James L. Conway
Member when Babar was thrown around as a reference from time to time? I miss those days. They look so vulnerable in their short-sleeved T-shirts. I also love Jensen’s approach: he’s already affected before we know he’s affected. He’s affected from the second he’s admitted and gets … probed by the wraith, lol. His body language, his face, just the way he moves … it’s not different so much as he is even MORE himself, he’s himself without the protective coloring. He’s impulsive and tough, he’s vulnerable and sex-adjacent, that poor girl attacks him and he just starts making out with her, no questions asked. He is in the Id Zone. But it’s not obvious, it COULD be regular un-affected Dean. It’s hard to tell. Such good acting. Rewards a second watch. It’s so interesting, too, the shrink he makes up (without knowing he’s making her up). The way she talks to him, the way she supports him, but also asks him questions about the burden he places on himself. These things all work with the plot but they serve a deeper character-based purpose.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 12 “Swap Meat”
Teleplay by Julie Siege
Story by Julie Siege, Rebecca Dessertine and Harvey Fedor
Directed by Robert Singer
Out of the mental hospital and into a horndog 15-year-old boy. Is it possible that a man with Jared Padalecki’s physique gets by on salads? Come on now. The contempt Jared puts into the word “virgin” makes me laugh out loud. It’s fun watching Dean deal with the weirdness of this new Sam. Interesting short conversation early on where Sam says he doesn’t think he wants a wife and kids. “It’s not my thing anymore.” But it seems like maybe … it is for Dean? He poses it as a question to Sam but his attitude is one of … “Damn, that couple and kid thing back there looked pretty good to me.” This loops in to where Dean will end up in this season and spend half of next season trying to manage.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 13 “The Song Remains the Same”
Written by Sera Gamble and Nancy Weiner
Directed by Steve Boyum
Mary rant: Samantha Smith is not a good actress and it’s a shame on multiple levels. She was a “shoo in” for the larger role in the later seasons because, duh, she was Mom! But nobody seemed to ask the question: “Can she act though?” She didn’t have to audition. They just plugged her into it assuming she could act. She’s just a VOID onscreen. Cooler heads should have prevailed, realized their mistake, killed her off again, and moved on. I am only mentioning this because young Mary is so open and sensitive, so smart and funny, with her heart on her face. She makes me cry. I love this Mary. I feel like the later seasons – coming into the #MeToo era – even though this has nothing to do with #MeToo – it was just the zeitgeist, one we are still living in – wanted to show Mary was a “strong” woman, and in today’s world “strong’ means “badass” and I am so freakin’ bored of badass women. How about you create a three-dimensional character? It’s almost like the later-season Mary and the writers responsible for her wouldn’t know how to incorporate THIS Mary if they tried. They were too wildly in love with the swashbuckling “fifth of whiskey” so-called “broad” to actually try to connect the dots. Meanwhile, though, as I said before, Samantha Smith does not at all suggest “whiskey drinkin’ broad”. That would be ELLEN. Samantha Smith suggests nothing. This was a HUGE problem and instead of addressing it, they acted like they had no choice but just to keep using her and giving her huge plots and massively difficult scenes/emotions to play – none of which she was able to do even halfway convincingly. I’m sorry. I watch this, and how beautiful Mary is, how OPEN, and I wonder … dammit, what the hell happened.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 14 “My Bloody Valentine”
Written by Ben Edlund
Directed by Mike Rohl
“What are you, the Hamburgler?” My favorite part about that line is that it’s offscreen. This makes it so much funnier. This is one of my favorite episodes. I am trying to picture what shooting this must have been like for the two young actors in the opener. They probably met a couple hours before. And then they had to do … THAT. Brave! Now. The IDEA behind this episode – that Famine creates insatiable hunger, for all kinds of things, not just food – is SO well done, and so not literal. You know what you’d expect. Famine comes to town and suddenly everyone’s dying of malnutrition. Instead we have couples killing each other and a naked Cupid running around. And, by contrast, Dean being totally unaffected by Hunger. This is another one of those Dean revelations – like his domestic side as revealed by the bunker – that I went back to again and again in my writing about him. The confrontation with Famine is legitimately upsetting because there HAS been “something up” with Dean this whole season; it’s been a confusing one so far, in terms of the brother’s relationship. Not un-clear or un-motivated, just confusing: the two of them have moved into another space, and it’s awkward, and they don’t quite know how to relate to each other. Dean is willing to gamble his life away, he finds no worth in it, and so Hunger – for whatever, food, sex, love – doesn’t exist for him. The way he explains it is very healthy. I’m hungry I eat, I want sex I have sex. He gets his needs met. But the magic trick of this episode is that they go deeper with the examination of what Hunger means, and not experiencing hunger means you’re cut off from that which makes you human. I also like the implication that Dean tomcatting around with waitresses is a sign of health. It’s refreshing. I keep saying stuff like this and feel like I’m not saying exactly what I want to say. I’ll just come out and say I think this comes from my own years of tomcatting around and not feeling shame about it. I was bullet-proof somehow. My life was pretty difficult for various reasons and fucking around was an oasis and I have no regrets. I don’t know how I managed to avoid the usual nightmare-stories but I think my approach – “hey this is fun let’s just have fun” – had a lot to do with it.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 15 “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”
Written by Jeremy Carver
Directed by John F. Showalter
Please pay attention to Jim Beaver’s line reading of “She hums when she cooks. She always …. used to hum when she cooked.” The pause. Beaver is a real actor, man.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 16 “Dark Side of the Moon”
Written by Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin
Directed by Jeff Woolnough
Yet another way later seasons betrayed what happened in earlier seasons: Roy and Walt return? And Dean doesn’t kill them? Like, we don’t yearn to see Roy and Walt again, there’s no unfinished business there, except for the fact that Dean’s rage – “when I come back, I’m gonna be pissed” – is filled with so much conviction it’s actually scary. He’s not gonna bury the hatchet with those two clowns. Sam and Dean’s conversation in the road is so well-written and it really shows how far they came in their relationship to one another. Dean is so enmeshed with Sam, still upset about Sam running away, going to college. You really see the damage done to Dean. Even in the way he takes care of Mary by going to her and comforting her. Sam’s line “I didn’t get the crusts cut off” tells us so much about his character. Amulet. Yet again: when they brought it back a decade later, the effect was “…. Meh. That’s not quite what I wanted” which hurt because the “Samulet” alREADY had such great meaning, and Dean throwing it away was heartbreaking.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 17 “99 Problems”
Written by Julie Siege
Directed by Charles Beeson
I like this one because even though the situation is dystopian-fantastical, the approach is gritty realistic with a lot of details. The church, the parishioners, the barbed wire, the light fog … you feel like it’s a real place. Also I like this one because this is how it would go. If the apocalypse were to come – and maybe it has come, tbh – there would be groups like this, and false prophets, and communities holing up, and bristling with barbed wire barriers. One of the interesting emotional through-lines is Dean being over it, tired, and having a very un-Dean-like “there’s nothing we can do” attitude. He’s exhausted. There have been a couple of episodes where he has exchanges about love and relationships (“Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid” “Sam Interrupted”. “Swap Meat”. Considering what happens at the end of this season (at the end of this episode), you can see this has been put in place from the start, but it’s more like an underlying buzz than a persistent melody. It also helps support the growing feeling – and Sam’s growing suspicion – that Dean is going to “say yes”. Something is happening to Dean. He’s trying to make the inevitable a choice. And he’s tired. Really tired. The episode rewards multiple watches because once you click into it the subtextual background-buzz is all you can hear.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 18 “Point of No Return”
Written by Jeremy Carver
Directed by Phil Sgriccia
The shots of Dean in the opener, with the green walls, and the drink, and the reflection … are some of my favorite shots of Dean. I love Zachariah, and watching him makes me realize that the corporatization of Heaven in later seasons, the gleaming boardroom aspect of it, didn’t necessarily have to be boring. Zachariah is obviously written as a businessman, a kind of Willy-Loman angel, a middle-manager, harassed and overworked and then blamed for the unreasonable demands put on him. It’s all very relatable. I think maybe because we didn’t SEE Heaven – at least not the way we did later on – some mystery was maintained. But Zachariah having a depressed mid-day drink about his failure to close the deal is still, at this point, effective. Onto the episode: Jeremy Carver’s script is masterful. Think about how much ground he covers here: all those angels, all the Heaven stuff … in later seasons the very same episode would be mind-numbingly boring. And Rowena would just do some spell to get Adam out of the golden-gilt room. But here? It’s apocalyptic AND it all comes down to the “disagreement” between Sam and Dean, the hangover of Season 4, Dean being unable to get over Sam betraying him, Dean being suicidal, frankly, because he’s so tired and over-it, and maybe too because he feels like Sam abandoned him. Etc. etc. There are so many well-written scenes, with real conflicts. Adam, Bobby, Sam and Dean. Castiel beating the shit out of Dean. Zachariah and Adam (two great scenes). A couple great scenes between Sam and Dean. Each one has its own resonance, and each serves a purpose. These conflicts are real: the situation may be supernatural but the conflicts are human-sized.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 19 “Hammer of the Gods”
Written by Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin
Story by David Reed
Directed by Rick Bota
“An elephant?” “Like full-on Babar.” It appears Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin are responsible for Dean’s multiple references to Babar. Moving backwards you really see the progression of Sam and Dean in new and fresh ways. It’s season 5 here, but they’re still adjusting to being on their own without the controlling presence of Dad. Dean is compulsively Big Brother and Sam is rebelling. But when Sam rebelled, he ends up a demon-blood-addict with a demon booty call. Dean still can’t trust Sam. He takes on the whole apocalypse because he feels like Sam could still go dark side. This breaks Dean’s heart but it’s also a very lonely place to be. Anyway, you know all this. It’s just so tense and jagged between them. By the time we get to Season 7, all of that has really been worked out. Dean still sometimes pulls rank, but not in quite the same John-Winchester-y way that he is doing in this season. In fact, it goes in the other direction, so much so that Sam has to break up with him. Twice. Just to set healthy boundaries. Screw the monsters. Screw the angels. This show is about THEM.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 20 “The Devil You Know”
Written by Ben Edlund
Directed by Robert Singer
This pandemic-heavy season is giving me flashbacks. To right now. The disagreements and tension between Sam and Dean here are fascinating, particularly when seen in the light of future developments and the moral compromises to come. There’s a lot of residual STUFF. They were still getting mileage on residual stuff – technical term – in season 9, 10, 11. But it’s different here. There are all these unexpected layers. Dean watching over Sam, worried, on the lookout – hypervigilant. Sam outraged at Dean even considering working with Crowley. And Dean doing what he feels he has to AND reminding Sam, in tense moments, that Sam was the one who drank demon blood and etc. So it’s all very twisted and interesting.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 21 “Two Minutes to Midnight”
Written by Sera Gamble
Directed by Phil Sgriccia
Bobby seems totally unaffected by not having a soul. Why does Sam become JumboTron-Dead-Eyes and Bobby is his same old self? But the really important thing is the entire Death sequence – from his entrance – my favorite character entrance in the entire series, with Benny a close second – to the scraps of paper flying in the air, the way they suggest impending doom with, literally, a windy day – that’s IT – to the conversation Dean and Death have at the table – Death himself – seriously, start to finish that Chicago sequence is perfection. As perfect as this show – or any other show – has gotten.

