And The Nominees Are: Breaking Down the Ten 2023 Best Picture Hopefuls

I love the Oscars.  I hate the Oscars.  I like the Oscars.  Do I like like the Oscars?  Guys, stop.  We’re just friends.  I don’t even think of them like that.  Oh my god, stop.  You’re being so stupid right now.

Since childhood, I’ve felt every kind of emotion possible towards the Academy Awards.  The first Oscars broadcast I remember watching live with some sort of concept as to what was actually going on was the 70th Academy Awards, the one where TITANIC completed its year-long Wilt Chamberlain-esque dominance against all of Hollywood by winning eleven trophies.  It was also the one where they trotted out seventy past winners for a special “Family Album” segment, which I sort of remember being awkward even at the time.  Still, an undeniable magic emanated from the ceremony through the television and into my brain.

From there, I entered a years-long period of being super into the Oscars.  All the way through high school, I became an Oscars nerd (girls loved it).  I carried around a little pocket book that listed all the past winners and nominees in every category, as well as a brief write-up of every past ceremony (girls loved it).  I even mastered the art of putting together an Oscars ballot, realizing early on that if you wanted to win a pool, you had better stop voting with your heart and start investing in an Entertainment Weekly or Variety subscription in order to read the tea leaves (girls loved it).  My shining achievement was winning the grand prize at an Oscars party in 2006, which netted me both a DVD copy of the 2003 David Spade movie DICKIE ROBERTS: FORMER CHILD STAR and a box set of special features for the 2005 remake of KING KONG (which I hadn’t seen).

And then, I entered a even-more-years-long period of rebuking the Academy Awards, deciding I had finally seen through their shiny veneer, and assessing it as a ceremony that was more interested in rewarding mediocrity and pleasuring its own phallus rather than actually celebrating art, unlike the then-recent past where they were lavishing awards to CHICAGO and CRASH.  Looking back, it’s obvious I was just walking around with a cognitive disorder that most men in their early twenties suffer from known as Being a Butthead (symptoms include just knowing you’re the smartest and most cultured person in any given room, saying the words “devil’s advocate” more than once a day, and finding any excuse in any conversation to be a chippy little bitch).  But at the time, I really did think the quality of movies had cratered and was in disbelief that the Academy could put on a show every winter and pretend that they hadn’t.

Now, I still feel like the overall state of Hollywood is rather dire and too much mediocre slop is getting regaled with accolades by default.  But, I now can’t really think of the Oscars without thinking of a quote from comedy uber-producer Lorne Michaels in regards to SNL’s unique creative process: “the show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30”.  

So it goes with the Academy Awards.  They’re not given out because there’s finally enough great flicks to bring honor to.  They’re given out because it’s almost spring and they just happen every year.  As a result, some years they really got it (what a year 2007 ended up being, eh?) and some years they really do not (quick, the 94th Academy Awards were less than two years ago, what won Best Picture?).  But if you accept them as merely a snapshot as to what we’re guessing might be enduring works in the field, they never become anything less than fascinating, even when they end up being completely incorrect.  Even people who profess to hate the ceremony and not care about them at all seem uniquely obsessed with them, just from a different angle.

As it happens, this year’s crop of Best Picture* nominees feel like a more interesting pool than in years past.  It’s a mix of populist blockbusters, esoteric and challenging films being presented to the mainstream, international crossover hits, and traditional Oscars fare.  It’s a pretty good cross-section of genres and, thus, felt like a good list to work my way through this month.

*Not that Best Picture is the be all and end all of Academy Award nominee pools, it just feels the most straight-forward.  “Here are the ten best movies of the year”, the claim seems to be.  You don’t need to know anything about acting technique or editing processes in order to weigh in.

So…let’s take a look at this crop of ten and see what we have here.  I don’t know that I’m necessarily going to do this every year, but I’m more excited to dig into the Best Picture nominees than I have in literally half a decade or so, and I don’t think I’m alone.  But, are any of them any good?  Read along and find out!

AMERICAN FICTION

DIRECTED BY: Cord Jefferson

WRITTEN BY: Cord Jefferson

STARRING: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Actor (Jeffrey Wright), Best Supporting Actor (Sterling K. Brown), Best Adapted Screenplay (Cord Jefferson), Best Original Score (Laura Karpman)

An imperfect first feature, but perhaps the best kind of imperfect first feature.  AMERICAN FICTION is a movie bursting with ideas and creativity, and feels for all the world like a story Jefferson (who has a ton of comedy bonafides, but whose GOOD PLACE work I was personally most familiar with) has been sitting and thinking about for a long time.  Its main story is of a well-regarded, but beleaguered, author (Wright) who is told his work doesn’t sell due to it not being “Black enough” (which means everything you might imagine it to mean).  In a fury, he submits a joke manuscript (under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh) filled with every maddening Black literature trope in the book: street vernacular, drug slinging, gang members in durags.  He then has to deal with the reality of it becoming critically-acclaimed in its own right, and threatens to become his first bona-fide financial hit.   The satire is occasionally brutal, but always honest, to the point where I genuinely fear I’m coming off sounding like one of those goddamn literary judges in this very here sentence.  How’s that for meta?

Where you can feel Jefferson’s voice still forming is in the movie’s awkward marriage between its vicious satirical eye towards the performative activism of…well, essentially every artistic domain, and its desire to also be a relatively straight-forward family drama.  Monk attends a literary seminar back home in Boston, just in time for Mom (Leslie Uggams) to begin developing Alzheimer’s.  His sister Lisa (an underused Tracee Ellis Ross) passes away suddenly and his estranged brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) is in town for the funeral.  Monk maybe learns to open his heart when he begins dating the woman down the street.  You get the idea.

AMERICAN FICTION is actually competent on either side of its story’s coin, but you can’t help but wish that it backed up and picked a lane for now.  Still, you have to admire a movie that is willing to take a slightly Oscar bait-y tale and infuse it with a keenly observed indictment in the way well-meaning white people in power infantilize and commodify stories of black trauma in order to assuage guilt (and maybe feel like they did something) at the expense of other types of stories by black voices.

Despite the structural whiplash, Jefferson has created a movie that has guided Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown to their first Academy Award nomination (which feels impossible).  I’m genuinely excited to see what Jefferson comes up with next.

(Plus, this movie features Adam Brody doing what he does best: playing a dirtbag Hollywood producer.  What’s not to love?)

ANATOMY OF A FALL

DIRECTED BY: Justine Triet

WRITTEN BY: Justine Triet, Arthur Harari

STARRING: Sandra Huller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Director (Justine Triet), Best Actress (Sandra Huller), Best Original Screenplay (Justine Triet and Arthur Harari), Best Editing (Laurent Senechal)

I have a very specific fear, one that has developed concurrent with the meteoric rise of true crime documentaries, podcasts and television networks.  

My fear is that I will one day wake up or come home and find my wife dead under a bizarre circumstance.  The fear doesn’t stem from the death of a spouse (although I should make clear I also fear that, and would find that devastating), but, rather, the routine investigation that comes after.  I know a lot about myself, and one thing I’ve learned is that I do not hold up well under scrutiny.  Especially when I’m aware that the person scrutinizing thinks I’ve done something I didn’t.  I get squirrely, nervous, agitated.  Suspicious.

I’m nervous that everyone’s going to think I killed my wife, is what I’m saying.

So, yes, I found ANATOMY OF A FALL very nerve-wracking.

It’s a rather exquisitely constructed movie, a film that delivers on its titular promise.  A man mysteriously falls out of an attic window.  His wife stands accused.  Along the way, several isolated moments from their marriage get pulled apart, analyzed, ripped apart.  We also learn about the zany game that is the French judicial system (allegedly; I suspect it’s heightened here for dramatic effect just like American legal dramas).  Their blind son gets pushed to tell “his side of the story”.  A dog gives one of the best goddamn animal performance since Rin Tin fuckin’ Tin.

However, the entire two-and-half-hour film seems to hinge on one crucial, extended sequence: the pivotal argument Sandra and Daniel have the day before his fateful fall (or murder?).  ANATOMY OF A FALL tries to keep it as ambiguous as possible whether Sandra is guilty or innocent; even by the end when the court makes its decision, an argument could be made that they got it wrong.  Thus, this argument (which begins as an orated transcript before transitioning to full-on chamber scene) needs to keep this ambiguity while still giving both characters reasons for their intense anger and unhappiness.  

Mission accomplished.  In a scene that probably runs about ten minutes or so, we get a full picture of a marriage built on resentment and stifled creativity.  He’s mean and obstinate.  She’s cold and seemingly uncaring.  It’s not pleasant (and not the kind of thing I would ever want put in a public record), and it’s certainly damning.  But does it mean she did it?  You’ll have to watch to decide, even though you can’t know for sure.  And that’s the power of ANATOMY OF A FALL.

Oh, and a steel drum cover of 50 Cent plays way more pivotal of a role than you might expect

BARBIE

DIRECTED BY: Greta Gerwig

WRITTEN BY: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach

STARRING: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrara, Will Ferrell, Michael Cera, Kate McKinnon, Rhea Perlman

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling), Best Supporting Actress (America Ferrara), Best Adapted Screenplay (Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach), Best Production Design (Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer), Best Costume Design (Jacqueline Durran), Best Original Song (“What Was I Made For?” - Billie Eilish & Finneas O’Connell; “I’m Just Ken” - Mark Ronson & Andrew Wyatt)

BARBIE has unfortunately become a somewhat difficult movie to discuss on online spaces over the past couple of months.  Think it got snubbed at the Oscars (despite it receiving eight nominations, including those for Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie)?  Think it’s a groundbreaking and important blockbuster?  Think it’s a man-hating woke disasterpiece*?  Think it’s pretty good, but with some messiness?  Congratulations!  Someone on the Internet probably thinks you’re an idiot.

*Although this take isn’t as prevalent as people seem to want to think, it’s always been a criticism I’ve found fascinating, since it’s an instant confession that the critic in question either didn’t see the movie, or went into it with that opinion ready to go and worked backwards.  BARBIE is man-teasing, perhaps, but it definitely and obviously isn’t hating.  Much of the movie’s power actually comes from its observation that the answer to female subjugation is not male subjugation.

Such is life for a movie that has undeniably spoken to the masses in a way I’m not sure anybody thought possible prior to its release.  And, why shouldn’t it have?  Although the claims of it being the first original blockbuster of a generation is a little disingenuous (it is based off of a popular toy, after all), it is the first in a while to be as audacious and colorful and funny as it is.  It has a great cast, some of whom feel like they’re being properly cast in a movie for the first time (Kate McKinnon as “Weird Barbie” comes immediately to mind).  The songs are bright, colorful, and clever.  The sets are tactile and gorgeous.  It’s even got something to say about the world.  BARBIE was just a good goddamn time at the movies.

I have my quibbles about it.  For instance, I’m not convinced “beach you off” is as funny as the movie clearly believes.  I also thought America Ferrara’s big speech reads better on the pge than it does on the screen, if only because it makes too literal the theses that the rest of the movie had been doing a remarkable job communicating thematically up to that point, one of the only times BARBIE seemed to be courting clapping over anything else.

But then…I don’t think movies need to be perfect in order to be effective and resonate.  BARBIE is a big blockbuster with a brain.  Isn’t this what we’ve been clamoring for for years?  I don’t think it’s going to win the big prize this weekend (and there are better movies amongst its competition), but it absolutely deserves to be in the conversation.  It’s a win.  Can’t wait for four toy-based movies that are doomed to fail over the next couple of summers!

THE HOLDOVERS

DIRECTED BY: Alexander Payne

WRITTEN BY: David Hemingson

STARRING: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Actor (Paul Giamatti), Best Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Best Original Screenplay (David Hemingson), Best Editing (Kevin Tent)

The most straight-forward heart-warming crowd-pleaser amongst the ten, I could tell THE HOLDOVERS was working for me when I realized I wasn’t all that bothered by watching a blatant Christmas movie very out of season, something that usually drives me crazy.

I suspect for many, Alexander Payne’s latest starts clicking immediately, as the old-school 70’s blue Ratings Board notice appears, followed by retro production company logos appearing on the screen.  This is a film that is unabashedly trying to fit itself into the New Hollywood aesthetic, complete with somewhat grainy film stock, a mellow soundtrack and, most importantly, character-based storytelling.  I actually kinda thought literally busting out the old logos was pushing the aesthetic close to 70’s movie kabuki, and I immediately worried this was going to be more of a stunt than anything else.

I shouldn’t have been concerned.  THE HOLDOVERS is so committed to telling the kind of story that the New Hollywood movement was known for making.  It focuses on a set of losers, and allows them to have flaws and contradictory feelings.  It really gets going when it focuses down from a story about a set of prep school students left behind on campus for the holidays (the literal “holdovers”) to a story of just one holdover, Angus Tully (Sessa), and the bond he begins to form with his cranky classics professor Paul Hunham (Giamatti) and the school’s kitchen manager Mary Lamb (Randolph).  

THE HOLDOVERS is a movie about people who have been left behind in one way or another, and have essentially resigned themselves from ever forging connections with others, from moving on from their disappointing pasts and futures.  But, as what so often happens during the Christmas season (whose aesthetic this movie wears like a friggin’ glove; how perfect a setting is snowy Massachusetts for something like this?), an opportunity for renewal and hope and revival.  All three of our main characters have been diverted from the idea of ever having something resembling a normal family unit.  But maybe they can be the family they make, not the one they have.

It’s all well-worn territory in Hollywood filmmaking, true.  But when it’s approached not with treacly manipulation but with such sincerity as it is here, who can complain?  

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

DIRECTED BY: Martin Scorsese

WRITTEN BY: Martin Scorsese, Eric Roth

STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DeNiro, Lily Gladstone

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Actress (Lily Gladstone), Best Supporting Actor (Robert DeNiro), Best Cinematography (Rodrigo Prieto), Best Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), Best Production Design (Jack Fisk and Adam Willis), Best Costume Design (Jacqueline West), Best Original Score (Robbie Robertson), Best Original Song (“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” - Scott George) 

This is the only one I get to cheat a little bit on.  I already wrote a whole-ass article about this one in November, and my generally positive thoughts haven’t changed in the weeks and months since.  The details of this true story are still infuriatingly evil, Scorsese grapples with the tricky question of “whose story is this to tell, really?” about as well as anybody can (despite many people still feeling otherwise), and DiCaprio still has a stupid grimace on his face for the entire three and a half hours.  

When I reflect back on it, however, what strikes me about KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON is its simplicity.  Compared to the other 180-minute star-studded epic in this group, Scorsese keeps his flourishes to a relative minimum, with most of the bold stylistic choices kept to the beginning (I still love the presentation of the opening exposition as a 20’s newsreel) and the ending, one of the most purposeful auteur cameos I can think of, and easily the most singular and memorable moment in a movie full of ‘em.  Does it still make me pine for a cadre of indigenous storytellers in Hollywood to tackle this kind of content in the future?  Of course!  But this version is pretty goddamn good.  Scorsese’s still got it at 81 years old.  What a miracle.

MAESTRO

DIRECTED BY: Bradley Cooper

WRITTEN BY: Bradley Cooper, Josh Singer

STARRING: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Maya Hawke, Matt Bomer, Sarah Silverman

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Actor (Bradley Cooper), Best Actress (Carey Mulligan), Best Original Screenplay (Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer), Best Cinematography (Matthew Libatique), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Kau Hiro, Kay Gerogiou and Lori McCoy-Bell), Best Sound (Steven A. Morrow, Richard King, Jason Ruder, Tom Ozanich, and Dean Zupancic)

There’s exactly one scene where MAESTRO functions as intended, where the movie’s actual subject successfully transforms into its intended subject.  We watch Leonard Bernstein teach a conducting class, walking an aspiring student through a fermata he is struggling to transition his orchestra out of.  Bradley Cooper as Bernstein is easygoing, warm, knowledgeable, direct but not mean.  Most crucially, you actually learn something about music!  The student’s trouble is audible, and Bernstein’s solution is clear even to those who don’t know the first thing about classical music.  It’s actually quite wonderful.

Naturally, we then cut to Bernstein dancing with this student in a club as Tears for Fears blares on the soundtrack.  The movie ends about ninety seconds later.  Thanks for nothing, MAESTRO.

Yeah, I fucking hated this.  Despite all my efforts to keep my biases in check, I suspected that this was going to happen; it’s the lone Best Picture nominee that feels perfunctory, like it got in simply by checking all the right boxes on a list (even the “Holocaust” nominee this year feels different from others of its ilk).  It’s a biopic with a beloved actor desperate for an Academy Award that touches on themes such as art, cancer, being gay, and being an asshole.  What’s not to love?

I don’t mean to, nor even really want, to speak ill of either Bernstein or Cooper.  Bernstein is one of the great mythic figures of the twentieth century, whose mind (like all the great ones) was a series of contradictions.  Even after a bad time at the movies, I’m eager to re-engage with his work and dig into his life.  And I harbor no true hate for my man Brad!  I’ve liked him for over twenty years now, going all the way back to his time on Alias. (remember Alias?)  I think he has an eye for direction, and I even think the screenplay he co-wrote here is really onto something.  There are a ton of rich themes permeating the story of the Leonard Bernstein-Felicia Montealegre marriage.  Having to share your life and trust with a man who can seldom be himself, a man who has the very soul of music flowing through him, one of the true artists to have ever lived, yet can’t seem to truly connect with many around him….there’s a lot there.

But there’s no room for MAESTRO to really engage with any of those things, outside of lip service.  Because Cooper’s quixotic search for a Best Actor trophy has taken all the oxygen.  Look how much he’s acting here!  He’s acting his ass off!  Holy fuck, he doesn’t even look like Bradley Cooper (because he’s in prosthetics and makeup the entire time)!  How is doing it?  All the while, Carey Mulligan is right beside him doing twice the work with half the effort.

Never mind other things that stuck in my craw: the arbitrary usage of black-and-white for the first forty-five minutes, the even more-arbitrary usage of Bernstein’s music throughout, the fact that you don’t even get much of a sense of why he was special, outside of people constantly saying he is.  Part of me just wants Bradley Cooper to just get his stupid Oscar so he can rid himself of the same cognitive disease that is currently afflicting Amy Adams and threatened to claim Leonardo DiCaprio.  Actually, that reminds me: if Cooper loses this weekend, how do you think he feels about raw animal meat?

OPPENHEIMER

DIRECTED BY: Christopher Nolan

WRITTEN BY: Christopher Nolan

STARRING: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Supporting Actress (Emily Blunt), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Nolan), Best Original Score (Ludwig Goransson), Best Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema), Best Production Design (Ruth De Jong, Claire Kaufman), Best Costume Design (Ellen Mirojnick), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Luisa Abel), Best Film Editing (Jennifer Lame), Best Sound (Gary Rizzo, Richard King, Willie D. Burton and Kevin O’Connell)

I struggle with Christopher Nolan.

This is not a struggle I take lightly.  I want very desperately to be a full-fledged fan of his work.  His movies are literate, exciting, and almost uniformly well-cast.  He has a love for the integrity of both the act of making films as well as watching them, almost to a fault.  He as a man is not nearly as pretentious as his reputation often portends; a quick review of his favorite films reveals a palette that leans grand, meticulous and popular.  I’m fairly certain most people have heard of a majority of the films he loves.  He’s not that esoteric!  This is not a bad thing at all!  It’s imperative there be a high-level filmmaker that is accessible on this level.

I just…don’t ever get that jazzed about his actual movies.  There was only one time I ever felt like I was floating on air after walking out of a theater screening a Nolan film and that was THE DARK KNIGHT and, even then, it was likely the hype talking (I was with a group of friends and had gone out of town in order to see it in IMAX.  Pretty serious stuff).  I never felt that way about the Batman sequel ever again.

For all the other Nolan films post-MEMENTO, I find myself just saying, “it was good, I really did like it” over and over, usually as a closer after spending a couple minutes talking about what I didn’t like about it.

So it goes with OPPENHEIMER, a movie that is frequently thrilling and haunting; how could it not be, given the subject matter.  It looks gorgeous, and shares a similar “Cavalcade of Stars” quality to its supporting cast as KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.  It has its moments of tension, especially impressive when considering most people know where this is all going.  The Trinity test sequence is pretty gripping, even when you know nobody goes up in flames as a result of it.

It’s also a somewhat misunderstood movie.  Contrary to some people’s hand-wringing about it, the movie doesn’t come close to providing a loving portrayal of its titular subject matter; yes, it shows him wrestling with the unique guilt of following your natural passion all the way to creating the ultimate doomsday device.  But depicting guilt isn’t the same thing as asking us to sympathize.  A character in the movie even says this directly to him, albeit in relation to a different topic: “you don’t get to commit sin and then ask us to all feel sorry for you when there are consequences”.  And for those who thought it would have been more respectful to Japanese culture to show the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki getting annihilated by a bomb, let’s just say we disagree.

On the other hand, OPPENHEIMER doesn’t wind up feeling like the whole of its parts.  In particular, I feel like Robert Downey Jr.’s role as Lewis Strauss is overly complicated.  His perspective in the film is peppered throughout the film in black and white, much like the bits of Guy Pearce narrative in MEMENTO.  I suspect (although do not know for sure) that this was broken up in order to keep the last hour of the movie from being bogged down in a lot of hearings and interviews and talks of security clearance revocations.  However, given that the bomb gets dropped right around the end of hour two, guess what ends up happening?  It’s unclear to me if this aspect of the story added much to the movie’s overall power at all.

Is it Nolan’s best work?  It’s possible.  It was certainly fortuitous to become part of the summer’s biggest phenomenon, as it likely pushed a different type of audience towards it; it’s possible this is the first “movie for adults” a lot of younger folks had the opportunity to see.  It’s an important moment in one’s life!  I just wish the movie had been more streamlined (note: this isn’t the same as saying it’s too long).

OPPENHEIMER was good, I really did like it.  It was.  Really!  I did.  Seriously.

PAST LIVES

DIRECTED BY: Celine Song

WRITTEN BY: Celine Song

STARRING: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Original Screenplay (Celine Song)

Having grown up in the era of the “sweet protagonist wants nothing more than to get with the free-wheeling girl of his dreams, if only she weren’t engaged to the biggest asshole on the planet” movie (see: THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and THE WEDDING SINGER, to name just two), I often wondered if the formula would benefit from some rejiggering.  What if, as so often in life, the other guy was actually a nice normal guy, and our two leads realize some things just aren’t meant to be?

Well, I finally got it with PAST LIVES, and it turns out it’s fucking devastating.

The one movie of the ten that feels like it could easily translate to the stage, PAST LIVES is just a sweet, melancholy meditation on the seemingly-little connections we make as we move around this planet that turn out to become lifelong “what if”s.  Effortlessly romantic, the story of Nora (Lee) and Hae Sung (Yoo) is told more or less in three parts: their fun courtship as twelve-year olds in Korea, their reconnection over Skype in their mid-twenties, and their in-person meetup in New York in their thirties.  She’s married now, and settled in a country and city she’s calling her own.  To Hae Sung’s devastation, her white husband (Magaro) is a nice, supportive man (and, to the movie’s immense credit, a fully realized human being).

The honest concept of life being a train ride, with an infinite number of tracks it could possibly go on, but with the subsequent sacrifice of the ones you don’t follow…it’s a difficult one.  Life rarely places you where you imagined it, which doesn’t make reality bad or unpreferable.  But we’re prone to wondering..what if one little thing had gone differently.  Would I be happier?  Would I be where I’m magically supposed to be?  It’s why the movie’s concept of the “past lives” (specially, the idea of in-yun) is so potent and so sweet and so heartbreaking, especially when Hae Sung approaches the concept in a completely different light.  

A small little movie that seems like kind of an Oscars afterthought, if I’m being honest (it only has two nominations), I still admire it for its honest portrayal of complex emotions that I’m willing to bet are very universal, regardless of one’s culture.  

POOR THINGS

DIRECTED BY: Yorgos Lanthimos

WRITTEN BY: Tony McNamara

STARRING: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Director (Yorgos Lanthimos), Best Actress (Emma Stone), Best Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Best Adapted Screenplay (Tony McNamara), Best Original Score (Jerskin Fendrix), Best Production Design (James Price, Shonda Heath & Zsuzsa Mihalek), Best Cinematography (Robbie Ryan), Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier, and Josh Weston), Best Costume Design (Holly Waddington), Best Film Editing (Yorgos Mavropsaridis)

It is here that I will provide my one and only real hot take prediction regarding tomorrow night: I have this gut feeling that Emma Stone is going to win Best Actress over Lily Gladstone, if only because that would be the outcome most perfectly calibrated to cause the biggest shitstorm on Monday morning.

Remember, everybody, “Best ____” on Oscar night usually means “Most ____”.  And it is undeniable Emma Stone is doing the most acting, especially when compared against the way more understated performance from Gladstone in KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.  Look at her walking around funny and making little animal sounds!  She’s really going for it!  When you also consider that this year’s Oscars isn’t predicted to have a bunch of other surprise winners or losers, and also that Stone has won it before and the last time she won, she also managed to be tangentially connected to a bigger controversy….it’s all just too perfect.  I feel fairly strongly about this.

That aside, I actually loved POOR THINGS, and I was a little concerned that I wasn’t going to.  It maybe shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise; I loved THE FAVORITE, although the enduring memory from that was an all-time Olivia Colman performance more than anything else.  I’m not typically a fan of the type of whimsical hyper-stylization that Lanthimos likes to indulge in, as I kinda find it to be a crutch to obscure an inability to tell a narrative.  But POOR THINGS’s story-telling remains crystal clear, even if I had trouble parsing out the meaning of every detail (why was Dafoe burping up bubbles, exactly?).  People seem split on Ruffalo in this, but I actually really enjoyed seeing him go full cartoon character after spending the last ten years playing a theoretical one over in the MCU.  And despite my sort-of swipe at her earlier, I really do think Emma Stone is good in this pseudo-riff on the story of Frankenstein’s monster.  Her original talents as a comic performer (a muscle I feel she gets to flex less and less as time goes on) especially come into play here.

It also has as much on its mind in regards to the way men sexualize and infantilize women as BARBIE does, making the two movies a weirdly perfect double feature.  Sure, POOR THINGS depicts four thousand times as much fornicating (a fact that, admittedly, some critics point to as a undercut of the movie’s feminist ambitions), but nevertheless, it points to an interesting undercurrent of popular themes in Hollywood nowadays.  And the relative success of both with audiences suggests an undercurrent of wanting to see those themes explored.  It’s kinda cool!

THE ZONE OF INTEREST

DIRECTED BY: Jonathan Glazer

WRITTEN BY: Jonathan Glazer

STARRING: Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller

ALSO NOMINATED FOR: Best Director (Jonathan Glazer), Best Adapted Screenplay (Jonathan Glazer), Best International Feature Film, Best Sound (Tarn Willers, Johnnie Burn)

A profoundly difficult movie to talk about, especially when it’s not guaranteed that the person you’re speaking to has seen it or not.  I highly suspect THE ZONE OF INTEREST is even more of a chilling gut punch if you manage to walk into it completely cold.  If you don’t know what its thing is, I recommend ceasing reading further and just go see it, though it should be warned: it’s not a date night movie.

For those who have seen it, or at least now what it’s about…what is there to say?  It’s a Holocaust movie that winds up being the most chilling and effective because of its refusal to actually depict the Holocaust.  It mostly shows us team meetings, reveals of blueprints, of domestic squabbles between our primary German family, living right next door to the infamous Auschwitz death camp.  Of work transfers.  Promotions.  Evil, as it turns out, lives within bureaucracy and structure. 

THE ZONE OF INTEREST strips itself of any sort of narrative comforts we’re used to when it comes to mainstream depictions of the Holocaust.  There are no arcs to speak of, no swelling moments of hope and triumph in the face of human atrocity.  It’s almost boring, at least if it weren’t for the horrifying sound design that feels specifically calculated to trigger a panic attack within you.  You quickly become hyper-vigilant of any variants in noise; is that thumping coming from the house or next door?  The question as to whether this is something that can sustain interest for more than a few minutes is a fair one (and there are some people who have made it clear that this was actually more of a bore than anything else), but it’s hard not to look at this as perhaps the only true Holocaust movie.  Evil has no three-act structure.  For most, it’s just going to work.

The Delightful World of Jacques Tati: Cleaning Out My Criterion Closet

Hello!  This is the first in what will likely be a very occasional series where I take the opportunity to finally go through the various Criterion box sets I have sitting around.  Some of them I bought for myself in the middle of a series of “what does anything matter anyway” shopping sprees back in 2021.  A couple of them I believe were provided to me as a Christmas present.  One I think might have just appeared in my home one day?  Regardless of how they got here, I figured they would each eventually make for some good writin’ content.  At least here’s hoping.

Here we go with the first official entry of the “Cleaning Out My Criterion Closet” series: The Complete Jacques Tati!

(I’m open to suggestions on the series name.)

Let me start with this: I find Jacques Tati delightful.  

His work pushes a lot of my creative buttons, some of which I didn’t know I even had.  His movies are, to a one, lush and bright and colorful and playful, qualities that are always going to win points with me.  Also, I didn’t realize this about myself, but I find Tati’s specific style of quiet observational social satire to be very comforting and warm, especially since it manages to so often be eerily prescient.  On top of everything else, I find myself strangely fascinated with directors who managed to carve out their place in film history with a relatively brief filmography.  Although he has also starred in, written and directed a handful of shorts, Tati’s feature-length directorial count is just six (five, depending on how one wishes to categorize his last movie, 1974’s PARADE).

So, yes, when finally working my way through the Complete Jacques Tati box set I bought myself from Criterion almost three years ago, I found myself smiling often and delighted quite a bit.  Imagine my surprise, then, to find that Tati is a sneakily polarizing filmmaker, at least if the healthy sampling of various Letterboxd reviews, some from mutuals, are anything to go off of.

I should remind everybody that, of course, the Letterboxd app is the first, last and only source for objective truth in film criticism.  All joking aside, plenty of praise is still heaped on Jacques Tati anyway, even by those that don’t profess to get him, and nobody seems to really argue his credentials, either as a visual artist or as a film auteur.  

But a lot of people don’t think he’s all that funny.

It is the singular thing that I see holding people back from really embracing Tati’s filmography.  Going back to Letterboxd, one generally-positive review of MONSIEUR HULOT’S HOLIDAY describes the humor of the film as hitting him “with all the comic force of a gentle breeze and the energy of an afternoon nap”.  A two-and-a-half review of JOUR DE FETE simply reads “it may be time for me to finally accept that tati is not for me”.

To be clear, there’s not a single thing wrong with feeling this way, and it doesn’t invalidate anybody’s film taste to do so; those two particular reviews come from folks whose writing and style of critique I genuinely love and aspire to one day live up to.  But I keep coming back to the question of why certain styles of humor hit with some people and others don’t.  It’s one of those grand questions of being alive to me, roughly equivalent to “Why are we here?” or “Why does God allow people to suffer?” or “Why does my headphone cord always manage to find the perfect corner or edge to get stuck on in order to suddenly yank me backwards?”  The question of how an individual's sense of humor works is ultimately unanswerable, but it feels like a query of vital importance regardless.

I’d be lying if I didn’t have this all in the back of my mind as I went through Tati’s films and shorts over the past couple of months, almost all of them for the first time.  Admittedly, there were periods where I sort of agreed with those who said his style doesn’t click for them.  Then again, there were moments when I couldn’t believe anybody could watch these movies without a big, fat, permanent smile on their faces the whole time.

As it turns out, Jacques Tati is more a state of mind than anything else, and adjusting to his style is half of the fun, the “aha” moment when you realize he is clicking for you.  And it is a singular, practically peerless style, one worth trying to break down to figure out…

….why is Jacques Tati funny for some, and not for others?

———

My first encounter with Tati was only a couple of years ago.

In December 2021, MON ONCLE was the weekly selection for the Arroyo Film Club, a…uh, film club I was (and am!) a member of.  I jumped into Tti’s third feature film relatively cold.  The only things I really knew about it were that a) it was critically acclaimed and b) it was part of a series of loosely connected movies by Jacques Tati starring a character named Monsieur Hulot.  Hulot had a signature look (gray trench coat, hat and a pipe of comical length) and was known for strolling through various social situations that often featured displays of new technology, in this case a modern “house of the future”.  Sounds fun!  I imagined something like Mr. Magoo, a movie filled with humorous set pieces with that old-fashioned “setup, complication, payoff” formula that made many frantic comedies of the 20th century so satisfying.  Imagine all the different contraptions inside that house he would have to tackle and wrangle!  

For those who have seen MON ONCLE, you know that it’s….not really that.  I mean, it’s not not that; it’s not that it doesn’t have good old-fashioned gags.  One of the biggest laughs in the movie is a scene where Hulot starts playing around with the kitchen glassware inside the home of his wealthy sister and brother-in-law.  His wonder and delight in a jug that bounces off the floor is quickly followed by his harsh discovery of a matching tumbler that….doesn’t.  And it is a movie that is mostly made up of comic setpieces that develop a joke all the way through to its logical conclusion; the rubber hose factory is proof enough of that.  It was just the light, patient way in which Tati did it all that threw me off.  His particular sense of humor turned out to be something way more subtle than I was used to.  

