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OT Killers of the Flower Moon PART TWO (Spoilers)

posted 4 months ago by roger1 (2351)
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An OT thread on Killers of the Flower Moon went hither and yon and ended up cirlcling around to "journeyman directors," like Richard Quine, Gordon Douglas and Jack Arnold and I figured I'd tie some things together in a PART TWO on ALL of them.

(Also, on my computer, the thread kept getting narrower and narrower so I couldn't write.)

Killers of the Flower Moon:

Keeps picking up "Best Picture of 2023" awards in various early contests. There's an opponent of Scorsese and this movie who thinks "Apple is buying all the awards," but who knows. The Golden Globes will be the test of that...a very buyable award though now "cleaned up for racism" etc and on its best behavior.

The Golden Globes is PERFECT for Barbie, btw -- because the Globes has a "Comedy or Musical Category" as well as a "Drama" category for movies and its where Barbie can clean up and make all sorts of commercials about winning Best Picture(Comedy or Musical) etc. Which is OK.

At the Oscars, Best Original Screenplay, Ryan Gosling for Support(competitive field) and likely some art direction, costume technical awards are on tap.

Barbie is now on TWO of my streaming channels. I tried watching it on one -- only got ten minutes in before the overall overkill of the thing consigned me to "old fartsville" on that one. But hey, I saw it once in the theater.

It will take the Oscars to prove if Killers of the Flower Moon is the real deal, or if Oppenheimer can best it. (Or maybe Poor Things? Lock for Emma Stone on Actress there?)

I would suggest that one other reason KOFM may be in the lead is that it is progressive material on white/Native American relations and a historical outrage. Oppenheimer is ultimately somewhat "conservative" not in the party sense but in the focus on US/Soviet competition in the Cold War as much as WWII.

Plus: Scorsese. He may have one big hater over on the KOFM board, but in general, he is being honored in his 80s for "pulling this one off." How many more does he have? Hitchcock of course died at 80, a much less fit man from a Victorian generation.

Food for thought: Is QT's theory(based on Hitchcock, Wilder, and Hawks) that the final films of older directors aren't that good coming home to roost for ...Martin Scorsese?

There is this: Wolf of Wall Street, The Irishman, and Killers of the Flower Moon are all, demonstrably, LONG movies. Marty didn't need that kind of screen time to tell the tales of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull? (Did he? I didn't do a count.)

I think it took until Casino (1995) for Marty to do a three-hour long movie. But those three hours moved real fast, and so -- I would contend -- do WOWS and The Irishman.

Still, the long movies suggest an older man, perhaps, unable to "cut things down," too much in love with his own work. And thus QT would seem yet again proven right.

Except he's wrong. WOWS was one of Scorsese's best and certainly his funniest. And I LOVED the Irishman. And KOFM may yet catch my fancy.

Personally, I think Scorsese is back from a slump that included a far too-childish looking Leo DiCaprio playing Howard Hughes in The Aviator and a far-to-childish looking cop(as if wearing his father's overcoat and hat) in Shutter Island. At least in The Departed, Leo was surrounded by scene stealers like Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg(MVP and sole Oscar nominee), and yes, Alec Baldwin. Oh, and Matt Damon was in it too. Oh, and Matt Damon was in Oppenheimer, too (check out the trailer and Damon's underwhelming attempt to express rage about the importance of the project.)

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Back to Jack Arnold's Incredible Shrinking Man and "spider terror."

Man, nature did a number with spiders, yes? Their creepy multi-legged crawl. Their webs(traps for slow death); their thousand eyes. Their poison bites(black widows and violin spiders.) The big ugly tarantulas (terrorizing James Bond in Dr. No...just ONE of them.)

As the shrinking man shrunk, suddenly he was lower in the food chain than the cat and when the spider came forth...terror. (Evidently, the man shrunk so microscopic that spiders couldn't find him anymore after he killed his Main Opponent.)

There was a B on TV in the 60's called "Earth Vs. The Spider"(real cheap) that had a scene that terrified me as a young'un. The giant spider was gassed and supposedly is dead, so they put him in the school gym and have a rock and roll dance around him -- but nope, he was only sleeping -- he comes awake and eats a guard before terrorizing the town. (As with Tarantula -- also directed by Jack Arnold -- the giant spider is mainly represented by blow-up photography of a real tarantula - but "Tarantula" also used a mock up of a horrific tarantula face...I mean them bugs are ugly! Nature got mean.)

Sidebar: Neither Tarantula nor The Earth Vs The Spider are anywhere near the quality of "Them" which was, after all, directed by a studio journeyman who had directed Cagney and Peck and would direct Sinatra.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

More spiders: Before "Eight Legged Freaks" Spielberg(I think) produced "Aracnophobia," about teeny tiny spiders getting in people's shoes and shirts, biting them and killing them as if a heart attack occurred. The story zigged and zagged before bringing on a "big" spider that was about a foot long -- no giants in this one.

Spielberg et all learned of folks spider phobias when Arachnophobia flopped. The VHS/DVD cover took the movie poster(a view of a small town with a spider in the foreground) and TOOK THE SPIDER OUT.

So spiders are an acuqired taste for screen terror.

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On-topic: Both The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and Them taught me from a young age about how to structure a thriller -- I'm not even sure the Howard Hawks produced "The Thing" did it as well. There is a simplicity to the plots and how the shock moments came that may have influenced Hitchcock INDIRECTLY to structure Psycho from Bloch's book. But not The Birds...which was too slow at the front.

So if Psycho is basically structured like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms(which PREDATED Godzilla, and is better) and Them -- is that why Psycho got no Best Adapted Screeplay nomination?

Well, as the shrink says: yes..AND NO! Psycho in certain ways put epics like Ben Hur and Sparactus and El Cid to shame with its constantly interesting compact sense of plot and surprise. And even if Psycho "is just a little horror movie at heart," the script and dialogue were way ABOVE the usual. Just the line "Then who is that woman buried in Greenlawn Cemetary?" is as perfect a bit of mystery misdirection as has evern been written for a movie. And such classic lines as "" My mother's not herself today" or "We all go a little mad sometimes...haven't you?"

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Or how mother scolds Norman about "the cheap erotic fantasies of young men with cheap erotic minds." How ELEGANT and how directly SEXUAL for 1960. It has always enraged me that Psychos II, III, and IV had mother yealling about "sluts and whores" - her IQ dropped down several stages from Mother in the original and that MEANT something. (Particularly given that Norman uses MOTHERS syntax when he says "People cluck their thick tongues and suggest oh so very delicately...)

Psycho can be proud that it used the smart templates of BIG HITS like The Beast and Them and gave them A exposure with a better script still. An Oscar nom(and win) for the Psycho script might well have reflected on ALL the good 50's horror movies, of which House on Haunted Hill -- is not.

I raise House on Haunted Hill because it came out in 1959, ahead of Psycho , and Hitchcock saw it and remarked upon it to Joe Stefano upon hiring him to write Psycho. Hitch told Joe that they were going to make something like House on Haunted Hill, "except good." HOHH DOES have some good inside-the-haunted house atmosphere -- certain shots in the living room of the haunted house match those inside the Bates mansion in black and white atmosphere, but ultimately HOHH is ultimately too DUMB to stand with these others..perhaps becaquse The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Them were made with studios in mind(they were "pick ups.") Its a matter of scripting...

Well, that sort of plays out some points in this OT thread...including the ON Topic ones.

I saw Napoleon and I'm going to give it an OT glance without"burying it" here.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

So spiders are an acuqired taste for screen terror.

You can say that again. A huge number of people have a no-kidding-around complete horror of spiders, especially anything at all big. It takes more self-control than most people have to turn around and find anything fun with spider scares in movies. Or even on TV. I was traumatized as a kid by a Get Smart episode that did its version of the Dr No scene. It even left Max in deep peril from the spider as the episode's closing cliff-hanger! watch that here (go almost to the end of the ep.):
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6t9flo
Get Smart (in '70s re-runs) was my fave show for a while as a kid and I remember having nightmares from and feeling deeply shocked and betrayed by that ep.. Get Smart was supposed to be funny and yet that ep. went full-out horror.
And, to really blow all arachnophobe's minds, as part of Billie Eilish blowing up a few years ago she established her goth-punk bona fides with her tik-tok style 'Vertical' vid for her track 'You should see me in a crown'. The whole thing is pretty traumatic but the big shock is fully Bunuelian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah0Ys50CqO8

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

So spiders are an acuqired taste for screen terror.