Supernatural, Season 5, episode 22 “Swan Song”
Teleplay by Erik Kripke
Story by Eric Gewirtz
Directed by Steve Boyum
My feelings about Chuck are so colored by what was done later, AND the attitude Chuck-God had towards Sam and Dean later. Here it’s absolutely epic and also filled with emotion. Fondness. The fondness of an author for characters he’s created and lived with for years. So much is lost when Chuck is God. It doesn’t track, the dots don’t connect – or, if they do, you lose a LOT in the transfer. Jared’s Lucifer – from “The End” to here – is so chilling. He’s so calm, almost kind. It’s really good work from him. It would be easy to go all Clockwork Orange with it (I’m looking at you, Misha Collins), but he dials it back, and plays Lucifer as eminently reasonable, and not at all threatening. And it’s been wild watching this season where Sam “going dark” looms over the WHOLE thing, everyone sees “it” in him. Bobby, Castiel, Dean … it’s like this THING with Sam. From the moment John whispered in Dean’s ear in the hospital in Season 2, episode 1 … Sam’s potential to go dark has been a major plot point. This is stating the obvious, I’m just saying later seasons just REALLY abandoned this. Perhaps that was a good choice, it played itself out as a potential – but to then turn Sam into this perpetually mild-mannered guy who was always reasonable – i.e. Season 11-15 when everyone over there just FORGOT how to write Sam … watching this is so fascinating and rich.

Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Television | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Happy birthday, Big Joe Turner, “Boss of the Blues”

Posted on May 18, 2025 by sheila

Before the advent of microphones, if you were a singer, you needed to be heard. “Blues shouters” were powerful figures known for shouting above the music. Big Joe Turner was a blues shouter from Kansas City, and also one of the many – many – building blocks in what eventually would be called “rock ‘n roll”. His career spanned from jazz clubs in the 1920s to touring the world up until his death in 1985. He stood on stages with and collaborated with them all: Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, boogie-woogie maestro Albert Ammons, pianist Pete Johnson. Turner hailed from Kansas City, and did some early gigs in New York, but came back home, feeling New York wasn’t ready for the rowdiness of his sound yet. Eventually New York came calling in 1938, in the form of a talent scout – John Hammond – putting together the From Spirituals to Swing concerts at Carnegie Hall. (These two concerts are now legendary and did what they set out to do: connected the dots in Black culture, from gospel to jazz to swing.) In 1938, same time, Turner and pianist Pete Johnson went into the studio and recorded “Roll ‘Em Pete”.

For more background on “Roll ‘Em Pete”‘s significance, you really need to listen to Andrew Hickey’s episode on it in his A History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs podcast. To boil it down: In “Rock and Roll Music”, Chuck Berry wrote “It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it” … and “Roll ‘Em Pete” is generally considered to be the first song featuring that back beat. (Hickey goes into all that. And more. Way more. I’ll be listening to that podcast until the day I die, probably, and I still won’t be finished.)

Powerful forces were converging all over the place in the 1930s and 40s, cultural, spiritual, political and technological. These forces somehow coalesced making space – somehow – for what came after, i.e. 1950s rock ‘n roll and rockabilly. Something as world-changing as 1950s rock and roll doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s not a bolt from the blue. Even Elvis deciding to record “That’s All Right” in 1954, an old blues song by Arthur Crudup, has such a long history surrounding it you really need to understand the context to get why Elvis’ version was such a revolution (and seen as so threatening). If you don’t get all that, then you might make the mistake of thinking, “What is the fuss about?” It’s easy enough to get the timeline and know the Renaissance followed the Black Plague – ha – but there are a lot of little things along the way, inroads, developments, explorations, tangents – that help foster the eventual explosion.

“Roll ‘Em Pete” was a wellspring.