For one, it wasn’t a movie that was all that concerned with getting up close and personal with its characters; every shot felt just a little distant, almost literally observational, like I was watching something unfold across the street.  It sounds like nothing more than a simple style choice, but when you reflect back on your favorite comedies, most of them (if not all) rely on close-ups, all the better to accentuate and highlight a given joke, situation or punchline.  Reaction shots are an essential tool in a comedian’s belt.  Not for Tati.  He is much more interested in watching his jokes unfold from afar, almost by accident.  It takes some time to adjust to that!

For two, considering it’s a movie categorized as a “Monsieur Hulot” adventure, he didn’t seem to be the primary focus of MON ONCLE (especially surprising given that he is the titular oncle).  When he is, he’s not always the main driver of the action.  More often, things happen around him: the things he observes in the modern home of his sister and brother-in-law, the light mischief he allows his nephew to get away with, the ridiculous path he must take through his building in order to reach his room.  When things do happen, he barely seems bothered by them.  It was all a much more detached experience than I had ever expected from a bright and colorful French comedy from the 50’s created by a man with a background in clown and mime.  

I definitely liked it.  But as it became my turn to discuss it during the club’s meeting/Zoom session, I couldn’t focus on anything beyond MON ONCLE just…not being what I expected.  It was hard for me to evaluate it on its own terms just because what it was was so different to me.  I was expecting to go to a concert and watch a band play a big, bright march.  What I got was a light, but slightly high-tempo, waltz.

I suspect, and can only suspect, that this might be a similar barrier to entry for others trying to experience Tati for the first time.  It’s not really a question of his movies just being too damn smart for cretins to truly understand (god, do I hate those kinds of arguments), but it is a question of its style of humor being so singular that it’s hard to really process the first time around.  And if it was that discombobulating the first time, why would you go back for a second try?  Frankly, if the box set wasn’t already sitting there daring me to do something with it, I probably wouldn’t have dipped back in.  MON ONCLE wasn’t what I was initially expecting, which can only be processed as disappointment.

Guys and gals, I’m telling you, give Tati another try if you haven’t already.  Watching MON ONCLE a second time, it revealed itself to be a masterpiece.  Because once you can adjust to how he saw the world, his work is quite rich. I really hesitate to call his movies a “vibe” because, either positive or negative, aren’t all movies a “vibe”?  What exactly would a “non-vibe” movie be?  But his best work hits this great cross section of “pleasant” in terms of appearance and “prescient” in terms of content, and it’s genuinely difficult to identify any other movies quite like them.  

What else can you call that but a vibe?  

But like all vibes, they’re only valuable when you can feel them for yourself.  Without that, there’s not much else to hold onto.  But if you’ve watched a few Tatis and you just don’t find yourself loving them, take a little time and revisit.  I’m proof positive that it can make a difference.

After you do that, I recommend doing what I did and start working your way through his relatively brief filmography in order and seeing what emerges.  For me, I started realizing the style choices that once made MON ONCLE vaguely impenetrable to me are actually the precise elements that make him so damn delightful.

———

Something to keep in mind about Jacque Tati’s films is that they really are not the “belly laughs, roll on the floor in fits” kind of comedy, at least not to me in the present day.  Maybe its postwar French audience were in hysterics, but I guess we’ll never know, because they’re presumably all dead.

Regardless, people who complain that his style of humor is just too light to be taken in aren't exactly completely off base or anything.  The jokes on display are observational, almost detached, and Tati applies this method of comedy consistently throughout his filmography, especially the four Hulot films.  He casts himself as the presumably central character (either Hulot or, in 1949’s JOUR DE FETE, Francois the Postman), but then sort of wanders in and out of the narrative at will.  His movies are purposely constructed to feel loose even when, in actuality, they’re constructed with an obsessive eye for detail that made him one of the purest auteurs in all of film (it’s also what ended up cutting his directorial career short, but we’ll get there).  Nothing about his movies are forceful in any way; you are trusted to arrive at the conclusions he’s trying to draw you towards, but they don’t get mad at you if you don’t.

The idea of the detached oblivious protagonist can be found even from his first starring role, in a short entitled “Soigne Ton Gauche!” (Watch Your Left!).  There, he plays a farmer who gets the opportunity to be a boxer.  He takes it with such aplomb, and enters his own little world so quickly, that it seems to be lost on him that he’s very much in the process of getting his ass beat by the professional fighter he’s been set up to fail against.  His first Hulot feature, MONSIEUR HULOT’S HOLIDAY*, is made with the same light touch, as the titular character makes his film debut attempting to relax at a seaside resort.  He makes his entrance in the main hall by innocently leaving the door open, allowing a gust of wind to hit his fellow vacationers; one man’s mustache begins to flap.

*MONSIEUR HULOT’S HOLIDAY is perhaps the one Tati movie that would benefit from a rewatch for me.  I had a pleasant enough time with it, but compared to the next two Hulot movies, it didn’t move me as much.  I also opted for the original cut, which runs about 100 minutes.  I have to wonder if Tati knew what he was doing when he eventually went back in 1978 and recut it to a much tighter 86.  I guess I’ll let you know.

What Jacques Tati seemed to be the most preoccupied with in his art, and what doesn’t really start coming to focus until MON ONCLE, is the increasing reliance on technology into a no-longer-simple postwar world.  It’s never usually set up as a “man vs. machine” battle of wits; more often, we see people interact with new technologies or modern furnishings in order to evoke an ironic “isn’t this silly?” response.  Shots of a television broadcast playing video of Apollo 11 shooting into the stars juxtaposed against a car breaking down on a city freeway.  A dog accidentally triggers an automatic garage door sensor, locking the home owners inside.  Two steps forward, two steps back.  That sort of thing.    

As you might have noticed, the issue with some of his style and observations is that, frankly, they’re so dead-on and prophetic that they don’t even register as jokes in the twenty-first century.  My go-to example: one of the big signifiers of “modernity” at Villa Arpel in MON ONCLE is a garden filled with rocks and a garish (if admittedly playful) fish-shaped water sculpture.  Now, one quick walk around my neighborhood here will show the “front lawn filled with rocks” aesthetic is still a popular style choice, at least where I’m at in central California, and it looks just as odd in real life as it does in MON ONCLE.  

But that’s my point.  It’s not really a joke, now, is it?  A set dressing detail that would likely have seemed exaggerated in 1958 France now just seems like what a nice, modern house looks like in the here and now.  It’s not worth laughing at.  It’s the same as the camper car at the center of 1971’s TRAFIC, a vehicle that comes equipped with everything one needs to rough it in the great outdoors: a water line, a small table and accompanying chairs, a television set.  This is presented as absurd, but it now just seems like a prototype for your average RV.

To view it one way, it’s exactly why Tati’s movies are so thrilling.  His ruminations on our reliance on technology were extremely accurate!  But to view it another way, it’s why his movies can feel so light and so inconsequential.  

What I don’t think anybody can deny is how playful his movies are.  Sets that appear to be constructed one way suddenly collapse to reveal themselves.  Recurring jokes take on a slightly different rhythm, almost as if their creator is aware of you adjusting.  To visit Villa Arpel one more time, I’ll never forget the night-time scene where, as Hulot attempts to get through the gate, the house suddenly appears to have eyes.  Yes, it’s clearly two people in the window, their silhouettes serving as the pupils, but the way they follow Hulot around from afar….it’s simple magic.  How could you not be delighted?

Speaking of being playful, let’s talk a little PLAYTIME.

———

Jacques Tati’s fourth feature film PLAYTIME is probably his biggest feat and my personal favorite of his.  Naturally, it’s the movie that basically ruined him.

It’s a movie told more or less in two parts.  As per Tati norms, the plot is pretty simple, no more than a starting point; this time, Hulot must go into the city in order to attend a meeting.  The first part of PLAYTIME is Hulot’s arrival and introduction to “modern” Paris, a land of glass and concrete where seemingly every building is nothing more than a labored labyrinth built to disconnect its inhabitants.  What was most striking about this section of the film, especially coming off of MON ONCLE, one of the most lush and colorful movies I’ve ever seen, was watching Tati suddenly experiment with a monochromatic tone.  Although ever vibrant, his conception of Paris is one of metallic and uninviting grays.

If PLAYTIME sounds cynical, I’m not certain that’s the goal.  Its primary thesis, at least in the beginning, is that modern city life is divisive by its very nature, even as we all find ourselves crammed into the same space.  A moment I keep thinking about is an overhead shot of an office manager walking over to a cubicle in order to pick up a phone and call another worker sitting in another cubicle across the room.  Another moment is a striking sequence of a modern (and very upscale) apartment building, where everyone seems to be watching the same boxing match, but completely sequestered by thick walls.  They’re unified, yet separate  As usual, Tati doesn’t punctuate any of this.  He just holds the shot long enough for you to arrive at the point on your own, then moves along.

The second half of PLAYTIME, on the other hand, is maybe Tati at his very finest, something that could only be referred to as “the restaurant sequence”, if it’s indeed possible for a singular sequence to take up an hour of runtime.  We sit in a fancy, happening restaurant in Paris (The Royal Garden) just as it begins to open its doors to patrons.  As often happens, things don’t go according to plan.  Pushy diners want to change tables.  Dishes sell out.  Doors get destroyed.  The restaurant begins to run past capacity. 

It’s a thrilling sequence for a plethora of reasons, the first of which is the illusion of it occurring in real time.  It begins with the restaurant opening up for dinner service and its first early-bird diners coming in.  It ends with its drunken patrons stumbling out to the street just in time for the morning cock to crow.  In between, we watch as the internal traffic ebbs and flows, as characters we saw earlier mix and intertwine, as dishes run out, as glass gets destroyed, as drunkards get expelled only to return.  By the time it’s all over, you genuinely feel like you’ve been part of the waitstaff all night.

Second, if you thought Tati was going to hang out in a gray world for too long….bitch, you thought.  It’s not the Arpel house, but the set of The Royal Garden is so satisfying to look at and take in that you’d swear you’d want to live there (or at least take a date to).  It’s a beautiful piece of meticulous scenery, made all the more delightful when it’s revealed that pieces of it have been explicitly designed to get destroyed.

There’s just ... a music to the second half of PLAYTIME  Just like all great compositions, it sets its rhythm just long enough for you to get used to it, and then bam a tempo change occurs, or a sustained note you had previously forgotten was even still playing gets resolved.  As mentioned earlier, the glass front door shatters and breaks.  Shit, now what?  Later, after we have just enough time to forget about it entirely, the solution is revealed: the doorman holds the brass handle and continues to let people in and out as if the door was still functioning.  Play time, indeed.

PLAYTIME is perhaps not an intuitive movie; it was not a success upon its release, and it severely stifled Tati’s career.  Why didn’t it do better?  For starters, Hulot as a character is even more hands-off than in previous entries, which may have alienated audiences, both then and now.  Compared to MON ONCLE, Hulot seems to be a supporting character in his own movie.  He disappears for large stretches, the screen time deferred to an American tourist just as lost and in awe of Paris as Hulot himself.  This was an intentional choice, meant as a compromise between art and commerce; Tati had started to become bored of the Hulot character, yet his movies would lose a sellable angle without him.  Thus, PLAYTIME is designed to make Hulot mostly invisible.

Alternatively, PLAYTIME could maybe never have been successful enough to make back its money.  The shoot just went on for too long, and cost too much to have ever been viable.  The entire movie is essentially one big massive, multifaceted, tactile set (dubbed “Tativille”, which took half a year to construct alone, from September 1964 to March 1965).  To actually shoot the damn thing took them from April 1965 to October 1966 (!).  The money frequently ran out, with heavy reliance on government grants to get the project done.  Tati’s persistent, obsessive need for control over every detail of the world he constructed, the creative spark that makes his movies so unique, ended up being what wound his career down.

And yet.  The result is a movie that exists in a world you desperately want to explore.  Imagine if “Tativille” still existed?  You’re telling me you wouldn’t pluck down money for tickets to have your own playtime in there?  Imagine actually being able to hang out and eat and dance in The Royal Garden?  Tell me you don’t wish it still existed?  But it doesn’t, at least not in our world.  On the other hand, it can always be revisited through PLAYTIME.  And if nothing else, the movie should be commended for that, the living testament and masterpiece of one of the purest auteurs the medium ever bore witness to.  

Why am I waxing on about it so much?  Because I think it’s my favorite of his main six, the one that best exemplifies his unique form of genius.  Yet, I think it’s a difficult one to just jump into.  It’s not where I’d tell a novice to start their journey, but I would tell folks who watched it once and found themselves on the outside of it to give it another try.

Tati’s filmography does feel like it fizzles out a tad after PLAYTIME.  His follow-up feature, 1971’s TRAFIC, is fine and full of imagination, and I admit to being pretty excited when it first began (Tati taking on commuting?  Let’s fucking go!), but it feels like a movie whose air has been taken out of it.  The main comic point is seen (as man starts to aim ever more towards space and stars, it’s never been more difficult to navigate the pathways here on Earth), but there’s an unusual lack of focus to it that made it meander a little too much for me.  Perhaps on that magic rewatch, I’ll find my way in.

Then there’s 1974’s PARADE, a movie that seems to have split sentiments amongst cinephiles, as well as Tati fans.  Although it’s included in the Criterion box set as his sixth and final feature, some people don’t seem to include it in the official count, referring to TRAFIC as his final movie.  It’s an understandable argument.  PARADE is a non-narrative feature, shot on video and made for television, that documents a performance of Tati’s circus troupe.  I’d hesitate to call it a strict documentary; there are too many small flourishes to call it an objective observation (besides the closing shot of children picking up the show’s instruments and beginning to perform magic themselves, there’s a lot of audience interaction and interruptions throughout the movie that smell of predetermined set-up, unless Dutch audience members really get down like that).  Regardless, it really is mostly just a series of short segments.  There’s some miming, there’s a lot of juggling and acrobatics, there’s some singing, there’s, like, a psychedelic rock performance?

And, look, at a distance, I didn’t really dig PARADE either.  Even at ninety minutes, it’s a little too long for what it is, and feels too much like a lost PBS program from the 70’s, the kind of thing that might have been rerun during the early days of Nickelodeon.  One wonders if paring it down to its best forty-five minutes and keeping it within the confines of a TV feature might have done wonders to endear it to its audience.  Were I to watch it out of context (I cannot imagine what someone would make of this were this the only Tati they’d ever seen), I don’t think I would have gotten it at all.  It feels too out of place, too un-indicative of what made Tati’s masterpieces so endearing.

But…I can’t fully dismiss PARADE, either.  Maybe it was the opportunity to see Tati’s amazing physicality on full display, even at a more advanced age, in a way he didn’t get to do as much as Hulot.  Maybe it’s because I had watched his earlier shorts where he played around like this a little more.  Maybe it was the accidental bittersweet nature of realizing his Hulot quadrilogy was truly bookended by movies and shorts that allowed him to be a clown.

All I know is, despite everything, by the end of PARADE, I was still sitting there with a smile on my face, still delighted, even in a much lesser work.

What can I say?  That’s the power of Jacques Tati.  Even at his worst, you can’t help but smile.

I Watched Every Super Bowl Halftime Show.

I love the Super Bowl.

I shouldn’t. I don’t know the sport of football intimately. I don’t really have a favorite team. But I actually think this plays in my favor. Imagine your ride-or-die squad playing in the Super Bowl? How would you ever be able to relax? I wouldn’t be able to settle my nerves until the game was over, and by then, you would have completely missed all the dumb, wonderful stuff that makes up a Super Bowl broadcast.

The reasons I love it are numerous: for one, it’s one of the last things (perhaps the sole remaining) that we as a country experience together. People have been tuning out of the Oscars, we barely vote, and nightly television has become ever splintered. But seemingly everyone checks out the Super Bowl in some capacity or another, even if they can’t stand it.

This brings me to the second reason I love the day: the broadcast has largely grown to accommodate all these different crowds. The football game itself is usually high-level, so fans of the sport are set. For the stoners and less discriminating, there are the endless assault of star-studded commercials that are never, and really have never, been funny even by accident. And for the non-football crowd, there’s that little concert that occurs halfway through.

Ah, yes, the halftime show. The oft parodied, sometimes maligned, but always discussed halftime show. For most of our waking lifetimes, this has been the spot where a musical artist puts on a show, sometimes with a bevy of special guests and sometimes not, and with frequent success! If nothing else, it allows for generations to discuss what type of music and performance is legitimate and interesting and which ones are not. Isn’t talking to people fun?

However, the halftime show was not always this way. The concert vibe is actually a fairly recent development that wasn’t really committed to until the 21st century. For the first three decades of the Super Bowl’s existence, there was a throw-shit-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks quality to its halftime entertainment. For years, it was just local college marching bands. The 80’s gave us floats and Up With People. Disney even tried their hand at producing some halftime synergy. Some were fun, while many, many, many were campy, memorable disasters.

So…I thought it’d be fun to work our way through them and see how the show evolved. What will we learn? Probably nothing, outside of the value and scarcity of one’s time. But hopefully it’ll be interesting anyway. Let’s find out!

(Please note that there are a handful that are essentially lost media, and they will be marked in red as applicable.)

Super Bowl I - January 15, 1967 (Kansas City Chiefs vs. Green Bay Packers)

University of Arizona Symphonic Marching Band (feat. Grambling State University Marching Band, Al Hirt, Anaheim High School Ana-Hi-Steppers Drill Team and Flag Girls)

Performed at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles CA

As you might expect, the very first Super Bowl halftime show is fairly nondescript and, frankly, unrecognizable from the major star-studded productions we’re used to today.  As you also might expect, it would be best to gett used to this, as this is par for the course for quite some time.

In terms of production, it’s totally fine!  The broadcast is clearly still working out its kinks; the camera is top-down the whole time.  This makes sense considering a marching band’s big gimmick is the formation of shapes, but the camera is too far away, it’s not super dynamic (it’s basically just a static shot the entire time)...it's just not that fun of a watch.

Arizona’s marching band, though…fun show!  It’s about what you’d expect; the music  sticks to the classics; “The Sound of Music”, “The William Tell Overture”, and the like.  It took me a while to get used to the formations, but once I adjusted to what they were supposed to be, I found them quite impressive!  My two favorites were the Dixieland steam boat, and the two football players facing each other on opposite sides of the field.  It’s entertainment at its most simple (“ooh, shapes!”), but it’s at least well-executed.

I must say, though, the most memorable moment of the first halftime show was a depiction of an Old-West shootout, complete with actors shooting guns at each other like so many Wild Bill Hicocks.  Even better, a couple of band members jump in to break it up and become collateral damage.  Yes, a gun battle on the world’s biggest football stage, with innocent bystanders taken out.  Why they decided to do this is unclear; yet it guarantees the first Super Bowl halftime show will remain forever singular.

Super Bowl II - January 14, 1968 (Green Bay Packers vs. Oakland Raiders)

Grambling State University Marching Band 

Performed at Miami Orange Bowl, Miami FL

At the moment, this one appears to be lost media.  There’s not a ton of Super Bowl lost media, as most of the broadcasts exist in some form or another.  Alas, this one appears to be mostly gone; there’s allegedly not even a full copy in NFL Film’s possession.  If it’s any consolation, Halftime Show #2 doesn’t sound like it was the best watch; the broadcast was beset with technical difficulties and 80% of the country lost the video feed from the second half of the second quarter to three minutes into halftime.

Grambling did well as a supporting guest for Super Bowl I; I have to imagine they did just as well as the main headliner.  Alas, who knows?

Super Bowl III - January 12, 1969 (New York Jets vs. Baltimore Colts)

America Thanks (Florida A&M University Band)

Performed at Miami Orange Bowl, Miami FL

Now we’re talking!  Loses momentum in the second half as it devolves into more line formations, cool though they may be (an eagle flapping its wings is a special standout).  But it’s the presence of some big goofy costumes and a giant, possibly inflatable, horn o’plenty that implies a goofier (and more fun) future for this slot moving forward.

What I ultimately found charming about this, despite myself, is the sincerity in which it approaches its patriotism.  As a show, it doesn’t seem like it’s trying to score with anybody or prove a point.  It just wants to pay tribute to America! For better or worse, it seemed like something most people just did, even at the end of a turbulent and culturally revolutionary decade like the sixties.  Compare this to the way patriotism in sports has been weaponized in various ways and directions in the near-sixty years since, and the third halftime show is downright adorable.

Super Bowl IV - January 11, 1970 (Minnesota Vikings vs. Kansas City Chiefs)

Tribute to Mardi Gras (Southern University Marching Band, Marguerite Piazza, Doc Severinsen, Lairen & Tara, Al Hirt, Lionel Hampton, Carol Channing)

Performed at Tulane Stadium, New Orleans LA

The copy I had available wasn’t the best; it’s a slightly grainy black and white and the sound isn’t as crisp as one would hope.  But this is otherwise dripping with early 70’s goodness.  There’s even some creepy puppets and floats by the end!  Carol Channing holds the distinction of the first solo artists to appear to sing a song for a Super Bowl halftime show, although she didn’t feel like she was doing full-on “Carol Channing” shtick, so it doesn’t stick out as much as you would think.

Overall, this one is pretty fun: New Orleans jazz is a good style for these early iterations of the halftime shows to build around.  You just keep waiting for the broadcast quality to catch up to the growing ambitions of these productions.

Super Bowl V - January 17, 1971 (Baltimore Colts vs. Dallas Cowboys)

Southeast Missouri State Marching Band (Anita Bryant, Up With People)

Performed at Miami Orange Bowl, Miami FL

Pretty easily the best of the first initial five.  Southeast Missouri State’s Marching Band was actually fairly dazzling (not a term I thought I’d use in regards to a 70’s marching band routine, but here we are), with the most ambitious formation routines to date; loved the back and forth formations to create the words “Super Bowl”.  Anita Bryant, a singer I knew more for her, uh, social stances than I ever did as a performer, was sort of a mixed bag for me.  She has an intriguing low register in her voice, but I found the arrangement of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” to be too maudlin to be engaging for as long as it went on.

The real highlight, though, are the floats meant to represent the various regions the newly-merged NFL teams hail from.  They’re all fairly garish and not exactly great combo jobs; all of the California squads are represented by a little number with a giant Academy Award and a man with a camera.

Then, of course, there’s Up With People, a group you’ll be hearing a lot about before the end of this article.  Their specific brand of dorky earnestness still comes off as practically counter-culture when compared to something like America Thanks, but it’s hard to make something like “Someone Smiled At Me” and “Let All of the People In” sound like anything more than, presumably, “Age of Aquarius” B-sides.

Super Bowl VI - January 16, 1972 (Dallas Cowboys vs. Miami Dolphins)

Salute to Louis Armstrong (Ella Fitzgerald, Carol Channing, Al Hirt, USAFA Cadet Chorale, U.S. Marine Corps Drill Team)

Performed at Tulane Stadium, New Orleans LA

This halftime show also appears lost to time; a full game video exists, but with none of the pregame or halftime stuff thrown in.  There’s an eight minute sort-of-home-video that shows the Tyler Junior College Apache Belles and Band arriving to New Orleans, rehearsing and performing at the Supber Bowl.  It includes taped-off-the TV footage of the halftime show with stock music playing over it, so one can almost kinda get an idea of what the show would have been like.  I should mention that the stock music is going for “sweet, hazy nostalgic memory” over “Louis Armstrong trumpet”, so it’s in conflict with the show footage.  

Otherwise, though, I think this one isn’t eligible for fair evaluation.  It’s a shame, too: a glance at the topic (Louis had recently passed away) and the guest list makes it sound pretty fun.  The minimal footage we do have is fun.  The video is at least an interesting watch for its look into a meaningful moment for a group of young kids.  Other than that….

Super Bowl VII - January 14, 1973 (Miami Dolphins vs. Washington Redskins)

Happiness Is… (University of Michigan Marching Band, Woody Herman, Andy Williams)

Performed at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA

This one is unfortunately a little underwhelming.  Woody Herman rocks a mean clarinet, but the band feels a little uninspired.  The “NFL” formation has been done, and better. I kind of like the different helmet carts being driven around the field, I suppose.  Also, the theme of “Happiness is” is pure early 70’s poppycock, and is way looser of a theme than you might expect.  “Happiness is a fiesta and the bullfights!”  “Happiness is rooting for your favorite team!”  “Happiness is discovering America from coast to coast!”  Eh.  It’s just all the same stuff these acts have been doing for years already.  It all ends with Andy Williams singing “Marmalade, Molasses and Honey” followed by “People”.  Pass.

I do think it’s interesting that the only thing the halftime shows of this era are trying to promote is the idea of the NFL and its various teams as a result of the still-recent merger.  The only ones trying to get exposure here is the league itself.

Super Bowl VIII - January 13, 1974 (Minnesota Vikings vs. Miami Dolphins)

A Musical America (University of Texas Longhorn Band, w/Miss Texas 1973 Judy Mallett on fiddle)

Performed At Rice Stadium, Houston TX

Unfortunately, this one also appears to be missing forever. There really doesn’t appear to be an upload of it anywhere.  Oh, there’s a YouTube video that claims to be of the 1974 halftime show, but it really just looks like a promotional or home video of a Longhorn performance.  The most obvious thing that proves this isn’t the Super Bowl is that Judy Mallett never shows up on the advertised fiddle.  Although the first clue that this was a fraud was the announcement you hear near the beginning of the vid that tonight was ”Mom’s Night”.  Nothing wrong with a night for the moms, but even a dummy like me suspect this is the kind of promotion the Super Bowl wouldn’t have needed to utilize, even in these early years.  Although I do think this year’s Super Bowl should also be Bobblehead Night.

Super Bowl IX - January 12, 1975 (Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Minnesota Vikings)

Tribute to Duke Ellington (Mercer Ellington and Grambling State University Marching Bands)

Performed at Tulane Stadium, New Orleans LA

Juuuust enough footage is available (about seven minutes, or a little over half) to evaluate.  It’s perfectly fine, but it does feel like well-worn territory at this point.  I do find the folks in the comments of this particular YouTube video to be genuinely charming, with everyone expressing a collective desire for halftime shows to go back to the days when it used to be about the drilling, not just the dancing.  I genuinely love when people express a passion for things I have no frame of reference for.  However, this does explain why this leaves me a little cold: it’s just great drilling, and not much more.

Super Bowl X - January 18, 1976 (Dallas Cowboys vs. Pittsburgh Steelers)

200 Years and Just a Baby: A Tribute to America's Bicentennial (Up With People)

Performed at Miami Orange Bowl, Miami FL

Up With People!

The tenth halftime show is notable for being the first one to have a non-marching band as their headliner, although Up With People has enough love of lining themselves into formations to last three Super Bowl performances.

Look, it’s difficult to call this “good” by any objective measure.  I find myself both utterly captivated, but palpably horrified, by Up With People.  Their obsession with that dorky “clean” white 70’s sound, their relentless positivity cranked up so high it borders on sarcasm, the pastels….they’re so actively annoying that you actually have to give it up to them.
More than anything, this performance seems to mark a turning point.  It doesn’t have to just be marching bands, even if the material is still about the same that a marching band would do.  The shapes on the field, the “America!” theme, the great American songbook…it’s not exactly a departure from the current norm.  Oh, and the bicentennial theme is fascinating, if only because, again, it’s done with complete sincerity.  It’s not trying to go for “America uber alles” or “take that liebirals!”  It’s a celebration of how far the country had come and, admittedly, how far it had to go.  Oh, and it was a message delivered by Up With People.  In a year that included SNL and Taxi Driver, nothing apparently said the Spirit of 1976 more than Up With People.

Super Bowl XI - January 9, 1977 (Oakland Raiders vs. Minnesota Vikings)

It’s a Small World (Los Angeles Unified All-City Band w/the New Mouseketeers & Audience card stunt)

Performed at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena CA

Used as the hard launch for the New Mouseketeers a week before the premiere of the New Mickey Mouse Club, this really feels the most like an ad so far.  For the most part, it’s low on spectacle and high on good vibes.  The theme is “It’s a Small World”, so there’s a segment with dancers in different cultural attire, and everyone gathers around a small globe.  Its lessons on global intersectionality is mostly limited to waving around giant cloths of different colors.

I’ll give points to its one big trick in the finale: getting the entire sold out stadium involved in a giant color card flip, extending out the spectacle into the stands.  In a world where Disney can’t seem to bring together anything or anybody, they managed to unite the entire Rose Bowl in an impressive illusion.  Nice job, Mickey!

Look, I have a soft spot for the uncool during an event that is now all about the desperate need to be cool, but….I have my limits.  Too much fake high energy arm dancing, too much fakey bright singing….I actually all of this to be more aggravating than Up With People, but that might just be because that group has been body slammed by just about everybody for the entirety of my life.  Precious Disney was just as bad in the 1970’s.

However, if nothing else, it’s a first for the Super Bowl; it’s the first halftime show to be produced by The Walt Disney Company.  This one looks tame compared to others to come.

Super Bowl XII - January 15, 1978 (Dallas Cowboys vs. Denver Broncos) 

From Paris to Paris of America (Tyler Apache Belles Drill Team, The Apache Band, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt)

Performed at the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans LA

This one also appears to be missing, although there is another fake upload titled Super Bowl XII Halftime Show that just ends up being some strange Orange Bowl halftime show featuring the Electrical Light Parade.

From the description, it feels like it might be well-trodden territory by this point.  Al Hirt makes a return to the Superdome.  Based off of other halftime videos, the Apache Belles Drill Team appear to be a kickline/flag-waving act.  And look, they’re great!  But it feels like we’re reaching a point where light spectacle is all the halftime shows are going for at this point.

Super Bowl XIII - January 21, 1979 (Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Dallas Cowboys)

Salute to Caribbean (Ken Hamilton, feat. various Caribbean bands, including Gramacks out of Dominica)

Performed at the Miami Orange Bowl, Miami FL

I actually really liked this one.  It’s exactly what it purports to be, a salute to the Caribbean.  I especially liked the simple-seeming stage design, with the field turning into the Caribbean sea, and dancers getting their moment on their affiliated islands.  I also got a kick out of the Miami crowd going apeshit for Ken Hamilton, a singer I had no previous awareness of and could find limited information on.  This show is a good time!  

If I had a knock against it, it’s that the whole production has such a late-70’s Disney sheen to it that I had to make sure they didn’t produce it (it won’t surprise you that it was produced by Carnival Cruise Lines).  It feels like the Disneyland version of multiculturalism; shiny production values and immensely fun, but a palpable sense of soullessness.  However, it easily clears the fucking Mouseketeers for me.

Super Bowl XIV - January 20, 1980 (Los Angeles Rams vs. Pittsburgh Steelers)

A Salute to the Big Band Era (Up With People w/Grambling State University Marching Bands)

Performed at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena CA

I’m not sure why, but this one broke me.  Maybe it’s because the calendar has officially turned from the 70’s to the 80’s, maybe it’s because Up With People is now the main attraction rather than one simple flavor in the stew that was the 1976 halftime show.  Whatever the reason, the cheese that I originally found goofily charming has now become acidic.  Standards from the Great American Songbook being sung with bright sincerity while everyone is either stepping left and right or swinging their arms around…it all reminded me of the corny Broadway revue-style shows I kept doing in college (that my beautiful and very supportive friends kept coming to and pretending to like(.  The good news is that there can’t possibly be that many UWP numbers still to come….(looks at the list)....FUCK.

Super Bowl XV - January 25, 1981 (Oakland Raiders vs. Philadelphia Eagles)

Mardi Gras Festival (Southern University Marching Band w/Helen O’Connell)

Performed at the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans CA

This one also appears missing.  From what I can gather, it’s nothing we hadn’t seen before.  It would have been cool to see Helen O’Connell in this setting (and would have been a nice break from Up With People), but alas.

Super Bowl XVI - January 24, 1982 (San Francisco 49ers vs Cincinnati Bengals)

Salute to the 1960’s and Motown (Up With People)

Performed at the Pontiac Silverdome, Pontiac MI

All I’m going to say about this one is that, in a show called “Salute to the 1960’s and Motown”, these motherfuckers Up With People slipped in the Monster Mash. Classic Motown!

Super Bowl XVII - January 30th, 1983 (Miami Dolphins vs. Washington Redskins) 

KaleidoSUPERscope (Los Angeles Super Drill Team)

Performed at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena CA

I’m sorry to say, KaleidoSUPERscope is kind of a dud.  The drill team is talented, but the amount of skills on display aren’t really up to par entertainment-wise; it feels like a higher-scale version of the kind of thing a parent would have to sit through at a school function.  The audience card tricks are impressive, but it’s something we’ve already seen in years past.  It’s also undercut by the broadcast showing us the instructions being displayed on the Jumbotron; so much for magicians never revealing their secrets.  Otherwise, it’s just a lot of banner-waving and line formations.  Oh, and a lot of Electrical Light Parade-esque renditions of standards from the 60s and 70’s.  It does end on a grand finale of a very sincere message of peace and love to the world for the new year, which appears to just kinda be the same thing the show was, but with balloons and fireworks being released.  Yawn.