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You can say that again.
A huge number of people have a no-kidding-around complete horror of spiders, especially anything at all big. It takes more self-control than most people have to turn around and find anything fun with spider scares in movies.

---

Agreed. It seems that Hollywood felt SOME need to greenlight "major movies" about spiders, but they flopped. Arachnaphobia featured an oversized tarantula transported from South America to a bucolic Northern California town..where the big guy impregnated a smaller spider that gave birth to...teeny tiny spiders whose killings of local residents put the new young doctor(Jeff Daniels) under fire as "the wrong man" when he got blamed for misdiagnosing the deaths(the "old doctor" who was Daniels' accuser was Henry Jones(the vicious local official who accuses James Stewart in Vertigo) in one of his last roles. The movie seemed to want to try using the tiny spiders more for "wrong man" suspense than horror...until the Big One was brought in for a truly terrifying climax as he kept jumping up at, down on Daniels in a barn for a "jump scare" climax. Comic relief was John Goodman as a "spider Quint" brought in to kill all the little ones. Still: flopped. That finale of a big spider actively jumping on Daniels and trying to sink its fangs in for the kill was stomach-turning.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

"Eight Legged Freaks" (originally titled Arac Attack) was from the guys who made the "big effects extravangazas Independence Day and Godzilla 1998, and hence made sure the screen was filled with GIGANTIC spiders(the biggest being a taratula the size of a motor home natch.) The spider attacks on a town were reminscent of The Birds in sheer volume of attacking animals and the film maintained a constant comic tone that ALMOST distracted from the phobia. Flopped. It has an early role, BTW, for ScarJo as the beautiful daughter of a beautiful town sheriff played by the beautiful Kari Wuhrer . Ms. Wuhrer's career didn't go far, but ScarJo's did -- its a tough lesson in how Darwinian Hollywood can be. Of all the spider movies, "Eight Legged Freaks" is the one that, I think, almost made spiders entertaining and amusing.

One realizes that spiders were very much in the domain of the B picture in the 50's. Tarantula and Earth Vs the Spider were drive-in fare.

The Incredible Shrinking Man was up above those above, in quality but I've always wondered about this: whereas most of the other horror SciFi movies of the 50's hit TV in the 60s, I didn't see Shrinking Man on TV until the 70's. Was it withheld because ITS spider sequence was just too terrifying for kids? (THAT sequence ends with the live spider pinning our shrunken hero down, our hero stabbing UP with a sharp nail, and a POV OF the spider's fanged face above us, lowering down for the kill until stabbed...at which point "spider goo" drips down on our hero and the spider's face freezes in death. I found that more sickening and scary than anything in Psycho.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

I was traumatized as a kid by a Get Smart episode that did its version of the Dr No scene.

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Funny thing about that Dr No scene...in which, if one looks closely, you can see a sheet of glass between the climbing spider and star Sean Connery at one point...a DUPLICATE scene, played for laughs, can be found in "Call Me Bwana" of 1963, the year after Dr. No. It all comes together: BOTH Dr. No AND Call Me Bwana were produced by the Broccoli/Saltzman team; and in the next Bond movie -- From Russia With Love of 1963 -- Bond helps a friend shoot a bad guy who emerges from a wall through a "Call Me Bwana" poster. Final connection: Call Me Bwana is directed by...Gordon Douglas, who I have already singled out as a key journeyman director (he started with Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy!)

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It even left Max in deep peril from the spider as the episode's closing cliff-hanger!

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A nod thus, to BOTH Dr. No and Call Me Bwana:

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It even left Max in deep peril from the spider as the episode's closing cliff-hanger! watch that here (go almost to the end of the ep.):

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Eeek the memories...perhaps closer to Bob Hope as the comedy guy in danger in Call Me Bwana than the Bond version but...the Get Smart version had the most sickening climax: the spider gets drowned in..horse radish and one gets the queasy sensation of what it would be like to EAT the spider.

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CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Get Smart (in '70s re-runs) was my fave show for a while as a kid

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A great comedy show, that had great writers along the way from Mel Brooks and Buck Henry to some of the guys who wrote the great 70's comedy series like Mary Tyler Moore Show and 80's movies like Terms of Endearment. I watched it first run 1965-1970 and then in endless reruns...like eatin' peanuts.

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and I remember having nightmares from and feeling deeply shocked and betrayed by that ep.. Get Smart was supposed to be funny and yet that ep. went full-out horror.

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Spiders will do that to a program. Sometimes I wonder if movie/TV makers were being a bit sadistic in their spider scenes(especially towards kids) ...other times I figure they just weren't as scared by the beasts as their audiences.

And...who can forget the moment in the first Raiders of the Lost Ark where Alfred Molina (pre Doc Ock Spiderman fame by over 20 years) turns around and his entire BACK is covered in tarantulas?

One more thing: in "Earth Vs the Spider" we had close-ups of the faces of the giant spider's victims -- sucked of all juices a reminder that if the Big Spider DID get you...it was a giant vampire too.

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And, to really blow all arachnophobe's minds, as part of Billie Eilish blowing up a few years ago she established her goth-punk bona fides with her tik-tok style 'Vertical' vid for her track 'You should see me in a crown'. The whole thing is pretty traumatic but the big shock is fully Bunuelian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah0Ys50CqO8

---

Hoo boy...well, that is one brave little young lady! Heh.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

I've seen a couple more of the Oscar contenders: Maestro and May December (both on Netflix in the US). MD hit the spot for me in a way that nothing else has. Natalie Portman is a tv star who's been cast to play a woman who was a Mary Kay LeTourneau-like figure (Julianne Moore) back in the '90s and who has, like LeTourneau, married and formed a family for 20 years with the boy she did jail-time for having an affair with. Portman comes to Savannah, Georgia to do research on this strange family and woman she'll be playing. The family cooperates with this both because they're hopeful of a being somewhat vindicated by Portman's eventual movie and for financial beneficial reasons (that the movie could have been a little clearer about). Portman is the same age as the boy now is and as Moore's character was when she initiated the fateful affair, and her presence disturbs the equilibrium of the family. Various mirrorings and resurfacings occur and senses of performing are explored. MD isn't big on action but it's fascinating and well-paced and leaves us guessing, and at a svelte 1hr 53mins doesn't outstay its welcome (more movies should be this Psycho-length). I dug it, and tend to think that if you've been on Haynes's wavelength before you'll like this too, but it probably won't be for everyone. Highly Recommended with that proviso. Knockout supporting performance from the actor who plays 'the boy' 20 years later, Charles Melton. He's currently being talked up for an Oscar nom, and in a different year he could have won, but it's a very competitive category this year with well-liked superstars RDJ and Gosling and Ruffalo all ahead of Melton I'm afraid. Melton's the future tho' and this is going to be a role that in future years people will look back and say he should have won for.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

(Cont'd) Maestro didn't quite work for me. It's ultimately I think about as conflicted as it makes Bernstein out to be altho' this is hard to explain without talking about the ending of the film and lots of spoilers. I suspect that Cooper was trapped a bit by his passion project and by becoming close to the Berstein family. In general seeing MD soon after Maestro clarified for me that there's a lot to be said for lightly fictionalizing rather than biopic-making (e.g., Cooper's Bernstein imitation ends up being distracting - I never thought he got the voice right so all the bang-on visual impersonation stuff didn't go anywhere for me). Biopics have all sorts of obligations to be faithful to how people looked, to be comrehensive, to be nice, and so on whereas fictions from MD to Tar have a lot more freedom to be what they need to be, to cover only what they want to cover and to be ugly or say unpalatable things. I can recommend M for some good shot-making and for general performance quality but for me Maestro was a very partial success. It's worth seeing but is both confused and cramped so keep expectations low (A version of too high expectations: I'd heard about certain scenes from Maestro and had filmed better versions of them in my mind before seeing the film. Unfair I know, but it happens.)