Big Joe Turner was a powerful performer, with a massive voice and infectious energy: these were all very important qualities in the “modern” era. If you wanted to get booked into clubs, then you had to make people want to MOVE. Big Joe Turner was a bluesman, but he was also a big band swing-bang master of ceremonies, which then of course morphed into boogie-woogie which was just a tiny skip away from rock ‘n roll.

Turner influenced everybody. Buddy Holly. Fats Domino. Little Richard. And, of course, Elvis. I love this live performance of “Shake, Rattle and Roll” – where even though he’s got that huge microphone, you can feel the shouting in his voice, the power of it.

In doing a little bit of research for this post, I came across this piece about Derek Coller’s Turner bio-discography Feel so Fine. Some really great details but I loved this anecdote: Turner was arriving in England in 1965 for a tour. He didn’t have a work permit and the immigration officer said, “You’ve got a nerve.” Turner replied, “That’s what it takes these days, daddy.”

 
 
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Posted in Music, On This Day | Leave a comment

R.I.P. Paul Durcan

Posted on May 17, 2025 by sheila

I just heard the news that acclaimed poet Paul Durcan has died at the age of 80. The couple of obits I’ve read have been fairly obligatory although I am sure there will be more in-depth pieces as the news spread. In the meantime Colm Tóibín wrote a beautiful piece on him last year when Durcan turned 80. I love this part:

But the poems can also be daring, directly personal as well as directly political. It is hard to think of another poet in these islands who has written such searing poems against violence and cruelty and the politics of hate. It is also difficult to think of another male poet who has written such brave works of self-examination. In his poems about his father, for example, or his marriage, or his solitude, Paul Durcan manages a desolation mixed with a fierce generosity of spirit, a hard-won sense of healing edged and tempered by an equally hard-won sense of loss and despondency.

Paul Durcan’s poems are chatty, lots of voices, often hilarious. The titles are sometimes lengthy: “The Divorce Referendum, Ireland, 1986”, or “Irish Hierarchy Bans Colour Photography”. The humor sharpens the points he was making. Like his poem “Tullynoe: Tete-à-Tete in the Parish Priest’s Parlour” … you yearn to hear him perform it.

Tullynoe: Tete-à-Tete in the Parish Priest’s Parlour
“Ah, he was a grand man.”
“He was: he fell out of the train going to Sligo.”
“He did: he thought he was going to the lavatory.”
“He did: in fact he stepped out of the rear door of the train.”
“He did: God, he must have got an awful fright.”
“He did: he saw that it wasn’t the lavatory at all.”
“He did: he saw that it was the railway tracks going away from him.”
“He did: I wonder if … but he was a grand man.”
“He was: he had the most expensive Toyota you can buy.”
“He had: well, it was only beautiful.”
“It was: he used to have an Audi.”
“He had: as a matter of fact he used to have two Audis.”
“He had: and then he had an Avenger.”
“He had: and then he had a Volvo.”
“He had: in the beginning he had a lot of Volkses.”
“He had: he was a great man for the Volkses.”
“He was: did he once have an Escort?”
“He had not: he had a son a doctor.”
“He had: and he had a Morris Minor too.”
“He had: he had a sister a hairdresser in Kilmallock.”
“He had: he had another sister a hairdresser in Ballybunion.”
“He had: he was put in a coffin which was put in his father’s cart.”
“He was: his lady wife sat on top of the coffin driving the donkey.”
“She did: Ah, but he was a grand man.”
“He was: he was a grand man…”
“Good night, Father.”
“Good night, Mary.”

He had a rather horrifying time of it as a young man. His father was a judge, and their relationship was very challenging. To please this difficult man, Durcan went to UCD to study law, but whatever happened his first year in college was traumatic and his family essentially kidnapped him and put him in an institution where the treatment for mental illness was barbaric. He was drugged up and given electric shock therapy. 45 years later Durcan said:

I ended up in St John of God in a ridiculous way. There was nothing the matter with me. I’m sure you saw the film One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Well, I was one of the luckier ones, one of the ones who flew over the cuckoo’s nest and survived it. I didn’t get a leucotomy, which would have finished me off completely, but I did get massive amounts of barbiturates, the whole Mandrax and every lethal tablet you could ever name. I think I came out of it with a kind of melancholia.”

The “cure” made him sicker. He was very open about his struggle with depression.

His mother was John MacBride’s niece. MacBride, of course, was one of the martyrs of the 1916 Irish revolution, who married Maud Gonne (after he was executed, she, famously, wore widow’s weeds for the rest of her wild life). Durcan was born into this mythical Irish atmosphere.

Once he got out of the mental institution, he was free to go his own way at last. He got married and had a couple of kids (the marriage fell apart in 1984: this “failure” haunted him and he continued to write beautiful love poems for his wife after they split). His wife worked in a prison, and so Durcan was the stay-at-home dad. He wrote poetry as the children played around him – and I think you can tell. (This is a compliment). He held the post of “Professor of Poetry” in Ireland, a national trust.