The most exciting thing that happens occurs early on, when the camera accidentally switches to the people in the control room for about thirty seconds.  They seem like they’re having a good time.

Super Bowl XVIII - January 22, 1984 (Washington Redskins vs. Los Angeles Raiders)

Salute to Superstars of Silver Screen (University of Florida and Florida State University Marching Bands)

Performed at Tampa Stadium, Tampa FL

The Mouse returns!  It’s a movie musical tribute!  With two marching bands!  Tinkerbell kicks us off!  Welcome to the 80’s!

I confess to kinda digging this.  There’s at least a general commitment to getting the eras they’re homaging correct (the 42nd Street Busby Berkeley choreography was pretty much dead on).  And I think having Donald Duck and Goofy running around and participating in the action undercut the fact that every single performer on the field is a huge dork that deserves a wedgie.  All it was really missing were some celebrity cameos (Carmen Miranda Minnie doesn’t count).  Finally, I dunno if the audience was mic’d up, but it sure sounded like people were going apeshit for this.  It gets declared the “best halftime show they’ve ever had”.  I dunno about that, but it’s definitely the MOST halftime show we’ve ever had up to this point.

It’s not good at all, but it’s the good kind of not good.  I can be a weird sell sometimes.

Super Bowl XIX - January 20, 1985 (Miami Dolphins vs. San Francisco 49ers)

World of Children’s Dreams (Tops in Blue)

Performed at Stanford Stadium, Stanford CA

The theme is about as corny as it gets, although I suppose after nineteen of these or so, it should become clear that the halftime show at this point was clearly meant to be entertainment for kids.  I guess it works, although the theme is also applied broadly; a segment about the moon landing lines up with the kinds of things kids dream about becoming one day (and it gets us a rad jetpack stunt, easily the best thing in the whole show).  The segment on America, maybe not so much (“the land of dreams”, I guess?  It’s a stretch).  I also laughed at how hard they worked to fit in the Olympics.  We were still taking a victory lap after the 1984 Olympics, it seems.

I dunno, it’s more 80’s personality-free cheese.  This segment is in danger of dying, or at least becoming less than relevant.  And to be fair, we’re far away from the time when the show was being advertised as heavily as the game itself, so it is a bit of an afterthought.  But, goddamn, couldn’t it at least be somewhat cool?  Just a little?

Cool jetpack, though.

(Also, another funny behind the scenes audio glitch at the end, this one with just a slightly bitchy tone.)

Super Bowl XX - January 26, 1986 (Chicago Bears vs. New England Patriots)

Beat of the Future (Up With People)

Performed at Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans LA

“We are proud to dedicate the halftime spectacular today to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  This show is produced by Up With People…”

So opens the twentieth Super Bowl Halftime Show, as we see rehearsal footage from UWP rehearsing their dorky dance moves in places as diverse as Hawaii’s Diamond Head and the Great Wall of China (I’m sure they were thrilled).  From there, we get their patented well-meaning theater kid energy in droves.  At one point, they all assume the formation of a set of moving footprints, which is a visual more upsetting that I think was intended.  One guy sings “The Power of Love” wearing a loose-fitting neon green tie.

It feels like, at this point in the eighties, we’ve gone officially off the rails.  The production values are bordering on self-parody; I didn’t really think the decade ever had the neon cocaine aesthetic it’s often portrayed as having, but after three Up With People joints, I’m forced to believe most homages don’t go far enough.  While this was clearly not prime real estate for the NFL, I feel the broadcast reaching a point of crisis that’s being masked by some particularly strong football dynasties (this was the era of the Niners and the Bears).  Seven years away from Michael Jackson.

“And a fitting tribute to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr.”.  So the halftime show ends.

Super Bowl XXI - January 25th, 1987 (Denver Broncos vs. New York Giants)

Salute to Hollywood’s 100th Anniversary - The World of Make Believe (George Burns, Mickey Rooney, Grambling State University and USC Marching Bands w/various Disney characters and So-Cal high school drill teams and teachers)

Performed at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena CA

This contains an omnipotent shot of an inflatable Mickey Mouse hovering ominously over the Hollywood sign.

Again, it’s insane in the way only 80’s Disney can be, but it’s an entertaining lunacy.  It opens with a pre-tape of George Burns doing a couple of creaky jokes in his sleep.  About two minutes in, Mickey Rooney starts going nuts dancing in a marching outfit.  People in horse costumes start dancing on hind legs.  Everything appears to have sequins, including Goofy’s cowboy getup.

Look, the Disney ones crack me up, while Up With People make me throw up.  It’s a pretty easy choice to make.  I will say this one is maybe just a bit too busy compared to the 1984 offering.  There’s too much to take in, so it all kind of washes over you. Still….I mean, Mickey Rooney is really having a good time leading a marching band.

Super Bowl XXII - January 31, 1988 (Washington Redskins vs. Denver Broncos)

Something Grand (Chubby Checker, The Rockettes, 88 grand piano players, San Diego State University Marching Aztecs, California State University Northridge Marching Band and USC Marching Band)

Performed at Jack Murphy Stadium, San Diego CA

Still 80’s cornball, but with a touch of class.  Who doesn’t love the Rockettes, even if their presence gives this the feel of a Thanksgiving Day Parade, rather than a Super Bowl halftime show?  The 88 grand pianos on the field is admittedly a great stunt, and the whole show feels of a piece, which puts it head and shoulders above most of the rest in the decade’s pool.  I also find it hilarious that Chubby Checker went ahead and did “Let’s Twist Again”, the sequel to “The Twist'' with the exact same rhythm and melody.  

You still can’t help but feel like there’s something missing from the average production, almost like the powers that be are no longer sure what the halftime show is supposed to be.  The search for an identity continues.  Still, at least this one was non-irritating.

Super Bowl XXIII - January 22, 1989 (Cincinnati Bengals vs. San Francisco 49ers)

Be Bop Bamboozled in 3-D (Elvis Presto, South Florida-area dancers and performers)

Performed at Joe Robbie Stadium, Miami Gardens FL

Oh, my goodness.  

What is there to say about a halftime show whose main get is an Elvis impersonator that doesn’t appear to know a lot of Elvis songs?  The setlist, in order: “Rock This Town”, “Tutti Frutti”, “Do You Love Me”, “Devil With a Blue Dress On”, “Great Balls of Fire”, “Greased Lightnin’” and “True Love”, a set whose unifying feature is being non-Elvis songs.  

I also loved the completely out of context card trick that Elvis Presto plays with the audience.  Whether it’s a trick for the in-stadium audience or the at-home audience is not precisely clear, nor is it clear if the trick even works.  He just kind of sings a few different suits, people cheer and the show moves on.  There also might be a 3-D element, as teased by the Bob Costas-narrated opening?  I suppose, since we all exist in the third dimension, this one might be skating by on a technicality. 

Absolutely one of the oddest halftime shows in the history of the Super Bowl.  Of course, I loved it.

Super Bowl XXIV - January 28, 1990 (San Francisco 49ers vs. Denver Broncos)

Salute to New Orleans & 40th Anniversary of Peanuts (Pete Fountain, Doug Kershaw, Irma Thomas, Nicholls State University Marching Band, Southern University Marching Band, USL Marching Band)

Performed at Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans LA

An odd one with a somewhat arbitrary premise mashed together with a well-worn one: it’s the 40th Anniversary of the Peanuts comic strip, AND it’s another tribute to New Orleans (something they apparently did every time the Super Bowl was played at the Superdome).  Thus, we get a lot of horrifying-looking Charlie Brown characters riding riverboats and stuff.  It’s not all that interesting; the Peanuts angle could have had some juice if they had committed to it at all.  The New Orleans stuff has been done multiple times before in this space.  The only real highlight is a well-done River Queen formation illusion.  All in all, a missed opportunity.  I’m not kidding when I say the character costumes are nightmare-inducing, though.  Maybe that’s the highlight.

Super Bowl XXV - January 27, 1991 (Buffalo Bills vs. New York Giants)

Small World; Tribute to 25 Years of the Super Bowl (New Kids on the Block; Disney characters, Warren Moon, 2,000 local children)

Performed at Tampa Stadium, Tampa FL

What is there to say about maybe the most infamous pre-MJ halftime show of all time?  What is there to love about it?  What is there to hate about it?  Let me count the ways:

1. The fact that the halftime show, for the most part, is performed by two-thousand children, one of the crazier ideas in Super Bowl halftime history

2. Despite its theme ostensibly being about both Small World and the first 25 years of Super Bowl history, it’s mostly about honoring the troops fighting for us in the Gulf War

3. Chip and Dale at one point do the MC Hammer Dance

4. A little blond kid with a bowl cut sings “Wind Beneath My Wings”, which is, again, revealed to be about the troops

5. George and Barabara Bush make a video cameo about halfway through, also honoring the troops

6. The video of their cameo cuts out a little early, but their audio continues on as the camera pans and cuts through many of the two thousand children.  Even when you think they’re done, they’re not.  The Bushes ramble on long enough for the video to eventually come back.

7. A Giant Mickey comes out in an Uncle Sam get-up just in time for the “It’s a Small World” tribute.

8. As mentioned above, this is all build-up to the real, real headliners, which turns out to not be the troops.  It’s New Kids on the Block!  This is actually kind of an important moment, as this is one of the first times a halftime show was built around a big music act “get”.  It’s still to be streamlined and figured out, and it’s way cooler to say Michael Jackson was the first.  But, he wasn’t.  It was them New Kids.

A horrifying, crazy debacle.  Everything that rocks/sucks about the Super Bowl halftime show all rolled into one 14-minute extravaganza.  What’s not to love?

Super Bowl XXVI - January 26, 1992 (Washington Redskins vs. Buffalo Bills)

Winter Magic, A Salute to the 1992 Winter Olympics (Gloria Estefan, Brian Boitano and Dorothy Hamill, the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team, University of Minnesota Marching Band)

Performed at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis MN

The presumed nail in the coffin for the brown age of the Super Bowl halftime show, the one that got market-corrected by a special episode of IN LIVING COLOR, the one that made the powers-that-be realize that these aren’t cool anymore, if they ever were.

In isolation, Winter Magic is lame in the way all the Up With People/Disney ones are lame; too bright, insincere sincerity, too old-fashioned.  It doesn’t help that its theme is vaguely out of season.  Yes, it’s to celebrate the upcoming Winter Olympics, and yes, the music they use is generally winter-themed, but….it’s hard not to feel like it’s a Christmas show being performed at the end of January.  It’s hard not to hear “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” and “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and not feel like you’re supposed to be carefully hanging stockings by chimneys.

Gloria Estefan is okay, but feels like something extra they threw on.  Boitano and Dorothy ice-skate to the insipid “One Moment in Time” which negates any good vibes Estefan might have otherwise provided.  The ice rinks are comically small.  Still, it’s possibly the most important halftime show in the history of the medium, if only because it forced the NFL to up the ante the next year.

Super Bowl XXVII - January 31, 1993 (Buffalo Bills vs. Dallas Cowboys)

Michael Jackson

Performed at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena CA

The only thing I have to figure out on this one is how to address the big ol’ elephant in the room: the second half of the performance is dedicated to the kids of the world, so that they might have peace in our time.  Michael Jackson is surrounded by hundreds of them and, in case that weren’t enough, a good old-fashioned audience card stunt gives us drawings of about half a dozen more.  To be fair, this was just before the first accusations began to appear, so there was nothing really unusual about any of this to the general public in January of 1993.  However, it’s hard to ignore what we know since.

Other than that, perhaps the most famous Super Bowl halftime show of all time lives up to its reputation three decades later.  The coolest thing in the entire twelve minutes actually happens before a note is sung.  Following an intro done by none other than James Earl Jones and a nice stunt featuring a pair of MJ doubles, the real deal emerges from the center of the stage.  Following that is….absolutely nothing.  He just stands there, frozen.  For about two minutes.  The crowd is going nuts.  Finally, he moves his head from the left to the right.  Ecstatic cheering.  He finally starts in with “Jam” and puts on a hell of a show.  But even if he had stunk up the joint, there’s probably never been a more succinct display of absolute star power than that.  It may never happen again in the history of the Super Bowl halftime show, unless they bring back Brian Boitano.

Super Bowl XXVIII - January 30, 1994 (Dallas Cowboys vs. Buffalo Bills)

Rockin’ Country Sunday (Clint Black, Tanya Tucker, Travis Tritt, The Judds)

Performed at the Georgia Dome, Atlanta GA

An enjoyable show and, given the location and eventual game winner, a well-timed one.  I admit that country is not my wheelhouse and, thus, can’t weigh in too much on this.  I knew most of the names, but didn’t really know any of the songs.  I recognize the gravity of the Judds reuniting, but it didn’t mean much to me personally.  I do think it’s an interesting move immediately following the 1993 Michael Jackson show.  A different (but no less popular) genre while utilizing multiple artists feels like a savvy way of continuing to diversify the audience that might stick around for these particular fifteen minutes.  Hopefully they continue this path and don’t do anything too silly next!

Super Bowl XXIX - January 29, 1995 (San Diego Chargers vs. San Francisco 49ers)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye (Patti LaBelle, Indiana Jones & Marion Ravenwood, Teddy Pendergrass, Tony Bennett, Arturo Sandoval, Miami Sound Machine)

Performed at Joe Robbie Stadium, Miami Gardens FL

A Super Bowl so insane and corny that it actually becomes something resembling art, this probably represents the most blatantly promotional halftime show of the Disney era.  Meant to advertise the then-newly opened Indiana Jones dark ride at Disneyland*, this show feels more like a theme park stunt show than anything else, which is almost assuredly intentional.  It has all the hallmarks: “cool stunts” (aka, a lot of rolls and fake punches), piped in dialogue bits (Marion, one of the best Indiana Jones characters of them all, gets especially short shrift here; most of her spoken words are some variation of “Indy, help!”  It’s all a little chintzy, especially given the MJ-induced juice this spot had been infused with just two years prior.

*It sure is keen that this ride, which I still think of as relatively new, is almost thirty years old.  Time sure is neat!

Then again, what theme park stunt show opens with Patti LaBelle singing her head off (even if she does appear to, in the context of the show, maybe be the leader of an African tribe?  I shall probe no further into that), or feature the sudden appearance of Tony Bennett singing “Caravan” with the Miami Sound Machine?  What theme park would have the right to make the prized jewel Indy is trying to lock away in a museum be the Vince Lombardi trophy itself?  So, in a way, the Indiana Jones halftime show kind of kicks ass?  It’s certainly singular and for that, you kind of have to hand it to them.

Super Bowl XXX - January 28, 1996 (Dallas Cowboys vs. Pittsburgh Steelers)

Take Me Higher: A Celebration of 30 Years of the Super Bowl (Diana Ross)

Performed at Sun Devil Stadium, Tempe AZ

A shining example of one of the best types of halftime shows: handing over thirteen minutes to a singular star in order to perform five of the biggest songs in the world and let them do their thing.  To that end, Diana Ross brings her fastball here; her setlist is as follows:

• Stop in The Name of Love

• You Keep Me Hangin’ On

• Baby Love

• You Can’t Hurry Love

• Why Do Fools Fall in Love

• Chain Reaction

• Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)

• Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

• I Will Survive

• Take Me Higher

In between her “Oops, All Bangers!” concert, she manages to fit in several costume changes and caps it all off with an exit from the stadium via helicopter (this all preceded by an entrance into the stadium via crane).  The word “legend” is thrown around a lot, but….

Super Bowl XXXI - January 26, 1997 (New England Patriots vs. Green Bay Packers)

Blues Brothers Bash (The Blues Brothers - Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman, Jim Belushi; ZZ Top, James Brown, Catherine Crier)

Performed at the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans LA

Possibly the most unique of all the “tribute to New Orleans!” halftime shows, 1997’s was most notable at the time for the recorded intro from Fox News anchor Catherine Crier, which was seen by some as an erosion of the cable channel’s journalistic integrity, a phrase I need not add any commentary to.  

To me, this one stands out for feeling very hollow.  I should state that I’m on the record as not really getting the Blues Brothers.  I love the 1980 film, but I don’t truly understand them as an actual band playing actual music on an actual stage.  Nor do I get Aykroyd’s continued insistence on keeping it going after John Belushi’s death.  Different strokes for different strokes, I suppose, but they were always a little lost on me.

Suffice to say, this halftime show is nuts, but in a chintzy way, like watching a halfway decent tribute band at Universal CityWalk or something.  It’s definitely unique and you’re vaguely happy it happened, but you can’t help but feel like you would have been better off if it hadn’t.

Super Bowl XXXII - January 25, 1998 (Green Bay Packers vs. Denver Broncos)

Salute to Motown 40’s Anniversary (Boyz II Men, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves, The Temptations, Queen Latifah, Grambling State University Marching Ban)

Performed at Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego CA

This one was a slightly odd watch; it’s simultaneously a nostalgia act for the glory days of sixties’ Motown (and their selections of Robinson, Reeves and The Temptations could not have been more perfect) AND a retroactive nostalgia act for the then-relatively new Boyz II Men and Queen Latifah.  One wonders how people must have felt then about having this new type of R&B being put on the same level as these legends.  Watching it now, though, it’s all kind of one big swoosh.  The 1960’s and 1990’s now feel roughly equivalent in terms of distance from the present and, for a generation born in the 2000’s, both might as well be in the biblical times.

Bonus points for being the first halftime show I ever watched as it aired live!  It’s good!  It also gave me existential dread.  What else do you need from the Super Bowl?

Super Bowl XXXII - January 25, 1998 (Green Bay Packers vs. Denver Broncos)

Salute to Motown 40’s Anniversary (Boyz II Men, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves, The Temptations, Queen Latifah, Grambling State University Marching Ban)

Performed at Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego CA

This one was a slightly odd watch; it’s simultaneously an intentional nostalgia act for the glory days of sixties’ Motown (and their selections of Robinson, Reeves and The Temptations could not have been more perfect) AND an unintentional retroactive nostalgia act for the then-relatively new Boyz II Men and Queen Latifah.  One wonders how people must have felt then about having this new type of R&B being put on the same level as these legends.  Watching it now, though, it’s all kind of one big swoosh.  The 1960’s and 1990’s now feel roughly equivalent in terms of distance from the present and, for a generation born in the 2000’s, both might as well be in the biblical times.

Bonus points for being the first halftime show I ever watched as it aired live!  It’s good!  It also gave me existential dread.  What else do you need from the Super Bowl?

Super Bowl XXXIII - January 31, 1999 (Denver Broncos vs. Atlanta Falcons)

Celebration of Soul, Salsa and Swing (Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Savion Glover)

Performed at Pro Player Stadium, Miami Gardens, FL

Perfectly serviceable and entertaining, perhaps the ideal baseline for what these should be.  Again, one of the secrets of a good halftime show is having one to three long-running artists with a few songs everyone likes and just having them perform them.  Anything more and you’re doing great.  Anything less, and you probably need to do some rethinking.  It’s a formula that will save the show’s ass later on in the 2000’s, and it certainly carries the night here.

Overall, 1999 feels like a redemptive show for Gloria Estefan, who was last seen in this space trying to carry the 1992 Winter Wonderland debacle.  Here, she just gets to jam with Stevie Wonder.  She sounds great, he sounds great.  Also, the fun of these things are that they double as time capsules.  Remember when Savion Glover was just everywhere?  What was the deal with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy?

Super Bowl XXXIV - January 30, 2000 (St. Louis Rams vs. Tennessee Titans)

Tapestry of Nations (Phil Collins, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias, Toni Braxton, Georgia State University choir, narrated by Edward James Olmos)

Performed at Georgia Dome, Atlanta GA

You would think, from a review of the line-up, that this would indicate a move from 90’s hits to 00’s hits.  Here comes “Genie in a Bottle” “Bailamos” and “Un-Break my Heart”!  And, hey, it’s Phil Collins, can’t wait to hear “Can’t Stop Loving You”! 

BZZZZT.  No, this is Disney’s big tribute to the coming millennium, which means for some reason that we get a bunch of sappy songs you either don’t remember or never heard.  Christina and Enrique duet on “Celebrate Hand in Hand”, which as we all know was the official theme song of Walt Disney World’s Millennium Celebration.  Toni Braxton comes out to sing “We Go On”, a song written to close out IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth, an Epcot laser show.  Collins only manages to sing “Two Worlds”, your least favorite song from TARZAN.

It’s all nuts in the way only Disney’s early-century attempts at synergy can be.  But it’s undeniably a letdown.  There’s not one song or stunt or puppet I remember.  It’s just kind of a grey, fake-nice blob.  Which is to say, it’s the perfect opening ceremony for the 21st century.

Super Bowl XXXV - January 28, 2001 (Baltimore Ravens vs. New York Giants)

The Kings of Rock and Pop (Aerosmith, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, Nelly)

Performed at Raymond James Stadium, Tampa FL

MTV.  Aerosmith.  NSYNC.  A prerecorded intro sketch featuring Ben Stiller as the character Timothy Swackhammer, Halftime Coordinator.  The 2000’s have begun in earnest.

This show begins a tradition (still upheld to this day) of the halftime show trying to make two distinct flavors taste good together, usually in vain.  Mixing Aerosmith with NSYNC isn’t quite as awkward as you might imagine, although it helps that both parties seem happy to be here.  Aerosmith was riding high on their 21st century resurgence, while NSYNC just seemed enraptured at even being on the same stage with the legendary rock band.  They each sing a couple of their songs, then NSYNC plays backup harmony with Steven Tyler.  A couple of guest stars stop by, bada bing, bada boom.  All in all, of Justin Timberlake’s three Super Bowl halftime appearances, this is easily the least disastrous.

PS: Britney fans will be disappointed with this one; she basically just shows up as backup to “Walk This Way”.  One has to wonder if, had the 2004 show debacle hadn’t occurred and her mental health hadn’t taken a dive by 2007, there was a window where a Britney Spears solo halftime show might have been a reality.  Alas.

Super Bowl XXXVI - February 3, 2002 (St. Louis Rams vs. New England Patriots)

9/11 Tribute (U2)

Performed at Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans LA

Yeah, like I’m enough of a dumbass to sharpen my knives against one of the most iconics halftime shows of all time.  My main quibble aside (that being that the list of 9/11 victims scrolling on the screen throughout the set aren’t especially readable for the television audience nor, presumably, those in attendance in New Orleans), it’s an undeniably effective performance.  I’m not exactly a U2 fan, nor am I a committed skeptic: I exist somewhere in the middle of the Bono Love/Hate spectrum.  They unsurprisingly keep it to the hits (and, shockingly, only three!), which is precisely how I like them.  It’s good!  Even if it weren’t, I wouldn’t dare admit it!  It’s the 9/11 Tribute Show, for god’s sake!

Should mention: Janet Jackson was the original pick for this particular year’s headliner, but got bumped after 9/11 in order to find a different act more suitable for the moment.  Keep this in mind.

Super Bowl XXXVII - January 26, 2003 (Oakland Raiders vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers)

Shania Twain, No Doubt (feat. Sting)

Performed at Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego CA

This one was very odd and unsatisfying.  You might wonder how Shania Twain and No Doubt might blend together.  Well, we’ll never know, because the 2003 halftime show doesn’t even try.  Shania goes on first, and I must say she was a real letdown.  An obvious lip-synced performance of “Up!” and “Man! I Feel like a Woman!” and she’s outta there!  Thanks for playing, Shania!

Then comes mid-2000’s No Doubt (aka the worst No Doubt) and they play just one song and it’s exactly the one you think they might do.  Then out comes Sting for some reason, and they start jamming on “Message in a Bottle” and by “they” I mean Sting, No Doubt and not Shania Twain, who I am left to presume was already tucked away in a Qualcomm suite by that point.

What can I say?  It sucked, an attempt at smashing two unrelated acts together and hoping people were interested.  This was the year I opted for NBC’s counter-programming, a prime-time edition of Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey doing Weekend Update.  That broadcast is now unfortunately lost media, but I wish this halftime show would get lost as well.

Super Bowl XXXVIII - February 1, 2004 (Carolina Panthers vs. New England Patriots)

Choose or Lose (Janet Jackson, P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock, Justin Timberlake, Jessica Simpson, Spirit of Houston and Ocean of Soul marching bands)

Performed at Reliant Stadium, Houston TX

Perhaps the most infamous halftime show of them all.  I will avoid adding too much to twenty years of conversation about the “wardrobe malfunction”, although it’s obviously one of the most hand-wringingly overwrought controversies of our lifetime, and the hypocrisy of Janet catching all the shit for it and Justin being able to just keep doing this “I’m a little stinker” act for nearly another two decades is infuriating to this day.

I will point out a couple of things I find funny:

• 1. The “wardrobe malfunction” is the best thing to ever happen to the 2004 show because it otherwise kind of sucks?  It’s another, “this star does one song, then this unrelated artist does another song, then another unrelated singer does their thing, then two of them come together” that reeks of halving an ass.  

• 2. The reason the show features the Mid-00’s Top-40 All-Stars is that the theme for this year was technically “Choose or Lose”, MTV’s pro-democracy campaign that was technically a different venture from the privately funded Citizen Change and their famous slogan “Vote or Die!”.  Yes, the goal was to drive out the vote.  Instead, everyone saw a covered breast for a quarter of a second and John Kerry ended up losing to George W. Bush by 3 million votes.  Coincidence?  Yes.

Super Bowl XXXIX - February 6, 2005 (New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles)

Paul McCartney

Performed at Alltel Stadium, Jacksonville FL

Thus begins an era that many find refreshing and nostalgic, while some found somewhat staid and overly reactionary to the moral panic the year before.  It’s the Legends of Rock run!  I will say in advance that, for the most part, I actually really like the next six halftime shows, where a legacy act or artist gets twelve minutes of just them and their worldwide audience to sing their hits.  No guests, minimal histrionics…just the music, maaaaan.  I’m not in love with what they necessarily represent; they feel too much like a “please don’t me mad at us anymore” kowtowing to a generation that somewhat refused to believe any music after their time could have any value.  BUT, the next half-decade worth of shows are pretty high level, so fuck, maybe the “this is the only real music” crowd has a point.

Anyway, McCartney’s show is probably my least favorite of the six, although it’s still strong.  When it comes down to it, his set of four curated Greatest Hits are the lesser of the next five acts to follow, at least for me (my hottest Beatles take: I’m not a “Hey Jude” guy).  It’s still a great and confident set, and the complete opposite of the 00’s ones that preceded it.  Simplicity is the name of the game.  McCartney comes out, says “Hello, Super Bowl!”, sings the songs you most associate with him, then gets out.  No gimmicks, no tricks, no exposed breast (unfortunately).

Super Bowl XL - February 5, 2006 (Seattle Seahawks vs. Pittsburgh Steelers)

The Rolling Stones

Performed at Ford Field, Detroit MI

Mick Jagger is impossible to parody.  You cannot possibly exaggerate how much he never really stops moving, nor can you ever successfully overinflate the amount of his perpetual motion in relation to his age, a dichotomy that was already funny in 2006, and only gets more insane with time.

Anyway, look, it’s great!  They’re rocking their asses off on a tongue-shaped stage.  The energy never ceases, and the 13 or so minutes they’re allotted whizzes by in an instant.  You know exactly what you’re getting from a Rolling Stones halftime show (you’ll never believe this, but they play “Start Me Up” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”), and I suspect that was most of the appeal, both for the football-watching audience at large and the NFL themselves. 

Super Bowl XLI - February 4, 2007 (Indianapolis Colts vs. Chicago Bears)

Prince (w/Florida A&M University Marching 100 Band)

Performed at Dolphin Stadium, Miami Gardens FL

On the generally accepted short-list of greatest halftime shows in Super Bowl history, the mystique behind it was undeniably boosted by the turn in the weather.  How much more do you want than it actually raining during “Purple Rain”?  Who doesn’t like the vague danger of somebody (or several somebodies) getting electrocuted during a football game?

There are other things to love about it, the first being Prince’s singular presence.  Love him or hate him, there was never anybody like him.  Also, I love the “Purple Rain” segment as much as everybody else, but I had forgotten the detail that his set is almost entirely covers.  The whole middle of this is him doing “Best of You” by the Foo Fighters.  For some reason, I respect this as a power move.  I could do three more of my mega-famous songs, but I’d rather put a spin on other people’s.  I had also forgotten that, three years after America freaked out forever on Janet Jackson, Prince turning his guitar into an Austin Powers-esque phallic symbol caused another mini-panic*.

*About 150 complaints were filed with the FCC about this year’s broadcast, with most people bitching about either this or that “do something manly!” Snickers commercial where two guys accidentally kissed.  Good times.

Looking back, this felt like a good balance for the Super Bowl halftime show.  A legacy artist showing the kids how it’s done, while throwing in just enough subversion to rankle mom and dad.  Just a little.

Super Bowl XLII - February 3, 2008 (New York Giants vs. New England Patriots)

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 

Performed at University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale AZ

This one took me the most by surprise.  Obviously, Tom Petty was a legend, and there’s absolutely nobody in this country consciously walking around that doesn’t know at least two of his songs.  But for whatever reason, I had never really engaged with him much as an artist.  I had never seen him live, either in person or on video.  In some ways, this was my first real exposure to his vibe.

At least in this context of this halftime show, I was wildly charmed by him.  He seemed humbled by the moment in a way almost no other artist to perform in this slot ever is, like he seemed genuinely surprised and touched to be there.  He had an easy-going vibe to him, with a nice continually contrasting set to match.  He rocks out with “American Girl”, then we all get to ride the mellow waves of “Free Fallin’”.  So on and so forth.  

I wish I had had the chance to become a fan while he was still alive, as I suspect I would have had a great time seeing him in an actual venue.  For now, though?  Him sneakily being one of my favorite halftime shows will have to do.

Super Bowl XLIII - February 1, 2009 (Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Arizona Cardinals)

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Performed at Raymond James Stadium, Tampa FL

Great show, and I’ll always respect a good wall of sound on Super Bowl Sunday.  It did strike me, however, that the no-longer-than-fifteen-minutes format of the halftime show rips the Boss of one of the signature things about his shows: the long, rambling, verbal setups to his songs.  Alas, he’s left to just blow the roof off of Raymond James Stadium (to those who argue that it doesn’t have a roof, I’d ask you to consider why that might now be) by ripping through three of his greatest hits, as well as his then-new one, “Working on a Dream”.  Major points that this halftime show happened before Clarence Clemons passed away, which means we get some sexy sax action.

Also, for those who forgot, this is the one where Bruce power-slides his crotch into the camera.  BRUUUUUUUUCE!

Super Bowl XLIV - February 7, 2010 (New Orleans Saints vs. Indianapolis Colts)

The Who

Performed at Sun Life Stadium, Miami Gardens, FL

The last of this six-year era is probably my favorite, and yes it’s absolutely as simple as I like The Who the most of the six.  All five songs they performed on this night are five of the best rock songs ever.  They still were able to rock.  They sounded great.  Nothing else to it, really.  Even in 2010, The Who were uniquely suited for the moment in a way few were.  They actually had the nerve to open with “Pinball Wizard” and resist the urge to do nothing cutesy to it, like call it “Football Wizard” or something.

Look, sometimes a deep analysis isn’t warranted!  This one rocked!  The end!

Super Bowl XLV - February 6, 2011 (Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Green Bay Packers)

The Black Eyed Peas (ft. Usher, Slash, local Dallas high school drill teams and dancers, Prairie View A&M University Marching Storm)

Performed at Cowboys Stadium, Arlington TX

Look, sometimes a deep analysis isn’t warranted!  This one sucked!  The end!

Okay, okay, I’ll try just a little more.  The 2011 halftime show is usually ranked amongst the worst, and I can’t really levy a contrarian opinion.  It’s quite poor, and it seems quite poor for a variety of reasons.  First, the sound levels are atrocious and would have sunk even the greatest artist.  Second, the Black Eyed Peas weren’t that good in the first place, and their sound has aged horrendously over the last twenty years (oh boy, more tinny bass drops!).  Third, even if it hadn’t, they were never the right band for this particular moment.  The Black Eyed Peas are meant to be enjoyed in the club, perhaps played over the intercom of a basketball game.  A live act, they are not; they’re mostly just kinda standing there the whole time.  Fourth, although Slash looks like he’s trying to get the fuck out of there as soon as possible, fellow special guest Usher is giving it his all.  It’s shocking how much the show picks up the second he arrives, making the headlining act look all the more amateurish.

This was the Super Bowl’s toe-dip back into music of the youth, and it probably couldn’t have gone worse.  It’s very fortunate they didn’t just give up on the concept entirely and start Googling if Glenn Miller was still alive.

