Happy birthday, Polly Platt

Posted on January 29, 2025 by sheila

“As a child, I wanted everything I saw in movies. I always wanted to strain spaghetti with tennis rackets.” — Polly Platt

She is, of course, referring to Jack Lemmon in The Apartment:

Polly Platt was a mostly unsung jack-of-all trades, married to Peter Bogdanovich at one point, a crucial collaborator on his extraordinary run of early films, and one of those people behind the scenes without whom great movies can’t happen. And someone like Platt won’t get the credit for her contributions – it’s just the nature of the game – but that doesn’t make what she did any less of an accomplishment.

An admirer of Platt, as I am, I could not have been more thrilled that Karina Longworth, creator of the massively successful podcast You Must Remember This devoted an entire season to the career of Polly Platt. It’s a hell of a listen, it’s a far deeper dive into her work than has ever existed before. Even when she died in 2011, and all the amazing tributes started coming in – it’s entirely different than having a multi-part series on her entire career.

She worked on some of my favorite movies of all time, although “worked on” is an understatement and her smarts and drive and creativity (not to mention her work as a producer) helped to actually create movies like The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, Paper Moon and my God Bad News Bears. She was the production designer for Barbra Streisand’s A Star is Born, she wrote the screenplay for the very controversial film Pretty Baby (and also produced), she was executive vice president of James Brooks’ production company. She was the first woman in the Art Directors’ Guild. (This is nothing to cheer about though. It was the 1970s. You all should be ASHAMED of yourselves.) She was art director on Terms of Endearment (nominated for an Oscar), and co-produced a bunch of classics, indie and non-indie, films like War of the Roses, Broadcast News, Say Anything, Dogtown, Bottle Rocket, production designed The Witches of Eastwick … the list goes on and on (and you’ll notice she worked in so many different fields: art direction, writing, producing, production design. She was often the only woman in any given room.

As a collaborator, she was innovative, smart, and made things happen. She always had her eye on the whole of every project. She did not toil away in a corner on her own little piece of it. Every choice she made dovetailed into the larger concern. This is what is meant by collaboration and Polly Platt was one of the greatest of collaborators.

In the midst of sometimes chaotic movie shoots when people start to lose track of their own names, not to mention their moral compasses, let alone remember what the hell it is they are trying to make, Polly Platt ALWAYS remembered what they were “trying to make”.

Polly Platt described, in her own words, how she solved a problem during the shoot of Paper Moon. I love the story. Pay attention to how she thinks about said problem, and solves the problem, but also look at how she weaves the solution into the WHOLE. She justifies her choice in terms of character (“this hat belonged to her mother”), and the hat itself becomes a potent symbol and character-detail that is one of the unforgettable parts of the movie.

This is how you create art. You solve problems, but you don’t just solve them to solve them. You justify your choices. This is true for actors (justify, justify, justify) and it is true for everyone working on a movie.

Working under the gun to solve an urgent problem, Platt came up with a solution that not only solved said problem, but expands out the character for us, letting us know more about her.

If you think this is easy to do, then you know nothing about making movies.

Polly Platt:

One day Alvin Sargent and Peter Bogdanovich came to me and they said, “There’s a scene in the movie where the sheriff is looking for the money and it’s hiding in plain sight: How can we have the money hiding in plain sight where the sheriff can’t see it? What do we do?” They came to me with the problem. And Paramount had the most beautiful old laces and velvets and silks and buttons and I remembered this extraordinary brown lace and the lace was quite intricate and I realized that if I designed a hat for Tatum which, in my mind, was the hat of her mother, I thought, we could have the lace go around the hat and then we could tuck the money right into the lace. Unless you were really looking for it, nobody would really know it was there. So the hat itself was designed as they were doing improvements on the script. That’s how that came to be, and they were very happy with my solution.

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Happy Birthday, Dorothy Malone

Posted on January 29, 2025 by sheila

I was so happy to pay tribute to Dorothy Malone for Film Comment.

The actress – whose career spanned over 50 years – died in 2018 at the age of 93. She was an Oscar-winning actress who ended up on television in Peyton Place, a choice many at the time thought was a shameful “step down”. Television wasn’t seen as legitimate like film or theatre. But Malone’s instincts were correct. Peyton Place was a smash hit and a cultural flash-point. Peyton Place was an early example of “appointment television.”


Dorothy Malone, and fellow “Peyton Place” cast member, Gena Rowlands

My first exposure to Malone – as is probably true of most people – was in Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, where she is unforgettable in her one scene in the bookshop with Humphrey Bogart. Malone’s nameless bookstore clerk is one of the few truly liberated women in cinema. I don’t know anyone who isn’t affected by this scene in a primal way. Men never forget her. Women find her aspirational. A lesbian friend of mine – normally very articulate – can’t even discuss the scene. “Forget it. I’m hers forever.”