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

I've seen a couple more of the Oscar contenders: Maestro and May December (both on Netflix in the US). MD hit the spot for me in a way that nothing else has.

....

Well, there's YOURS (maybe) for 2023. Your chances, swanstep, to encounter a personal favorite film each year is better than mine because you simply see more films and have a broader taste for types.

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MD isn't big on action but it's fascinating and well-paced and leaves us guessing, and at a svelte 1hr 53mins doesn't outstay its welcome (more movies should be this Psycho-length)

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May/December is a reminder that one can always weave an ON topic thought or two out of OFF topic movies. May/December, for instance, stars Julianne Moore, who has been around a LONG time in movies now and keeps getting cast in Oscar bait and(perhaps less)in maintream films.

And Julianne Moore played Lila in the remake of Psycho and -- (a) nobody remembers Moore for THAT role and (2) Vera Miles was, arguably, better in the part.

There is footage of Moore filming Psycho and rather dissing the project(the producers didn't mind, they WANTED some comparisons today to 1960.) At one point, Moore says "I have no character to play, here" and I suppose NOT as to depth, but definitely there IS a character in a woman who deeply loves her sister and is desperate to find out what happened to her. Miles played the emotion AND the anger; Moore pretty much just plays the anger.

There is also footage of Moore about to open the drawers in Cabin One and she says "why am I opening these drawers?" I expect Hitchcock would have shaken his head -- even at the BASIC mystery level, Sam and Lila are desperately opening these drawers looking for a clue, any clue, to Marion's dissappearance.

But then Julianne Moore did Van Sant's Psycho for the money so she could do more meaningful indies for less cash. (Also Moore offered to play Marion or Lila -- and would have been a better Marion than Anne Heche for sex appeal alone.)

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CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

MD isn't big on action but it's fascinating and well-paced and leaves us guessing, and at a svelte 1hr 53mins doesn't outstay its welcome (more movies should be this Psycho-length)

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Again...ON topic in an OFF topic thread.

For whatever reason, Killers of the Flower Moon has spawned a fairly heavy debate about how long movies are now, and in one of the articles, a bunch of famous films were lined up at less than two hours to prove "less can be more."

Psycho was one of them. So was Citizen Kane (1 hour, 59 minutes...JUST made it.) So was Casablanca(1 hr, 42 minutes.)

Anyway, Psycho made the list. Psycho always fascinates me in is sense of time.

On the one hand the story is simple and moves from murder to murder to climax and done.

On the other hand, EVERY TIME I see Psycho -- even when it feels over real fast -- I have a feeling of having covered a lot of ground. I think the movie starting in Phoenix and ending up at that motel in Northern Californial(with the long drive in between) confers an "epic journey" quality to the story. From the Phoenix hotel to the Redding jail cell is quite a journey.

On the other other hand, Psycho is much shorter than the movie ahead of it -- North by Northwest. Psycho is one hour, 49 minutes; NXNW (Hitchcock's longest film) is two hours, 16 minutes. In screen time, Psycho ends around the time that Roger Thornhill first arrives at the Mount Rushmore tourist center.

Total Trivia: TV Guide in the 60s listed running times for movies that included time for commercials. Most network movies were listed at "2 hours." Network movie shows ran often from 9:00 to 11:00 pm. But some movies were granted longer TV run times:

Psycho (2 hours, 15 minutes.)
North by Northwest (2 hours, 45 minutes.)

I thought North by Northwest was a REAL LONG movie when CBS debuted it at 2 hours, 45 minutes on a Friday night in 1967. I think it started at 9:00 and ended at 11:45 pm.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Natalie Portman is a tv star who's been cast to play a woman who was a Mary Kay LeTourneau-like figure (Julianne Moore) back in the '90s and who has, like LeTourneau, married and formed a family for 20 years with the boy she did jail-time for having an affair with.

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Well, one has to admit that this is both fairly unique for a film subject and timely.

SNL some years ago had a courtroom sketch where TWO hot teachers were on trial for "corrupting a young teen" -- played by Pete Davidson.

The joke was easy:

Prosecutor: Once the other boys in school learned of your affair with these teachers, did they shame you?
Pete: No.
Prosectutor: Did they call you any names?
Pete: Oh, yeah, uh "Luckiest guy in the world," "King of the hot chicks" and "My MAN!" like Denzel says it.

We get the point. Teenage boys getting predated upon by hot women teachers -- well, its in the news all the time, the women teachers ARE going to jail and losing their jobs, but the "real world" assessment seems much more lenient that if an older man predated upon a young girl.

Age does matter. I believe that LaTourneau's lover was something like 13 years old. Too young. Jail time. The more "kids" inch towards 16, 17...the more understandable a relationship is, I suppose.

Of course, 2 years ago, Licorice Pizza put things on the line with a 25 year old woman and a 15 year old boy. But the movie was very careful: they never had sex, it was platonic, and they were both the same EMOTIONAL age -- it always felt like a chaste love story between two kids, to me.

Anyway, it sounds like May/December has put more nuances into the tale(Portman's presence) and kept the topic as timely as it was two years ago.

Its right there on Netflix, along with Maestro. I'll get to them both eventually! I DROVE to Indiana Jones, Oppenheimer, Barbie, The Holdovers, and Napoleon. I'm that "old guy who don't care about COVID." Like that.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Maestro didn't quite work for me. It's ultimately I think about as conflicted as it makes Bernstein out to be altho' this is hard to explain without talking about the ending of the film and lots of spoilers.

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Hmm..I'm not sure what the spoilers with Maestro would be, unless its a spoiler to reveal something about Bernstein that I thought was general knowledge.

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I suspect that Cooper was trapped a bit by his passion project and by becoming close to the Berstein family.

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"Authorized biographies" can be dangerously whitewashed. The authorized biography of Hitchcock -- written in 1978 before his 1980 death, by John Russell Taylor -- is pretty PRish.

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In general seeing MD soon after Maestro clarified for me that there's a lot to be said for lightly fictionalizing rather than biopic-making.

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Agreed. It became pretty clear after seeing "Hitchocck" that little of what was shown on screen actually happened. But I read this somewhere: studios push for true stories (whether "based on" or "inspired by") because if its TRUE, it means MORE BOX OFFICE . Aha. As long as they SAY its true, that's the sales pitch, not the actual truth.

I remember growing up with Leonard Bernstein all over TV -- he was "culture FOR TV." But it took me years to separate Leonard Bernstein from ELMER Berstein -- the guy who competed in the 60s with Jerry Goldsmith for "Best Western Scores" (The Magnificent Seven, True Grit and other John Wayne Westerns for Bernstein; Rio Conchos, Stagecoach, and Bandolero for Goldsmith.) Elmer also did the heart-rending score for To Kill a Mockinbird, and late in life became a "comedy score guy" for John Landis(Animal House, Blues Brothers) and Ivan Reitman(Stripes, Ghostbusters.) Why? Because John Landis was pals with Elmer Bernstein's son. Bernstein "followed the comedians" from Animal House to Ghostbusters.

Leonard's two big scores were On the Waterfront in 1954 and West Side Story(stage 1957, film 1961.) I suppose those two were enough, but ...did he do more?

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

I think Leonard was just as famous as the conductor of the New York Philharmonic (was that the name) as a movie composer.

So, I'm ready to sample "Maestro" on Netflix with that backgrounding but...not much more excited than about any other biopic ...but I WAS excited about Hitchcock right up to when I saw it.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

Hmm..I'm not sure what the spoilers with Maestro would be, unless its a spoiler to reveal something about Bernstein that I thought was general knowledge.

I'd need to discuss the last shot of the movie and certain late dialogues. I think you want to encounter those things for yourself first time through and free from my parsings of them!

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

OK.

I know the spoilers issue is an important one. The absolute best thing to do is to not go to ANY movie discussion page until one has SEEN it...and that can take time these days. It may be days...weeks...before one can make the time to see the film.