Super Bowl XLVI - February 5, 2012 (New York Giants vs. New England Patriots)

Madonna (ft. LMFAO, Cirque du Soleil, MIA, Nicki Minaj, Cee Lo Green, a shit ton of local high school drumlines)

Performed at Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis IN

Okay, so Madonna wasn’t exactly new in 2012.  But she was still coarse enough in style to ruffle some feathers with the modern day football audience, which always makes these shows even 5% more interesting.  

Look, even if you’re not a fan of her catalog (I’m somewhat ambivalent myself), Madonna can obviously still put on a show!  Less great are her odd assortment of guest stars.  Nicki is still in her prime here, and Cee Lo seems happy to be there, but I didn’t need reminding that nepo-baby-dipshit-rap-act LMFAO was ever a thing.  MIA doesn’t make much of an impression musically, although her flipping off the camera made headlines the next day, which counts for something.

This one feels like the opening act of a new era for the halftime show, where singular artists are given the space to do their unique thing, whether or not the main television audience was going to be super into it.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it at least adds a little variety as we enter the last ten or eleven halftime shows.

Super Bowl XLVII - February 3, 2013 (Baltimore Ravens vs. San Francisco 49ers)

Beyonce (ft. Destiny’s Child)

Performed at Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans LA

Out of respect (and fear) of the Bey-hive, I’ll keep my comments positive, not that I have much to complain about anyway.  Beyonce is probably worth a deep dive one of these days, as so much of the last twenty-five years of pop culture seems to run through her in one way or another.  It also speaks to her incredible longevity that she seemed like the perfect choice for a halftime show in 2013, yet now feels a little too early in 2024.  This was pre-LEMONADE and RENAISSANCE, yet she still has more than enough hits to carry the fifteen-minute slot.  She manages to fit in a few measures of nine songs, including two Destiny’s Child numbers and a DC-ified version of “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”, which seems like it has to be a record amount up to this point.  

Beyonce’s specific stage presence is sort of amazing to behold.  Her vocal prowess is well-documented, but it’s fascinating to watch her make a lot out of her dancing ability.  I wouldn’t call her graceful in motion, exactly, but there’s a quickness and sharpness to it that makes it feel more than what it is.  That sounds like a slam, but it isn’t.  What I’m describing is star power.  She’s got it in spades.  I only wish I hadn’t initially watched it in the context of a room full of anxiety-ridden 49er fans.

(Also, I give it points for committing to the “Destiny’s Child reunion” gimmick.  Once Kelly Rowlands and Michelle Williams arrive on stage, they never leave it again, as I recall.)

Super Bowl XLVIII - February 2, 2014 (Seattle Seahawks vs. Denver Broncos)

Bruno Mars (ft. Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Performed at MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford NJ

I can’t get a gauge on how “cool” he is, necessarily, but I am an open buyer for what Bruno Mars sells.  He genuinely seems like he can do it all: sing in an almost-long-forgotten style, play any and all instruments, dance like his life depended on it…it’s good stuff.  I suspect it comes off as corny or try-hand to others, but I’d rather someone be a cheeseball while bringing back that 70’s R&B feel than “be cool” doing whatever the fuck we were doing in 2014 (probably listening to Major Lazer or something).

It’s a fucking blast from beginning to end, and in retrospect, Bruno Mars probably snagged his halftime spot at the exact right time.  He only released one other album after this, the equally successful 24K MAGIC, before dropping off somewhat in the public consciousness (although one can easily imagine Silk Sonic showing up as a guest on one of these someday).  2014 felt like the year he was everywhere, and it was a rare moment of the Super Bowl striking while the iron was ripping hot.  

Super Bowl XLIX - February 1, 2015 (New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks)

Katy Perry (ft. Lenny Kravitz, Missy Elliott, Arizona State University Sun Devil Marching Band)

Performed at University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale AZ

A solid show all-in-all.  Katy Perry has the exact right repertoire for the event; I didn’t confirm it, but it sure feels like every single song in her set that night was a number one hit that saturated the market in its time.  It’s got spectacle; special points for her entrance onto a giant puppet lion, as well as her eventual flying around on what could reasonably be described as the NBC “The More You Know” star.  Heck, even the (as usual) completely unrelated special guests feel worked in as part of the show this time around.  

I’ve talked my shit about Katy in the past and, living through her early-2010’s reign, she could easily get on one’s nerves; again, it’s impossible to exaggerate how completely inescapable her TEENAGE DREAM reign was.  But, with a healthy dose of hindsight, I feel I have no choice but to respect her.  She took time to figure out her persona and aesthetic, then made her fortune going all in on it.  Even as I groaned through “Roar” and “Dark Horse”, I had to admit her legendary status.  This was another halftime show that was extremely well-timed; a couple years later, Katy would almost certainly be hocking her awful “Swish Swish” song.  She was at the height of her powers in the winter of 2015.  Bravo.

(Also, to all of you who mercilessly mocked Left Shark: shame on all of you.  He was just vibing, the way any of us would have given the opportunity.  Leave him alone!)

Super Bowl 50 - February 7, 2016 (Carolina Panthers vs. Denver Broncos)

Coldplay (ft. Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, Gustavo Dudamel, University of California Marching Band, Youth Orchestra L.A.)

Performed at Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara CA

This is one of my very favorites in halftime history.  The vibes are very high and very positive, possibly because it’s still daytime, or maybe it’s the seemingly Haight-Ashbury inspired color palette throughout.  Regardless, I had a smile on my face the entire time.  That said, things don’t really pick up until Beyonce and Bruno Mars show up and start dueting on “Uptown Funk”.  In a sense, the whole show starts to feel like a Halftime Multiverse of Madness.  I’m not sure there’s been three former/current halftime show headliners on stage during a halftime show before, but it adds to the star power of the proceedings.

In the context of this particular project, I also got chills during the finale, where tribute is paid to the first fifty years of halftime shows.  I felt a little delirious seeing clips from the past shows, some of them now feeling like I had watched fifty years ago at this point.  It gave me the push I needed to get through the final seven halftime spectaculars.

Final note: Coldplay is one of those bands I was adamant in my hatred for during my high school days.  Then, occasionally, I would hear a song of theirs and think, “okay, well, I like that one”.  Fifteen occurrences of that later and I think I’m just a casual Coldplay fan, the treacly “Fix You” notwithstanding.  Getting older is mostly becoming comfortable with who you are. 

Super Bowl LI - February 5, 2017 (New England Patriots vs. Atlanta Falcons)

Lady Gaga

Performed at NRG Stadium, Houston TX

Another personal favorite.  A lot of my Lady Gaga admiration has eroded over the years, as she’s expanded her portfolio into jazz standards and Oscar grabs.  No disrespect to either of those pursuits; the provocative Gaga stuff couldn’t last forever, and to some degree, it’s hard to top hanging yourself on the VMA’s.  But I liked the weird, theater-person-in-need-of-psych-meds energy she had in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s.

And this halftime performance is basically 100% that.  She’s dancing around with her hands in little claw shapes.  She’s bouncing around the stage on strings.  She’s being a little weirdo the whole time.  I suspect this is anathema to a good time to many, but it’s hard to deny her singularity.  And, at the end of the day, isn’t that what the halftime show is all about?  There aren’t even any guests this time; who needs ‘em?

Super Bowl LII - February 4, 2018 (Philadelphia Eagles vs. New England Patriots)

Justin Timberlake (ft. the Tennessee Kids, University of Minnesota Marching Band)

Performed at U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN

I dunno, I thought this one was kinda pee.  I have no real hate towards JT, I generally like his music (especially the 20/20 EXPERIENCE sort-of double album, although I suspect I’m somewhat alone on that one).  But his “I’m just a little goofy guy from your youth” act was starting to wear thin in 2018, and is almost unrecognizable in 2024.  

The issue isn’t the setlist, which again I think is pretty okay and a good fit for the halftime show.  It’s how…bland and timid it feels.  It’s also impossible to ignore the unfortunate symbolic meaning of him even being back at the halftime show at all.  The fact that he was extended an invite after 2004 and Janet Jackson appears to be essentially banned for life reveals too much about what actually offends us.  Timberlake perhaps isn’t obligated to refuse the opportunity on moral grounds, nor is he perhaps fully in control of who he can select as a special guest.  However, the fact remains that the absence of any sort of acknowledgment of him avoiding any sort of consequence has the distinct smell of cowardice.

Thankfully, he WAS able to bring in Jimmy Fallon for a pre-recorded intro.  Isn’t that epic?  Who’s to say whether the show is good or bad then?  Look, the TROLLS song!  That’s fun, isn’t it?  The whole thing just feels impossibly dated despite barely being five years old.  Also, even though it ends up being the most memorable part of the night, fuck him for the little Prince “duet”.

Super Bowl LIII - February 3, 2019 (New England Patriots vs. Los Angeles Rams)

Maroon 5 (ft. Travis Scott, Big Boi, Georgia state University Marching Band)

Performed at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta GA

I thought this one was also urine-esque, for much the same reason as the year before.  I don’t hold much against Maroon 5.  I like many of their songs, not that they happened to perform any of them that night.  But, Adam Levine is so fucking corny and swagless; only he could perform a song called “Moves Like Jagger” and not attempt to even move a little bit like Jagger.  It’s probably for the best, but still, read the fucking room, Adam.  It’s also hard to lose from your mind his unfathomably dorky sexts* while he’s ripping off his shirt to show off his bare chest with his very cool tats.  Go ahead, Adam!  Howl like an animal!  I’ll never get “I may need to see the booty” out of my mind.

*I do struggle with this all becoming public information.  On the one hand, it’s really none of our business.  On the other hand, it’s very very funny, so it’s impossible to say whether it’s bad or not.  Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!

Throw in a surprise appearance by Travis Scott, and it’s just kind of an ugh night.  Big Boi was cool, though, and his two songs were easily the highlight of the show.  I desperately wish he and Andre 3000 would get back together.  Imagine Outkast doing a halftime show?

Super Bowl LIV - February 2, 2020 (San Francisco 49ers vs. Kansas City Chiefs)

Shakira and Jennifer Lopez (ft. Bad Bunny, J Balvin, Emme Muniz)

Performed at Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens FL

I remember people going ape-shit for this one at the time, almost as if we all knew deep down we were mere weeks away from something resembling a social apocalypse.  In that sense, it’s a fascinating watch.  Future historians, please note: there really was a quarter of the year 2020 where life was pretty much normal!

It’s a fun one and probably the most thematically coherent of the “take a couple artists and have them split the show” bunch.  Shakira looked the same in 2020 and she did in 2001, and she sticks to her four or five major crossover hits.  Then out comes J-Lo, whose particular star power strikes me in a way nobody else’s does.  It’s genuinely difficult to process her as a human being.  Like, I can’t imagine her just walking around in a house somewhere or, like, eating food.  Does that make sense?  Beyonce and Lady Gaga bowl me over by sheer force of will.  With Jennifer Lopez, I don’t even consider her the same species as myself.  No, I have no clue what’s driving that, but there it is.

What really struck me here is that this was the first time the halftime show would dip its toe into millennial nostalgia.  It absolutely will not be the last going forward.  It’s not even the last on this list.  But that’s what this is.  Some of these songs were pushing twenty years old at the time, even if it didn’t feel like it.  Even four years ago, our generation was generally still young enough that these were just songs that we knew, not artifacts from days gone by.  Don’t worry, every person older than me has informed me that it gets worse!

Super Bowl LV - February 7, 2021 (Kansas City Chiefs vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers)

The Weeknd

Performed at Raymond James Stadium, Tampa FL

A halftime show that is likely to age weird, given the fact that it managed to broadcast in that post-lockdown orders, pre-vaccine creation period.  My wife astutely pointed out how many of the dancers’ costumes were designed to cover up the fact that they were masked.  There’s also a strange, empty atmosphere to the entire proceedings.  A scan of the crowd reveals social distancing, which my brain still processes as “oh, man, they couldn’t sell out this game” because I’m dumb.

It doesn’t really matter, as The Weeknd puts in a hell of a show, albeit one that generated a meme with legs.  He’s an odd talent: he’s definitely not of the “pick up an instrument and start jamming” variety, and he’s definitely electronica-adjacent, but he’s not hiding behind the bleep-boops to mask that he’s charisma-deficient (like, say, the Black Eyed Peas).  He definitely has a presence to him, and more than a little flair for the dramatic.  Another defacto theater-kid-made-good story.

Super Bowl LVI - February 13, 2022 (Los Angeles Rams vs. Cincinnati Bengals)

Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar (ft. 50 Cent, Anderson .Paak)

Performed at SoFi Stadium, Inglewood CA

This show is notable to me for two reasons:

1. I believe this is the first halftime show to revolve primarily around celebrating a producer.  I don’t think Dre discovered every single one of these people, but consider the prominent featuring not only of Eminem and 50 Cent, but the intro and outro showing Dre looking out over the city, as well as Dre pretending to adjust the levels on a giant soundboard throughout the show.  The implication is clear: the last twenty to thirty years of hip-hop came from Dr. Dre’s influence.

2. This halftime show was responsible for a year-long existential crisis for me.  In terms of millennial nostalgia-baiting, the 2022 halftime show runs where the 2020 one walked.  The whole broadcast was like this, to be honest: commercials featured such of-their-time celebrities as Zach Braff, Lindsay Lohan and the cast of THE SOPRANOS.  I guess nobody ever gets to decide when they’re the new generation to have their youths milked by corporations, but I can tell you I wasn’t ready for it on February 13, 2022.  

This show was very popular; a lot of “now this is how it’s done!” reactions to the halftime show flew through the Twitter-sphere.  And, look, it’s a great show.  Dre and Snoop still got it.  I really loved the set, a series of connected rooms that everyone is walking in and out of.  Em is singing about losing yourself, while 50’s hanging from the ceiling like it’s 2003 again.  But you’re never prepared for when you become the old guy lamenting why things can’t just be how they were, and how the kids would never understand what real art is.  

All this to say, the show is great.  But it also signaled the sudden end of one chapter of my life, and the forceful beginning of another.  We’re now our parents’ age.  Thanks for the reminder, Dre!

Super Bowl LVII - February 12, 2023 (Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles) 

Rihanna

Performed at State Farm Stadium, Glendale AZ

This one is another in the “give one artist fifteen minutes to remind everyone why they’re at the top of the industry”, which feels like the most successful formula on the whole.  Rihanna is especially impressive here considering she had been inactive for six years or so prior to this.  She also easily clears the record for most songs performed by one artist at the halftime show.  She does a total of fifteen full or partial songs before her slot is through.  And, honestly?  It’s great, if only because she has one of the greatest stank-faces in modern music.  Overall, it was a great reminder that Rihanna’s been gone for a while, but she’ll never truly go away.  Even if she never releases another album, her legacy is secure.

This was also the show that assuredly caused a lot of guys around the world to go, “....she’s pregnant, right?  No, I’m wrong, why would she be performing while pregnant?  But she’s not dancing a whole lot….god, I’m just being an asshole.  I’m not going to turn and ask my wife.  But, like, she is, right?” (It turns out she was, thank god.)

Super Bowl LVIII - February 11, 2024 (San Francisco 49ers vs. Kansas City Chiefs)

Usher (ft. Alicia Keys, Jermaine Dupri, H.E.R. will.i.am, Lil Jon, Ludacris)

Performed at Allegiant Stadium, Paradise NV

I’ll be honest, this one took a bit to get going. For all the retro Vegas-y action going on, the first few minutes are a little slow, as Usher just kind of makes his way from his throne to the stage. Things pick up when Alicia Keys gets introduced, and it never loses steam again. By the time the show went full Starlight Express, I felt delirious.

Usher is another one of those artists whose ubiquitousness is often slept on. Someone on Twitter actually had the nerve to ask if anybody knew any other Usher songs besides “Yeah!”, but it’s easy to forget he’s been around for over twenty-five years, and has been cranking out hits pretty much the entire time. I think we’re so used to him being around that his music just kinda fades in the background now. But, he’s got a discography to be respected! This show clearly proved that.

Points for going for the obvious fan-favorite choice and bringing back Lil’ Jon and Ludacris for the end. Bonus points for the troll move of including will.i.am, certainly making him the only member of the Black Eyed Peas that will ever get to return to the halftime show. Prayers up for Justin Bieber not getting the invite and having to settle for just being in the crowd.

———

I’m exhausted.  One more thing, then I’m going back to bed until Usher takes the stage.  In no particular order, my personal five favorites and least favorite halftime shows:

FAVORITE

1. Coldplay ft. Beyonce and Bruno Mars (2016)

2. The Who (2010)

3. Prince (2007)

4. Lady Gaga (2017)

5. Michael Jackson (1993)

LEAST FAVORITE

1. Winter Magic (1992)

2. Up With People Salutes Motown (1982)

3. Up With People Beat of the Future (1986)

4. Shania Twain, No Doubt (2003)

5. The Black Eyed Peas (2011)

The Surprising Endurance of MEAN GIRLS

1. SO NOT FETCH

Nostalgia is a funny drug.

We humans tend to overrate the past at the expense of the present, and use that feeling to inform the future.  “Things were just better twenty or thirty years ago”, we say.  “Life was easier”, which it often is at the beginning of our lives, when we have the capacity to ingest and process sugary crap and the ability to live without major responsibilities.  It can feel like we spend our entire existence trying to enter our peak, only to get there and immediately yearn to return to when we were first starting the climb.  What can I say?  We’re hard to please.

The truth is, of course, that most periods of time are roughly equivalent to every other.  There are valleys (living during WWII) and peaks (living after WWII*), but for the most part for most people, major social plusses came with many unrelated minuses, pushing life to about even.  Kids in the 80’s got to enjoy peak NBC Letterman and the explosion of blockbuster entertainment, but lived with the specter of a Russia-induced nuclear holocaust that could begin at almost any second.  Kids these days have access to essentially all of the world’s information and knowledge at any time and any place, yet must live in a world where making public every moment of your life has been practically de riguer since birth.  So it goes.

*Assuming you were white.  Being male was a good idea, too.

For me, nostalgia is even more of a funny thing.  I more or less grew up in the 2000’s, a decade I now spend way too much time thinking about in the 2020’s.  It’s a set of years I often look back on with fondness, even though I really have no reason to.  I began the decade smack dab in the middle of sixth grade and ended it with just a few more months of college left to go, a time period anthroplogists refer to as The Most Embarrassing Ten Years of My Entire Fucking Life.  It was an excruciating time mostly marked by having to figure out how to regulate emotions for the first time, greatly exacerbated by the advent of LiveJournal and the beginnings of sharing every dumb thought in your head to countless strangers on the internet.  

It didn’t help that, purely in terms of popular culture, the 2000’s were largely a wasteland.  Some grand things were on the horizon in terms of television (LOST, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Friday Night Lights all premiered in this decade, all within three years of each other), and I think actually there were some things to like and admire in popular music, although you had to know where to look (alternative college stations were a good place to start).  Even with those silver linings, though, you had to filter through the glut of depressing reality shows (for those who think it gets no worse than Keeping Up With the Kardashians….my brother, you have no idea how much trashier it can get; Calabasas’ favorite family comes off as downright classy compared to something like Are You Hot?) and the continued poisoning of political discourse (his image has been severely rehabbed over the years, but getting the net average Republican and Democrat together in mid 2004 and asking them what they thought about George W. Bush was asking for someone to get killed, possibly yourself).

The worst was the movies*.  The current “IP and Superhero” era we appear to maybe be entering the end of is often cited as the worst one in Hollywood history, which may or may not be true.  However, we often overlook just how…ugly….and goopy…and orange everything seemed to look like in a post-9/11 world.  To get an idea of what every blockbuster looked like in high school, one can look no further than the poster for 2002’s THE SCORPION KING.  It really has it all: a bunch of muscle-bound actors making faces into the camera against uncomfortable fire colors, all with a vague “extreme” aesthetic.  Bleak times.

*Okay, I suppose the worst was the terrorist attack and financial crisis that respectively bookended the decade.  But then again, have you watched BATTLEFIELD EARTH lately?

Crucially, there also weren’t a lot of movies with anything resembling wit.  Just as an example, Will Ferrell was leaving SNL and cranking out the hits (OLD SCHOOL, ELF, STEP BROTHERS, TALLADEGA NIGHTS, to name just a few), and they absolutely have their fans, but they (along with seemingly every other comedy at the time), seemed to dabble exclusively in either manic, obnoxious, frat, or manically obnoxious frat humor*.  Fun times could be had at the mall cineplex or on a date or something, but there seemed to be a lot of empty calories going around comedically.  

*Don’t get me wrong, I quite like Will Ferrell as a comedian.  His countless appearances on late night shows are legendary, and he’s a top-five SNL cast member ever.  His movies just don’t do anything for me, is all.

During my time in high school (2002-2006), there were really only three movies that people seemed to quote with any regularity: ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and MEAN GIRLS.  I don’t really like two of those movies.  I have always been really fond of the third.

So this is the MEAN GIRLS article.

II. ON WEDNESDAYS WE WEAR PINK

MEAN GIRLS is kind of a miracle.

For so many reasons, it feels like it should be one of those things, an artifact of a specific time.  For starters, it stars Lindsay Lohan, maybe the poster child of the decade, the physical manifestation of what the 2000’s felt like.  The precocious child star turned prime tabloid fodder, the performer who burned out so hard on various addictions so publicly, Lohan eventually became such an obvious punchline for a million unfunny talking heads and comedians that you just wanted somebody to air lift her out of Hollywood in order to drop her off at an abandoned silo somewhere for her own good.  There were seemingly hundreds of celebrities that fit this bill that decade (almost always young women), but Lohan always seemed the most tragic.

For second, MEAN GIRLS was created and penned by Tina Fey, as big a guiding directional force for 2000’s comedy as anybody else.  Whether she was a force for good or not, however, largely depends not only on who you ask, but when.  Her oeuvre is one that feels under constant audit; a quick Google search of “tina fey racist” ought to give you an idea of how it frequently goes for her.  Now, in isolation, you can probably successfully defend her on every point of contention.  However, when taking it all in totality, you can sort of see how she epitomized a certain comfort comedy had in the beginning of the 21st century in regard to engaging in racial stereotypes under the guise of “I’m not actually racist so”.  I think intent is way more crucial in unpacking comedic racial commentary than we make it sound sometimes, but it still gives one much to think about in terms of where elegance comes into play.

On that note, for…thirds? I think?  When watching MEAN GIRLS in 2024, you definitely feel its mid-00’s energy begin to show.  Teenage girls at a mall?  The use of landlines (hands-free though they may be)?  Vicious gossip being spread around school via paper?  Technology tends to creep up on us, but it’s downright bizarre how different the human high school experience has become a mere two decades later.  None of this is to mention how, yes, it also engages in arguable racial cheap shots (its Asian representation remains a point of contention both then and now) and words that would absolutely not be used now, Regina George’s liberal use of…uh, the r-word being the most obvious candidate.  Obviously, it’s not used in order for anyone behind the movie to actually put down the disabled (it’s actually one of the most clarifying things about Regina’s true character), and it doesn’t personally offend me.  Yet, one imagines this would be an easy rewrite in the here and now; I highly suspect the 2024 remake has worked around this.

And yet, for all of this, MEAN GIRLS remains one of the relatively few stone-cold classics that the 2000’s ended up producing.  To watch it now is to marvel at how much of it still works.  The casting is essentially perfect all the way up and down the call sheet.  Every line is seemingly a perfectly quotable nugget.  And its story of a formerly home-schooled girl infiltrating the Plastics, the nastiest most insular clique in school before losing herself in the facade and becoming a Plastic through and through herself is a surprisingly astute one all these years later.  No, the movie never gets quite as dark as it clearly wants to be; one of its biggest shock-laughs (Regina getting suddenly hit by a school bus) gets immediately softened, and it generally has to abide by its PG-13 rating.  On the other hand, it’s played for laughs that the sex-ed coach gets busted for sleeping with several students, so I’d argue it finds its darkness all the same.

Even the elements I worried would age the film turned out to be some of its strongest.  I mentioned above how the fall of Lindsay Lohan felt tragic in a way that other public celebrity meltdowns in the 2000’s didn’t, and that’s because it represented a very real loss of talent.  It’s very, very easy to forget how good she used to be; in fact, MEAN GIRLS might represent the last high-quality project she was (or may ever be) a part of.  To play the role of Cady Heron requires two things: the ability to play wide-eyed sheltered, almost child-like, wonder and insecurity towards almost everything around you, as well as the capacity for embodying full unbridled bitchiness.  Lohan does both with seemingly no effort at all.  There are showier performances surrounding her in pretty much every scene, yet MEAN GIRLS likely wouldn’t work at all without her.

And man, are there some showy performances going on here.  Just as an example, our three central Plastics are also all wonderful in their own ways, and I’ve always admired how precisely drawn their personalities are, as well as how they work in relation to each other.  Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried) and Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert) are both vapid suck-ups in their own ways to Regina, but there’s also crucial differences in how they go about it.  Karen is famously rock-stupid, but also possibly the only truly kind person in the group?  Gretchen, on the other hand, sometimes seems actually wounded when she gets her hands metaphorically slapped.  There’s a genuine insecurity when, say, she gets told her try-hand slang invention “fetch” is “never going to happen”.  As for Regina, she was a star-making role for Rachel McAdams* and I’m not kidding when I say you could feel it in the theater as you were watching it.  

*Although I suppose THE NOTEBOOK coming out the same year didn’t hurt.

Then, of course, are the SNL, TV vets and future stars that litter the supporting cast.  Amy Poehler (whose “cool mom” of Regina might be my favorite side character of them all).  Ana Gasteyer.  Neil Flynn.  Diego Klattenhoff.  Rajiv Surendra.  Dwayne Hill.  Tina Fey herself.  Special shoutout to Lizzy Caplan and Daniel Franzese for taking two roles that could have been stuck in expository dialogue hell and imbuing them with personality.

But then again, even if nobody else in the supporting cast shone, as long as Tim Meadows was there, MEAN GIRLS would likely retain its legendary status.  His Principal Ron obviously gets the number one best line of the entire movie (“I will keep you here until four”), but Meadows manages to lift every other one of his lines with this active blank face that makes everything 15% funnier.  I don’t mean to be the guy who says a man in a movie with GIRLS in the title is the MVP and, frankly, he’s not.  But he’s absolutely the sixth man of MEAN GIRLS.

Of course, it’s kind of difficult to pick the true number one best line.  There are the obvious zeitgeisty ones: “I have ESPN”.  “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen”.  “She doesn’t even go here!”  “You go, Glen Coco!”  However, I might pitch the dark horse “what are marijuana pills?”.  But picking the true number one is difficult because, well, there are a lot of goddamn great lines in MEAN GIRLS.  And this leads me to ending this section by defending Tina Fey’s comedic sensibility after acknowledging why maybe not everything about it has aged all that well.  Yeah, not everything about her sensibility is great; looking back, she was probably too obsessed with the Hilton sisters in her time as Weekend Update anchor.  The content of her humor may not have survived, but the loopy cadence and witty spirit of it lives on, if the lasting endurance of this and 30 Rock is any indication.  She was a major reason I fell in love with comedy in the first place, so I’ll never fully write her off.  

Nostalgia is a funny drug.

III. THE LIMIT EXISTS

So, I have something to confess.

Full disclosure time: the plan for this month’s article was to not just wax on about the original MEAN GIRLS, but to also compare it to the remake/musical adaptation that came out this month.  If nothing else, I find the very concept of the new movie fascinating: it’s a movie adaptation of a Broadway musical adaptation (also penned by Fey!) of a twenty-year old original that also appears to double as kind of a straight-up remake.  What is one to think when many of the joke structures of the original seem preserved, and a pair of original cast members return in their old roles?  MEAN GIRLS 2024 seems like an attempt to bridge two generations in one two-hour musical.

My vision for this month’s article was to enter into the 2024 MEAN GIRLS remake with full eyes and a clear heart, and assess what the Gen Z version of a millennial favorite might look like.  Hell, it might have even allowed me to go on a good old-fashioned screed about the relative creative bankruptcy of the current Broadway practice of taking well-known intellectual properties, adding fifteen bullshit songs and an additional forty minutes, then waiting for the cash to roll in.  It probably would have been a really interesting article.

The thing is…I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t bring myself to see the new MEAN GIRLS.

It’s not out of some sort of confusion as to its general existence.  The musical is popular!  The movie stars well-known people!  It’s fucking January, a month that could use a little sugary pop at the box office!  And I am a recent convert to the Church of Renee Rapp, just like everybody else who have found her scorched-earth style of handling press junkets to be delightful.  This is not me making a big show of Refusing to See Something.  It’s not even out of a pearl-clutching “how dare they” moral outrage as to how they could possibly touch a nostalgic classic.  Again, the 2000’s fucking sucked.  Touch away, you monsters.

But I just couldn’t get myself to hop in the car, take out my wallet and cough up twelve bucks on a weekend day to see a copy of a movie that means more to me than I guess I thought.  And I will remind you I blew a free afternoon to watch THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER.  So, instead, the remainder of this article is going to be about breaking down exactly why I decided to abandon its actual crux.

To be clear, there are a couple of things about MEAN GIRLS 2024 I find concerning.  As I had never heard it before, I did work my way through the original cast recording of the Broadway score and was dismayed to find that none of the songs were particularly catchy in melody or memorable in lyric, a red flag in an adaptation of one of the most quotable movies of its generation.  Although I disliked very little of what I heard, it also provided little of the loopy joy practically every other line of the original movie did.  I took a break from the soundtrack and ultimately never came back to it.  

More disheartening are the clips I’ve seen where it looks like the screenplay for the 2024 version is mostly going for doing the same jokes from 2004, only a little worse?  It’s one thing to recast most of the adults, one of those things that just has to happen if you’re remaking a twenty-year old movie (although my brain is also refusing to adjust to Busy Phillips replacing Amy Poehler as Regina’s mother).  But then Tina Fey and Tim Meadows are returning as the same characters, presumably as some sort of nod to continuity?  I’m not sure why that would matter, but I suppose it’s possible.  I imagine it might also be that they were the two cast members that didn’t necessarily age out of their characters, or maybe it’s just Tina putting her thumb on the scale a bit, bringing her friend along with her.  Whatever the reason, there they are, confusing the intent of the entire endeavor just a bit.

The point is, it appears MEAN GIRLS 2024 is largely just doing the original again, only with alternate takes.  Coach Carr, now played by Jon Hamm, is misspelling the word “hormones” on the whiteboard this time, a major step down from the misspelling of “chlamydia” the first time around.  Meadows’ “I did not leave the south side for this!” has been downgraded to “I did not go to graduate school for this!”  I dunno, I’m already not a fan of movie remakes/reboots trying to court fans of the original by pointing at something and going “remember this?”.  However, it turns out what I hate even more is someone waving something in my face and asking “remember this?” and the thing in their hand is only vaguely recognizable.

I would imagine the best path forward for a project like MEAN GIRLS 2024 is just to rebuild it from the ground up.  An updated MEAN GIRLS is not the worst idea in the world; technology changes, but kids remain the same throughout generations.  I don’t begrudge the idea of replacing three-way phone calls for FaceTiming and TikToks.  Sunrise, sunset and all that.  But that means you have to let the old jokes go, too.  And replacing them with new ones.  New ones without any of the old cadences and setups.  And that’s difficult when the whole point of the endeavor is to present yourself in the shadow of an original.

I should make it clear: this is not me declaring MEAN GIRLS 2024 as bad!  How could I?  I didn’t see it, and I’m not in the habit of making a definitive evaluation of something I haven’t seen or read or listened to.  But I highly suspect it would be a waste of my time, speaking as someone who is both a humongous fan of the original and as someone outside the very targeted demographic the new one is seeking.  Maybe there’s value in realizing these things at a certain point and just letting it go.

As it stands, I couldn’t put the key into the ignition to hear music I didn’t really like paired with old lines I’ve come to love, but rewritten to be just a little worse.  Not when I have the original easily accessible at essentially any time.  So I didn’t.  I’m happy to just kind of live in a world where the original MEAN GIRLS is a singular entity.  I’m happy to pretend Tim Meadows didn’t come back to the role, either in the 2024 musical or in the 2011 TV sequel.  I guess I just didn’t want the spell broken.

Nostalgia is a funny drug.

Stocking Stuffer: The Twelve Craziest Things that Happened on THE SANTA CLAUSES

Okay, look, I know I’m supposed to be with my family right now, drinking eggnog and watching Rudolph or arguing about Ron DeSantis or whatever today.  But I can’t help it.  I can’t let this Christmas season end without completing a little bit of unfinished business.  In my defense, you’re supposed to be with your family right now too, and here you are.  Bear with me for a second.

This year was notable on the blog for me being able to update and “complete” a couple of long form series for me.  Last month, I was able to resurrect my 2020 Scorsese retrospective by reviewing KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.  A couple of weeks ago, I was able to put a bow on this summer’s Sofia Coppola series by breaking down her biopic PRISCILLA.  