His live readings were legendary. Imagine hearing him read “Tullynoe: Tete-à-Tete in the Parish Priest’s Parlour”. I am so sorry I didn’t go to one of his readings at the Irish Arts Center, but there are clips of him on YouTube. Caitriona O’Reilly describes the effect Durcan had on an audience in this piece in The Guardian:

Hilarity has always been Paul Durcan’s stock-in-trade. Anyone who has attended one of his electrifying poetry readings and been reduced to hysteria (a common enough occurrence) can testify to the unique flavour of his work, especially when read aloud by the poet himself. That voice, with its peculiar, precise sibilance, its mock-solemnity, its quavering rise and fall, is the voice that remains in your head when reading his poems afterwards. He is one of the few poets honest enough to admit (as did the hieratic TS Eliot) that poetry is a form of entertainment, yet intelligent enough to know that entertainment does not mean “cheap”. His populism, his popularity, as a poet are unusual – comparable only to that favour enjoyed in Ireland by his venerated contemporary Seamus Heaney.

Here’s audio of him reading at the Irish Arts Center, in New York:

I love so many of his poems: There’s the one about the Pieta: how does he make it so funny? It’s about an overbearing mother’s love, where he says to Jesus, essentially: “You have got to get up, friend. Grow up.”

There’s also this one.

Going Home to Mayo, Winter, 1949
Leaving behind us the alien, foreign city of Dublin
My father drove through the night in an old Ford Anglia,
His five-year-old son in the seat beside him,
The rexine seat of red leatherette,
And a yellow moon peered in through the windscreen.
‘Daddy, Daddy,’ I cried, ‘Pass out the moon,’
But no matter how hard he drove he could not pass out the moon.
Each town we passed through was another milestone
And their names were magic passwords into eternity:
Kilcock, Kinnegad, Strokestown, Elphin,
Tarmonbarry, Tulsk, Ballaghaderreen, Ballavarry;
Now we were in Mayo and the next stop was Turlough,
The village of Turlough in the heartland of Mayo,
And my father’s mother’s house, all oil-lamps and women,
And my bedroom over the public bar below,
And in the morning cattle-cries and cock-crows:
Life’s seemingly seamless garment gorgeously rent
By their screeches and bellowings. And in the evenings
I walked with my father in the high grass down by the river
Talking with him – an unheard-of thing in the city.
But home was not home and the moon could be no more outflanked
Than the daylight nightmare of Dublin city:
Back down along the canal we chugged into the city
And each lock-gate tolled our mutual doom;
And railings and palings and asphalt and traffic-lights,
And blocks after blocks of so-called ‘new’ tenements –
Thousands of crosses of loneliness planted
In the narrowing grave of the life of the father;
In the wide, wide cemetery of the boy’s childhood.

Durcan wrote a long tribute poem to Micheál MacLiammóir, a man I have written about before, usually in connection with his lifelong friend Orson Welles. (MacLiammóir was Iago to Welles’ Othello in Welles’ film.) MacLiammóir was a fascinating man: he founded the great Gate Theatre in Dublin, to compete with and rival the revered Abbey. He came from a new generation, with new ideas about theatre. The Gate is still going strong, and is just one of this man’s legacies. I once posted the text of his fantastic essay about film acting. A brilliant actor who basically adopted Ireland as his homeland by force of will and imagination. A fabulist, because he wasn’t Irish.

MacLiammóir died in March 1978, and Paul Durcan wrote this poem immediately as a tribute. It is in MacLiammóir’s voice, and it is glorious.

Micheál MacLiammóir

‘Dear Boy, What a superlative day for a funeral:
It seems St Stephen’s Green put on the appareil
Of early Spring-time especially for me.
That is no vanity: but – dare I say it – humility
In the fell face of those nay-neighers who say we die
At dying-time. Die? Why, I must needs cry
No, no, no, no,
Now I am living whereas before – no –
‘Twas but breathing, choking, croaking, singing,
Superb sometimes but nevertheless but breathing:
You should have seen the scene in University Church:
Packed to the hammer-beams with me left in the lurch
All on my ownio up-front centre-stage;
People of every nationality in Ireland and of every age;
Old age and youth – Oh, everpresent, oldest, wished-for youth;
And old Dublin ladies telling their beads for old me; forsooth.
‘Twould have fired the cockles of John Henry’s heart
And his mussels too: only Sarah Bernhardt
Was missing but I was so glad to see Marie Conmee
Fresh, as always, as the morning sea.
We paid a last farewell to dear Harcourt Terrace,
Dear old, bedgraggled, doomed Harcourt Terrace
Where I enjoyed, amongst the crocuses, a Continual Glimpse of Heaven
By having, for a living partner, Hilton.
Around the corner the canal-waters from Athy gleamed
Engaged in their never-ending courtship of Ringsend.
Then onward to the Gate – and to the rose-cheeked ghost of Edward Longford;
I could not bear to look at Patrick Bedford.
Oh tears there were, there and everywhere,
But especially there; there outside the Gate where
For fifty years we wooed the goddess of our art;
How many, many nights she pierced my heart.
Ach, níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin: 1
The Gate and the Taibhdhearc – each was our name;
I dreamed a dream of Jean Cocteau
Leaning against a wall in Killnamoe;
And so I voyaged through all the nations of Ireland with McMaster
And played in Cinderella an ugly, but oh so ugly, sister.
Ah but we could not tarry for ever outside the Gate;
Life, as always, must go on or we’d be late
For my rendezvous with my brave grave-diggers
Who were as shy but snappy as my best of dressers.
We sped past the vast suburb of Clontarf – all those lives
Full of hard-working Brian Borús with their busy wives.
In St Fintan’s Cemetery there was spray from the sea
As well as from the noonday sun, and clay on me:
And a green carnation on my lonely oaken coffin.
Lonely in heaven? Yes, I must not soften
The deep pain I feel at even a momentary separation
From my dear, sweet friends. A green carnation
For you all, dear boy; If you must weep, ba(w)ll;
Slán agus Beannacht:2 Micheál.’