I try to stick to "minor spoilers only" in my posts but I know one person's "minor" can be another person's "major." I'm working on it. Of course, once responded to by someone who has SEEN the movie(i.e. you, swanstep) I open up on the spoilers with a warning.

The Maestro spoiler awaits.

CONT

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

I believe that LaTourneau's lover was something like 13 years old

He was 12! May December's young boy was 13.

Priscilla, Sofia Coppola's sort-of-biopic of Priscilla Presley (it's based on Priscilla's autobio from the 1980's and Priscila P. herself executive produces) tackles Elvis at 24 meeting Priscilla when she was 14 and in ninth grade. They lived together in Graceland from when she was 16 but didn't marry until she was 21. The film is pretty coy about what's actually going on sex-wise before marriage and babies but it's clear that Elvis is having lotsa sex with lots of other women both in Memphis and in Hollywood while Priscilla is not getting much sex if any pre-marriage at Graceland. It's strange, and although the film is pretty muted, it never backs away from seeing Elvis as a mixed up guy doing Priscilla no favors by picking her out at such a young age and then sheltering her so extremely (even from his own desires). Unfortunately a film about someone being sheltered and deprived and frustrated is probably destined to always be a little frustrating or claustrophobic itself, and always seeing Elvis through her lens is inherently a little maddening too. It's a pretty good film I think and 'prisoner' narratives can be great from Room (2015) back to A Man Escaped (1956) or even The Grand Illusion (1937) but somehow greatness isn't in the cards with Priscilla (it's got almost the same story as Coppola's Marie Antoinette but lacks that film's scale and sense of fun). And it doesn't have May Decembers's complexity. So, meh.

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

I believe that LaTourneau's lover was something like 13 years old
He was 12! May December's young boy was 13.

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Yikes! This entire "underage" issue has become its own minefield in recent years. The LaTourneau story was very much a tale of "too young" and the jail time was appropriate. And the jail time would have been appropriate with an older man and a 12 year old girl.

Whereas Licorice Pizza posited a sexless relationship with a "boy" who reached an age (16) that is legal in certain American states, and a sheltered "woman" who was still very much a girl -- living at home with her older sisters way past their teens. I just found that the movie focussed nicely on "love for love's sake" and soulmates and demonstrated that -- if one waits for legal deadlines to kick in -- such relationships are OK.

That SNL sketch zeroed in on the "male teenage fantasy" of being (as the song says) "Hot for Teacher" and getting the goods. Hard to avoid THOSE realities either but -- the law does. A lot of those hot teachers are doing jail time -- and the psychological ramifications of these affairs are their own study.

I would here like to point out that back in my youth, I knew a fairly studly jock type guy of 16 who "carried on" with a teacher's ASSISTANT of 21 or so. They seemed so close in age and sensible about what they were doing that it seemed OK...to hear about, at least.

I like to mention that none other than Cary Grant gave an interview in which, in passing, he rather ranted about the "artificial" sexual criminal laws imposed upon minors who had reached the age of menstruation. In Grant's opinion, nature said these menstruating pre-teens were now "women" and laws against doin' what comes naturally were punitive and Puritan. I can't say that Cary's position" took"as a public matter. And even if 12 or 13 is "natural" under Cary's guidelines...an adult exploiting that age is still a problem. And..in modern society, 13 year olds may be capable of sexual comportment but generally have no ability to earn a full living, work, marry, etc. They gotta wait.

.CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Priscilla, Sofia Coppola's sort-of-biopic of Priscilla Presley (it's based on Priscilla's autobio from the 1980's and Priscila P. herself executive produces) tackles Elvis at 24 meeting Priscilla when she was 14 and in ninth grade. They lived together in Graceland from when she was 16 but didn't marry until she was 21.

--

I've held off on seeing Priscilla after having gotten burned so bad by that awful Elvis film with Tom Hanks a coupla years ago. It seems unavoidable for "Priscilla" to HAVE to center on the age difference, the underage issue, and the "holding prisoner" of young Priscilla until she was of age. This was something that a celebrity of Elvis' statue COULD do, but it sure didn't end up too good for anyone did it? Divorce, fatal overdoses and suicide lay ahead for these people and their progeny.

How much easier for everybody if everybody is at least 18 when these things begin.

Once that threshold is crossed -- and in Hollywood especially -- we get the OTHER issue: 60-something men with 20-something wives. Movie stars get to do that, no laws against it, just a fair amount of "tut-tutting" in the gossip columns.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

I've held off on seeing Priscilla after having gotten burned so bad by that awful Elvis film with Tom Hanks a coupla years ago.

Priscilla's going to burn people too I'm afraid - it's so subjective and fragmentary in its coverage of matters that it's easy to be dissatisfied. It's almost completely a two-hander between Elvis and Pris for a start (e.g., it's clear that Elvis's relationship with Col. Tom is close and an issue for Pris but he never appears on screen).

The casting in the movie physicalizes the gap between E and P. The actress playing Pris is a couple of inches shorter than the real Pris and still looks like a little girl when she's 22 in the film. And the movie's E, Jacob Elordi (formerly the terrifying High School quarterback rapist/abuser Nate on Euphoria), is as big as tight ends in the NFL: 6' 5" and a wall of muscle, while E was around 6' and not pumped up in modern ways. These differences make a difference and certain shots of the leads together kind of make you laugh. They look like different species, and some viewers are going to be taken out the movie completely by that.

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

I've held off on seeing Priscilla after having gotten burned so bad by that awful Elvis film with Tom Hanks a coupla years ago.
---
Priscilla's going to burn people too I'm afraid - it's so subjective and fragmentary in its coverage of matters that it's easy to be dissatisfied.

---

"Here we go again." Biopic organization.

I DO remember Priscilla Presley and the now-late Lisa Marie being very supportive of Elvis, I've lost track on this one about Priscilla's stance. I suppose "it is what it is." She was that young. He was that old. The idea that a male performer can have all sorts of affairs and still idealize "one woman, one wife" is a showbiz canard goin' way back. (Sinatra and Dino for two.)

Funny thing about "Elvis," last year. Some things I liked -- like the focus on Elvis' famous 1968 TV comeback special and the idea that he slipped some activist music past ol' Colonel Parker(true? Played good.)

But I judge these things by how a KEY thing is handled. In Elvis, "Viva Las Vegas" was fragmented and thrown away -- and its a classic song. In Hitchcock, the filming of the Arbogast murder was so "undersold" that you couldn't TELL for awhile that that was what the scene was about -- a telltale shot of Anthony Perkins in Mother drag was the clue in plain sight, but in reality, Perkins did NOT dress up for the Arbogast murder -- a little person named Mitzi did. And they turned THAT scene into untrue ridiculousness about a hack director being brought on set to replace a flu-ridden Hitch-- Alma taking over the direction for a day. This IS connected to how and when "Elvis" blew the material and took the entertainment value away. Plus the over-stylization.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

It's almost completely a two-hander between Elvis and Pris for a start (e.g., it's clear that Elvis's relationship with Col. Tom is close and an issue for Pris but he never appears on screen).

--

I'll say this for Elvis last year -- Tom Hanks' performance -- in grotesque facial make-up and fat suit -- as Col Tom made the long-standing case for the man's villainy, especially in the montage (true?) in which Elvis tries to escape Col Parker and is sent one bill after another in owed reimbursements -- by the millions.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

The casting in the movie physicalizes the gap between E and P. The actress playing Pris is a couple of inches shorter than the real Pris and still looks like a little girl when she's 22 in the film.

---

Tricky to get right. Sometimes underaged girls can look older.

---

And the movie's E, Jacob Elordi (formerly the terrifying High School quarterback rapist/abuser Nate on Euphoria),

---

I'm not familiar with the Euphoria cast beyond Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney(see: the new Stones video)...guess I should sample that show.

---

is as big as tight ends in the NFL: 6' 5" and a wall of muscle, while E was around 6' and not pumped up in modern ways.

--

Odd: Elvis seemed too thin and whispy in the last actor who played him. Hard to get the guy right.