However, I recently brought to my own attention that I made a promise at the end of 2020.  After spending a few days going over the delirious insanity that was the SANTA CLAUSE trilogy, I had made a declaration at the end of the article for THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE -

This marks the end of the canonical story of Scott Calvin, at least so far.  In the advent of Disney + expanding every brand under their corporate arm, it's a little surprising there hasn't been a SANTA CLAUSE 4 announced yet, or a 10-episode TV spinoff starring Curtis and Buddy.  However, I wouldn't be surprised if Mickey Mouse changes his tune in the next couple of Christmases.  If he ever does, I'll be here to review it.

As it turns out, Disney eventually met me somewhere in the middle.  Technically, the movie trilogy is still defunct as of 2006.  HOWEVER, last year, they dropped six episodes of a follow-up continuation series, entitled THE SANTA CLAUSES!  My wife and I watched it and basked in its asinine nonsense, then thought nothing else of it afterwards.  I realized later, after Santa had already come and gone, that I was technically obligated to do a write-up.  Okay, well, I wasn’t going to go back and post something in late January, so I chalked it up to a lesson learned.

 THEN, Disney had the nerve this fall to drop a second season.  I took this as a sign.  Thus, today, on the holiest of days, I present to you the twelve craziest things that happened during the first two seasons of THE SANTA CLAUSES (now streaming on Disney Plus!):

1. Let’s start with the theme song, a short little thing that sets expectations for the show perfectly.  It’s not so terrible as it is downright bizarre, a jingle that seems to be missing a middle section.  One’s mileage may vary, but I felt like I was going crazy every time this thing played in front of me.  The graphics aren’t much more comforting, I’m afraid.  It starts with a CGI reindeer turning around and staring straight into your soul, and it concludes fifteen seconds later with a bevy of CGI Santas raining down your screen.  Interesting choices, both.

2. The episode titles themselves, quickly revealed at the end of the title sequence, are oddly chosen and crafted.  I think they’re going for “funny-sounding” over anything truly informative.  Here’s a sampling of a few of them: you be the judge as to whether that particular mission was accomplished.

   Chapter One: Good to Ho

   Chapter Two: The Secessus Clause

   Chapter Four: The Shoes off the Bed Clause

   Chapter Five: Across the Yule-Verse

   Chapter Seven: The Kribble Krabble Clause

   Chapter Eight: Floofy

   Chapter Twelve: Wanga Banga Langa

3. Something that you probably suspected about THE SANTA CLAUSES is that it does dabble a little bit in the brand of conservative humor you may associate with modern-day Tim Allen.  Yes, Santa moans early on in the first episode about how “you can’t even say Merry Christmas anymore”.  Hacky shit, but I would actually submit that there isn’t enough of this going on in the series.  Not that I think it’s particularly amusing, but I feel it’d be a stronger choice to go all in on the cranky boomer jokes rather than do one or two before settling for an amorphous “IP brand extension” tone.  Yes, it probably is now “more accessible for all audiences”, but nobody’s watching but me anyway, you know?  Let’s have some personality!

4. One of the running themes early on in the first season of THE SANTA CLAUSES is Santa’s search for a suitable replacement, a hiring event that gets opened up to celebrities and notable figures.  It’s actually a pretty decent setup for a series of famous faces coming up to the North Pole and doing their thing for thirty seconds.  Naturally, the show provides us only one: NFL great Peyton Manning, who auditions by grunting out, “Ho-Ho-Omaha!”, a reference to Peyton’s famous audible call that I’m guessing most of this show’s potential audience had probably forgotten about in 2022, or maybe never heard before at all.  One has to imagine what would have happened if the first season had filmed a MERE year later; maybe Santa would be getting pitched by the Kelce brothers to appear on New Heights or something.

5. The Season Two premiere contains an interesting treat.  The episode’s centerpiece is a quick music video-esque segment, featuring all the elves dancing around and providing backup to another elf singing “Dancing with my Elf”, a parodic cover of the Billy Idol song “Dancing with Myself”.  Oddly, this turns out to be part of a training simulation for Scott Calvin’s son (don’t worry about it).  I didn’t dig too much as I felt deeply weird Googling a child actress for more than a couple of seconds, but this felt like a way for Disney to showcase a potential child star in the making by finding a way to fit a singing showcase where one normally wouldn’t fit.  I find this somewhat charming in an old-school Hollywood kind of way.

6. Season Two features the Easter Bunny.  The Easter Bunny is played by Tracy Morgan.

7. Season Two’s main villain is a former Santa, known as the Mad Santa. One episode contains a flashback to Mad Santa’s original reign.  He is hosting a party and banging away on a piano singing a song, to the tune of We Wish You a Merry Christmas, about how he doesn’t like porridge.  Tracy Morgan’s Easter Bunny declares that the song “slappeth”.

8. Later on in the season, rhe Mad Santa grants everyone at a Santa Claus-themed park a present based on their deepest desire.  One person gets a signed framed photo of Guy Fieri (I admit this one made me genuinely laugh).

9. A running storyline throughout THE SANTA CLAUSES’ second season is the need for Santa’s head elf Betty (Matilda Lawler, who is pretty easily the best child actor on the show up to this point) to attend Kribble Krabble, which turns out to be the elf version of the Amish ritual Rumspringa, where adolescents get a chance to live outside their religious confines.  Here, Betty must go live among the humans in New York in order to….oh, who knows.  Referring to Rumspringa as “Kribble Krabble” is one of those things that feels vaguely offensive in ways that are imperceptible.  There’s nothing really wrong with it, but it seems like there should be.

10. 90’s television and movie stalwart Laura San Giacomo recurs as Christmas witch La Bufana, a name I only held onto for its resemblance to that of jazz legend Paul Bufano.

11. THE SANTA CLAUSES expands on the greater SANTA CLAUSE lore (a bone-chilling sentence if ever there was one).  It also contains a pretty major retcon.  We find out in the fifth episode of Season One that the Santa that Scott Calvin appeared to have killed (played then by Steve Lucescu, now played by PARKS AND REC alum Jim O’Heir) is not, in fact, dead!  He simply retired to the afterlife (which kind of sounds like he died to me, but never mind).  Also, the passing of the mantle to Scott was no accident; he was a carefully chosen successor, handpicked by Santa after a chance encounter when Scott was a kid.  See?  There’s no random manslaughter in the original movie anymore!  Are we having fun with any of this yet?

12. It’s likely this is the only thing you ever knew about THE SANTA CLAUSES and, in fact, might have been your first indication that the show even existed, but it should be noted that Casey Wilson, the pilot episode’s big guest star as the girl Scott Calvin encountered in the very first SANTA CLAUSE film, has gone on the record with what a disinterested asshole Tim Allen was during the filming of her episode.  Although this is something that technically allegedly occurred offscreen rather than on, I think its potential truth helps clarify the weird feeling the entire show provides.  It’s a show where even its main star, playing the titular character, barely wants to be there.  You can feel it.  There’s a big feeling of “who gives a shit” that permeates every scene of every episode of this.  Amazingly, there’s a very real chance it gets a third season.  As long as the streaming slot machine needs feeding, anything and everything can be a quarter.

    You can bet I’ll be there if and when.

The Simple Power of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

I. “Each man’s life touches so many other lives.”

When it comes to movies and television, I’m not much of a crier.

Most people I know take to weeping when something overwhelmingly sad or despondent occurs on screen, especially when it’s a situation that hits close to home (“I’ve been there!” or “oh god, she reminds me of my mom”).  It just doesn’t happen for me that often, even when I can empathize or sympathize with the poor characters.  I can definitely feel the punch in my gut, and the most affecting emotional moments in cinema can stay in my head for days and days.  I just don’t ever really cry.

Even onscreen deaths don’t do a lot for me.  I definitely take most fictional deaths with something resembling disappointment, especially when it’s a character I really like.  But there’s just this wall I often have that keeps the corners of my eyes from actually producing water.  Maybe it’s because death is used as such an emotional crutch in film and TV and we’ve seen it over and over and over and over since the first time we saw BAMBI as little kids that it loses its impact; it now needs to be a really well-earned moment for it to resonate for me, especially once you start experiencing the loss of real people in your life.

I don’t bring this up as a boast of superiority.  This is not a smug “look at all those pathetic little humans out there reacting to fiction; don’t they know this is all made up?” observation, I promise.  I’m genuinely jealous of those who are able to absorb visual storytelling to the point of it feeling real.  It’s an ability that makes art so much more accessible, so much more alive.  This wall of stone in front of me has worried me at times, like I’m watching movies the wrong way or something.

However, I know that I’m not a total monster.  There are a couple of moments in fiction that get me every single time, where the mere thought of them can get me going if I’m in a particularly vulnerable state of mind.  They just need to be moments of triumph rather than catastrophe, moments of joy, often depicting characters realizing they’ve done something they didn’t even know they could do.  That they matter.

I’ve mentioned this one before, but…in the middle of a much longer article, I mentioned how much I loved the seventh episode of the second season of THE BEAR, titled “Forks”.  I didn’t divulge then and, in the interest of hoping you all out there who haven’t watched it yet will take the plunge soon, I won’t really detail it out now (this isn’t an article about THE BEAR, after all).  Suffice to say, though, that the episode takes a character that was often very frustrating (to the point of almost actively being a problem for the show) and redeems him so completely and totally and imbues him with such purpose that he instantly became my favorite.  It’s a story that proves it’s never too late to reinvent yourself.  A story about how every second counts.  A story so well told that I can no longer hear the opening jangle of “Love Story” anymore without wanting to start running around the room. 

Another moment…this one is slightly more embarrassing to admit, but Christmas is about sharing, so…..

I admit that I get got by the ending of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2.  The Ravager funeral hits me very time.  There, I said it.  It’s for several reasons: for one, the death of Yondu meant the MCU lost Michael Rooker, one of the more overqualified and too-interesting actors in the entire franchise.  For two, it’s Rocket Racoon’s realization that people still cared about Yondu, even when he spent his life pushing everyone away and pretending not to care (a lesson that resonates with our favorite talking raccoon).  For three, it’s the fact that, despite his fears at the beginning of the film, Yondu didn’t let the Ravagers down!  Sylvester Stallone said so!  It’s another redemption story, this time for a gruff character that spent a lot of time acting like he didn’t care only to show, in his final moments, that he absolutely cared, to such a degree that at least one of the living is forever altered.

They’re both moments of men proving that they matter.  That they have (or had) worth.

Look, I have a type.

This brings us to the ending of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, an iconic and oft-parodied moment in a movie that’s almost exclusively filled with iconic and oft-parodied moments.  You probably know it without ever seeing it.  “To George Bailey, the richest man in town”.  Auld Lang Syne.  “Attaboy, Clarence”.  That whole thing.  Like much of the film, its final scene wears its heart so strongly on its sleeve that its arm threatens to come off.  It’s borderline manipulative.

And goddamnit, if it doesn’t make me cry.  Every single fucking time.  It’s as much a Christmas tradition as the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Naturally, I wanted to write about it as a little holiday treat. so, let’s jump into IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE!

II. “George Bailey is not a common, ordinary yokel.”

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a movie that became a Christmas classic mostly because it was free.

The fact that the 1946 Frank Capra drama was not exactly a box-office dynamo upon its release (essentially breaking even on its $3 mil budget) is one of the more famous things about it.  However, what gets lost in all that is that it was still liked by many in its time.  Its reviews were solidly mixed, yes, but consider that it was also nominated for Best Picture during the 19th Academy Awards, with Capra and James Stewart snagging Best Director and Best Actor nominations, respectively.  It won only a technical achievement award, but the film garnered respect from its peers even upon its release.  It even ruffled some feathers: its blatantly anti-capitalist themes prompted the FBI to issue a memo implying the film was Communist propaganda.  Not bad for a movie that is often dismissed as sentimental!

* for its simulation of falling snow, a technique considered unique for its time.

Every single person on the planet probably knows the story of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE but, just in case….it tells the now very well-known story of George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart), a young man living in Bedford Falls who’s at the end of his rope.  We learn exactly how he got there by going through his life, as told to his guardian angel (Henry Travers).  We see George as a child saving his brother Harry (Todd Karns) from a watery death.  We see him as a boy working for a pharmacist, Mr. Gower (H.B. Warner).  We see George as a recent high school graduate, eager to go off to college and see the world.  When his father (Samuel Hinds) suddenly passes away, George must put his ambitions aside and run the Bailey Building and Loan, a people-oriented institution constantly under attack from the miserly and profits-first Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore).  Along the way, he courts the loving Mary Hatch (the inimitable Donna Reed) and begins to raise a family.

Mr. Potter is finally able to bring the Building and Loan to its knees, essentially by seizing an opportunity to steal eight grand from the loyal, but wildly forgetful, Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell).  With a bank audit about to begin, George finally has nowhere to turn.  A man once full of life is about to plunge himself off a bridge to his death.

Enter Clarence!  The wingless angel launches the most famous section of the film by granting George his wish to never be born so that he can see for himself just the impact he had on his loved ones, and the world at large, as well as just how much worse the world would be if he hadn’t been there.  If he hadn’t stood up against the greedy and cold Mr. Potter.  If he hadn’t fought for the people of Bedford Falls.  If he hadn’t started a life with Mary.  If he hadn’t saved his brother’s life.  George refunds the value of life and runs off to face another day, just in time for everyone in town to raise the money to cover the stolen eight grand…and then some!  The Building and Loan lives on, Clarence earns his wings, and the hearts of everyone in the audience grows three sizes that day.

Alas, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE came and went like a good majority of movies did in the times before television, home media and streaming.  Some have pointed out that the movie was not quite as optimistic as post-war audiences were hoping for in 1946 (and it is bleaker than you might remember), which might explain why it didn’t connect with audiences right away.  It became a movie somewhat lost to time, and it was certainly no holiday classic.

Then, the 1976 Christmas season came.

Thanks to a clerical error, National Telefilm Associates neglected to renew the copyright for the film in 1974, and it more-or-less entered the public domain soon after.  Starting with 1976, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE aired constantly on television, which led to people discovering it all over again.  By the 1980’s, it was as much a part of the holiday television schedule as Rudolph and Charlie.  There’s an overwhelming chance the first time you ever saw it was on TV.

For me, it was a movie that I was introduced to in stages.

For many, many years of my life, I knew it as “that movie that came on after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade” (yes, there was a time where it wasn’t the dog show!).  My mom usually worked on Thanksgiving, so I got to know the first forty-five minutes of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (with commercials) really well.  12:45 pm was about when my grandfather would pick me up to take me over to grandma’s house to start prepping for the day’s festivities.

After a couple of years, I started getting kind of curious about what else happened in this movie, specifically when we got to the angel making it so that Jimmy Stewart was never born.  I started having the TV turned on to NBC in that brief period between getting settled at Grandma’s and having other family start to trickle in.  I think my grandparents liked that I was getting into older movies.  Yet, I never did make it to that damn bridge.  This was easily the most famous thing about the movie, and yet, I never managed to watch it long enough to ever see it.

Finally, a family member loaned me a cheapie VHS copy of it and told me to enjoy.  I finally sat down and watched the dang thing one November in the early 2000’s and finally, finally got to see Clarence arrive and alter George Bailey’s existence.  Shockingly, this most parodied element of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE doesn’t occur until around minute 100 of a 130-minute movie.  I kind of considered most of what came before it to be a little overlong and a little boring, I’m afraid.  Too much focus on loan management, on housing, on bank examiners.  George Bailey should have tried getting into video games or something.  At least, that’s how I felt at the time; if it weren’t for the film being so intertwined with my still-forming holiday traditions and memories, I might have never thought about it again.

The funny thing about IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, though, is how much it opens up once you become an adult yourself.

III. “Why’d we have to have all these kids?”

Look, one of the joys of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is just how fakey Hollywood it can often be.  There’s a lot of “pause for the punchline” kind of moments, where background characters emerge from the ether to say an old-timey one-liner like “why don’t you kiss her instead of talkin’ her to death!”.  Where the presence of a bottle or a shot glass in a character’s hand represents a fall from grace.  Hell, there’s a fucking black crow that starts flying around whenever shit is about go down at the Building and Loan.  It’s not subtle, and it’s often pretty goofy.

My favorite little detail of the whole movie is how, throughout the course of what has to be one of the most stressful Christmas Eves a movie character has ever experienced (after Potter steals the money from Uncle Billy, George threatens Billy with prison before coming home and roasting the house, his wife, his wife’s family, his kids, his kids’ teacher and the song his kids are playing), he goes from being clean-shaven to developing a five-o’clock shadow.  What a day!

And, yeah, it’s got all the hallmarks of an “old movie” with possible “old movie problems”, depending on your point of view.  There’s a scene of George and Mary flirting in a way that might be considered uncouth now; George withholding her robe from her as she crouches naked behind a bush is pretty obviously meant as a playful give-and-take, but I imagine it may bump some today.  And, like basically all movies made between 1931 and 1956, there’s a black maid character that you kind of just have to get through*, although Annie (Lillian Randolph) isn’t the butt of a joke as often as I had remembered.

*My method of dealing with racism and sexism in old media: I visibly shake my head and audibly say “oh, that’s not okay”, even if nobody else is in the room.  This then absolves any guilt or unease about continuing to enjoy the movie from there.

And, of course, the movie is littered with that “old-timey movie” accent.  IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is filled with oft-quoted lines of dialogue.  But, for me?  My favorite line to quote to myself is one from the alternate George-less present.  It’s when Sheldon Leonard, playing the titular owner of the bar Nick’s, starts laying down the law to Clarence Oddbody after he orders something a little too, um, colorful: “we serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don’t need any characters around to give the joint ‘atmosphere’!”  Watch it again sometime and tell me that’s not a satisfying thing to recite.

But I think all the Hollywood artifice contained within IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is actually a charming addition to the movie, not a cheap detraction.  Because, honestly?  The movie is often unbearably, shockingly dark.  And somewhat cynical.  And, yes, anti-capitalist enough to prompt a response from the fucking FBI.  And displaying the darkness alongside a magic movie world just makes it that much darker.

For context, IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE contains a grief-stricken shop owner battering his child employee until he bleeds from his ear.  A young man dies of influenza.  A father yells at his kids after lamenting ever having them in the first place.  Our hero tearfully prays to God before drunkenly crashing a car on his way to commit suicide.  It just goes on like this.

More than anything else, though, it contains the story of a dream deferred, of a man who constantly gets beaten down by the levers of his country, of his god, of life itself.  And, for the most part, the story doesn’t cut any corners in regards to its slow, steady depiction of George getting beaten down.  

Whenever something can go wrong for George Bailey, it does.  It must.  His father suddenly passes away.  The Building and Loan must survive a bank run.  His brother, the heir apparent to the B&L, gets married and hooked up with a great job elsewhere.  And every single time, he must put others before him.  For better or for worse, he has a driving sense of nobility within him.  He knows exactly what is good with the world: his father, the family’s B&L, his wife Mary, his brood of kids, keeping citizens with roofs over their heads even if payments are late, community, society, loyalty.  Keeping one’s word.  He also knows exactly what’s wrong with the world: Potter, the richest man in town.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE makes it very clear: the rich are the enemy.  Potter drives people into slums, or maybe the streets.  He owns almost every utility in Bedford Falls, and spends most of the movie trying to take down the Bailey Building and Loan.  He eventually finds his chance by stealing money from Uncle Billy, the fateful envelope that leads to George’s follicle miracle on Christmas Eve.  Potter is never to be trusted.  He’s loyal only to himself.  And that’s why he nearly wins.

This movie never, ever stops putting the screws to George Bailey.  For the first 100 minutes (and even really the next 20 after that), it’s George getting his ass handed to him by life.  He never gets to go and travel around the world, or to get his education, or even to leave his damn hometown.  And, y’know, that’s the thing about being an adult.  This happens to almost all of us to some degree.  I’m guessing almost everyone who’s ever seen IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE can relate to some aspect of George’s plight to some degree.  How could you not?  I won’t turn this into a screed about the state of the American worker, but I will let you search within and do the math yourself.

Even when Clarence finally takes human form and shows him what life would have been like if he had never been born, George kinda eats shit the whole time.  He’s informed by everybody he’s ever loved that they don’t know who he is.  He’s thrown out onto the street.  People are constantly dismissive, and at least one is outright scared*.  And, yes, it turns out life is now a dystopia named Pottersville.  Nice going not being born, George!

*That would, of course, be the now-matronly Mary, whose “unwed librarian” status is indicated by putting her hair up and fitting her with glasses.

It can be a difficult watch if you let it be.  It’s a story of how you can live as nobly as you possibly can, and believe in people, and treat everyone well, and put everybody else around you before yourself, and you can still get chewed up and spit out by a rich fuck who decides you’re in his way.  And that’s kind of all there is to it.  And when you’re watching it happen to one of the most beloved movie stars to ever grace the silver screen?  Yeah, it’s brutal.  By the time George sits on a barstool at Martini’s, praying to God to help him if he’s out there….it’s panic-inducing.

IV. “No man is a failure who has friends.”

All of the above is why, when the movie does kind of pull off some Hollywood razzle-dazzle by getting us to that magic ending?  Where everything is okay at the end, once George realizes his life meant something?  Where even the fucking bank examiner starts contributing money to the George Bailey Relief Fund?  Where the most powerful choice that George is ever provided turns out to be to choose to keep on going?  That he matters, and always has, warts and all?  How could it not be genuinely rousing?

Yes, it’s schmaltzy.  It’s corny.  One might even call it manipulative, were they so inclined.  Because it’s leaning on all the old tropes that all stories do.  Friendship and love, it turns out, is all you need.  Now let’s sing a song to the new year!  Christmas!

But, goddammit, it hits.  Because it’s the perfect conclusion to this melancholy story.  It turns out that George has not been defeated.  He ultimately wins the day by having the one thing Mr. Potter never did.  He has friends.  He has people that love him.  He’s touched their lives.  Everyone is emotionally better for having been in George Bailey’s life; one angel now has his wings because of him.  George Bailey is better for being alive.

It all culminates in one of the only movie moments that honest-to-god makes me cry every time, even if I just think about it.  Harry Bailey, the war hero, comes home to raise a toast to his brother George,

“The richest man in town.”

Merry Christmas, everybody.

The Gorgeous Gilded Cage of Sofia Coppola’s PRISCILLA

Sofia Coppola movies tend to be a dice roll.

I’ve covered it extensively in this space this year already, but I’ve found there to be a unique gap between the ceilings of her filmography and its floors. When she’s really clicking for me, she’s capable of making some of the best movies of the past twenty-five years; 1999’s THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is one of the great tales of suburban ennui from one of the best years Hollywood ever had. Also, its clunkiness in its handling of race aside, 2003’s LOST IN TRANSLATION is still one of the few movies I can pop on at any time, any place, and feel like I’m falling in love with the medium for the first time all over again. Finally, 2010’s SOMEWHERE is Coppola at perhaps her most fundamental and efficient, telling a full tale about a failed celebrity father with a minimum of dialogue. All three are timeless mood pieces about the universal feelings that unite us (even though they are admittedly very white-oriented, something which may be a barrier to truly loving her work. As always, I leave you to determine your personal mileage).

When she’s not really firing on all cylinders (again, at least for me)…well, you get stuff like 2013’s THE BLING RING, a movie that truly stunned me in its complete lack of (or even attempt at) insight, especially given that the topic of star-chasing California vacuousness should have been a layup for Sofia. This is to say nothing of 2020’s ON THE ROCKS, a movie that doesn’t so much stink as it does just kinda sit there, an empty and far-too-light exercise from a filmmaker that is so obviously capable of much more.

With that in mind, then, when I finally went out and saw PRISCILLA, Sofia Coppola’s eighth and newest film, it felt like there was a lot on the line for me. Although 2017’s THE BEGUILED had intriguing elements, Coppola hadn’t really made a movie that I loved in the last thirteen years. I needed her biopic about the famous wife of Elvis Presley, a woman who was able to carve out a sizable acting and business career herself, to at least be adequate. “Make me feel something” is the only thing I asked of it.

I’m happy to report, then, that PRISCILLA did make me feel a little something! It certainly gave me stuff to chew on. I hesitate to call it one of Coppola’s greats, but it’s definitely one of her very goods. It also gave me the energy to move forward with putting a temporary button on another one of my running series. For the last time this year, let’s jump back into the filmography of Sofia Coppola!

———

Although there are many potential aspects within the life of Priscilla Presley (nee Wagner) one could potentially dramatize, PRISCILLA is exclusively focused on her marriage to Elvis. The film starts with a chance encounter on the military base she resides in, a moment that leads to an invite to a party, a party where the starstruck teenager officially meets the celebrity singer for the first time. The film ends with the functional (if not official) ending of their union, as Priscilla finally leaves their home in Graceland for the first time in her adult life. The story is fairly small in scope, yet the lessons to be taken from its telling feels wide-ranged.

PRISCILLA is structured somewhat like a series of vignettes. In one sequence, Elvis provides her some of his sleeping pills, believing them to be safe due to them being prescribed by a doctor; when she wakes up a couple of days later, he seems genuinely apologetic. In another, Elvis rejects Priscilla’s desire for a job; after all, what would happen if he needed her and she suddenly wasn’t available? Thus, as stories of his rumored affairs with film costars start to hit the front pages of the morning newspapers, she has nowhere to go. Despite his insistence that it’s all just junk made up by the media, she has no choice but to take it all in. His alleged affair with Ann-Margaret. His outbursts of anger. His continued substance abuse. His awkward sexual advances. She’s forced to sit in it.

And so are we.

Elvis and Priscilla’s dysfunctional marriage can be a lot to take in at times, although what gives it the Official Sofia Coppola Touch is the cushy wealth and dreamy Graceland extravagance constantly on display, scored with a softer mix of needle drops than you might expect from the same filmmaker who brought you MARIE ANTOINETTE*. At Priscilla’s lowest moments, it becomes clear how quickly comfort and luxury can be a prison. When your husband can pay to have all three of your daily meals served at the door of your room, what reason does he have to let you leave?

*Although I personally really liked the usage of modern tunes in MARIE ANTOINETTE, there is nothing as jarring as The Strokes utilized here.

The main driving force that makes Elvis’ behavior on display so striking, however, is the stark age difference between he and Priscilla. On the day they met, Priscilla was 14, Elvis 24. By the time they officially wed on May 1, 1967, she was only 22. It’s one thing to know intellectually that Elvis’ only marriage was between him and a teenager; for all of his immense accomplishments and legacy, it’s still one of the most known things about him. It’s another to see it dramatized for ninety minutes straight, even if the exact truthfulness of what you’re experiencing can depend on who you talked to.

Speaking of, QUICK SIDEBAR! For several reasons, I disengaged from diving in too much about the real lives of Elvis and Priscilla, a move that the more attached might object to. I do acknowledge the movie is based off of Priscilla’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, and that Priscilla was an executive producer on the film itself. I also acknowledge that Lisa Marie Presley emailed Coppola last year with her concerns regarding her father’s portrayal in the film’s script. It can be difficult to form an opinion about the movie, then, without feeling like you’re secretly taking sides in what is clearly a sore subject for the family.

Like all human beings, I strongly suspect Elvis revealed different sides of himself to different people, resulting in these divergent opinions about his character. It’s tempting to walk out of PRISCILLA wanting to hate Elvis; however, I will make the obvious point that he’s no longer here to defend himself one way or another. Beyond that, I am not in any way either an Elvis or Priscilla biographer; thus, I made the call that fact-checking PRISCILLA was not within my purview. There are a lot of excellent articles that do exactly that, and they provide good context for their lives in the real world. It might also help you calibrate your expectations for the film.

For me, I wanted to review PRISCILLA as a Sofia Coppola movie and nothing more.

(It’s also why I resisted the temptation to catch up with ELVIS, the glitzy Baz Luhrmann movie from last year that earned Austin Butler a presumably well-deserved Academy Award nomination. Directly comparing ELVIS and PRISCILLA admittedly seems like the obvious and appropriate thing to do; however, despite their clearly opposing titles, I’ve never gotten the impression that they’re really in competition with each other, either onscreen or off.)

As a Sofia Coppola movie, then, it seems to me that the story of the Elvis-Priscilla marriage is being used as a vessel to explore a social situation far too common to the human experience: a young girl being plucked from obscurity to be the beau of a powerful and influential man, the subsequent existence within a gilded cage, and the relative normalization of this kind of set-up. Again, walking away from PRISCILLA wanting to furiously cancel a long-dead Elvis Presley is somewhat understandable, but also somewhat missing the point. Instead, one has to wonder why this sort of thing is so easily allowed to occur, and why it’s more or less accepted. It’s a substantial thought to chew on, and one that’s still rattling around in my brain all these weeks later.

A criticism of PRISCILLA I’ve seen occasionally thrown around is Jacob Elordi’s portrayal of Elvis, at least in terms of its accuracy compared to Austin Butler’s work in the same role just one year prior. And, it’s true that Elordi doesn’t look or sound all that much like Elvis, really at all. However, I’d argue a depiction need not be 100% accurate or faithful in order to be effective. Just as a random example, Will Ferrell’s work on SNL and Broadway as George W. Bush was a wildly unconvincing impression that nevertheless cut to the heart of what Bush felt like, at least at the time. Elordi’s performance is like the dramatic version of that, I suppose. It’s not a perfect imitation, but because of him, you feel the tension and ping-ponging feelings that Priscilla (who is the main focus, after all) might have felt on any given random day.

So, no, there’s no comparison between Elordi and Butler (at least, I presume). However, Coppola’s focus is different than Luhrmann’s, and the scope of her Elvis’ performance appears to be calibrated in kind. At the end of the day, the onscreen star of PRISCILLA is Priscilla herself, Cailee Spaeny.

Spaeny ends up being a casting coup, if for no other reason than she manages to play so much younger than she really is. For all intents and purposes, the two leads here are the same age (Spaeny is 25, Elordi 26; thirteen months separate them). However, the age gap still manages to read perfectly, because…well, she just looks like a teenager. Maybe it’s her eyes, maybe it’s her size, maybe it’s the soft way Coppola films her throughout*, maybe it’s all of those things. Any way you slice it, you get uncomfortable seeing the two engaged in anything resembling romance. It’s a nice touch.

*In the tradition of Kirsten Dunst and Scarlett Johannson, Cailee Spaeny turns out to be an ideal “Sofia lead”. Coppola’s camera loves her.

It also helps that Spaeny is terrific as Priscilla. Like almost all Coppola leads, the role is written on the page as more internal, and Spaeny gives an understated performance in kind. Although the story PRISCILLA tells is not precisely a revelatory one, it’s still crucial that the emotions that come from dramatizing a turbulent and inappropriate relationship feel real. Spaeny essentially nails it at every turn; she’s enamored and intoxicated with the glitz and home comforts that come with celebrity. She makes her buy the isolation and pain that comes with being with a public-facing heartthrob, a man who frankly has different needs than a civilian ever will. You feel her rationalizing when he loses his temper, when he essentially demands she get used to his affairs, when he changes her and builds her up into his desired image. You feel for her, which (as I identified earlier) was my baseline ask of this movie.

PRISCILLA isn’t perfect; watching it, I get the sense that, at this point, Coppola has likely revealed everything about her filmmaking technique that she’s going to. Sofia Coppola’s movies have never been traditionally plot-heavy; they instead rely on the emotional truth of the situation being depicted. Although she’s only made eight feature films, she’s been at this for twenty-five years. This reliance isn’t going to change. This is just who she is, and when it works, she’s transcendent. Her very best films take a hold of you so intensely that they are difficult to shake. When they don’t, her movies can erode quickly.

It’s a difficult alchemy, one that PRISCILLA doesn’t quite reach for reasons I haven’t been able to put my finger on. There’s nothing to point to and say, “this doesn’t work”. It’s actually an uncommon movie that doesn’t really have anything wrong with it. BUT, I think the bar is just set so high for me when it comes to Sofia Coppola. I mean, LOST IN TRANSLATION literally caused a euphoria in me the first time I saw it. PRISCILLA simply didn’t; however, that’s a insanely unfair standard for me to keep setting her against.

Because PRISCILLA is absolutely good enough! It’s not at all difficult to take the general framework of this story and apply it to any number of age-gap celebrity marriages and relationships. Many of them are famous enough to jump to mind almost immediately; we’re all mostly familiar by now with Jerry Seinfeld’s relationship with a teenager back in the 1990’s, at the height of his sitcom’s fame. Sure, she had essentially just turned 18 when she and the 38-year old comedian made it official, so it was all technically legal. Same goes for actor Doug Hutchison, the man who married sixteen-year-old Courtney Stodden back in 2011, a story that ran in the media mostly as a sort of freak show curiosity: see this gross guy with this crazy girl?