March 1978

1 But there’s no place like home.
2 Farewell.

And so we say, like the second footnote to that poem, “farewell” to Paul Durcan, whose work encompasses the complicated problems affecting our world and us, but the lightest of touches – hilarity, really, as Caitriona O’Reilly observes – not just wit, or sarcasm. He wasn’t caustic, and still his critiques of what we do to each other in the shadow of the institutions that rule our lives could not have been more clear. How Durcan pulled this off – plus his notoriously riotous live readings – was a gift.

 
 
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 RIP, writers | Tagged | 3 Comments

The DMV of Love

Posted on May 17, 2025 by sheila

In 2008, Keith and Dan had me out to their place in Brooklyn for dinner. They were new people to me, and I was just starting to “circulate” in the New York film critic community, through writing for Matt Seitz’s blog (which Keith edited). When I covered the Tribeca Film Festival for the first time, Keith helped me pick up my press badge, the first time I met him. But the following year, Keith invited me over because he had a screener of The Wrestler and I was busy writing a huge piece about Mickey Rourke (the first piece I wrote that gained any traction). I loved hanging out in Keith and Dan’s two-story apartment, in one of those old Brooklyn townhouses, where they lived for twenty years. We sat in the living room, and talked for hours. This was the meeting where Suzy Gilstrap made her immortal appearance. If you were around in 2008-2009 then you will remember this era. The Skyward era. We were talking about Bette Davis, and Dan said there were only two or three things of hers he hadn’t seen – the unavailable Seed (1931), which we ended up getting to see years later at MoMA, and the TV movie Skyward. I flipped out because I actually had seen Skyward back when it first aired. I then proceeded to act the whole thing out, all the different parts, totally from memory. I hadn’t seen it since I was in middle school. TV movies have a way of vanishing. This one was notable due to the presence of Bette Davis, of course, but also because it was one of the first things Ron Howard directed (maybe the first?). On my drive back to Weehawken, still in a hilarious mood because of the uproarious Skyward laughing fit (Keith to Dan: “What is it with you and Skyward Christmas?”), I remember so clearly thinking at one point: “I am going to know those guys forever.”

You don’t always feel that way after meeting someone new.

Cut to: May 5, 2025. I was the witness at Keith and Dan’s City Hall wedding in New York. When they asked me to be the witness, I was overwhelmed! They got married on their 24th anniversary as a couple. I set out into the windy grey morning to meet up with them, filled with excitement. I love that area. It makes me think of Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, John Jay … all those LAWYERS fighting it out on Manhattan soil, doing their best for us in the future. Okay, maybe not Aaron Burr. But still, they did try. All those crooked intersecting streets, made for horse and carriage and not cars, still holds the memory of what used to be.

I was early enough that I walked around a bit, soaking up the grandeur. It wasn’t raining (yet), and we were all grateful for that. It started raining at around 1 pm and didn’t stop for the rest of the day, but by that time the ceremony was over. I was struck by the engraving on the top of the courthouse.

I couldn’t agree more. Only by knowing and understanding history – in particular our history, and the context of its struggle to be realized – can we recognize what’s at stake, where we go wrong, the course to correct. There’s also something poignant about being a witness to two men being married. Writing this down is the first time I thought about it. Gay weddings are not a novelty in my world. 80% of my friend group is gay and this has been the case since high school. So a wedding is a wedding. But the larger context has a way of making its ugly face known, particularly when there are those who want to take away people’s rights. Never forget where we came from, and don’t hesitate to say “We are not going backwards.” There is a joy in living that refusal and we really felt it that morning! Dan made a joke about how to an outside eye it might look like I was a beard. lol And the first guy at the metal detector assumed I was the bride of one of them, which we found delightful and amusing. The sense of celebration was 1. so pure and 2. so universal. It was all around us!

There’s a little patch of green next to the courthouse called “Wedding Garden”, right across from the City Clerk’s office, where brides and grooms queue up on the daily to get married. I sat on a bench, soaking up the vibes, waiting for the grooms. And there they were coming towards me, looking absolutely smashing in their suits and shiny shoes. I was so happy! I took some pictures of them by the Wedding Garden.

I love them so much! We then headed across the street to join the throngs outside the clerk’s office. It used to be first-come first-serve, but now they give appointments, making it less of a crushing mob scene with less of a bottleneck. But still, there were a ton of people, and one extremely competent security guard checking people’s appointments and letting people through. Some people were in wedding dresses, others were in jeans and flip flops. The age range appeared to be literally from the 70s to late teens and everything in between. Every race, religion, age, was represented in the crowds. Everyone was consumed by their own joyful experience, and yet each individual experience poured into the whole, creating this party-on-the-sidewalk vibe, underlined by all the wedding bouquets placed on the ledge along the sidewalk, clearly a tradition.