Liberation isn’t just about being able to say “no.” Saying “no” is important. But true liberation comes when you are able to say “yes” – to feel the “yes” within you before he even says anything and then moving forward to get what you want. It’s such a great scene showing what this “saying ‘yes'” can look like, starting with his questioning of her and then ending with what is obviously going to be afternoon delight … among the stacks … among the stacks! Malone makes such an impression you keep hoping she’ll return. (It’s a bold move to put such a strong female character in the film, since it’s mainly a vehicle for Bacall and Bogart. But Bogart, in the film, is surrounded by viable alternatives, including the sassy cab driver who gives him her card – yet another liberated woman.) Most men would overlook Malone’s character at first glance, or at least not perceive the sexual potential. She’s not a bombshell. She’s not a vamp. She looks prim and proper. But she’s a smart cookie, and – importantly – smart about what she’s feeling in the moment (not too many people are). She feels the heat with this stranger – feels how hot she is for him – and decides to act upon it. Without shame, without coyness, without anything other than a frank admission of her own desire.

She takes off her glasses.

And, to quote my friend: “Forget it.”

In 1956, of course, Dorothy Malone won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as quintessential “bad girl” in Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind. David Lynch is on record with his love for Written on the Wind. I always thought he was referencing Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind with this shot in Lost Highway.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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“I think I’m invisible sometimes.” — Ingrid Thulin

Posted on January 27, 2025 by sheila

It’s her birthday today.

I’m really proud of the video-essay I wrote on her for Criterion: The Eerie Intensity of Ingrid Thulin

One of Ingmar Bergman’s repertory company of actors. As heavy-hitting as Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson. She wasn’t fully fluent in English and therefore she didn’t move into international stardom the way Liv Ullmann was able to do. But let’s not get it twisted. She worked with the great European directors: Bergman, Luchino Visconti, Alain Resnais … Of course her legacy is her work with Bergman. Her work in Bergman’s films is as good as it gets. She trained as a ballerina before switching to acting. She appeared in a number of films and television series in the 1950s, before catching Bergman’s eye. He cast her as the daughter-in-law in Wild Strawberries, where she makes an enormous impression, her chilly blonde beauty hiding a dark ambiguous soul.

After Wild Strawberries, she appeared in two more Bergman films, Brink of Life and The Magician, in two wildly different roles, giving just a glimpse of her dazzling diversity. Unlike other movie stars, she did not have a personality like a “fingerprint” of personality. Whatever Thulin’s personality, it was completely irrelevant to her in her work. She was truly uncanny. Like, who WAS she? It’s literally impossible to know.

In the early 60s, she appeared in Ingmar Bergman films, back to back, Winter Light and The Silence. They are two of his most ruthlessly uningratiating films. In Winter Light, Thuline play a mousy tormented woman, in love with a pastor. In The Silence, she plays an alcoholic dying woman holed up in a hotel room in an unnamed city. These two roles, played so close together, have to be one of the most astonishing displays of acting virtuosity in any career. The films are so difficult to take, they are so unremittingly bleak, their reach will always be smaller than something more accessible, like Wild Strawberries, or even Persona. Thulin is a Priestess of Bleak. Her anguish is so total in Winter Light she’s difficult to look at at times. In The Silence, she drinks, smokes, masturbates, gasps for oxygen to come into her diseased lungs, goes raging against the dying of the light, fears death, courts death … it’s a mind-blowing performance.

She went to places in her work other actors don’t go. Not because they are afraid (although this may be true), but because they literally can’t conceive the depths it is even possible to go. Thulin is frightening that way. She saw farther and traveled farther.

Her hands are maybe the most expressive hands of any actor. They’re agonized, restless. Claw-like, desperate. They look like they’d keep clutching and wringing and twisting themselves up, even after death. She was an actress of supreme control/intelligence – and yet her work does not feel studied, or pre-planned. Her hands have a life/mind of their own.

She appeared in more films directed by Bergman: The Hour of the Wolf, the television movie The Rite, and the great Cries and Whispers, where she is truly terrifying. There’s one damn near unwatchable scene. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know the scene I mean. Instantly. It’s hard to picture another actress who would even consent to play such a scene, and/or do it the way she did it.

It’s hard to find interviews with her. You have to dig deep. I came across this clip of an interview she gave in 1969, where she spoke about working with Vischonti, Bergman, Alain Resnais – their different styles and approaches. She’s riveting. If you don’t speak French, just turn on closed captioning.