Jerry Lee Lewis. Bill Wyman. Jimmy Page. Hell, going out with younger people is not the sole domain of celebrity men. Ask Nicole Scherzinger, who dated a 19 year old Harry Styles when she was in her mid-thirties. Age-gap relationships are common enough in entertainment that it’s practically assumed at this point.

But does that negate the possibility of damage? Does it negate the morality of it all?

I think that’s the real power of Sofia Coppola’s new movie. Not so much that it brings up something nobody’s ever heard of before (celebrities being bad? Who knew?). But, rather, it’s the way she makes you sit with how being in an underage marriage with the biggest star in the world might feel, both the ecstasy and the agony. It shines because Priscilla’s conflicting emotions are depicted beautifully by Cailee Spaeny. It works because Jacob Elordi connotes the idea of Elvis so well. It’s effective because Sofia Coppola has never lost her eye for lush imagery.

The point is, is that PRISCILLA works. Consider me relieved.

Getting Lost in the Labyrinth of Taylor Swift

Writer’s Note: First, hello! Either “you’re welcome, enjoy!” or “Sorry! See you next week”.

Next: given that new Taylor Swift news comes out at a rapid and untenable pace right now, this article had to be somewhat frozen in time in order to be able to get it done. Thus, this sentence is the only time you’ll see the name Travis Kelce. The tragic event at one of her Brazil concerts happened too late into this writing to get into. As fun as seeing the potential demise of Deuxmoi at her hands has been, I just had no time to mention it directly in the article. Whatever you may think about any of those topics, let’s just assume I agree with you.

Okay, I think that’s it. Again, have a good time!

I. The moment I knew

“When did you first get into Taylor Swift?”

The extremely nice woman sitting next to us on the floor of SoFi Stadium on August 7th, her young daughter in tow, had asked my wife and I a fairly straightforward question.  My wife had a fairly straightforward answer: although she had been a fan since the “White Horse” days, she officially took the plunge after buying the 1989 album and never really looked back; by the time REPUTATION hit, she was a fan for life.

For me, it was a little more complicated.

The answer I provided to this lovely woman on the 7th went as follows: “my lightbulb moment was when Taylor performed ‘All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)’ on SNL”. Now, this wasn’t not the truth.  For reasons that still remain unclear to me*, November 13th, 2021 was the first time in her fifteen-year career that I really went, “oh, I get this now”, although even that was already sort of a lie.  In truth, Taylor’s particular and unique gravity really started hitting me for the first time earlier that same night, when her mere appearance in a Please Don’t Destroy pre-tape bumped them up an entire hour in the show’s lineup, pulling the sketch group from their typical end-of-show spot to one of the first sketches of the night.

*My best guess?  Outside of two Weekend Update guest spots (Aristotle Athari’s lone appearance as stand-up comedian robot Laughintosh 3000 and Sarah Sherman roasting Colin Jost for the first time), Taylor was the bright spot of a pretty dismal Jonathan Majors-hosted night.  This was long before the allegations of domestic violence against him had become public, mind you; Majors was just a visibly uncomfortable sketch participant, clearing the way for Taylor to walk away with the show, salting the earth on her way out.

The problem is that citing that night at all is also kind of a lie.  It’s not like I wasn’t already sort of a fan before 2021.  Through my beautiful, funny, smart and always insightful wife Trina, I’ve become well-versed in the intricacies and metaphors of both folklore and evermore.  MISS AMERICANA, THE REPUTATION TOUR and FOLKLORE: THE LONG POND SESSIONS have been screened multiple times in our house.  I fondly remember the full breakdown I received from her on what each frame of the “Look What You Made Me Do” music video symbolized and/or represented (at the time, an exercise roughly equivalent to providing a chimpanzee a seminar on the intricacies of alternative dispute resolution).  Taylor Swift’s music had been in the background of our lives for the past few years.  In a very real sense, I had already been assimilated by proxy.

Except….well….there really was a first for-real, real moment where I first remember thinking, “hey, Taylor Swift’s pretty good”.  It was when I heard “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” on the radio for the first time.  I even have written, quantifiable proof that I liked this song when it first came out!  I listed it rather high in a “Best Songs of 2012” article I wrote in an earlier iteration of this blog, which I link to you for the sake of receipts, but also for the sake of comedy.  It was a rough re-read for me; really, I declared a Karmin song the number one tune of the year?  I bumped Carly Rae Jepsen to an honorable mention?  I put a Phillip Phillips song on there?  Even Taylor’s entry feels unnecessarily backhanded.  So, go ahead, laugh away!  I sure did.

Regardless, I still mark that 2021 SNL performance as the day I became a “Taylor Swift Fan”, the night I lost sleep later wondering, “what have I been missing out on this whole time?”  And it would have been better for the sake of the story if Trina and I had found ourselves at Night 4 of the Los Angeles leg of The Eras Tour on the exact two-year anniversary of that fateful performance.  Instead, we attended during the much-less monumental (and, given the subject matter, just short of any sort of symbolic significance) almost-twenty-one month anniversary. 

Still, finding our way at what will almost certainly go down as one of the most popular tours of the decade generated many moments of reflection for me.  Well, that and a lot of smiles, a weird anxiety, and a random tear or two.  But, for the purposes of this article, lots and lots of reflection about the last twenty-one months or so, when I officially decided to take the plunge into the magical world of Taylor Swift, working my way through her discography from start to finish.  Even bolder, I’ve been dipping my toes in something that feels simultaneously like a broad monoculture and a very specific and splintered sub-culture, the complicated fandom known as Swifties.

Just because she’s so ubiquitous in pop culture (even more so than ten years ago, if that even seemed possible at the time) as well as the fact that, frankly, writing and promoting an article about Taylor Swift practically guarantees clicks and views, I’ve been wanting to write something about her for a long time.  Except…how do you possibly come up with a fresh angle on one of the most written-about humans on the face of the earth?  I’m not sure you really can.

I wanted to avoid just doing a “top five songs” ranking list* or a “favorite album” article** and calling it a day.  I could go track by track and give my views and opinions on her discography, videography and live performances from the perspective of a relative outsider…except that’s already been done, and quite brilliantly; if you haven’t seen the work of this particular glorious madman on Reddit (a work, I should say, that inspired me to keep pushing forward with this several times), you must do so.

*Although for the record, in no order, my five favorite songs as of this writing: “Cruel Summer”, “August”, “Exile”, “Style”, “New Romantics”.

** Gun to my head, it’s a three-way tie between folklore (her most revelatory), 1989 (her most fun) and RED (her most consistent).  

But what nobody’s done yet is provide my personal observations as a guy in his mid-thirties diving into Swiftie-dom head-first for the past year and a half to see if there’s anything to take away.  It turns out, as often happens when diving into something or someone with a massive following and self-created mythology, there’s quite a lot to take in!  So I apologize in advance for the collection of essays you’re about to read.  But consider this my outlet to expound on the beautiful, frustrating, elating, confounding, and slightly disturbing things you reckon with when navigating a fanbase and body of work as large and expansive as Taylor Swift’s.

In short, I can’t imagine bothering my actual friends or family with all of this information, so I’m passing the savings on to you, dear reader.

You might be reading this as a lifelong Taylor Swift fan, eager to hear what a relative outsider has to say.  You may be a new fan looking for commonalities in our experiences.  There’s an excellent chance you’re a more regular reader thinking to yourself, “Ryan, what the fuck?  Can you just get back to writing about 70’s movies?”  In due time, my friend, and sooner than you think.  But this article is for you, as well.  It’s for everyone, at least as much as I can muster.

And maybe, just maybe, I can even try to definitively answer the question that has probably been on the minds of those still on the outside this year….

….what’s the big deal about Taylor Swift, anyway?

II. I promise that you’ll never find another like me.

To become a fan of Taylor Swift is to willingly accept a series of contradictions.  One of the most fundamental is that her music tends to feel somewhat timeless in terms of its sound and content, yet is completely tied to the time in which they were released.

Taylor’s real superpower is her ability to capture a particular feeling, either through produced sound or (more often) through lyric.  Whether it be elation, heartbreak, petty revenge, reflection, or just good old fashioned anxiety, there’s inevitably a Taylor Swift song for everybody.  And even though her songs very often tend to be about something or someone extremely specific (half the fun for most fans is determining exactly what or who that is), the feelings behind them are typically expressed so acutely that it’s very easy to draw a straight line between her experiences and your own.  Her songs about very public-facing feuds and breakups can be applied to your falling-outs, your regrets, your successes.  It’s a neat trick: what should feel like a barrier to entry ends up something that makes her music kind of timeless.

Despite this, the majority of Taylor Swift’s discography is undeniably tied to each album’s particular release year.  Most of her major hits were completely unavoidable in their prime.  You couldn’t escape “Blank Space” in 2014 even if you tried.  As a result, when listening to them again, you can’t help but be transported back to a specific place and time.  Many of the singles off of RED take me right back to the commute to my job as a luggage handler at a local airport.  I can perfectly visualize the apartment parking space I was in when Trina played me this new song called “Shake it Off” the first time.  Working my way through ten sequential Taylor Swift albums largely served as a walk through the greatest hits of the 2010’s (insomuch as there are any to walk through*), but it also served as a walk through the first era of my adulthood.  It was a real treat.

*This is perhaps a cranky take, but most of the Top 40’s tunes in the first half of the 2010’s were fairly rancid, more so than the historical average.  Once, in conversation, I referred to the EDM onslaught as a second disco era and I still stand by that. 

The even bigger treat, though, is going through her discography in full and realizing…wait, these album tracks I’ve never heard before are all way better!    This gets to another contradiction, this one essential to Taylor Swift’s work.  It’s a fact that her most popular songs are humongous and ubiquitous.  “Blank Space”.  “Love Story”.  “Shake It Off”.   “You Belong With Me”.  It is impossible to deny the profound legacy of these songs, if only because everyone and their cat has heard them.  It’s just a fact.

It’s also a fact that she easily has fifty songs better than any of those.  This is an open secret amongst her fanbase, but I’m here to confirm to those on the outside: if your knowledge of Taylor Swift consists of what you’ve heard on the radio, you likely haven’t heard Taylor Swift’s best work. 

This isn’t remotely your fault, by the way.  For whatever reason, she struggles with selecting singles, which I think is an occasional barrier to people giving her a fair shot.  The vast majority of Taylor Swift’s best songs never got released as singles, or barely played on the radio, if at all.  One of her very best  (“New Romantics”, off of 1989) didn’t even make the fucking album the first time around; it had to wait for a Target exclusive release to have its day.

This can cause unintentional damage!  For instance, 2019’s LOVER might be her overall most underrated album, bloated and somewhat unfocused though it may be.  A big, bright, lush, pink album that followed the dark theatrics of 2017’s REPUTATION, LOVER contains some of her sexiest (“False God”), most confessional (“The Archer”), romantic (its title track) and insightful (“Afterglow”) work in her entire oeuvre.  It also prominently features one of her most well-crafted pieces of pop ever, the partially-St. Vincent-penned “Cruel Summer”.  Naturally, the first single off of the album was “ME!”, a wildly annoying song that prominently showcased all of her worst instincts.  Although it got plenty of radio play (and it does have its supporters), it was eventually derided enough by the fanbase that it didn’t even make the 40+ song batting order on the Era Tour.

This is likely why the more Taylor-skeptic among the population have a hard time with people awarding her such intense flowers as, “she’s the premier lyricist of our time” even though…well, it might be true.  It’s hard to square a sincere comparison between Taylor Swift and someone like Paul McCartney against a constant blaring of “Me-hee-hee/hoo-hoo-hoo”*.  I get it.  You can only work with what you’re exposed to.  For whatever it’s worth, I was there at one point, too.

*Although I’d point out not all of McCartney’s work has exactly been brilliant, either.

This is why I think her famous ongoing re-recording project has been particularly well-timed (for those who don’t know the background behind the re-records, we’ll get into it.  It’s complicated).  In the post-pandemic era, when she seemingly picks up new fans exponentially with every passing week, it’s remarkably well-timed that the conversation around Taylor Swift has consistently been about her actual albums lately, as opposed to just a collection of songs from various years. 

Take a rube like me, watching Trina get extremely excited when RED (TAYLOR’S VERSION) finally hit Spotify on November 12, 2021.  I pulled it up myself out of curiosity and clicked around aimlessly before listening to half of WANEGBT (TV)* and calling it a night.  Meanwhile, Trina, wizened fan that she is, immediately zeroed in on the main event: the ten-minute version of a song I was only vaguely familiar with, but is possibly Taylor Swift’s signature song, “All Too Well”.  I, of course, hadn’t really heard of it.  Trina and I were just working on different levels back then.

*Another side effect of becoming a Taylor Swift fan: your brain has to get used to lots of insane acronyms.

But, as a result of RED getting another day in the sun, I got an opportunity to really absorb that particular album and what it meant to fans both then and now.  Turns out it’s a heckuva album, with an unusually laser-locked thematic focus, even for her.  With reflection, it’s possible that this re-release planted the seed that blossomed into my Manchurian Candidate-esque activation during that SNL episode later in the month. Whether it did or not, RED (TAYLOR’S VERSION) undeniably changed the way I thought about her work.

Speaking of lyrics….

III. Oh my god, she’s insane, she wrote a song about me.

I’m not the type of person to really absorb music through its lyrics.  I’ve never really been sure why, since a lot of my life has revolved around words, either via writing or reading or performing them.  I’m also not much of a musician, and lack knowledge as to how songs are typically put together sonically, so it would make sense if I focused more on lyrics than on the music itself.

Nope, it’s just not the case for me.  If the song makes me feel good, I’m usually in, regardless of content.  I’m the dude that went, “wait, ‘Pumped Up Kicks’ is about a school shooting?” ten years ago.  I’m a vibe guy at the end of the day.  Unfortunately, this lack of lyrical appreciation puts me at a significant disadvantage when it comes to attending services at the Church of Taylor Swift. 

To put it mildly, the lyrics are the lifeblood of the fandom.  One of the reasons the “friendship bracelet” concept took off in conjunction with the Eras Tour is that a lot of her lyrics convey a ton of information and emotion in just a few short words, which is perfect for an art project where space is limited.  Heck, it should be noted that the “friendship bracelet” trading thing is, in itself, a reference to a lyric, this one off of “You’re On Your Own, Kid” from her recent MIDNIGHTS.

There have been a lot of criticisms towards her artistry, the primary being her quality as a vocalist, which is not a completely unfounded criticism (or at least, it used to be*).  However, her most clear claim to her legacy has been her ability as a lyricist.  Thus, it’s worth it for me to at least try to dig into this aspect of her body of work.

*This is another reason why I think the re-recordings have been such a net-positive; hearing her perform her old songs in the present displays so clearly how exponentially she’s grown as a singer over the past ten-plus years.

The lyrics of hers that stand out to me the most tend to fall into three categories:

1) The simple and devastating.  She’s often at her very best when delivering a verbal gut punch in as few words as possible.  This might be why folklore and evermore took off the way it did in 2020; it’s an album full of these types of lines.  Take “tolerate it”, a song from evermore about a woman who is much more invested in her crumbling relationship than her unnamed partner is: “I made you my temple/my mural/my sky/now I’m begging for footnotes in the story of your life”. 

Also consider this passage from folklore’s “august”, one entry in a trilogy of songs about a love triangle.  This one gives the perspective of the girl being cheated with, a smitten teenager who spent the summer maybe thinking this would become something more than it was destined to: “back when we were still changing for the better/wanting was enough/for me, it was enough”.

Finally, there’s this line from the bridge of folklore’s “illicit affairs”, another song in the same vein as “august” that digs into the effects of being the “other woman” in an affair: “don’t call me ‘kid’/don’t call me ‘baby’/look at this idiotic fool that you made me/you showed me colors you know I can’t see with anyone else”.

(folklore and evermore are great albums.)

2) The deeply romantic.  Obviously something like “Lover” has become a wedding first dance staple for the last couple of years, and considering the simple domesticity of its opening line “we could leave the Christmas lights up ‘til January/this is our place/we make the rules”, it should.  But there’s also a little line buried in one of the last songs off of MIDNIGHTS’ “Sweet Nothing”: “On the way home/I wrote a poem/You said ‘what a mind’/this happens all the time”.  It’s a powerful testament to how her words can stir you that the simple power of that line sticks in the brain, even as the relationship that spurred the observation is, uh, no longer active. 

This is also a domain where Taylor tends to get downright poetic.  Take a line like you see in “ivy”, another song about a secret affair, this time off evermore (I don’t think I put together how much folklore and evermore are about shenanigans until this moment): “I can’t/stop you putting roots in my dreamland/my house of stone/your ivy grows/and now I’m covered in you”.

3) The abruptly blunt.  Sometimes, poetry just has no place when it comes to making a point.  Whether it’s a sing-songy “all you’re gonna be is mean/and a liar/and pathetic/and alone in life” (“Mean”) or a brutal “I was never good at telling jokes/but the punchline goes/I get older but your lovers stay my age” (“All Too Well (10-Minute Version”)), Taylor Swift has had, from the jump, an unnatural ability to unload a full clip into someone she already killed a couple of minutes ago. 

Actually, that last line about not being “good at telling jokes” gets to an interesting question that gets asked often….

IV. I think it’s strange that you think I’m funny

Is Taylor Swift funny?

It’s a question that seems to haunt her career and one that seems to be of great personal import.  Someone who may or may not have played the title character in 2001’s DONNIE DARKO, it would appear, had at some point implied to her that she wasn’t.  The topic comes up on at least two songs on RED (TAYLOR’S VERSION).  It’s clearly a very real point of contention for her.

So….is she funny?

My answer: yes, she absolutely can be!

I mean, if she crashed the Slipper Room one night to do twenty minutes of stand up and then tried to banter with Kumail Nanjiani or something (not that anybody in the greater Taylor Swift Mythology would have ever done this), I don’t know that there would be an imminent career change on the way.  But she’s survived the SNL double-billing gauntlet before (and actually did pretty well, at least in relation to others who have tried).  I think she’s gotten in some pretty funny off-the-cuff remarks during this most recent tour, and they’re often even lightly at her fan base’s expense, which I think is a little bold.  It’s not a core part of the experience, but she can be funny!

More than just “joke-telling”, though, I think there’s an inherent, and purposeful, silliness to her and her onstage persona that actually makes her endearing.  We’ll get into general Era Tour takeaways shortly, but one of the biggest observations I made while finally getting a chance to see her perform live is…

…well, Taylor Swift is completely and utterly swagless.

This is not an insult, I promise!  She might even agree with me: she said roughly as much back in 2014 during an interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning:

“My life doesn't naturally gravitate towards being 'edgy,' 'sexy,' or 'cool' - I just naturally am not any of those things.”

More than her just not being naturally “cool”, though, her vague but palpable uncoolness is actually a key part of her persona and her success (at least in my opinion).  For instance, if she were a slightly more graceful dancer, I think something like the music video for “Delicate” would lose a lot of its oddball power.  If she were cooler, if she were less of a dork at her core?  The video wouldn’t work.

I can’t truly draw any comparisons between her and other major live acts, because I just haven’t seen them in person.  But it seems to me that, whereas there are other acts that absolutely focus on the precision of their every dance move, beautiful movement isn’t necessarily a major tenet of a Taylor Swift show.  Yes, there is dancing and lots of it, but it’s all cut with this deep subtext that she might start bursting into laughter at any moment. 

What this ends up doing is making her feel….well, relatable.  This is unfathomably important to The Taylor Swift Brand.  Her presumed relatability is a core aspect to her popularity.  But I think that vaguely silly stage persona is a major part of that.  Seeing her live, she doesn’t exactly have the feel of a goddess who’s come down to Earth to bless us with her once-in-a-lifetime talent.  Instead, she feels for all the world like our goofy friend from high school who managed to turn herself into an institution.  We don’t actually know her, but it feels like we could.  There’s more joy to be wrung from that than you might think.

All of this gets to the most obvious answer to, “why do people care about Taylor Swift so goddamn much?”….

V. Just think of the fun things we could do

It’s fun!  Sometimes, in our pursuit of seeking individuality and creating personal legacy in a world that seems intent on snuffing it out, we way overthink the appeal of monoculture.  It can be fun being into something that everyone else is!  It’s fun being into Taylor Swift!  There’s a thrill in being able to say something insane like, “John Mayer better pray” to a coworker and there being a non-zero chance they’ll know what you’re talking about.  It’s identical to the thrill everybody got ten years ago yelling “HODOR” at each other. It’s the same reason AVENGERS: ENDGAME became the overwhelming in-person theater experience that it was.  It’s fun to be able to share something together!  That’s what society is! 

Come to think of it, being a Taylor Swift fan is actually not terribly unlike being a Marvel Cinematic Universe fan, in the sense that the longer you take to join up, the more homework you’re going to have to do, and some of it is going to involve Tom Hiddleston.  Oh, and you’ll also end up having to assume a fair amount of embarrassment as other fans get overly defensive over something that doesn’t really matter.  But mostly the homework thing.

But, man, what fun homework it is to do!  As alluded to near the beginning of this article, just going through her discography and live performances is, if nothing else, a trip down memory lane.  But there’s all this ancillary material that you’ll inevitably come across that can trigger all new rabbit holes to go down.  One of the most obvious is the rush to figure out who or what a specific song is talking about, which leads to jumping around into events of her life and the various friends and lovers she’s held over the years.  It helps that many of her former flames were, and continue to be, pretty famous, which leads to all these other expansions of the Extended Taylor Universe.  Whether you find this kind of thing inherently interesting is in the eye of the beholder (full disclosure: her dating history is one of those things I’ve never found all that fascinating, even before I became a fan), but it also becomes an inevitability when consuming her music.  The music is her, and she is the music.

It can get so much more granular, and tangential, than that.  Clothing is important; the mere mention of the word “scarf” can activate a Taylor Swift fan like they were the Winter Soldier.  There’s mythology that revolves around just the different-colored dresses she wears during the secret songs on the Eras Tour.  Become a fan for long enough, and you might even start watching horrific filth like VALENTINE’S DAY and CATS, two noxious ensemble films that bookended the 2010’s, just to be able to jump into the “is Taylor Swift a good actor?*” discourse.  If you’re committed to this kind of thing, you will never, ever be bored.

*The answer, I’m afraid, is no, not really.

You can even find yourself blindsided with her songs used in different ways.  Taylor Swift’s music is used in media all the time, and 90% of the time, it’s the trailer of an Amazon Prime series you’ve never heard of and will never watch.  Sometimes, though, you get a moment like in the latest season of THE BEAR.  If you haven’t seen it, I can’t even link to the scene I’m talking about because I don’t dare step on it.  You just need to watch the show.  Suffice it to say, though, a major Taylor Swift tune scores one of the most remarkable and satisfying turning points in a character I’ve seen in forever.  If you know, you know.  If you don’t, you’ll know it when you get there.  And as a fan, does it make it sweeter that it’s her music specifically?  Look, it helps.

As another example, earlier this year, my wife and I devoured Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour magnum opus all about the doomed Evermore theme park in Utah.  For those who haven’t seen it, you may still have sussed out the relevancy here; upon the release of the completely unrelated album evermore, the fantasy sort-of-role-playing theme park sued Taylor Swift in 2021 for…well, it’s not exactly clear; the stealing of their name, I guess?  It sure looked like a desperate attempt at a quick influx of cash to me, but I am no lawyer.  It backfired; they were counter-sued for the unlicensed usage of Swift’s music, and that was that.  A beautiful example of shooting yourself in the foot to get a day off of work.

ANYWAY, at the very end, the video closes everything out with an Evermore-based version of the title track of evermore that plays over the credits.  And it’s great.  It manages to sum up the entire video in a couple of minutes while still being a near-faithful rendition of one of Taylor Swift’s best songs.  It actually made me appreciate the beauty of the original that much more.  You don’t need to be a fan to get everything you need out of this amazing YouTube doc, but goddamn, it doesn’t hurt.

You even start finding yourself cackling at viral videos that include her material in some way, shape, or form, even if it’s not especially positive.  As an example, around the release of her most recent original album MIDNIGHTS, Caleb Gamman released a video where he goes track by track and attempts to identify, as quickly as possible, which tracks were produced by Jack Antonoff based on how annoying it sounds.  Spoilers: he does well.  It’s great*.  It casts a massive amount of shade, but it’s great.  I watch it, like, once a week.

*Even better is this parody/response video by Sam Fishell.

I could go on and on and on, and to be honest, this could be applied to any sort of fandom.  I'm sure there’s hilarious Carley Rae Jepsen content out there.  It’s just that there are so many goddamn Taylor Swift fans.  The numbers are in their favor here.  As her base grows larger and larger and ever larger, being able to share that language unlocks more and more around you in online spaces.  You can lose yourself quickly in this stuff.  But it gives you things to talk about with other people.  That’s become a precious commodity these days.

This gets us to my actual experience at The Eras Tour.

VI. The best people in life are free

It was August 7th 2023, also known as LA Night 4.  Gracie Abrams opened first, which made me wonder if her dad J.J. was in the house*.  HAIM followed, and it should be said they were fucking incredible (if you ever get the opportunity to see HAIM, please take it).  After this followed one of the most emotionally overwhelming three and a half hours of my life, followed by ninety minutes of traffic back to our hotel (that we should mention was less than five miles away).  All in all, a pretty decent Monday night.

*(For context, J.J. Abrams and I have had beef ever since RISE OF SKYWALKER. Let’s just say you got lucky that night, you coward.)

For several reasons, this section isn't really going to be a formal “review” of The Eras Tour per se, the primary one being the famous Ticketmaster debacle that shot ticket prices way up and prevented many, many, many longtime fans from even being able to entertain the idea of going.  I recognize that attendance was an immense privilege and I hate the idea of anybody reading this potentially feeling like that’s being rubbed in their faces.  So I’m going to keep a lot of setlist stuff to a bare minimum.

(Alright, I’ll gush just once.  Our secret songs that night were “Dress” and “Exile”, an evil combination if ever one existed.  It was amazing.  Okay, that’s it.)

That said, it must be stated that it is a unique and downright flabbergasting experience seeing 70,000 people all gather for one specific purpose and one only: worship at the altar of their chosen queen. 

It’s here I should mention that big, loud, bright pop concerts are not my typical forte.  I have no real aversion to them; it’s just that the type of artists I tend to like seeing in concert are just more likely to find themselves in San Francisco music halls* and amphitheaters than they are football stadiums.  And, yeah, I’ve been fortunate enough to see live concerts of artists that are probably more important to the actual foundational history of music when all is said and done (Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, and Crosby, Stills and Nash, just to name a couple).  But this is the first, and possibly only, time I’ve seen an internationally famous pop star at the absolute crest of their popularity (so far).

*For the hell of it, some of my all-time favorite artists currently working include Ben Folds, The Strokes, Ingrid Michaelson, Leon Bridges and Kate Miller-Heidke.

And, suffice it to say that Taylor puts on a great show.  It’s been said over and over that she’s currently going for roughly the length of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, performing somewhere around forty-ish of, yes, some of her greatest hits (“Love Story”, “Shake It Off”, “Blank Space”) but also some relatively deep album cuts that will likely never be performed again* (“tolerate it”, “Midnight Rain”, “illicit affairs”, to name a couple).  But it should be noted that this is all done seemingly without her breaking a sweat, an astounding professional human performance trick that one doesn’t see all that often in an era where “showing the work” is often elevated as a virtue.

*This is why I slightly push back on the common characterization of The Eras Tour as a “greatest hits” show, per se.  It is until it isn’t.

But that’s not the loopiest thing about being there at a Taylor Swift concert.  No, the most unique aspect of The Eras Tour is the palpable socialization that permeates the air.  Now, again, my experience with major pop tours is very limited, so I don’t have a ton to compare The Eras Tour to in order to gauge whether the level of dedication to look, vibe, and aesthetic the average Swiftie maintains is usual or not (although I have my doubts).  But, given the costumes, the ancillary props, the signs, the gatherings, the general positive vibes….the closest thing I can compare it to is the year I attended the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. 

Even then, though, Comic-Con by that point was just not this specific.  It was a confluence of hundreds, maybe thousands, of various and disparate fandoms, which included certain mainstream movie and television franchises, actors, and studios.  You could walk down the halls of the San Diego Convention Center and see at any given point a Dalek, a Terminator, Tony Stark, Spider-Man, Invader Zim, a hobbit…there were lots and lots of potential sources to pull from.

Walking around SoFi that night was like attending a Comic-Con in celebration of just a single person.

Now, look, obviously rabid enthusiasm for a popular music star was not invented with Taylor Swift; you could track that all the way back to at least Franz Listz.  One even imagines there might have been a particularly charismatic caveman banging rocks together in a way that caused other Neanderthals to camp out in front of their cave.  It can also get sooooo much more intense than what your average* Swiftie is capable of; for instance, there was nobody swooning or fainting in the aisles like it’s a February 1964 episode of Ed Sullivan, at least not the night we were there.  Still, there’s something almost vaguely nonsensical from the outside as to just how fiercely loyal even that hypothetical average Taylor Swift fan can get.

*Please note I said “average”.

You don’t need me to tell you that Swifties can get intense about seemingly nothing.  At times, hearing someone spew out a theory about a song or album that may or may not even exist starts to take on the tone of a Q-Anon faithful, or maybe someone standing on a street corner.  Numerology often comes into play, and you see a lot of effort to connect dots that may or may not fit.  You don’t quite get this with any other fan base of almost anything, at least not to my observation; it’s hard to imagine a Harry Styles fan firing up Google Maps in order to prove a weird point.

So….what’s up?  What’s the obsession all about?  What about her is drawing out people like this?  Why are they like this?

Like all interesting questions, there are a couple of answers.  Let’s start with a good one.

VII. I know places we can hide

Ever since the start of the pandemic, there’s been a lot of talk about the loss of “third spaces”.  It’s a social theory that’s existed since at least the late-80’s, when Ray Oldenburg coined it in his book THE GREAT GOOD PLACE, released in….1989 (what does this mean???).  It basically posits that a person’s first place is their home, with their second being the workplace.  For the good of fostering a community, creativity, and society, a third place that’s neither of those spaces is a necessity.  It’s a place to connect with others, whether they be friends or strangers.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but churches used to fill this space for many; now, there are a lot of good reasons why there’s been a shift from that in recent decades, but it was a legitimate source of interaction for earlier generations*.  However, a third space could be almost anything.  It could be parks, record stores, gyms, cafes…all things which have either eroded, disappeared, or have been replaced in one way or another, even before March of 2020.

*Not to put too fine a point on this, but the only times I’ve ever really considered entering a church on purpose was for the possibility of meeting other people.

You probably see where I’m going with this, but to make it official: I think fandoms have definitively taken the place of traditional third spaces in the 2020’s.  This is both good in the sense that there are a lot of worse spaces to be in, and bad in the sense that fandom spheres mostly exist online, which can lead to trouble quickly if not properly monitored.  However, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Taylor Swift’s star has continued to rise as third spaces continue to erode.  In fact, it may be the key thesis statement to Explaining The Whole Thing. 

I’m willing to guess that the vast majority of her fanbase, both those who managed to get in on the ground floor back in 2006 as well as those who started listening to her last week, don’t have much in the way of a third space anymore, if they ever did.  This isn’t a value judgment, I barely have one myself (I think it’s why I’m writing more often these days; it’s out of a need for creating a third space out of thin air).  Especially starting with my generation (millennials), many of us don’t. 

So, yes, I think you could chalk this very obvious explosion in her popularity in the 2020’s as a result of the release of folklore (perhaps her magnum opus) and evermore (the ultimate red-headed stepchild in her discography that has a fiercely loyal fanbase all of its own).  But I also think it’s because the pandemic decimated a lot of second spaces too, as the workplace and the home either became as one, or got eliminated altogether.

Frankly, there was nowhere else for people to go.  So they got online and talked about Taylor Swift.

This loss, combined with living through the paradox of increased social media connection driving an inability to communicate about….uh, I guess fucking anything at this point (people can’t even agree on why they like the things they have in common), the relative universality of Taylor’s work provided a Rosetta stone for those stuck in their own personal Tower of Babel.

We can’t really talk about politics, religion, social issues, TV, movies, the past, or the future.  But we can talk Taylor.

To that end, easily the most fun aspect of attending The Eras Tour was the socializing.  Again, I’m a 35-year-old straight male relative newcomer to all of this.  I’m actively trying not to make too fine a point of my age, gender and/or sexuality, I promise.  I’ve found Swifties to be way more inclusive than their reputation suggests, but a large portion of her fanbase are women and members of the LGBTQIA community.  No value statement there, it’s just….take a look around.  There’s not always an abundance of spaces to accommodate people in those groups, and I don’t want my goofy straight ass to crash them too much.

Needless to say, I wasn’t swapping friendship bracelets or anything that night; the handful of guys I talked to that night didn’t seem like the bracelet-swapping type, and approaching groups of young women with bracelets felt like an excellent way to get pepper-sprayed.  But being able to see my wife jump in and socialize with strangers, all of whom she now shares a language with in an age of stark division…it was awesome.