To see a movie where they got Elvis entirely WRONG(facially at least)...Michael Shannon in "Elvis and Nixon"(or is it Nixon and Elvis?) Ugly, older guy. He did have the voice and manner down, though. I hear Kurt Russell got Elvis right all the way back in 1979, but I never saw that TV production(by John Carpenter!)

---- These differences make a difference and certain shots of the leads together kind of make you laugh. They look like different species, and some viewers are going to be taken out the movie completely by that.

-

Probably. I'm thinking though: neither Anthony Hopkins nor the much smaller Toby Jones REALLY got Hitchcock's face down well enough in "Hitchcock" and "The Girl" in that Hitchcock-biopic ridden fall of 2012. Not even, really, the famous voice. Its hard to imitate the inimitable beyond a broad impressionist version. Hopkins came close on body size and shape, Jones not at all. And Helen Mirren was a far sight more sexy as Alma than the real thing; the actress Imelda Staunton came much closer to Alma's look in 'The Girl."

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

Odd: Elvis seemed too thin and whispy in the last actor who played him. Hard to get the guy right.

Elordi gets Elvis's broad-shoulderedness and statusesqueness (larger than life-ness) right for sure, but he's *so* big that it makes a joke out of some lines that are essentially quotes from E, e.g. that he was physically intimidated by the big-shouldered, somewhat amazonian Ursula Andress. I'm sorry, but you have to laugh at the suggestion that Elordi could ever be intimated by a normal size human being. He's still a full foot taller than Andress and so much heavier. Guys built like tight ends are helluva physical specimens and very rare in Hollywood, and in the real world inspire wariness. Obviously Psycho (1998) was somewhat unbalanced by 6'5" Vince Vaughan looming over waify Anne Heche, and there are plenty of roles that other really big guys like John Wayne and The Rock should not play. If Elvis had played opposite Wayne in True Grit rather than Glen Campbell, Wayne would have still loomed over him (E's height = GC's height), not over Elordi.

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Odd: Elvis seemed too thin and whispy in the last actor who played him. Hard to get the guy right.

---

Elordi gets Elvis's broad-shoulderedness and statusesqueness (larger than life-ness) right for sure, but he's *so* big that it makes a joke out of some lines that are essentially quotes from E, e.g. that he was physically intimidated by the big-shouldered, somewhat amazonian Ursula Andress.

---

I was watching the 1967 James Bond spoof "Casino Royale" the other day(not to be confused with the serious Casino Royale of 2006 with Daniel Craig.) Its quite the mess, but quite the all-star mess. Peter Sellers and David Niven and William Holden(cameo) and Jean Paul Belmondo(cameo)and Orson Welles and Woody Allen(right before he made his own movies and became a superstar; quite funny here) . And Ursula Andress (billed second, I think.)

Andress is mainly paired with Peter Sellers for "their segment" of the multi story tale and -- indeed -- she TOWERS over Sellers and its rather a romantic mismatch. Amazonian indeed. She needed strapping Sean Connery in Dr. No for a physical match.

But also this about Casino Royale 1967: if one enjoys watching beautiful 1960s women on the screen, this is the movie to do it: a woman named Barbara Bouchet is to faint over. Jaqueline Bisset -- just a year before serious stardom in "Bullitt" -- is dubbed with someone else's voice and used for brief sex kitten exploitation (though there is no nudity in this film.) And Joanna Pettet as "Mata Bond" -- the offspring of Niven's "original Bond"(from the 40s) and Mata Hari. (The daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, Rumer Willis, played 1969 Pettet in QT's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.) An Egyptian beauty named Daliah Lavi, also to faint over(and humliating Woody on the screen most savagely for humor.) Even a "mature" Deborah Kerr plays up bosomy nightgowns with great sex appeal in a sequence directed by John Huston.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Plus assorted no-name beauties in bit parts. Yep, if you want a collection of the most beautiful international beauties in 1960s cinema, Casino Royale is the place to go with your "male gaze." They don't make 'em like THAT anymore.

And yet: among all those beauties, I found the high-billed Ursula Andress to be almost aloof and forbidding in her beauty. Too intimidating for male fantasy. A bit -- dare I say it? -- MANNISH in her comportment, even with her looks.

I just found that interesting.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

I'm sorry, but you have to laugh at the suggestion that Elordi could ever be intimated by a normal size human being. He's still a full foot taller than Andress and so much heavier.

---

Well, its interesting to realize that Elordi was chosen as "the best casting" for this Elvis and thus his size was simply ignored. I will reach that with Norman Bates -- in an unexpected way -- below.

---

Guys built like tight ends are helluva physical specimens and very rare in Hollywood,

--

My go-to Hollywood guy, the late screenwriter William Goldman , said most male movie stars were actually not very tall -- ranging from short(Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise) to average(Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and borderline short Robert Redford.) Goldman stood next to Sly Stallone in a pool just to compare height! (Sly is fairly short , too, said Goldman).
At the time Goldman wrote his article on star height, he saw only Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery as truly tall stars. John Wayne was dead. (Vince Vaughn -- who has called himself "circus giant tall" -- was yet on the horizon.)

So guys like this Elori fellow are rare. I"ve been watching a streaming series about an action man called "Jack Reacher" who was a man mountain in the crime novels, played by short Tom Cruise in two movies and NOW has been cast with exactly the giant size, huge biceps and six-pack abs the novels called for. The actor (Alan Ritchson) is actually a bit TOO big -- physically scary in the part, and easily able to beat up the bad guys. The series is Number One(I think) on Amazon; I wonder if Ritchson can join The Rock and Vin Diesel as a big guy on the screen. (But how TALL are Diesel and The Rock.) Or this Elori guy. William Goldman might be impressed at this influx of big, tall male stars.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Obviously Psycho (1998) was somewhat unbalanced by 6'5" Vince Vaughan looming over waify Anne Heche,

---

Yes. I think you commented that perhaps director Gus Van Sant cast everybody AGAINST type so as to separate out from the casting of the original. Except: the casting of the original was just right, and part of the way Psycho worked was for Leigh to actually seem a bit more solid(physically) and worldly(emotionally) than Tony Perkins. In short, audiences had no particular reason to FEAR Perkins. Vaughn was physically intimidating and this really kicked in with William H. Macy as Arbogast. In the original, stocky Martin Balsam seemed tough enough to beat up Norman if necessary. Macy was in danger, it seemed, as soon as he faced off against the giant Vaughn and asked the wrong questions.

Which brings me to ANOTHER physically bigger version of Norman Bates. In Psycho IV: The Beginning, Henry Thomas (from ET!) played a solidly built, strapping Young Norman Bates in a film that had a VERY scrawny Tony Perkins playing Norman modern day. It didn't much work.

I remember being stunned how a mere 8 years had grown Henry Thomas from a baby-voiced boy to a really big young man. I think Thomas found other roles in better, more serious films than Psycho IV. I hope so. For Psycho IV called upon Thomas to be shown "full face" in Mother's garb not only stabbing one victim, but STRANGLING (off motif) another.) It really felt ugly for the sweet hero of ET to be turned into such a perverse version of Perkins' more elegant psycho.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

there are plenty of roles that other really big guys like John Wayne and The Rock should not play.

---

Yep...dainty male suitors in Sense and Sensibility come to mind, first. Ha.

I remember being amused to read that when John Wayne asked his friend Rod Taylor what movie he was working on, and Taylor answered "a romantic comedy with Doris Day" Wayne answered: "I would crawl across broken glass to work in a romantic comedy with Doris Day." Actually, I'm sure something could have been arranged for those two but it shows you: the big guys felt typecast.

---

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

If Elvis had played opposite Wayne in True Grit rather than Glen Campbell, Wayne would have still loomed over him (E's height = GC's height), not over Elordi.

---

And it would have worked with Elvis and the Duke. What a missed opportunity THAT True Grit was, given Glen Campbell's terrible, weightless acting in the film.

Mia Farrow had agreed to play "the girl." In the year after Rosemary's Baby! When Mia was as hot as she'd ever be. Robert Mitchum, co-starring with her in "Secret Ceremony," warned Farrow off working with "yellling director" Henry Hathaway. So Farrow quit. The Colonel nixed Elvis for True Grit -- billing AND the issue of Elvis not being the only star.