There’s Keith, all ready with the paperwork.

There’s a gorgeous art deco interior, with a lot of space in the hallway for everyone waiting. There are shiny red hearts hanging over each clerk’s station, a whimsical touch. The hallway echoed with laughter and excited conversation. I saw a hugely pregnant bride, in a white wedding dress and veil, with silver shoes, going through the metal detector, behind her husband in cargo pants and a T-shirt. I love people. She was talking into her phone, informing her family, “We’re about to do it!” The woman who checked us in heard my name and immediately burst into song: “OH! OH SHEILA!” Then she said, “I bet you have heard that a thousand times.” “But it’s welcome every time. I mean, if someone’s going to sing a song at me –” She, agreeing: “It’s a GREAT song.”

This was the energy of every civil servant government employee working there. They should be protected at all costs. They keep things running. They serve us. The billionaires are parasites on the rest of us.


There’s the “Oh Sheila” clerk!

Dan kept referring to the clerk’s office as the DMV of Love, which is really accurate. You are given a number and you sit and wait. There’s a line of clerk’s desks, and you wait to be called. At the desk, you sign the certificate. Then you are allowed into the inner area, a little circular room, with two “chapels” on either side, each one churning out wedding ceremonies at the speed of light.

One woman was in charge of this. Her name was Wanyi Mai and we were blown away by her. She organized everyone, she told people who were ‘on deck’, and she also performed each ceremony, swapping back and forth between the two rooms. She was masked, she was energetic, and she had exactly the right energy for this kind of thing. If she had been irritated, stressed, or officious, she would have put a damper on the mood. But if she were too lackadaisacal and touchy-feely, the delays would have been extreme. So she was firm and in charge, but she was also friendly and energetic, like “okay, you’re next! Be ready!” Keith and Dan and I soaked up the vibes, taking videos to send to their parents. Again, the architecture was so beautiful, this circular room so graceful. Art deco for the win.

Finally it was their turn! Wanyi Mai led us into this inner room. There was a podium with a plastic barrier. There was a glass case with a massive old book on display, presumably a county clerk’s ledger in the past, showing all the married couples who came through here. The room was bare, no nonsense, no fluff. Wanyi Mai stood at the podium, told them to move closer together. I was in charge of filming the whole thing, a weighty responsibility. I checked 5 times that I had chosen “video” and not “photo”. The video came out perfectly.

The ceremony took a minute. The vows were so simple, and yet the feeling was overwhelming. I was in tears as I filmed, trying not to sniff, and thereby drown out their voices. It was tender and quiet, and their lengthy shared history was between them. It was very moving. I loved how she said, “By the power vested in me by the state of New York, I pronounce you married! You can kiss and hug!” It was probably her 40th ceremony of the day. (We looked her up afterwards, and many people – with wedding notices in the New York Times – call her out by name. We could see why!)

They don’t have you go out the same door you came in. You walk in on one side of the building as a single person, you walk out the other side of the building married. You join the celebration on the sidewalk. Everyone is saying “congratulations” to total strangers. You can’t walk two feet without being blocked by a happy family gathered for a photo. Photo shoots were going on in every available nook and cranny. Children ran around. The bouquets piled up on the ledge.

We were going to go have lunch at Cafe Reggio, my old grad school haunt. I loved it best on snowy winter days. I’d go and sit there by myself and read, or write, as the snow came down outside. We all have fond memories of the place. We walked there, and we felt the first raindrops as we hit Bleecker. Perfect timing. We got the best seat in the house, a little corner table by the window. We had cappucinos, lunch, I had a lemonade, they had tiramisu. We looked through our photos. I sent them the wedding video. They sent everything on to their parents. It’s not about me but it felt so special to be a part of their day, to be “standing in” for their family, the witness symbolic of their larger world. It was a big responsibility!

We took the train back up to their place. Rain was now pouring down. We were going out to dinner but that was hours later, so in the interim, we just just hung out, talking, enjoying the flowers that were delivered, looking at the certificate, and reminiscing about what happened that morning. “Member this part?” “I loved this part.”

We also watched a silent Greta Garbo film (The Temptress).

Rain really coming down in torrents now, we set out to have dinner at this cozy Italian place near them. We had wine. I told the waitress it was their wedding day and she was adorable and sweet. They comped them the desserts, and she wrote on the check, “Congratulations on your wedding day.” It’s important to take in the goodness of other people. We must insist upon it, in the face of gleeful cruelty gone mainstream. The food was delicious, the ambience perfect. The streets are so steep up there and, like the court square all the way downtown, you can feel the history, it’s totally undertandable why George Washington would camp up there, you can see why it’s called Washington Heights. If you’re at war, you want to be on the high ground. Which is awesome, but climbing up and down those steep sidewalks – in the rain – in my nice shoes – was an ordeal. Sorry, George. I welcomed it, though!