People even seemed to find a way to connect with other fans after getting priced out of the building.  It turns out that there’s a whole system and culture revolving around tailgating outside the stadiums Taylor performed at during the North American leg of the Eras Tour (to the point where some stadiums towards the end had to clamp down on it).  Fans still dressed up.  They still swapped friendship bracelets.  They danced with each other to all 40+ songs that got played every night.  The fact that this became a thing implies this might not all be about the concert experience for everybody.  It sounds to me like sharing the language was the ultimate point.

It should be said, though, that in the pursuit of learning this specific language, sometimes people get lost in it and lose their mind.  This gets us to the second reason people seem obsessed with Taylor Swift.

To some degree, it’s specifically incentivized.

VIII. This is why we can’t have nice things.

In order to really explain the particular sway Taylor Swift holds over her fans, we should talk about the secret sessions.

The secret sessions are the kind of thing that doesn’t really make the leap into general pop culture, but was a big deal in Swiftie circles.  To that end, I only found out that secret sessions were ever a thing via Reddit comments and articles from people who managed to attend one.  They’re….really something.  Or at least, they were.

For the uninitiated, secret sessions were…well, secret listening parties that were held in conjunction with a new album release hosted by Taylor Swift herself, often at one of her actual homes, with invitations going out to the most dedicated fans in the pool.  Everyone would sit around, she would come out and talk to the hand-selected crowd, she would play several tracks from her soon-to-be-released album, she would make cookies for everyone, there would be photo ops, there would be NDAs signed….it was a whole thing.

The determination criteria as to who got in for this hasn’t been explicitly revealed, to my knowledge.  However, invites from Taylor Nation (the official name of Taylor’s marketing/PR team) generally seemed to go out to young, dedicated fans who a) had a robust social media presence (presumably the better to extensively vet them and ensure they were who they said they were) and b) used that presence to talk mostly about Taylor Swift. 

For a period of about ten years, though, it really did seem like there was a real incentive to post exclusively about Taylor Swift all day on Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter.  Every new uploaded picture, lengthy lyrical breakdown, and homemade craft project was a potential lottery ticket, and the Mega Millions jackpot was Taylor Swift baking you a cookie and providing you the photo op to end all photo ops*.

*Imagine knowing someone who went to one of these things and got a photo with her?  Would you be able to tell them anything ever again?  Isn’t that, like, the ultimate trump card?  “Oh, you developed the pill that cured Alzheimer’s?  Nice, dude!  Here’s a photo of me with Taylor Swift at her house.”  This would arguably be more of a conversation-ender than taking a photo with any president in our lifetimes not named Barack Obama.  Maybe even Obama.

You can see where obvious peril may lie in this system.  To hear people tell it, this practice caused friction within the fandom almost immediately.  Although the intention wasn’t to put certain fans in a specific hierarchy, it became difficult not to view fans who scored a trip to Taylor Swift’s house as “fanning better” from ones who didn’t.  Also, it won’t surprise you to hear that people acted badly almost immediately; there are reports of people yelling out names of Taylor’s ex-boyfriends during the 1989 secret session and people stealing bathroom soaps and, oddly, Scrabble scoresheets during the LOVER secret session.

The lasting effect was that there really was (maybe still is?) a genuine incentive for that insane Taylor Swift fan in your life who only seems to be able to talk about lyrics from folklore and make Photoshopped collages based off of SPEAK NOW’s color schemes to be the way he or she is.  There exists a non-zero chance that this dedication could leverage them into the homes and arms of their favorite artist.  It absolutely won’t….but it could.  It has.  Who knows?

My instant reaction in my head to hearing about all of this for the first time was a simple, “Is she insane?”  That this unusual amount of access to a star who has been on various levels of “extremely famous” for roughly thirteen years cooked a lot of fans’ brains was a little like the boat sinking at the end of TITANIC; at the end of the day, no other result was likely.  The one thing you can’t depend on people to do is behave.

To be clear, I am not blaming her for this.  The intention was to do something amazing for fans who may not have the opportunity to pay their way into this kind of access.  It’s kind of beautiful if you think about it.  But it speaks to the essential “people-pleasing” aspect of Taylor Swift’s personality that she continued these for years, even after it became clear that people’s expectations as to what celebrities “owe us” have shifted into a very dark area, and as it became equally clear that there’s something about Taylor Swift that make people literally go insane.

It also, unfortunately, served as a central tenet of her brand, that being “Taylor Swift is your best friend”, a brand that inherently had to shift given everything that the last few years have become.  Maybe the secret sessions were always doomed to end the way they did; there doesn’t appear to be any intention of bringing them back.  But considering that Taylor can’t seem to shake that need, you never know what will happen next.

IX. I did something bad.

It becomes difficult to talk about Taylor Swift without eventually talking, at least a little bit, about capitalism.

Simply put, there may be no public figure in the world who has better harnessed the levers of the American machine quite like her.  Like all brands that yield a popular output, this is both good and bad.

On the good end, it can be a marvel to see her marketing instincts at work.  For instance, consider how easily she’s gotten everyone to use the word “era” to replace the word “album”.  An era is really just referring to one of her records!  Even folklore and evermore, two of her most intrinsically linked albums, borne from essentially the same creative kiln, are somehow two separate “eras”.  Who knew?

Part of that stems from another bit of genius that seems to have been seeded from the very beginning: every album getting a distinct associated color.  SPEAK NOW is purple, folklore is gray, 1989 is light blue, RED is cerulean.  This is a particular boon for those who like to dress up for her concerts, but aren’t feeling all that creative.  You could easily get away with throwing on something amber and stating you’re in your "Evermore era” without anyone interrogating you.

Submitting yourself to well-crafted marketing really can be fun.  As bleak as late-stage capitalism can be, we typically don’t mind putting our money towards something that we can presumably get something out of, even if it’s just a little emotional charge.

On the other hand….

If you type the phrase “capitalist queen” into Google, you’ll get a lot of Taylor Swift-related TikToks.  It’s a descriptor that I sense is mostly used ironically by her fanbase, although one also starts to suspect it’s also a way of distancing oneself from easily the hardest thing to square away about being a Swiftie.

I worry I’m opening myself up to accusations here of being unfair or a secret hater or something, and I hope I’ve bought myself some credibility as to the good faith I enter this section with.  My ultimate position is this: if we can praise Taylor for her generous donations to the food banks of her various stops across the country this year (and we should!  It’s amazing!), or for the fat bonuses she wrote for the people on her team doing a lot of the grunt work (and we ought to!  It’s life-altering stuff and exactly what all people in Taylor’s position ought to be doing), we should be able to talk about the less savory maneuvers that have defined her as a brand.

Essentially, for those who have never been able to get on board with her, to those who have always sniffed something vaguely disingenuous about her, it’s likely because of those capitalist tendencies.  And it’s not completely unwarranted. 

You might remember that Swift recently received negative press when her extensive usage of private jets became public.  You might also remember that, on the list of top ten carbon emittors, she ranked number one by a lot.  Her team responded by pointing out that her jets were often loaned out to others.  This is a disastrous answer for a couple of reasons, the primary being that it misses the point of the controversy entirely.  Her team has also pointed out her various carbon offsets that she purchased (almost double the amount needed to cover her usage for the entire Eras Tour), which also doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things.  These are frustratingly bad responses to a very obvious problem.  They just are.

However, the private jet controversy hasn’t seemed to really stick as a major mainstream point of contention, if only because, all “eat the rich” rhetoric aside, the reason for her flying private is plainly obvious (at least in my opinion).  She’s already one of the most* stalked human beings on the planet.  I just don’t think simply flying first-class on Virgin is an option for her at this point in time, despite people online insisting that she should.  We can argue all day whether it’s right that the possibility exists for someone to be so well-known that destroying the environment in her wake is a necessity for survival, but the toothpaste can’t be put back into the tube at this point.  It’s what it is.

*”Most” in the sense of pure numbers, as opposed to “the most intensely”.  That honor might still belong to Bjork.

Whether she really needs two private jets (one is allegedly for just friends and family) is a whole different thing, and ditching the second one at least feels like an easy way for her to address the issue directly.  However, the whole conversation kind of makes me uneasy since the only reason we even know she has two jets, and how often they fly and where they go to, and for how long is because…well, people follow her every move. 

It’s all publicly available information, which I guess it probably should be in the interest of accountability.  And I honestly understand the argument that tracking this is specifically a public good, especially since carbon emissions (much like recycling) is fundamentally a corporate issue that’s been pushed onto the consumer as our responsibility for some reason.  I get why people get pissed about having to use paper straws while Taylor Swift gets to privately fly her siblings and family members around every day.  I get it.  I’m annoyed just writing it out.  But I don’t know that stalking her every step as a way to prove that she should be flying commercial is a super compelling argument.  That’s all.

The private plane usage is a real issue, but I think both the people who love Taylor and those who hate her are zeroing in on this and intentionally leaving out information in order to maintain their positions, making the conversation really difficult to parse through.  I do think to her average fan, though, this topic more than anything else is what cuts against the “Taylor is your best friend” marketing angle the most.  How could your best friend emit so much carbon?  It turns out, she has her reasons, and there are undeniable consequences to it that we are left to reckon with.  It’s what it is.

A bigger point of contention, at least for me,  is her near-obsessive need to keep releasing purchasable content.  I cannot speak to how things used to be on this front; what I can tell you is that easily the worst part of the MIDNIGHTS era was the constant rollouts of unnecessary “Anti-Hero” remixes and confusing re-releases of the original album, some of which could only be purchased by those fortunate enough to find themselves around the right truck in the MetLife stadium parking lot.

It all feels borne from the same instinct that led to the secret sessions, that desire to create special experiences for some as a way to forge a bond.  There are those out there who now own a copy of MIDNIGHTS that most others don’t.  That’s special!  But it can’t shake the feeling of it all being a cash grab, which ruins some of the specialness of it all.  It doesn’t seem right that you would need to own multiple copies of the same album in order to have every associated song.  It sure helps juice the sales numbers, though.

So, yes, the Taylor Swift Experience can feel a little hollow at times, and it’s all just part and parcel of what it is.  For as long as she inches toward billionaire status and has the level of fame and adoration that she has, she’s going to contribute to the heat death of the planet.  She’ll never not be obsessed with stats, numbers, and legacy; therefore, there will always be more corporate and transparently capitalist moves to be made to give her more Spotify streams and hard album sales.  It doesn’t override the art or joy in any real way, but it’s not fair to dismiss any and all criticism as “people who just hate her for no reason”.  It’s important to at least acknowledge it, even if it can’t really be reconciled.

There’s an even darker side to the whole Swiftie experience that gives me real pause as well, and this time the call is coming from within….

X.  Hunters with cell phones

The thing that I’ve been talking around this whole time is that, for as positive an experience I’ve had with Taylor Swift fans in the real world, there are also a lot of real bad actors out there, and they have a tendency for messing things up for everybody else.

(This doesn’t even include the bevy of stalkers that have gotten frighteningly close to being able to do something evil to her.  It’s worth noting, though, that very few of them have ever expressed an active hatred of her.  On the contrary, they often sound like fans, minus the part where they try to sleep in her bed.  One has even said she seems “nice and cool”.  The pipeline between fan and stalker is often much shorter than people want to admit.)

Over the course of writing this, the infamous Jack Antonoff rehearsal dinner incident came and went.  And, to be honest, it was a real splash of cold water to my face after the euphoria of The Eras Tour.  It was to the point where I almost hit “delete” on this whole thing, so scared and nervous was I to associate myself to a fanbase that can get so dangerous.

For those not in the know, somehow, someway, word got out that Taylor Swift was at Long Beach Island in New Jersey attending a rehearsal dinner in advance of Antonoff’s nuptials.  In no time at all, hundreds of people started swarming around outside of the restaurant in question, then eventually across the street (which feels pretty pointless to me, but whatever).  Just sort of hovering.  Waiting for her to…eventually come back out, I guess?  I think the purpose for most was just to get footage of her, however brief, in order to upload the precious seconds of footage onto TikTok and get those sweet, sweet likes.  For this, she gets treated like a zoo animal.  At least with paparazzi, there’s a financial incentive.

Again, I know the instinct is to say, “this is what she wanted!”, which feels like another distancing tactic in order to avoid grappling with the fact that people are rapidly losing their minds.  Yes, Taylor has an obvious pathological need to be public-facing (she’s literally called herself a “pathological people-pleaser” in the recent track ‘You’re Losing Me’).  However, I think even people who hate her guts can probably agree that she’s at least owed the right to attend the wedding for a friend (an attendance she didn’t announce herself) without attracting a crowd.  Yet, that’s apparently beyond the scope of reason in 2023.  But people want her to fly first class on Delta.

It seems like a strange event in isolation.  But then you couple it with the fact that people who think they’re married to her can find her house, break in and sleep in her bed, or apparently be able to get into the lobby of her apartment complex and just walk around.  A rag like the New York Post can even interview you.  You can say, “can’t she just have a secret garage to enter into her residences in?”  And, she does!  Want to guess how we know that?

You just sort of get this bad feeling in your stomach when you dwell on it all for too long.  Even giving airspace to any of it at all kind of makes me feel guilty.  I reflect back on a diary entry she wrote ten years ago about being anxious about people with phones and cameras camping outside her home:

The hunters will always outnumber me.  The spectators will stand by, shaking their heads, going “that poor girl”.

But the point is, they’re still watching.  Everyone loves to watch a good hunt.

Hmmm.  Fuck.

Let’s ease our way towards the end of this thing with a topic a little less crazy.

XI. Karma is my boyfriend

Taylor Swift is the closest I’ve ever come to believing the Illuminati is real.

Like most nasty conspiracy theories, the Illuminati has deep Germanic roots.  The Bavarian Illuminati was a very real society in the late 18th century that stood in opposition to perceived injustices, and sought to control the unjust without dominating them.  The Catholic Church loved this about as much as you might imagine, and the Illuminati were quickly outlawed.  Although some argue they stoked the initial fires that eventually grew into the French Revolution, how much control they really held appears up for debate. 

But the idea of the Illuminati has persisted ever since.  And, given its inherent secretive, cloak-and-dagger nature, you can accuse almost anybody of being Illuminati, even when they’re extremely public and frequently-tracked figures whose ability to fit in multiple secret meetings in order to control the world is presumably limited.  I once got into an increasingly-sincere conversation with an old coworker during my aforementioned job at the airport about how Jay-Z and Nicki Minaj were members of the Illuminati, although he never seemed to express a tangible reason as to why.  To him, they just were, and that was proof enough.

Now, it should be stated, I don’t really believe in the Illuminati, any more than I believe in a secret deep state, adjustment bureau, or a cabal of lizard people.  But I’ve also spent the last ten years seeing every Taylor Swift-related controversy break right for her eventually, that I just have to wonder sometimes.

Obviously, the infamous 2009 VMA’s incident sort of spoke for itself.  Whether you believed Beyonce truly had made one of the best videos of all time or not, it was hard to find someone who didn’t find it off-putting that Kanye West felt the need to make that particular point at that particular time in that particular way*.  It was a plainly evident inappropriate moment that promptly ended Kanye’s career a scant thirteen years later for unrelated reasons, but not before getting excoriated for it the next day by Jay Leno on the first episode of the former Tonight Show host’s 10 pm talk show (2009 was a bizarre, wild time).  The worst thing about the interruption that night, though, was its subsequent launching of eight million extremely unfunny “Imma let you finish” jokes that lingered for years.

*Fun fact about the 2009 VMAs; this was also the night Lil Mama made the ill-advised decision to crash the stage and perform “Empire State of Mind” with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, neither of whom had a clue this was happening.  The pop star who desperately tried to pull Lil Mama back from ending her career?  Beyonce.  Yep, she managed to find herself in the middle of two of the craziest ever VMA moments on the same night, despite doing nothing but sit there both times.

But Taylor’s second run-in with Kanye in 2016 was a little more complicated, at least at the time; it felt like public sentiment was roughly split on who was in the right.  The exact timeline of what exactly happened is a little detail-heavy, and can sometimes be tedious.  The brass tacks of it, however, are that Kanye West slept in a bed with a bunch of celebrity wax nude figurines for the music video for his song “Famous” off of THE LIFE OF PABLO.  There were many notable figures who “appeared” here, including West himself, but also Bill Cosby, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Donald Trump, George W. Bush and….Taylor Swift, who also had a lyric all about her that was the center of the controversy: “I think me and Taylor might still have sex.” 

The line was allegedly cleared with and approved by Swift herself.  For a long time, though, it was genuinely unclear who knew about what and who approved of which.  The key misstep, though, was Taylor’s public assertion that she hadn’t given approval of the line in question.  The downfall came when Kim Kardashian, Kanye’s then-wife, released a snippet of audio of a phone conversation that seemed to reveal that she had.  Now, the clip conveniently leaves out the part of the conversation where Taylor goes on to say “I thought you were going to call me a bitch or something”, a troubling omission considering the song goes on to contain the line “I made that bitch famous”.  It would be a few years before the truth came to light that this snippet was edited, but the damage in 2016 was done.  If the trending hashtag was any indication, Taylor Swift, it appeared, was over.

It does seem, with hindsight, that the #taylorswiftisoverparty crew had been making plans for years, and were simply waiting for the right opportunity to leap out from behind the couch and turn on the lights.  As mentioned, there’s been a contingent that has just never vibed with Taylor, and likely never will*.  As we’ve already discussed, some of those reasons are very legitimate, some of them aren’t, but it is what it is.  The immediacy of her downfall after Kim Kardashian posted the phone call audio on Snapchat (there’s a 2016 sentence if ever there was one) indicates that there were lots of folks out there waiting for something, anything to validate their inherent gut instincts.

*I don’t know that I’ve explicitly said this yet, but…this is okay, by the way!  We don’t all need to like the same things all of the time. 

As time has marched on, however, history has vindicated her on this front (if you think people hate Taylor Swift, you should solicit some opinions about Kanye and Kim nowadays).  It didn’t hurt that in 2020, the full phone call hit the internet, which revealed that Kimye were full of shit after all.  The real consequence, though, is that something very legitimate like the private plane stuff no longer sticks.  Taylor Swift has already been tied to a stake, burned to a crisp, and resurrected as something stronger than before, and it was over something tenuous at best.  The snake shit has been internalized as a key piece of imagery on her tours.  The Kanye subreddit briefly became a Taylor Swift subreddit last year.  It’s over.  She won.  She won so definitively, in fact, that things that could take her down now are graded on an invisible curve.

So it just makes me wonder.  Maybe the Illuminati is real.  Who knows?  What am I to think when I see the Scooter Braun empire begin to crumble out of nowhere?  It’s been years since Taylor’s contract with Big Machine expired, spurring her to jump over to Republic Records.  It’s been years since grown man Scooter Braun bought Big Machine and, with it, her masters and allegedly refused to sell them back to her.  It’s been years since Taylor subsequently announced a massive project to re-record her first six albums (the ones made under Big Machine) in order to lessen the value of those old masters, And now, as I sit here writing this and everyone from Ariana Grande to Carly Rae Jepsen to (maybe) Justin Bieber mysteriously cutting ties with the 42-year-old guy who calls himself Scooter on purpose?

Let’s just say I want to believe.

XII. It’s nice to have a friend

The whole Kimye incident does cut to one of the other seminal truths about Taylor Swift.

As mentioned, here’s something about her that’s never sat quite right to many.  A phony, artificial quality, something vaguely insincere and hollow.  It’s plagued her since the very beginning (remember people making fun of the “surprised face” she used to do at awards shows?  Doesn’t that feel like a million years ago now?)  So, in a sense, anything that finally seemed to validate that gut instinct was going to get hopped on with vigor, even if it meant taking the word of another music star who’s been more known for being grandiose than strictly honest.

This is a characterization that is supported by at least a little evidence (see Section IX), as unfair as the loyal want to paint it as.  Taylor undeniably conducts herself as a Brand, even if she’s a Brand that seems to speak with unusual frankness, has a genuine adoration for her fans even when they’re being freaks, and has an unending energy for passionately defending herself, even if this can sometimes lead to obvious consequences.  For instance, her public criticism of an admittedly extremely corny (and arguably sexist) joke at her expense on the Netflix show Ginny & Georgia mostly just led to some of her fans sending racist comments to the show’s teenage star on Instagram.  That’s not good!  Again, we can’t just take in the good and conveniently ignore all the bad!

And yet…it’s a constant temptation.  It’s still hard to square all of the above away with the passion, poetry, and bouncy fun inherent to her music.  With the undeniable kindness she has shown to both friends, family and strangers.  With the constant vindication she experiences with enough time and distance.  Having both good and bad within you ... .doesn't that make her inherently more of a human being than a brand?  So which is she?

This all leads to the ultimate, final, essential contradiction to Taylor Swift. 

She’s simultaneously both a person and a brand.  At least to us.  Beyond that, we don’t know.  We’ll never know.  Taylor Swift is our friend, except that she isn’t.  She’s intimately familiar, yet quite literally unknowable. 

To be a Fan of her work is to be, at least in some small part, inherently tied up in her, too.  It’s impossible to separate the art from the artist because, in her case, the art is the artist.  Even folklore and evermore, which she has specifically described as “story time” with songs sold as less-than-confessional, still contain nuggets of information towards her personal life; does anybody think “mad woman” isn’t about her fight with Scooter Braun?  Even “the last great american dynasty”, a lovely folklore song about the life and times of Rebekah Harkness, winds up being about Taylor Swift at the end.  This isn’t a complaint or an indictment, it’s just an essential truth about her work; even when she’s talking about someone else, she winds up reflecting back on herself.

And why shouldn’t she?  She’s consciously built herself up as The Brand.  She never adopted a stage name (why would you when your name is already something as eloquent and melodic as Taylor Swift).  Up until relatively recently, her social media presence wasn’t all that super-corporate (even the major Ginny & Georgia fuck-up implied a human being on the other end of that phone.  An undeniably flawed one, but a human nonetheless).  Hell, if Christina Grimmie hadn’t been murdered during a meet-and-greet, there’s a possibility Taylor would still be inviting people over to her house to this day.  She is The Whole Thing.  For all of its consequences, she’s achieved everything she’s wanted to achieve. 

Furthermore, to be a fan is to sort of accept this.  It’s why people passionately defend her honor if someone goes, “eh, that Shake it Off song….I dunno”.  It’s why Swifties seem to talk about her and her life just as much as her individual songs (if not more).  Frankly, it’s why weirdos think they’re secretly married to her.  It all feels personal, even though there’s just no way it really can be.  She constantly puts herself in her music, and people respond to it because they see themselves in her.  It’s a 1:1 translation.

So that’s why I think she’s such a Big Deal to people.  And, yeah, to put yourself in your art is Basic Artistry 101.  But I’m not sure we’ve ever seen it so explicitly marketed, in ways both thrilling and chilling, before she showed up.  And in a very specific time in the world, where basic tenets of society appear to be stretching or disappearing right before our eyes?  It doesn’t really surprise me that people cling to her more than ever before.  Tie that in with the constant Easter Egg hunt that her work often can be (even if I think her hints are way more obvious than people act sometimes), and you can see why people start sounding like moon men when talking about her songs.

It’s fun.  Like all fun things, it gets taken way too far way too often, and usually publicly so.  Yet, most Swifties, at least the ones I’ve interacted with, are fairly normal.  In another lifetime, most of them might be passionate fans of almost anything else.  But, in this timeline, they chose Taylor. 

So it goes.

XIII. Long live.

Consider, if you will, the number thirteen.

On the simple face of it, it’s a number that is not particularly special, outside of its status as a prime number.  However, it’s possibly the number with the most folklore attached to it, due to its stigma as “unlucky”.  The reason for this is surprisingly unclear; it could be connected to Judas Escariot’s status as the “thirteenth” person at the Last Supper, it could trace back to the Code of Hammurabi.  However, there’s no real consensus theory as to why.  This has not stopped buildings from excluding a thirteen floor to this day, anyway.  The number has meaning because somebody important decided it did, and everybody agreed to go with it.

The number thirteen is also a seminal piece of Taylor Swift lore (I did mention numerology comes into play in the fandom, didn’t I?), mostly because…well, it’s her favorite number.  For as much as people cram the number into every one of their weird, ragged theories on TikTok, there’s honestly nothing else really to it than that.  Taylor likes the number, so it has value.  The number has meaning because somebody important decided it did, and everybody agreed to go with it.

I mention this somewhat tangential fact because a phrase that keeps reappearing over and over in this article is “my wife”.  This isn’t a coincidence.

At the end of the day, there’s little chance I would have entered into any of this at all without her.  She’s the one who’s been playing her music this whole time, who stood by one of her favorite artists through the REPUTATION era (at a time when Taylor’s stock was low), who was caping up for “False God” when seemingly nobody else was talking about it, who excitedly sat next to me as Johnathan Majors introduced the “All Too Well” performance that kicked all of this off. 

Simply speaking, it’s been something for us to bond over the past couple of years.  It’s that social aspect that the Taylor Swift fandom provides, but in microcosm.  It’s a blast to have a shared language with a million disparate people, yes, but it’s life-affirming to have a shared language with the person you’ve chosen to spend your life with.  It’s cool that, in a pinch, a conversation can get some grease by one of us simply pulling up a crazy T-Anon TikTok and going from there.  It’s amazing that she no longer has to watch her concert films when I’m not around, out of perceived potential embarrassment.

Ultimately, “Taylor Swift” has meaning because somebody important (to me) decided she did, and I agreed to go with it.

And now here I am, at the end of easily the longest article I’ve ever written, realizing that THAT is what is going to endure.  Taylor Swift could retire tomorrow, and finally run off to the lakes, never to be heard from again, and the net value I gained from diving into her work would have been a positive.  Regardless of how she decides to conduct her business and life, regardless of how the worst actors in her fanbase choose to spend their precious time, she’s given my wife and I a new commonality, one that I imagine will endure.

So, when the extremely nice woman (whose name I desperately wish I had gotten; if anybody reading this remembers talking to a guy on the floor of SoFi about Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, comment below!) asked me, “when did you become a fan of Taylor Swift?”, I gave my answer.  Later that night, and into the week that followed, I then ruminated over the potential other answers I could have given.

Now, with a few weeks looking back, the real answer is “the same day she became important to my wife”.  It took me years to get caught up, but the trap was set that day, whatever day it was.  And what a lovely trap it turned out to be.

I genuinely thought going to The Eras Tour and writing this article would effectively close the book on Taylor Swift for me, at least for a little while, not unlike people walking out of AVENGERS: ENDGAME and going, “I think I’m good.  I’ve gotten what I wanted out of this.”  Then, 1989 (TAYLOR’S VERSION) got announced a couple of days after we got home.  Not long after that, it turned out The Eras Tour was going into movie theaters as well.  And as we sat there, trying to decide what weekend we wanted to get our tickets for (do we do opening weekend and increase the chances of a fun and raucous friendship-bracelet-swapping crowd?  Do we wait a couple of weeks and hope we miss the people who want to scream-sing in the movie theater?  Decisions, decisions!) I realized what was already plainly obvious.

As long as we’re doing it together, the train will continue ever on.

And I’m ready for it.

The Uncomfortable Conversations Within KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Martin Scorsese is the reason you’re reading this right now.

I don’t mean that literally; he’s not funding me or anything (at least not yet, I guess we’ll see how this goes).  But I do have him specifically to thank for my renewed interest to write about the moving pictures the past couple of years.

Like all things good and bad, it started with an idea.

In late 2019, back when I was young and foolish, I really, really wanted to weigh in on the newly-brewing “Scorsese vs. Marvel” controversy that was permeating the atmosphere.  However, there was a palpable roadblock in the way of me doing so in any sincerity.  You see, to give you an idea of where my movie tastes sat at the beginning of my thirties, I had seen the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe up to that point, but had failed to see even one Martin Scorsese movie.  Thus, I didn’t exactly feel qualified to levy an opinion in one way or another.  I definitely had a sense that people wringing their hands over Marty being mean to Marvel were being wildly over-defensive.  But I couldn’t prove it.  How could I?

So I decided to watch every Martin Scorsese movie.

By the time I started putting pen to paper (or, I guess, fingertip to keyboard), the Great Scorsese Film Festival had turned into a pandemic project.  It’s one that I still look back on with a lot of fondness, if only because it eventually provided me the unique perspective of someone who had seen every MCU movie and every Scorsese movie*.  It’s not that I thought everything he ever made was a masterpiece (massive thumbs-downs for me on NEW YORK, NEW YORK, as well as CAPE FEAR and SHUTTER ISLAND).  But many are, and I picked up probably five new favorite movies from the project.  At the very least, the sheer variety and totality of his work, especially in his first two decades, belied the common argument that “all he makes are mob movies!”

*With that perspective in mind, I can definitively state that Marvel fans need to chill.  I wrote a whole post-mortem once the project was done that summarizes my thoughts, and they haven’t changed much over the past three years, so I’ll just link to that instead of rehashing them here.

I think about that project a lot, not just because it was the rare one I saw to completion, but because I remember feeling kind of…sad by the end.  I was sad that I had let an esteemed director’s work pass me by completely up until that moment.  There are people I knew that had seen most of his work in a theater, and had grown up with his movies, providing them the cinematic language that unlocked their love of film going forward.  I refuse to say I had blown it; for the most part, everything one watches has value as long as you can get something productive out of it.  However, I was a little annoyed at my previous lack of curiosity.

What helped curb that sense of melancholy, though, was the knowledge that Scorsese was determined to make at least one more movie before the lights go off.  That movie was KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, an adaptation of the 2017 non-fiction book by David Grann.  By the end of 2020, it wasn’t at all clear when it was going to premiere, or (more to the point) where it would even premiere; it felt like there was an outside chance that movie theaters wouldn’t even exist within another year.  And, not to be morbid, but Scorsese wasn’t a spring chicken.  Who knew if he would even be around long enough to start and finish the production?

Thank god he’s still here, for a variety of reasons.  But mostly, thank god he’s still here to finish up his 26th narrative feature film just in time for streamers and tech companies to start realizing, “hey, maybe we should release movies into movie theaters again” and canceled their limited release/streaming premiere in favor of a big fat rollout.  This provided me not only the opportunity to see a Scorsese movie in a genuine movie theater, but to revisit one of my favorite writing projects I ever did, hopefully not for the last time.

So…let’s break down KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON!  Is it a masterpiece?  A disappointing misfire?  Somewhere in between?  And more importantly, how do we feel about the choice of narrative perspective?  Well, I guess I can’t fully answer that last one, but I can tell you how I feel.  Let’s do this!

———

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON tells the true story of the murders occurring within the Osage Native American community in the 1920’s and early 1930’s in Osage County, Oklahoma.  It likely won’t strike you as coincidental that these murders begin happening soon after an discovery of an oil deposit on native land make the Osage people the richest people per capita in the world.  Congress quickly passes a law stating that all full or half-Osage people must have an assigned white guardian to help them manage their finances and newfound wealth, which, again, ya gotta figure is coincidental.

The film’s version of this story focuses on two real-life perpetrators (or, at least, facilitators) of many of the killings: Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro).  Burkhart, a blunt simpleton who seems to love the pursuit of money over all else, is home from the war and dispatched to the care of Hale, who has established himself as the deputy sheriff of a major Osage reservation.  Hale has a job for his nephew.  An Osage family needs a valet.  Why not get yourself set up to drive the Kyle sisters around?  

Burkhart, a man who does what he’s told, gets himself situated with the Kyle family, which puts him in prime position for his uncle’s next thought: he ought to start courting one of the sisters, Mollie (Lilly Gladstone).  She’s available, and the family owns a significant amount of oil headrights.  What better match could there be?  Mollie, a sly and witty woman with an unnatural ability to read the writing on the wall, finds Ernest charming, and the two are soon married.  The first hour of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON carefully and slowly establishes Ernest making Mollie a Burkhart.

The second hour depicts the callous killings of all the ancillary members of Mollie’s first family.  Whether it be an ex-husband who could claim the headrights in the unthinkable event of Mollie’s death, her boisterous and headstrong sister, or her elderly mother, all soon find themselves six feet in the ground under mysterious circumstances.  Obviously, we know what’s going on from the beginning of the movie.  Devastatingly, however, none of this is ever depicted in the film as an ironic mystery, a detective thriller where only we the audience know whodunit.  The Osage people basically know why they’re being systematically slaughtered.  Mollie in particular smells a rat from the jump.  But, y’know….what is she going to do?  Call the police?  Petition the government, the same government that got her into her particular situation in the first place?  White men hold all the power from the jump.  All she can do is stay alive as much and as long as she can.

The third, and unsurprisingly the most satisfying, hour can best be described as “Jesse Plemons Shows Up and Starts Busting Fools”.  It’s in this section that KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON actually does feel not unlike one of Scorsese’s prime mob flicks; the feds show up, and the crime family starts folding like a deck of cards.  I’ll defer detailing the ultimate fate of everybody involved, including Mollie herself, for now in the event you’ve yet to see it, although it does all lead to a thought-provoking and already-much discussed ending that I will be going into in a minute, so ya might as well take the three-and-a-half hours and just go watch it before going much further. 