And John Wayne ended up the only true star IN True Grit. Glen Campbell joked, "my acting was so bad it made John Wayne's work look Oscar worthy." And it was.

But: John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and Mia Farrow in True Grit. The movie that never was.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

The Colonel nixed Elvis for True Grit -- billing AND the issue of Elvis not being the only star.

The Colonel nixed prime musical assignments for Elvis too. Without spoiling too much I hope, Sofia C. ends her movie with the *perfect* 'song that the Colonel nixed' as Priscilla's driving away music. Soundtrack has definitely been one of Sofia's strengths throughout her career so far.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

I"ve been watching a streaming series about an action man called "Jack Reacher" who was a man mountain in the crime novels, played by short Tom Cruise in two movies and NOW has been cast with exactly the giant size, huge biceps and six-pack abs the novels called for. The actor (Alan Ritchson) is actually a bit TOO big

I remember the controversy about Cruise playing the character and I did check out the first ep. of the Amazon series. Yep, that guy's huge... which is apparently what the books called for...someone who changes the temperature of every room he's in, and who gets to avoid a whole range of fights a smaller man would have to fight because he's so damn scary. I dare say that Taylor Swift's current romance w/ pro-Bowl tight end Travis Kelce has only been quite the sensation it has been precisely because he's such an extreme specimen of masculinity - she's never had a boyfriend anything *like* him before, so he's just been catnip for her fans and the media.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

I have now seen Saltburn (2023) w&dir. by Emerald Fennell (who won a screenplay Oscar for her first film, Promising Young Woman). Jacob Elordi is second lead as Felix Catton,the scion of a high Aristocratic family who invites winkingly named normal/poor Oxford/college pal, Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan - last seen in a small part in the almost unremembered Banshees of Innisherin (2022) but was excellent playing obscurely malevolent pains-in-the-ass in things like The Green Knight and Lanthimos's Killing of a Scared Deer - so as cast we *know* he's up to something big, but what will it be?), to summer at the family estate/stately home/castle, the titular Saltburn.

The film's waist deep in various influences - the glamor and underlying social evil of England's aristocracy and their damned estates is the engine of much of UK lit, tv, & film. It's all in here: Brideshead Revisited, Rebecca, Downton Abbey, Sons and Lovers, The Go-between (which is having a very big year since Todd Haynes reuses the prodding piano score - I never liked it - from the 1971 film of it in his May December). Fennell's a bit of a Kubrick-head so there's some Clockwork Orange and The Shining - also If... (1968), Malcolm McDowell is Keoghan's spirit animal - in there too for good measure. (Cont'd)

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

(Cont'd)When the *thing* happens that sets in motion the final act of the film, Oliver tells us in voice over: "You don't need to be told, do you? You already know. You're just turning the handle on a jack-in-a-box. Just walking towards the end of the world...Knowing that any second the ground is going to fall away. It was the end of everything."
How you feel about Saltburn will turn on whether you like stories with that level of archness and foretoldness (if you're paying attention the music of the opening shot of the movie tells us where everything is going to end up) and about the kind of manipulation *that* will involve both within the story and of us by the director. I liked it but it's a feel-bad experience that courts disgust both with a few of its more extreme moments and with the overall 'evil triumphant' (albeit over social evil) vibe. Not much rewatchabiity I'm afraid. I expected a twist coming from 'Downstairs' but it never arrived even as an obstacle for Oliver to overcome.

Fennell comes from the English aristocracy and this is very much her unforgiving poison pen letter to her class. Glad she's got that out of her system.(Cont'd)

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

(Cont'd)Elordi is just OK in his role - he's required to be tall and beautiful and rich but isn't especially winning or charming beyond that. That's part of Fennell's cutting point: Felix doesn't have to be anything or do anything to be constantly slavered over by everyone. It probably never had a chance to be a star-making role for Elordi for that reason.

There's a glaring error in Fennell's script about dates w.r.t. Felix's mom played by Rosamund Pike. It's funny dialogue so you have to be a bit retentive to notice the problem as it were, through the laughter. I wrote about it at Saltburn's noticeboard here:
https://moviechat.org/tt17351924/Saltburn/65929081a2c8ce4954fee8de/A-small-but-irritating-problem-about-dates

[–] jay440 (107) 4 months ago

From Sam's remark about sending sister off to the movies, it seems the Crane sisters live together, probably in the house they grew up in. I think Lila had to have felt betrayed and in disbelief over Marion's sudden abandonment of her. Their parents are gone, and like Norman and Mother, they only had each other (okay, Marion also had Sam, on the side). Then suddenly one Friday Marion bolts and goes missing, without leaving any note behind. Marion imagines a phone conversation between Lowery and Lila where we only hear Lowery's side, but Marion imagines him saying Lila is deeply worried about her. She knows what she is putting her sister through.
There is a lot for an actress here, her fearing for a loved one gone missing, her stunned realization that a family member has suddenly turned fugitive from justice, and maybe some self-reproach, too, about being disconnected from her sister enough to miss the signs of her desperation. And also the deep foreboding that Marion is, indeed, already dead.

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

From Sam's remark about sending sister off to the movies, it seems the Crane sisters live together,

---

Yes..the Psycho script isn't in the "deep emotional detail" of some movie stories, but in its own compact way it tells us a lot even as it tells us a little.

Sam talks about sending sister to the movies after Marion talks of having Lila over(in the same house?) for "a big steak dinner for three." Why not FOUR? Lila has no man? The closeness of Marion and Lila is thus suggested from the get-go(no man accompanies Lila to Fairvale) as does the "imagined voices" of Lila wondering where Marion is on Monday(Lila was conveniently in Tucson on business -- likely staying at a motel! - the same fatal weekend that Marion was at the Bates motel.

---

probably in the house they grew up in.

---

I never thought of THAT one. Yes..if the parents were dead(and novel and the original screenplay confirmed this), Lila and Marion might very well have been able to move into the parental home.

---

I think Lila had to have felt betrayed and in disbelief over Marion's sudden abandonment of her.

---

There is a desperate, pressured quality to Lila from the moment she arrives at Sam's hardware store. She's been confronted with Marion having "stolen some money" -- a major shock just there (you never really KNOW people, do you?) And the fugitive run. And now...the disappearance.

As a character matter, we DO see Lila PUSHING various men to "do something" -- first Arbogast, then Sam, then Sheriff Chambers -- then back to Sam again for the final confrontation at the Bates Motel. And her pushing works -- particularly with Arbogast, who gets vital information and then disappears himself.

---
CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Their parents are gone, and like Norman and Mother, they only had each other

---
Again, the novel speaks to the loss of the parents directly. And in a scene in the movie cut from the screenplay, Lila discusses this with Sam -- and how Marion gave up college to support her younger sister Lila by working the real estate job.

The loss of that scene to Psycho is a major one even as it is understandable. In the movie, Hitchcock maintains the "accelerating thriller" excitement by cutting from Sam and Lila at the church with the Chamberses to them in the car heading out to the Bates Motel(and the movie ALWAYS gets scary when someone goes to the Bates Motel)
with the briefest blip of suspense-inducing dialogue ("We're going to register as man and wife...and then we're going to search every inch of the place.") Exciting indeed -- but that missing scene DID allow the audience to learn about Lila and Marion as co-dependent orphans and DID offer a glimpse into Sam's guilt over the marriage thing and both of their fears that Marion must be dead.

--
(okay, Marion also had Sam, on the side).

---

And clearly Lila knew about him...she flew(?) to Fairvale and his hardware store. (Well, nearby Redding, a real city, has an airport.) But how MUCH did Lila know about him? Its left unsaid. To me the issue is how LILA seems to have no man. Dinner for three, not four. No man with Lila in Fairvale(though she may have ditched him to keep him in the dark about Marion.) No man called BY Lila.

Van Sant's remake made its point(evidently through her clothes, belt and belt keys) that Lila is a lesbian, which seemed neither here nor there to her plot role, except for fending off a couple of too friendly touches by Sam(a bad touch, I thought.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Then suddenly one Friday Marion bolts and goes missing, without leaving any note behind.