Again, here’s my video-essay on Ingrid Thulin.

 
 
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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“Acting is like letting your pants down; you’re exposed.” — Paul Newman

Posted on January 26, 2025 by sheila

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It’s his birthday today.

I am so glad I grew up in a time when Paul Newman was still a leading man (and he was a leading man up until the end). So I got to experience the pleasure of going to see Paul Newman on the big screen. As an Actors Studio fan-girl from when I was around 12, I was well aware of Paul Newman and his work. (That I would go on to be involved in the Actors Studio 15 years later, attending sessions, taking workshops, involved in the Masters Program that Paul Newman himself set up … not a coincidence. I met Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward on the same night I met Elia Kazan. I held it together … barely.) I revere his acting. To look the way he looked is no small thing. But to look the way he looked and then to decide to work your ass off – and he WORKED, boy – in order to have a meaningful career – THAT is what sets him apart.

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Here’s my favorite example of his work ethic. For an actor who cares about acting, there is no resting on laurels. You’re never set. The gig requires you to “show up” each time, no matter how big a star you are. There are problems to be solved. Always. There are pockets of resistance within everyone that need to be addressed. Always. Whether you’re just starting out or whether you’re Paul Newman.

Sidney Lumet tells this story in his book Making Movies, about directing Paul Newman in The Verdict:

He is an honorable man. He is also a very private man. We had worked together in television in the early fifties and done a brief scene together in a Martin Luther King documentary, so when we got together on The Verdict, we were immediately comfortable with each other. At the end of two weeks of rehearsal, I had a run-through of the script … There were no major problems. In fact, it seemed quite good. But somehow it seemed rather flat. When we broke for the day I asked Paul to stay a moment. I told him that while things looked promising, we really hadn’t hit the emotional level we both knew was there in David Mamet’s screenplay. I said that his characterization was fine but hadn’t yet evolved into a living, breathing person. Was there a problem? Paul said that he didn’t have the lines memorized yet and that when he did, it would all flow better. I told him I didn’t think it was the lines. I said that there was a certain aspect of Frank Galvin’s character that was missing so far. I told him that I wouldn’t invade his privacy, but only he could choose whether or not to reveal that part of the character and therefore that aspect of himself. I couldn’t help him with the decision. We lived near each other and rode home together. The ride that evening was silent. Paul was thinking. On Monday, Paul came in to rehearsal and sparks flew. He was superb. His character and the picture took on life.

I know that decision to reveal the part of himself that the character required was painful for him. But he’s a dedicated actor as well as a dedicated man. And … yes, Paul is a shy man. And a wonderful actor. And race car driver. And gorgeous.

I find that story so moving.

When he died, I wrote a piece about Paul Newman for House Next Door, where I picked out three roles/specific acting moments to examine how good a technician he was, how gifted he was with craft. Paul Newman always knew he had to work hard. Marlon Brando and James Dean were his contemporaries.

Imagine the head trip that must have been for young actors at the time. How do you even COMPETE? It must have been like Irish novelists working on their masterpiece in 1921, and then Ulysses came out the following year, scorching the earth with its impact. Or like young hopeful male singers in 1953, who were listening to new kinds of music, wondering if there might be a spot for them there in whatever it was that was happening, and then along comes Elvis the next year, and Boom, not only did he steal everyone’s thunder, he took over the world in 8 months time. And for three, four years after, the influence was so enormous that everyone just tried to sound like Elvis. Elvis created his own gravitational pull. Or like Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album was so influential you can hear it in EVERYTHING, in practically every other album released by other bands in the year or so that followed.

That was what it was like for young actors in the early to mid 1950s. Brando to Dean. You could not escape either of them. And that was what it was like for Paul Newman.

What do you do? How do you make your own way? Without imitating them? Without trying to be someone else?

Newman always said there was only one natural genius in his marriage. And it wasn’t him.

He had to WORK to get as good as he was. This makes his lengthy career even more extraordinary.

Here’s the piece I wrote for House Next Door about Paul Newman:

Indelible Ink: Paul Newman.

 
 
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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“You can’t fake this music.” — Etta James

Posted on January 25, 2025 by sheila

Etta James was born on this day.

She grew up rough. Real rough. It’s a terrible story of near-constant abuse and neglect. She was in the foster care system, she never knew her dad. She had an early gift for singing, which she trained and cultivated. She was a very small woman with a GIGANTIC voice. One of the great voices of rock ‘n roll. You get glimpses of her in other people’s biographies and memoirs and you always want to know more. You can feel the roughness of her upbringing in her singing: every single note is filled with ALL of her. It’s why she blows the roof off.