It was dark by the time we left the restaurant. They walked me to my subway. I traveled back to my hotel on 45th, my heart singing. The rain poured against my window. I didn’t want the day to end. It had been so perfect.

24 years together. They were the first friends I made in this new world of mine, a world I hadn’t anticipated, a world (and/or new career) I hadn’t planned for. (And look at me now, with my first book coming out this fall. Notice I said my first book.) Who could have imagined this? Keith and Dan have been guides and support, endlessly entertaining, and their apartment has been a home away from home, where the whole point is to sit in a room and talk, and watch things, and discuss, and have Keith bring out some souffle he’s made or some gorgeous delicious dinner he’s cooked up. It – and they – are a hub of sanity in an insane world. The DMV of Love is a hub of sanity too. Joy and community is sanity. If you’re ever feeling depressed, go to City Hall and hang out in the area where everyone is lined up to get married. Say “congratulations” to people you’ve never met. Offer to take people’s pictures for them. Smile in support of other people. It’s infectious. My congratulations not just to Keith and Dan but to all the couples I saw that day.

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat.
Go raibh cóir na gaoithe i gcónaí leat.
Go dtaitní an ghrian go bog bláth ar do chlár éadain,
go dtite an bháisteach go bog mín ar do ghoirt.
Agus go gcasfar le chéile sinn arís,
go gcoinní Dia i mbois a láimhe thú.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 6 Comments

“It’s an absolute miracle that I’m still around.” — Dennis Hopper

Posted on May 17, 2025 by sheila

It’s his birthday today.

I’m so glad I used one of my columns at Film Comment -now on hiatus – to sing the praises of Dennis Hopper’s wild and nihilistic Out of the Blue, starring Linda Manz and Hopper.

Of all the essential and now-iconic roles Hopper played in his ravaged and ravaging up-down-up-again legendary-as-it-unfolded career, this is one of the best things he ever did, reciting Rudyard Kipling’s “If” – by heart – on the Johnny Cash Show.

What a riveting moment. This is what it means to be present in the moment. So few people can do it, actors or otherwise. It comes to mind that this is a slightly more formal version of Lee Strasberg’s famous (to actors anyway) “song and dance exercise”, a terrifying confrontation with the void out there in the dark, and being present – intimately present – to those watching you and listening to you. (I wrote about this a little bit in the Film Comment column. I took a Master Class with Hopper, and he talked extensively about “song and dance” and how much he loved it, and then – standing up there – totally unafraid – he demonstrated it. Actors are scared of that exercise (at least that was my experience. It’s raw and naked and you can’t hide – which is the point). But Hopper wasn’t scared of it at all. He was an intellectual, in many ways, an actor trained in the classics. Song and dance was one of the things that released him, exploded him into the actor he eventually became.

He was also a brilliant photographer. Here’s his most famous:

“Double Standard” 1961

And finally: Shortly before Hopper passed, Matt Zoller Seitz wrote a gorgeous piece called “The Middle Word in Life”, accompanied by a gorgeous video compilation of moments through Hopper’s life and his career. The essay ends with the heartfelt (and prophetic words, as it turns out) words: “Contrary to what we’d all come to believe, Dennis Hopper is not immortal. Let’s appreciate him now.”

Yes. Let’s.

A story about Easy Rider:

I asked Ante, our guide in Croatia, what he would do if he came to America. He said, “I would drive route 66 end to end.”

“I’ve done that!”

“You know. Like Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. I want to do something like that that.” It was the 2nd time he referenced Easy Rider.

I said, “You love Easy Rider.”

He said, “It was banned here for years.”

“Wow, I had no idea. I can guess why though.”

“FREEDOM!!” he said, with a huge gesture as he careened our car along a mountain cliff road.

(I thought, Both hands on the wheel, Ante, I beg you.)

He said, looking at me thru the rear view, “The first time Easy Rider played in Croatia was in 1982. It was big BIG deal. And my father went and saw it and it changed his life. He understood freedom then and what it really was.” (His father was a wine-grower outside of Split.) “And my father told me all about the movie when I was a child and how it was what freedom meant. He told me there were lines down the block outside of theatre in 1982 to see the movie. Everyone wanted to see it. It was a very dangerous movie.”

Easy Rider came up yet again. On our boat ride to Hvar Island, and then again on our ferry ride to Split, we were surrounded by motorcycle gangs from Croatia/Bosnia (it was literally me, Ante, Rachel, and 80 Hell’s-Angels-the-Balkan-chapter on those ferries).

I glanced at Ante and said, “Dennis Hopper?”

He made a dismissive gesture at the bikers and said, “They’re fake. They’re not Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.”

“So what about these guys over here, Ante?”

“Pfff. Fake.”

“I don’t know. They look pretty fucking tough to me.”

“No. Fake.”

“And these dudes, Ante? I find them all deeply attractive. And yet also scary.”

Ante: “They’re just pretending they’re Easy Rider.” Ante was having NONE of it. I, however, was having ALL of it.

“So Easy Rider …” I said, wanting him to finish the sentence, even though I had no idea what he would say. I just wanted to hear whatever it was.

Ante said, “Easy Rider is freedom and everyone wants that.”

The power of movies, people. You never know where they will go or who they will reach.

 
 
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