--

You can figure that Lila went into a panic mode upon coming home (Sunday night?) and finding no Marion there at home. You could say that Marion was cruel and unthinking in her actions, but we also know that Marion "went a little mad." Marion's decision to stay overnight at the Bates Motel even after she learns that Sam is only 15 miles away reflects, to me, Marion's internal decision to "hold up on the endgame," and give herself time to think about the reality of her theft. I expect the impact on Lila is part of her mental review.

---

Marion imagines a phone conversation between Lowery and Lila where we only hear Lowery's side, but Marion imagines him saying Lila is deeply worried about her. She knows what she is putting her sister through.

---

Yes. Those imagined voices are part of the brilliance of Psycho -- how often did/does ANY movie create that kind of emotion out of IMAGINED voices? And we don't hear LILA's voice because -- unlike as with Lowery, Cassidy, and Caroline -- we haven't MET her yet. Briliiant logic.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

There is a lot for an actress here,

---

I expect you are here reacting to Julianne Moore complaining that "she had no character to play here" with Lila and you know...she was very wrong. Oh, Lila didn't get to hyper-emote and cry at the top of her lungs and go catatonic or such things that a first class diva like Julianne Moore LIKES to do...but there is a sad heart to Psycho and its Lila.

Indeed, we can figure that one reason Hitchcock DID cut the Lila/Sam car scene and later, during the psychiatrist's speech, he cut Lila crying at news of Marion's death is -- his actors and writer made these people so REAL that the usual 'horror movie" thriller-type story would be emotionally undercut by too much crying. "There's no crying in baseball!" -- or in horror movies, evidently.

---

her fearing for a loved one gone missing, her stunned realization that a family member has suddenly turned fugitive from justice, and maybe some self-reproach, too, about being disconnected from her sister enough to miss the signs of her desperation. And also the deep foreboding that Marion is, indeed, already dead.

---

Yes, all of that , very clearly. I know that Sam seems to get a bad rap during all this -- doesn't seem quite caring ENOUGH about Marion's disappearance -- but I think he feels a quieter kind of guilt. As I like to point out, the whole reason that Marion suffers such a terrifying and painful death is because the Bates Motel is NEAR SAM. If she never met Sam, she never would have driven towards Fairvale. She never would have stopped at the Bates Motel. I figure that Sam will know that for the rest of his life.

[–] jay440 (107) 4 months ago

No surprise that the novel has much more about the characters' pasts than the movie. Hitchcock and his writer are pretty relentless with the scissors.
Psycho offers just enough of Sam's backstory to forestall the question "Why doesn't Sam marry Marion?"
All we get about Sam is that he can't make any money until he pays off his father's debts, and that he has an ex-wife "living on the other side of the world." Presumably she met money (a Cassidy?) and is traveling the world living the high life on her Sugar Daddy's dime, yet still bleeding Sam dry in alimony payments. She was probably the high school beauty, like Cybil Shephard in The Last Picture Show.

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

No surprise that the novel has much more about the characters' pasts than the movie. Hitchcock and his writer are pretty relentless with the scissors.

--

Yes. Hitchcock in one of his interviews said that when he purchased a novel for filming, he first worked with his screenwriter on taking things OUT...because a movie of any given book "verbatim"(even a short book like Psycho) would run for four hours or more. Also its quicker to read backstory than to see it.

---

Psycho offers just enough of Sam's backstory to forestall the question "Why doesn't Sam marry Marion?"
All we get about Sam is that he can't make any money until he pays off his father's debts, and that he has an ex-wife "living on the other side of the world." Presumably she met money (a Cassidy?) and is traveling the world living the high life on her Sugar Daddy's dime, yet still bleeding Sam dry in alimony payments. She was probably the high school beauty, like Cybil Shephard in The Last Picture Show.

--

I definitely pictured the high school beauty, because Sam was clearly a high school hunk -- BMOC, probably football player -- whose background was just too hardscrabble to please a woman who wanted the best things in life. Psycho was released when divorce was less frequent and less "acceptable" and Sam sounds trapped...paying for a woman who left him who may well be with another man.

The "paying off his father's debts" thing seems suspect to me today. Do people have to pay off their late parents debts? I suppose rather the issue was that Sam wanted to keep his father's hardware store going as his own business and had to take over THOSE debts to keep it running. There is a long passage in Bloch's Psycho where Sam thinks about(tells US) how the people of Fairvale go out of their way to support his business to help him "dig out" -- but if he does anything wrong, they'll stop (so he doesn't want them knowing about Mary/Marion yet.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

"On the natural," there is a linkage between Norman Bates running HIS "family business" -- a decrepit hotel -- while living alone up in the big house even as Sam Loomis runs HIS family business -- a perfectly functional hardware store while living alone in his sad little back room office. Psycho underlines its horror with the "banal everyday bleakness" of people trying to stay financially afloat.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

The dynamte screenplay of May December is a first script original piece by Samy Burch. She discusses her story here:
https://www.indiewire.com/awards/consider-this/samy-burch-may-december-interview-1234931909/
It's currently picked to get an Oscar nom but not a win. That said, it's good enough to win I think and she's got a good story (emerging from the casting dept), and the Acad. has a track record of honoring young female writers: S. Coppola, Diablo Cody, Emerald Fennell, Sarah Polley.

One interesting fact about Burch (not mentioned in the article) is that she has another script in production and in fact the film's finished: Coyote vs Acme. This now notorious $70 million animated film was finished and tested well but a Warner Bros exec. decided not to release it! Controversy exploded - and the exec has, I believe been fired, and the release is back on. Anyhow, Burch is having quite the beginning to a newfound screenwriting career.

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

The Golden Globes is PERFECT for Barbie, btw -- because the Globes has a "Comedy or Musical Category" as well as a "Drama" category for movies and its in "Comedy or Musical" where Barbie can clean up and make all sorts of commercials about winning Best Picture(Comedy or Musical) etc. Which is OK.

---

I thought I would follow up here a bit as to how the Golden Globes having a "comedy and musical" category benefitted Hitchcock at the Golden Globes(only) with some nominations:

Family Plot landed a Best Actress nomination for Barbara Harris(Madame Blanche) ...in the "Comedy or Musical" category. (she didn't win.

Frenzy landed four nominations:

Best Picture
Best Director(Hitchcock)
Best Screenplay(Anthony Shaffer)
Best Score(Ron Goodwin)

because....Cabaret moved to the "Comedy or Musical" category, and thus opened up some "Drama" slots. TV host Merv Griffin had Hitchcock on his show and praised him for his Golden Globe noms -- even in the 70's, the Globes could be used for promotional value even if the Oscars were "the real deal." (Neither Frenzy nor Family Plot got any Oscar nominations.)

Meanwhile, back at Psycho, Janet Leigh famously lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Shirley Jones(for Elmer Gantry) but Leigh DID win the Golden Globe for Psycho(Supporting) and I've noticed in recent years, that Golden Globe win is always mentioned about Leigh. Again, the GGs now have great PROMOTIONAL value.

CONT

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

On the Golden Globes' 'Comedy or Musical' division for the top awards; it often leads to controversy. I remember Get Out raising eyebrows as a CorM (the writer/director Jordan Peele had a brilliant line about the controversy - he thought that GO was a documentary so it was clearly in the wrong category!). And The Martian somehow won the GG for Best CorM film in 2015 when Ridley Scott doesn't have funny bone in his body. Anyhow, May December got the CorM classification this year. If you stream it/watch it on Netflix as I did then it doesn't seem that comedic. Apparently if you see it with a group in a theater, however, there are a lot of laughs. E.g. all the insider-y nudging from the score (repurposed from The Go-between (1971)) which at home feels more like an over-studied queer-studies affectation - which Haynes has often strayed into in the past - reads as campy fun in urban center arthouses. One of the mavens of film-youtubery, Broey Deschanel, had an epic vid. on this phenomenon, the history of 'melodrama' and much more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7yoK1Eyvt0
Make sure you see MD yourself before diving into all this tho'. Note that Haynes has talked a lot about how Bergman's Persona (1966) was one of his polestars for MD. Bergman is one of the least comedic, least campy writers and directors to ever exist, so there's that too.