She was discovered by Johnny Otis – who discovered so many people he’s one of the BTS people who really should be credited with “creating” rock ‘n roll. She was still a teenager but she had a world of experience and he searched around for the right material for her. The solution was a song called “Wallflower” – at least, that’s the official title but the TRUE title is “Roll With Me Henry.”

It was a hit and went to #1 on the R&B charts, and then was covered – and cleaned up – by Georgia Gibbs, whose version – called “Dance With Me Henry” – because “roll” was FAR too sexually suggestive – was an exact copy of James’ version, except whitened beyond recognition. This was a “thing” at the time, of course (Pat Boone’s “Tutti Frutti” is probably the most egregious example) but Georgia Gibbs was a repeat offender. LaVern Baker was the one who called out Gibbs, to such a degree the practice was, if not stopped, then definitely discouraged. Humorously, Etta James then covered Gibbs’ “Dance With Me Henry”. She had a “fuck it and fuck you” attitude about it. Fine, you copy my shit and have a hit? Well I’ll copy your copy, and I’ll make it BETTER and make some money, which she did.

Etta James was a “player” in late 1950s r&b, but not a central figure. Her songs hit the charts from time to time, but it was an era of such great change and flux it was difficult for anyone to remain on the top, since the top kept shifting around. But she kept doing her thing. Then she signed with Chess. In 1960, she recorded my favorite (or maybe my second favorite, if I had to choose) track of hers, a sexy-as-fuck duet with Harvey Fuqua, called “Spoonful”.

Her voice is all growl and rasp, and there’s an ache behind it, she’s filled with yearning and feeling, and yet the sound – when it came out – was raspy. Rasp is often sexual, and it was with her as well – it clearly is in “Spoonful” – but I think it’s the sense of the ACHE which puts her over the edge into one of the great vocalists of the 20th century. The “rasp” can be a choice. Singers can use it as part of their toolbox. For James, it was how she made sound. It was how she poured feeling into her sound. Some singers use it sparingly, a smart choice. James didn’t. Also a smart choice. She found unbelievable variety, and could twist and manipulate the rasp, up and down the scale. I am not a musician so I don’t even know if I’m using the right terms. Her voice was made for rock ‘n roll.

Like “Something’s Got a Hold Of Me”:

She’s one of the greatest blues singers of all time.

As I said earlier, I don’t really like choosing a favorite this or that, especially not with an artist I love like Etta James. But I will just call out her extraordinary vocal performance on “All I Could Do Was Cry”, sung from the perspective of a woman watching the man she loves marry someone else.

It’s a sad story, but sad like a country song is sad. The song is great, but it’s almost irrelevant in the face of what Etta James DOES with it. The variety she finds in sound, the way she keeps coming back to the same phrases, while deepening them … and also, just the overall operatic EMOTION she pours into it. The sounds she makes are amazing but why you FEEL it is how she expresses what she’s feeling. It’s so authentic. Authenticity like that is unmistakable and you must stop and listen.

Beyond all that, though: listen to the song. Forget the lyrics. Forget even the song. Just listen to what she is DOING. It’s unbeLIEVable.

 
 
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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“Gie me ae spark o’ nature’s fire / That’s a’ the learning I desire…” — Robert Burns, “the Ploughman Poet” of Scotland

Posted on January 25, 2025 by sheila

robert-burns

“For my own part I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet till I got once heartily in Love, and then Rhyme and Song were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my heart.” — Robert Burns

Robert Burns was born on this day in the middle of the 18th century. His family was a very poor farming family, and he had a lot of brothers and sisters. Yet his father decided that Robert, the eldest, should have a bit of an education. Just a bit, mind you. A tutor was hired, and Robert, in between farm chores and hard work, learned how to read and write. A whole world opened up to him through language. Writing came naturally to him. He started writing poems and songs almost immediately, some of which are still famous today (although “famous” doesn’t quite cover it). Robert Burns was a wild man who loved pleasure, loved fun, loved women. As is often the case with people who really know how to drink up life by the drop, he also suffered from depression. He had many illegitimate children. He eventually got married (to one of the women he knocked up).

Where did his writing bug come from?

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Review: Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story (2025)

Posted on January 24, 2025 by sheila

This was delightful. I reviewed for Ebert.

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Music shuffle: The Return

Posted on January 24, 2025 by sheila

To quote the final line of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: I been away a long time.

My last “shuffle” post was in 2022 and I worried about what I would do when “my laptop goes”. Well, it happened just a couple months later.