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

On the Golden Globes' 'Comedy or Musical' division for the top awards; it often leads to controversy.

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Well its a great place for movies to definitely get nominations -- and sometimes WINS - that they will NEVER get at the Oscars and hence...promotional value.

I think a lot of studios and stars were distressed by the multi-year end of the Golden Globes over its racism controversy.
They lost those "outside chances at awards" and they lost their "funny drunken party." MORE stars came to the Golden Globes than the Oscars BECAUSE those two categories doubled the nominees.

The deal (usually) with the Golden Globes -- lets use Best Actor as an example -- is that the guy who wins "Best Actor, Drama" will be the Oscar winner and the guy who wins "Best Actor, Comedy" is clearly out of the race. (Example: John Travolta won Best Actor comedy for Get Shorty, not the Oscar -- that in his GG acceptance speech he thanked L. Ron Hubbard didn't help.)

Leo DiCaprio won "Best Actor, Comedy" for The Wolf of Wall Street and started his speech with "I'd like to honor my fellow comedians," with a wry laugh. Like...why am I HERE?

CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

I remember Get Out raising eyebrows as a CorM (the writer/director Jordan Peele had a brilliant line about the controversy - he thought that GO was a documentary so it was clearly in the wrong category!).

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Ha on all counts. Well...it won, didn't it? I remember some "comedy" near the end as the hero's cop(security guard?) friend showed up for a not-necessary rescue.

I'm reminded that Hitchcock kept saying Psycho was a comedy( but he didn't mean THAT way.) I guess it has enough jokes to qualify but..there is NOTHING funny about that shower murder.

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And The Martian somehow won the GG for Best CorM film in 2015 when Ridley Scott doesn't have funny bone in his body.

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Ha. Again -- and this COULD apply to Psycho -- perhaps a drama with enough one-liners in it can qualify as a comedy. (Big laughs in Psycho when Norman acts like he "suddenly remembers" that Marion was here -- "Oh., yeah..you know, its not a very good picture of her." Or Sam saying to Norman "Living out here alone...would drive me crazy," Norman back "That would be a rather extreme reaction.")

The Martian was one of those "unexpected career saver hits" for the Unsinkable Matt Damon, by the way. The GG noms didn't hurt. I thought the plot was very intelligent but this was one of those "middle of the road hits" to me.

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CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

Anyhow, May December got the CorM classification this year.

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No kidding. About a woman who had a baby with a 13 year old. This could end up being the most delicate dance Hollywood has to dance with the public...accusations of pedophilia and "grooming" run rampant these days. And yet I will personally STILL defend Licorice Pizza for its carefully delineated story.

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If you stream it/watch it on Netflix as I did then it doesn't seem that comedic. Apparently if you see it with a group in a theater, however, there are a lot of laughs.

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Well, there were a lot of laughs in The Martian too. And -- yep -- a lot of laughs in Psycho. WITH, not AT.

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E.g. all the insider-y nudging from the score (repurposed from The Go-between (1971)) which at home feels more like an over-studied queer-studies affectation - which Haynes has often strayed into in the past - reads as campy fun in urban center arthouses. One of the mavens of film-youtubery, Broey Deschanel, had an epic vid. on this phenomenon, the history of 'melodrama' and much more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7yoK1Eyvt0

--

What? I need to understand further.. I will.

Note in passing: I've always made direct connection of Todd Haynes from his ACTING role (as the illl-fated piano player in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, he's quite good) to his direction of the truly wrenching "In the Bedroom" which had Tom Cruise's rather unattractive male cousin as the film's murderous villain. Took me years to understand that Cruise's cousin got his role in "In the Bedroom" BECAUSE of Tom Cruise and Eyes Wide Shut.

[–] swanstep (2619) 4 months ago

I've always made direct connection of Todd Haynes from his ACTING role (as the illl-fated piano player in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, he's quite good) to his direction of the truly wrenching "In the Bedroom"

Wrong Todd! That's Todd Field who directed Tar last year.

Todd Haynes directed the brilliant 'Julianne Moore's allergic to the world' movie, Safe (1995) - my fave movie from that year, ahead of great things like Se7en, Heat, Welcome to the Dollhouse, To Die For, and Toy Story... it's that good! - (bit of a mess but has its moments) Velvet Goldmine, (more Julianne Moore brilliance) Far From Heaven, (Cate Blanshett, Heath Ledger and others all play Dylan - it's artsy see) I'm Not There, (Cate Blanshett and Rooney Mara in Patricia Highsmith's 1950s lesbian tale - pretty good!) Carol. Haynes also made a very good, well-received HBO mini-series of Mildred Pierce w/ Kate Winslet in the 2000s- not easy to do since the 1945 movie original with Joan Crawford is a beloved, near-masterpiece at least. Impressive.

While they're very different film-makers, and make different sorts of intense artsy dramas (Haynes films are gay-er and more academic feeling), Field and Haynes *do* use the same prestige actresses a *lot*, so are easy to mix up from their output alone.

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

I've always made direct connection of Todd Haynes from his ACTING role (as the illl-fated piano player in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, he's quite good) to his direction of the truly wrenching "In the Bedroom"

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Wrong Todd! That's Todd Field who directed Tar last year.

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Whooops! This is where I should act like Martin Short as the beleagured, chain smoking business crook being interrogated by Mike Wallace(Harry Shearer) in an old SNL filmed bit: "I KNEW that...you're not telling me anything that I didn't know..." Ha.

I will also invoke a self-made rule about not erasing my original post on this. Let the mistake -- and the correction -- stand.

Also, I never said I matched you in expertise, swanstep. But hey, at least "Todd" triggered something. And there's more:

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Todd Haynes directed the brilliant 'Julianne Moore's allergic to the world' movie, Safe (1995) - my fave movie from that year,

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...and I DID see "Safe," on release in an art theater and I did like the story and its slow creep towards some real psychological disturbance.

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ahead of great things like Se7en, Heat, Welcome to the Dollhouse , To Die For, and Toy Story... it's that good! -

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Casino for me that year.

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(bit of a mess but has its moments) Velvet Goldmine, (more Julianne Moore brilliance) Far From Heaven,

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Saw Far From Heaven, liked its pre-Mad Men take on 50's upper class New York suburbia(I know it was re-re-making a 50s Rock Hudson movie with an African American character.

I did not catch the others, but there is time.

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CONT

[–] roger1 (2351) 4 months ago

While they're very different film-makers, and make different sorts of intense artsy dramas (Haynes films are gay-er and more academic feeling), Field and Haynes *do* use the same prestige actresses a *lot*, so are easy to mix up from their output alone.

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"And that's exactly my point!" as Arbogast once said.

I feel that we have an oddly "set" pool of prestige acting talent _ Meryl Streep is somewhat phasing out, but Cate Blanchett is going strong (at the 2008 Oscars for 2007 films, they had a spoof film to show Cate Blanchett as starring in everything -- even as the attack cartel dog chasing Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men) and Julianne Moore is clearly still a contender. Jessica Chastain has seemed to join them as "Oscar bait."

I like how Chastain went from winning an Oscar for playing Tammy Faye straight to another biopic as Tammy Wynette(opposite Michael Shannon as George Jones). Jessica's Oscar bait this year has her in a romance between a man and a woman with memory problems(called "Memory" natch.) I know Julianne Moore won the Oscar a few years ago for HER Alzheimer's movie. I have no interest in making light of a serious disease that affects many families but I CAN perhaps make light of too many movies being made on the subject so as to showcase an actor.

I remember how a coupla decades ago Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman headlined "The Hours" (was that for Weinstein?) and Nicole rather had to wear a fake nose (as Virginia Woolf) to stand out and win the Best Actress Oscar that year ("The winner...by a nose." said presenter Denzel.) Evidently Bradley Cooper is looking to repeat the nose win with Maestro. And HE is part of that pool of talent, too, male division. Small pool, what with Daniel Day Lewis retiring years ago (does he mean it? We'll find out.)