I “lost” my music collection when my laptop went kaput in 2022. My response would involve a rant about the state of affairs in re: the concept of ownership – which may be the most sinister aspect of the slow-creep tech takeover and also a monologue on the regret I feel that I did not have the foresight to see what was going on. The only music I had left after the laptop crashed was what had been purchased on iTunes, which meant I lost the thousands and thousands of songs I uploaded when I first converted my 100s of CDs, in my permanent collection for decades, and also uploaded all my mp3s, stuff I downloaded from YouTube. In other words: my music collection, curated by me, since I was 13 years old. This was when I gave up ownership and submitted to a landlord. This was my error. I didn’t realize that that was what I was actually doing. BUT. Recently, my friend Allison was here and she had computer problems and called the helpline. She befriended the help-line guy – who spent literally an hour on the phone with her restoring her computer. He became our friend. I then mentioned my issue with music collection having vanished. He said he could take a look. He said my complaint was one of their most common complaints. He said if I backed up my laptop then the music should still be on there. Thankfully I do regular backups. So we then transferred him to MY computer which he then took over and found my music collection – no longer in the “music” folder but in the “media” folder. There it was! All my music. Including the clip of my DAD talking. The songs from my sister, my brother, none of which are on iTunes. My Pat McCurdy collection. Like, the music that really matters to me. I have it back. I was in tears. Thank you, Mark Help-Desk Guy. You live up to your job description.

I am sure this problem will come up again. I want to get everything back into physical form, to avoid the landlord’s noblesse oblige. I only trust physical media now because the tech companies not only do not care but want it to be this way. They want us to give up the sense that we can own anything, and they wanted to position lack-of-ownership as the better way. This is why I have an entire bookshelf filled with DVDs. I’m supposed to trust Netflix? Or Amazon? Trust them to keep The More the Merrier on their streaming platforms? Fool me once, shame on you and etc.

I’ve been having so much fun re-acquainting myself with the music I love. Seriously it’s been bliss in one of the most difficult and stressful and jam-packed seasons of my life (July of 2024 to now. And counting.)

I’ve been listening to music as I do my “day job”. Simple pleasures are sometimes the best. Always, maybe. Simple pleasures are all we’ve got. Shuffling my music collection is a pleasure, not just for the music but because it also connects me to my past, past me’s, when I discovered an artist, what I was doing then, how it made me feel. Dropping into this “mode” is meaningful for me, as a human but also a writer. It shakes things loose, and I like that.

Without further ado:

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“I doubt sometimes whether a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me–yet I sometimes long for it.” — Lord Byron

Posted on January 22, 2025 by sheila

— And who is the best poet, Heron? asked Boland.
— Lord Tennyson, of course, answered Heron.
— O, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Nash. We have all his poetry at home in a book.
At this Stephen forgot the silent vows he had been making and burst out:
— Tennyson a poet! Why, he’s only a rhymester!
— O, get out! said Heron. Everyone knows that Tennyson is the greatest poet.
— And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked Boland, nudging his neighbour.
— Byron, of course, answered Stephen.

— “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, James Joyce

It’s his birthday today.

Here is his epitaph to his dog:

One who possessed beauty without vanity,
strength without insolence,
courage without ferocity,
and all the virtues of man,
without his vices.
This praise would be unmeaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes,
is but a just tribute to the memory of my dog.

“Lord Byron is an exceedingly interesting person, and, as such, is it not to be regretted that he is a slave to the vilest and most vulgar prejudices, and as mad as a hatter?” — Percy Bysshe Shelley, letter to a friend

More. much more after the jump, about this ultimate Avatar of the Romantics. The archetype, the mold. He was very very 20th-century.

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“The fault that I acknowledge in myself is to have descended to print anything in verse.” — John Donne

Posted on January 22, 2025 by sheila

“So difficult and opaque it is, I am not certain what it is I print.” — first publisher of the work of John Donne

It’s his birthday today.

John Donne (1572-1631) was a poet and an Anglican priest (born a Roman Catholic- to quote Monty Python: “a Catholic the moment Dad came”). A metaphysical poet, language vibrating with honesty and sensuality. His work feels – and is – personal: he questions, he badgers God, he declares himself – separately, as an individual. This particular TONE was not at all in tune with the times. He traveled far and wide as a young man, giving him a less than provincial outlook. He made a bad marriage, incurring the displeasure of powerful people which landed him in prison for a time. He had been on his way to a successful career as a diplomat; all undone by his marriage.

Speaking of “undone”, when he wrote to his wife to tell her the bad news of losing his job, he signed the letter: John Donne. Anne Donne. Un-done.

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