It’s a brutal, meticulously paced narrative, made all the more infuriating because you know where it’s going from the word “go”, even if you’ve never been made aware of the real world story.  The second you see the old-school silent movie graphic explaining the sudden wealth of the Osage that opens the film, you start doing the “oil + white people + America” math.  It makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience, made all the worse by the fact that what happened is so much more blatant, conspiratorial, and bald-faced than you could ever imagine.

It should be said that KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON boasts an enormous cast of people, including the aforementioned Plemons, Brendan Fraser, John Lithgow, Elden Henson, Jason Isbell, Gary Basaraba, Pat Healy and Pete Yorn, as well as indigenous actors Cara Jade Myers, Tantoo Cardinal, and Tatanka Means.  Yet everything in the movie seems to come back to the central three actors at its core: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone.  So let’s take a look at them.

I’ve long been an avowed DiCaprio skeptic, although that position might be shifting more towards “DiCaprio agnostic” nowadays.  By virtue of going through Scorsese’s filmography, as well as finally checking out 2019’s ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD after a years-long self-imposed Tarantino timeout following the excruciating HATEFUL EIGHT, I feel like I’m starting to understand why DiCaprio can be stirring when he’s at his very best.  I maintain that THE WOLF OF WALL STREET might be his best performance to date, if only because it taps into his unique cocktail of eternally boyish good looks and black-hearted charmless rat-bastardy.  I still don’t really see what makes him so special to the degree that many of my peers do, some of them legitimately getting visibly frustrated at the prospect of him possibly never winning an Oscar (until he finally won one for 2014’s THE REVENANT, in one of the most blatant examples of a “goddamn, here, now will you shut up?” award win in my memory), but my meter for him is getting more calibrated nowadays.  Sometimes he’s great; sometimes he’s annoying.  Mostly, he’s serviceable.

In KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, he’s on the high end of serviceable.  Although I personally could have done without the constant grimace he puts on his face as Ernest (it felt like a college theater student’s idea on how to play edgy), it’s impossible to deny that when you’re looking for someone to portray a casually evil man who still somehow seems so doe-eyed that you feel like maybe he truly has no idea what he’s doing, DiCaprio’s your man.  The only time DiCaprio’s vague lack of charm* falls flat is in the early scenes between him and Lily Gladstone.  Although the quick courtship makes sense in context (once one of the local white men set their sights on you, survival options were limited), it felt like just one scene where Ernest displays some natural magnetism would have gone a long way for me “buying it”.

*my lawyers have begged me to clarify, “in my opinion”.

DeNiro, on the other hand….man, what a performance.  I’m one of the only people in the world who thinks he might actually be improving with age.  He had a great run in the 70’s as a young and edgy actor, then entered this very prolonged phase where he was between young and old, and maybe wanted to be a comedic actor?  So he began floating around for about twenty years reading cue cards on the SNL stage and singing show tunes in Billy Crystal sequels, while the rest of us were left scratching our heads.

But, now?  As he’s entering his ninth decade of life, he’s sort of slowed down and lost a lot of his energy, and now he’s just doing it.  A lot of the mugging DeNiro face is gone, along with all of the tics and pointing.  It’s the same reason his performance in the last hour or so of THE IRISHMAN was so chillingly effective.  His William Hale here is plainly evil, but in a very manner-of-fact, logical way (aka the most terrifying kind of evil).  It’s one of the best things I’ve seen him do in a while, and the balance between his calm, assured energy and Ernest’s cocky and naive energy tells the whole story of how the worst things in the history of humanity tend to occur.

Lily Gladstone is as great and as intriguing a talent as you’ve heard, although she’s so good that she subsequently became the only element in KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON that made me question the choice of perspective the movie made (more on that in a bit).  In three and a half hours, you don’t quite get enough of her.  Of that somewhat limited time, she spends a lot of it having to express grief and horror, which is fine and all; it’s fantastically performed and is frankly warranted by the character’s circumstances.  However, you wish you could have gotten more of the Gladstone we see in the first hour of the movie, where everything about her is internalized.  She gets to be sly and witty, and many things are expressed via facial expression rather than dialogue.  

As for Scorsese himself, his talent for visual storytelling remains unrivaled.  Just as an example from the movie itself, I won’t soon forget one of the most striking images in the entire film: Hale sitting in a movie theater, watching a newsreel unspool about the 1921 Tulsa massacres, another profound dark mark in American history that it seems many would rather forget than learn from.  In a trick borrowed from a shot in Spielberg’s JAWS, the newsreel eventually begins to play out in the reflection of Hale’s glasses, giving the impression he’s sitting there just…absorbing.  Evil recognizes evil and starts taking notes.  

As mentioned, KILLER OF THE FLOWER MOON isn’t a perfect movie.  Although the discourse around “long movies” and the “morality of intermissions” or whatever the fuck people are yammering on about is stupid, the movie does feel long, as it intentionally doesn’t have the propulsion that drives Scorsese’s very best.  And, as all of you are undoubtedly aware, there have been criticisms aimed at the movie, and Scorsese himself, for choosing to tell the story from Ernest and Hale’s perspective (a decision, it should be mentioned, which deviates from the source book), rather than from the Osage people that were victimized by this abominable series of crimes.

It’s easy to dismiss those levying criticisms toward Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth’s decision to center its narrative around the two white perpetrators as opposed to the indigenous people at the heart of the event as bad-faith arguments from media-illiterates mad about his comments about Marvel.  And, no doubt, there is certainly a faction of those kinds of people taking advantage of a real conversation in order to defend a studio that really needs no defending.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not a real conversation.  It’s also a tricky problem with no real answer or work-around; the knee-jerk solution is for Scorsese and Roth to center the movie explicitly about Mollie Burkhart and her family, which would at the very least get us more Lily Gladstone.  I can’t help but think, though, that this would simply shift us into the timeline where Scorsese gets faced with criticism for telling a story that’s not his to tell.  The next solution down, I suppose, would be for Scorsese to just not make KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON at all, which would mean trading off a major last-of-his-kind filmmaker bringing attention to the Osage murders (a story that absolutely deserves the high-level film treatment) in exchange for avoiding uncomfortable conversations. 

The next possible solution down the list would be for an actual Osage filmmaker to be given the agency, power and funding to tell this story themselves.  And honestly?  I’m all for that.  This doesn’t need to be (and shouldn’t be) the only version of this story that gets committed to celluloid*.  It’s a rich and tragic and important enough narrative that all voices involved deserve a chance to express their perspectives.

*And, in fact, already isn’t: check out 1959’s THE FBI STORY.  

But, until such time as those movies get to emerge, this is the version that we have.  This is the movie Scorsese decided to make.  I’m uncomfortable armchair-quarterbacking how he should have approached it, if only because the way he did approach it is undeniably effective; I find it hard to imagine the kind of person who leaves this movie without being at least a little frustrated.  It’s made all the more potent by the fact that Scorsese, in a remarkably low-key ending, seems to accept that he is complicit in the packaging of a tragedy to be consumed as entertainment.

At the end of the film, in lieu of a series of title cards informing us of our central characters’ real-life fates and conclusions, we time-jump us a bit (could be days, could be years) or so and get presented the end of the story in the style of a live radio broadcast.  A live orchestra dramatically underscores the recitation of William, Ernest and Mollie’s futures after the murders are discovered.  Actors stand in to read boisterous composite exclamations, actors who are decidedly not Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio or Lily Gladstone*.  This is clearly an after-the-fact dramatization of the Osage murders, presented as a true crime story meant to thrill and chill a rapturous audience.  

*It should be noted, though, that one of the actors is Jack White, who looks enough like Johnny Depp these days that I briefly became desperately confused. 

This is an ending that is not without historical precedence, by the way.  An August 3, 1935 episode of the radio show G-Men dramatized this very same story, in presumably much the same way; the pipeline of actual murders to consumable entertainment (and the morality of said pipeline) is a whole article in and of itself.  What that episode of G-Men likely didn’t feature, however, is an appearance by Martin Scorsese himself.

Yes, in the film’s final moment, Scorsese appears onstage and recites the final years of Mollie Kyle.  As it turns out, she was able to remarry and gain some semblance of a life before dying of diabetes in 1937 at the age of 50.  She was able to be buried with her family, although Scorsese informs us that her obituary didn’t mention the murders.

Upon reflection, the point of this is simple: Scorsese feels guilty about all of this, too.  He appears to be aware that there is something kind of wrong about turning this shameful and greedy story into something that can earn other people, including himself, money.  That could very possibly earn other people, including himself, awards.  Even if it raises awareness of a true historical crime I feel comfortable saying most people I know, including myself, hadn’t heard about, people still stand to profit off of its telling.  So the criticism he’s received, including from some members of the Osage tribe?  He’s heard it.  He might even agree.  So he acknowledges it.  He puts himself front and center in it.  He literally faces it.

Does this solve anything?  I suppose it depends on your point of view.  One might view this as a sort of cheat from Scorsese, as if acknowledging what you’re doing while you’re doing it can possibly make anything better.  On the other hand, it could be seen as a kind of creative bravery; he’s clearly not hiding or deflecting from this conversation; if anything, he’s contributing directly to it.

Either way, perhaps the ending isn’t perfect.  Perhaps Scorsese’s decisions aren’t perfect.  Maybe KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON isn’t perfect.

But at least it mentions the murders.

The Devil Don't Care: THE EXORCIST And the Death of the Legacy Sequel

I. SAY YOUR PRAYERS

I’m a relatively godless man.

I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious household or family; they had and have their beliefs, but they weren’t expressed outwardly in times of non-crisis all that often.  I did a stint of Catholic education, but it was really late in my schooling; I went down the rare pipeline of secular K-through-8th, THEN getting taught by nuns at the age of 14.  As a result, I definitely found learning about Catholicism interesting (I’m one of those who thinks all people should do a once-through of major religious texts like The Bible, even if just as a piece of literature), but by the time high school began, the cement was probably already too dry in my head to really believe it.  There’s just too many contradictions, too many sects and groups of people who think they’re the only correct ones and everybody else in the world is wrong, even though all religions more or less believe the same things when you get right down to it.  It ain’t for me.

And yet….what the hell do I know?  I know full well the limitations of my intellect.  The mere fact that something doesn’t add up for me doesn’t really mean much in the grand schemes of things.  Hell, my non-believer status might even be the greatest single positive qualifier in favor of religion.  So who knows?  Thus, in the great family tradition, I find myself praying to a higher power in times of crisis anyway, even if it’s with a little detachment.  Who am I to say it doesn’t work?  

For instance, the other night, I prayed that the concept of the legacy sequel would be vanquished from the Earth. 

I don’t really need to explain what the “legacy sequel” is, right?  Even if you had somehow never heard the phrase, the very name describes it perfectly.  It’s a sequel that carries the “legacy” of a particular franchise or property, usually years and years, even decades, after the last nail in the coffin appeared to have been hammered in.  They’ve been around for quite a long time, especially on television, but the genre seems to have gotten turbocharged around 2015, with the one-two financial punch of JURASSIC WORLD and STAR WARS: EPISODE VII - THE FORCE AWAKENS wreaking havoc in Hollywood.  

And look, the appeal is obvious.  I don’t need to be the millionth person to get into the concept of people looking for comfort in trying times, and that comfort usually being in the form of nostalgia, one of the most powerful drugs in the world, the only concept that can make us go back in time, the closest thing we have to potential time travel.  And how, just like any other drug, nostalgia can be actively destructive in large doses, causing us to forever look backwards rather than blaze through to the future, however uncertain it may be.  Nah, there are plenty of think-pieces out there that cover all of this.  And, besides, you inherently know all this in your soul already anyway.

My problem with the concept of the “legacy sequel” is much simpler: they usually suck and are lazy, substituting the hard work of storytelling for “clapping” moments, then often fucking those up, too.  Here come the actors from the previous ones!  Here’s a location or a prop from the original!  Whoah, one of the characters just said The Line!  Are your heartstrings tugged yet?  They’re the cheapest kind of art: the disposable kind (I would be surprised if anybody saw GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE or JURASSIC WORLD - DOMINION more than once).  They’re usually not even interesting enough to be truly bad; they mostly just sit there.

I was thinking about all of this while watching THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER, the new horror legacy sequel from David Gordon Green, the other week.  I was thinking about a lot of things (mostly because it was boring).  About how transcendent the original EXORCIST still feels fifty years later.  About just how many attempts at a true and proper follow-up have been attempted since Gerald Ford was in the Oval Office and how none of them have ever truly worked.  And, most importantly, about why I was burning a free afternoon on this styrofoam cup of a movie.

The only real benefit I was able to pull from the experience is that it seems to me like the signs are forming of the legacy sequel boom coming to a close.  I might just have to keep praying hard enough.

II. WHAT AN EXCELLENT DAY FOR AN EXORCISM

The first time I ever saw THE EXORCIST, it was in the form of a Hollywood Video DVD rental, picked up in pursuit of some late-night entertainment during a teenage sleepover (I should probably clarify that I was also a teenager at the time).  Although my friends and I at that age usually aimed for such video cassette horror classics as ICE-CREAM MAN*, TERROR TOONS and JACK FROST for our cinematic indulgences (the kinds of things you rent for the night based solely off of the VHS cover), you can only hear about something being “the scariest movie of all time” for so long before you decide to class it up for a night.  It didn’t hurt that this was right around the time that the famous Director’s Cut (“The Version You’ve Never Seen!”) had hit the market, which meant THE EXORCIST was getting quite a bit of press around the time of that fateful night.

*Starring Clint Howard in the titular role!

We watched it and…I remember being only vaguely interested!  There were likely a plethora of reasons as to why.  My first guess was that, at the age of twelve, I was already firmly in my “everything is stupid and overrated” butthole phase, an era of my life that only lasted another twenty years.  With reflection, however, I’m not precisely certain how scary THE EXORCIST can really be to a thirteen-year old, especially the particularly fake-cynical type that I was.  It was definitely memorable; how could you ever forget Linda Blair vomiting up green sludge like she just walked out of Pea Soup Andersons?  Since this was the Director’s Cut, how could you ever shake the famous Spider Walk?  How could you…um…ever look at a crucifix the same way?  And yet, I definitely wasn’t scared, and I made sure everybody else at the sleepover knew it (I should mention, besides being a cynic, I was a real asshole at twelve years old).

But…what else would you really expect to happen?  THE EXORCIST, as it turns out, is not specifically designed to scare relative young-uns, although there’s enough flayed skin and gross puke contained within that it probably happens anyway.  No, it’s a horror movie for adults, and not in the “tied up naked co-eds” kind of way.  Specifically, this is a movie for people who have lived long enough to start having doubts about their previous actions.  To start wondering if maybe they’ve got it all wrong.  To begin living with unanswerable questions.

The real villain of THE EXORCIST isn’t the demon Pazuzu.  It’s regret.

The story of THE EXORCIST is still wildly famous even fifty years later, but in case you need a refresher…the main conflict of the movie begins when Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) starts acting oddly.  Where a bright, happy twelve-year old girl once stood, a strange sore-covered demon begins to form.  Nobody seems to have a clue what is going on, least of all her actress mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn).  The various doctors that take a look at her chalk it up mostly to a psychological condition, something that Chris rejects vehemently (and perhaps rightfully so, given Regan’s state).  However, by the time Chris’ director friend Burke Dennings (Jack MacGowran) is found dead outside the MacNeil house, his body found right underneath Regan’s window after going into her room alone only minutes before...it’s clear something needs to be done.

When science fails to produce answers, where else is there to turn?

Enter Fathers Lancaster Merrin and Damien Karras.

We spend quite a bit of time with these two during the first half of this movie; in fact, the first twenty minutes or so is almost a short film all its own, as we follow Merrin (Max von Sydow) as he walks the deserts of Iraq armed with proof that an old enemy has awakened.  Although some people may call the opening slow (I am not one of those people), it’s an incredibly bold, patient, and confident way* to open up a movie of this caliber, and it pays off.  The shot of von Sydow staring down the statue of Pazuzu at the end of this sequence is as rousing and engaging as any other start to a film I can think of, and Friedkin pulls it off without a fucking word of dialogue.  

*Remember when popular movies could still be slow burns?  Would the Netflix algorithm ever allow a movie to open like this?

The movie also lays the groundwork for where Father Karras (Jason Miller) is, both emotionally and spiritually, prior to his showdown with Pazuzu.  He carries a heavy load as a psychiatrist to other priests.  He confesses to a colleague that he’s questioning his faith.  Privately, crucially, he’s struggling with how to deal with his ailing mother.  She’s clearly not able to care for herself at home, yet he can’t live with himself during the brief period she’s admitted to a callous asylum*.  Although she’s ultimately able to die in her own home, Karras isn’t there for her at the end.  You get the palpable sense that Karras is going to be thinking about how things could have gone for a long time, maybe forever.

*If you haven’t picked up on it, there’s a strong anti-psychiatry streak to this movie that is inexorably linked to its pro-church theme.  I mention this because it means THE EXORCIST stands as proof that a well-constructed and compelling story can transcend one’s own personal compass.  

Karras gets connected with Chris via a mutual friend, Father Dyer.  After a visit to Regan’s room (which yields him only a face full of green puke), Karras correctly surmises that Regan is possessed by a demon and the only solution is to dust off a near-defunct church ritual: the exorcism (cue the tubular bells!).  His superiors reluctantly allow him to move forward with this, contingent on him bringing on a more experienced priest, who happens to be….Father Merrin!  The stage is set. 

It all leads to one of the most memorable sequences in 70’s horror, the climactic exorcism, where the brutality of Pazuzu (who winds up becoming an insanely formidable opponent relative to how stupid its name is) is laid bare.  Besides being shockingly foul and disgusting, both in look and in speech, it seems to have an instant read on what terrifies its foes to their core.  This results in the most chilling moment of the movie, at least for me*.  Pazuzu, using Regan as its vessel, begins to speak to Karras as his mother, asking him “why did you do this to me?  I’m afraid!”  As he clutches his ears and screams, “You are not my mother!”....well….

*I recognize that, in a movie that features, again, a possessed pre-teen masturbating with a crucifix, this may represent somewhat of a hot take on my part.

Look, I can’t claim to have had to deal with an aging, ailing parent.  But I have loads of profound regrets in other directions, and worries that maybe I should have been at places I chose not to be.  I replay lots of moments from the movie of my life, wishing I had a second take to use.  So to reach this moment in THE EXORCIST at thirty-five, it should come to no surprise that it hits waaaaay harder than it ever possibly could at the age of twelve.

Karras is ultimately in a showdown with himself.  With his regrets and doubts.  With grief.  With the memories of his mother.  The things that have merely kept him up at night now threaten to kill him.  And it speaks volumes that, in a movie that’s filled with striking and audacious moments (nearly 100% of the special effects, performed live on the set, hold up in all their grotesque glory fifty years later) and one so carefully and quietly crafted to set up character without an overload of verbal exposition*, it’s this moment that hit like a ton of fucking bricks for me.

*One of my favorite details establishing how ill-equipped Chris is for the dealing with her possessed daughter is the plethora of handlers and assistants she has milling about her house.

It didn’t help that I mostly forgot how THE EXORCIST ends.  I recalled Father Merrin being the one who dies at the end, but I had forgotten that we lose both priests before all is said and done.  Yes, we also lose Karras, and in a rather brutal fashion.  Although it makes for a bleak end, it perfectly fits.  It’s the completion of the story THE EXORCIST is telling, whether Pazuzu is defeated for good or not (can one truly defeat evil forever?).  And because the story has such a defined end, and because the story was so well-told that people went crazy for it, the movie runs into the same issue that all successful ones inevitably hit.

How do we make another one?

III. HORRIBLE, UTTERLY HORRIBLE, AND FASCINATING

I’ve given a spiel many times before about the stacked deck that pretty much every sequel faces, since they’re almost always tasked with following up movies that were already closed books.  It gets especially hilarious when franchises start realizing that they botched it with a particularly-maligned sequel and try to “fix it”, which leads to competing timelines within a series.

All one has to do is look at something like THE TERMINATOR, which flew too close to the sun after actually nailing its first follow-up (it’s not an opinion I hold, but T2: JUDGMENT DAY is generally considered better than the original) and has spent thirty years trying to come up with a proper T3 ever since.  Maybe the biggest offender in all of Hollywood is the HALLOWEEN franchise, which now boasts five separate timelines, some of which are quite entertaining (I confess to being a fan of HALLOWEEN: H20 and HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH) and most of which are total garbage (see HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION and both Rob Zombie films, at least in my opinion).

One of the more intriguing examples of this, however, happens to be THE EXORCIST franchise, which now consists of three sequels, none of which are connected to each other in any way, and two prequels, which are really just the same movie cut in different ways.  Naturally, I had to see these for myself.  Before I saw the new David Gordon Green sequel, though, I had to start at the (relative) beginning.

To both sequels’ sort-of credit, there isn’t really an attempt to just do THE EXORCIST again.  Both 1977’s THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC and 1990’s EXORCIST III embody decidedly different vibes than Friedkin’s original, although they both accidentally do it in similar ways.  Specifically, they both surround a major (but aging) leading man with weird performances and batshit imagery, all in the pursuit of covering up the fact that, well, there really is no movie at the core of either of them.

How could there be?  What possible loose thread could one possibly pull at by THE EXORCIST’S end?  

EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC starts with the semi-reasonable idea of picking Regan’s story back up with her as a teenager.  A new priest has entered her story, Philip Lamont (Richard Burton), who is also questioning his faith after a botched exorcism in Latin America (and by botched, I mean candles get knocked over and the possessed woman catches on fire; bad times).  A few years later, he gets assigned the duty of investigating Father’s Merrin’s death.  Apparently, there are whispers that Merrin will be marked as a posthumous heretic for performing the titular exorcism from the first movie, since the Church is modernizing and does not wish to confirm the existence of Satan (I’m not sure this makes a lot of sense but, again, I am no liturgical expert).

Father Lamont’s investigation brings him to the New York psychiatric institution Regan MacNeil now lives in, where she is monitored by Dr. Gene Tuskin (a post-CUCKOO’S NEST Louise Fletcher).  It’s here that we’re introduced to the movie’s big device, as well as the first indication that we’re not just doing the first one again: a brain synchronizer that allows its two users to “connect” via brainwaves.  Once brains start getting synchronized, EXORCIST II comes alive with its signature flourishes: flying with locusts all the way to Africa, a possessed James Earl Jones, really provocative camera overlays…there are long sequences of EXORCIST II that feel like fever nightmares.  I admit to loving the un-intuitive approach here. 

All of the above, plus an all-time on-autopilot performance from Richard Burton, makes THE HERETIC sound way more interesting of a start-to-finish experience than it actually is in practice.  One just can’t shake the feeling that director John Boorman is using audacious visuals (and they are audacious) to cover the fact that there really isn’t any movie here.  It particularly struggles with actually connecting itself to the first EXORCIST; specifically, why does the movie have this weird insistence that Father Merrin was the only one present at the first movies’ exorcism?  Seriously, is there some behind-the-scenes thing with Jason Miller that I’m not aware of?  EXORCIST II practically states as a matter of fact that Father Merrin pulled a solo act in EXORCIST I.  Does anybody know why?

It just feels like Boorman, screenwriter William Goodhart, and the film at large, struggled with actually making a movie that serves as an EXORCIST sequel, maybe because there really isn’t anything to continue with two of its driving characters dead and another one cured of her conflict.  I like to imagine, though, a parallel universe where EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC is merely an EXORCIST ripoff named THE HERETIC, the kind of movie that…well, that you’d rent from a Blockbuster twenty years ago off of its batshit cover alone and end up quite liking just for its sheer batshit energy.  Alas, as an officially sanctioned second part to the EXORCIST story, it doesn’t work.

EXORCIST III takes a decidedly different route, starting with pretending EXORCIST II never happened.  We do pick back up with a character from the original, but it’s time it’s not Regan.  No, instead they go with fan favorite...Detective William F. Kinderman!  (You remember him, don’t you?)  This time, the role isn’t played by Lee J. Cobb, but by George C. Scott.  He’s older and more somber, and is starting to worry that an old enemy is beginning to rise again.  There are signs that the Gemini Killer is on the loose again, a threat made all the scarier by the fact that the Gemini Killer was executed fifteen years ago.  Even creepier, he is called to a psychiatric ward to interview a patient who bears a striking resemblance to Damien Karras, who also died fifteen years ago…

EXORCIST III has its fans.  Don’t get me wrong, the appeal is understandable.  It’s an undeniably loony movie, with many scenes and moments that can only be described as flabbergasting; there’s an extended dream sequence where, among others, Fabio and Patrick Ewing appear as angels.  Why?  Who knows?  Plus, there’s The Famous Scene.  You know the one; it’s the one who probably first saw in the form of a YouTube video titled something like “scariest movie scene ever” or something.  Suffice it to say, the scene delivers in context, although it came way later in the runtime than I ever imagined (out of context, it always had “first scene” vibes to me).

But….Jesus Christ, is EXORCIST III a mess.  It reeks of a movie caught between multiple cuts; it vacillates too much between grounded and ungrounded, seemingly at random.  I want to love it for its clear ambition, and for it having the common decency to find a way to bring Jason Miller back, if only briefly.  But it felt mostly like a boring, vaguely pretentious slog.  I’m not as big of a fan of Brad Dourif in this as others seem to be, and I think George C. Scott is also coasting his way through this the exact same amount as Richard Burton did in PART II; he’s just more awake while doing it.  The individual pieces are really interesting and, when viewed in isolation, make it seem like a borderline gonzo masterpiece (again, “scariest movie scene ever!”).  But, when strung together, the most interesting thing that emerges is that William Peter Blatty himself directed it.

Finally, there’s the odd tale of the EXORCIST prequels, which is really the same movie twice.  Yep, 2004’s THE EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING and 2005’s DOMINION: PREQUEL TO THE EXORCIST are more or less two stabs at the same idea (and start with the same production premise of EXORCIST III: “none of the other sequels ever happened”).  The idea of an EXORCIST prequel started in 1997, and churned through possible stars and directors; Liam Neeson was the star of this project at one point, and both Tom McLoughlin and John Frankenheimer were tagged to direct at different times along the way before landing on Stellan Skarsgard and Paul Schrader by 2002.  

The two movies share a starting off point; Stellan Skarsgard is a younger Father Merrin suffering from a crisis of faith, and haunted by a traumatic Nazi-induced past.  He is now tasked with investigating a church found buried in the ground during a dig in Kenya.  As he and a companion keep looking further into it, it’s clear that the church isn’t so much built to worship something above, but perhaps to keep something down below.

This is sort of an intriguing idea for two reasons.  One: there’s a cold logic to the idea of “well, following up the end of THE EXORCIST has bombed out twice…what if we try to connect to the beginning?”.  Two: Paul Schrader is maybe the only person in the Hollywood sphere who potentially has the juice for this kind of assignment; his unique brand of human interest and nihilism fits right in with the EXORCIST universe.  If anyone could make an EXORCIST prequel work, it might be him.

Personally, though, I typically find prequels to be even more of a pointless pursuit than sequels are.  Most movies tend to start their stories at the most logical place: where the conflict begins.  Take THE EXORCIST: if it was truly all that important to establish and dramatize Merrin’s previous run-ins with the Devil prior to Iraq, the movie would have done so.  But it didn’t, because there was no need to.  As we talked about, the EXORCIST prologue sets up Merrin as a character as well as you can imagine, and with minimal dialogue.  There’s not a whole lot of further elaboration needed.  It’s fun to imagine how intense Merrin’s previous run-ins with Pazuzu might have been, but actually seeing it play out isn’t that entertaining*.

*This is also known as the STAR WARS Prequel Problem.

Morgan Creek watched the original 130-minute cut of Schrader’s movie, which was light on actual scares and heavy on pace, and naturally fucking freaked out, seemingly unaware of who Paul Schrader was.  A re-edit was demanded, then another, neither of which satisfied the studio.  Producer Sheldon Kahn was brought in to re-cut it on his own, which infuriated Schrader.  By August of 2003, Schrader was fired and the film was junked entirely.  Back to the drawing board.

This is what led to the alternate (but technically first, in terms of release date) version of the film, directed by Renny Harlin* and rewritten and recast from the ground up, although Skarsgard was retained, as well as Andrew French, who played Chuma.  The shoot was a mess (one might say….cursed?), unhelped by the fact that Harlin got hit by a car two weeks in and had to direct on crutches for a month and a half.  It was a real race to the finish, only officially finishing days before its August 20th, 2004 release.  

*The ultimate “guy whose movies you’ve seen ten of, even if you don’t know his name” guy; seriously, check his filmography some time.  DEEP BLUE SEA, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, CLIFFHANGER….the list goes on.

You’ll never believe this, but the 2004 version fucking sucks.  It’s not even bad on a “holy cow what were they thinking?” level.  It just sucks in the way all movies made within compromised, unconfident, stuck-in-survival-mode productions do.  Just as an example of its desperate search for tension: it takes Merrin’s internal conflict (spoilers for a movie you’re not going to watch: Merrin was once made to pick ten members of his Nazi-occupied village in the Netherlands to be executed in retaliation for the death of a German soldier) and drags it out into a long movie-length mystery, the crux of which is not revealed until almost the end.  This is, presumably, in order to drive the viewer to keep watching.  However, it’s not really all that compelling of a device, especially when the final reveal is not terribly more guilt-inducing than what your imagination might have conjured up on its own.  You also need to endure some of the most generic, mid 00’s-looking visuals I’ve seen in a while, including some truly jaw-droppingly horrendous CGI hyenas. 

Even though it only ever saw the light of day because Morgan Creek asked Schrader to finish it, it’s no surprise that the 2005 version of the EXORCIST prequel bodies the 2004 version pretty easily, probably because it contains that “humans are the real evil in the world” throughline that you’d expect from a Schrader joint.  It also plays straight with the audience; Merrin’s Netherlands village prologue just plays out in full right from the beginning, making Merrin’s internal conflict and guilt clear from the start.  Finally, I think the cast is better on the whole; just for instance, Gabriel Mann makes for a more interesting companion (and has more to do) than James D’Arcy did in the 2004 version.

However, it doesn’t solve the Big Problem: who cares?  As a set-up to the 1973 EXORCIST, it doesn’t inform the original movie in any meaningful way, or at least in a way that wasn’t already there.  I cannot imagine anybody watching either of these outside of the context of “gotta knock it out”, like, say, someone trying to see every movie Schrader directed, or, perhaps, writing a big EXORCIST article or something.  DOMINION is twice the movie BEGINNING is, but that makes it a 2/10 rather than a 1.  Either way, they should likely both be avoided.  

So there the property sat for almost twenty years.  And then, three weeks ago, THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER hit theaters.

IV. GOD PLAYED A TRICK ON US

I confess to not being intimately familiar with David Gordon Green’s entire oeuvre.  The only real sense I have for his work comes from his recently completed HALLOWEEN “trilogy”, although it’s really more of a new quadrilogy; like many HALLOWEEN sequels, it starts with the premise that none of the other previous follow-up chapters ever existed.  Thus, 2018 provided us the third movie that could reasonably be referred to as HALLOWEEN II (following 1981’s HALLOWEEN II and 2007’s HALLOWEEN II, and not counting 1998’s HALLOWEEN H20: TWENTY YEARS LATER, which is technically a follow-up to the 1981 HALLOWEEN II….I told you, the HALLOWEEN timeline is messy).

Like most, I don’t really like his set of HALLOWEEN movies; the 2018 movie is perfectly fine and perfectly watchable, although vaguely uninspired in the same way J.J. Abrams’ THE FORCE AWAKENS was.  It worries less about building a story worthy of both following up the first installment AND kicking off two subsequent movies as it does about fussing over feeling like the 1978 original, down to the credit font and the return of Jamie Lee Curtis (a move towards credibility that was already done back in 1998, but I digress).  I do think HALLOWEEN 2018 is a fine time, and the central conceit is valid; there’s something admittedly cool about Laurie spending the last forty years preparing for the next time Michael Myers enters her life by creating a HOME ALONE-esque house of traps.  But it succumbs to the same problem all of these try-hard sequels do: for all of its hand-wringing about capturing a timeless feel, it also veers too topical (two prominently-feature characters are hosts of a true-crime podcast, something that I promise will feel ancient in another five years).  It also makes Mike too brutal, which was never really his M.O. and again feels like a capitulation towards modern bloodlust than anything else.

It won’t shock you that I thought 2021’s HALLOWEEN KILLS was awful to a degree that is borderline un-understandable, starting with its stupid name*.  It’s the rare movie that accomplishes the somewhat contradictory tasks of being both infuriatingly idiotic and completely unmemorable.  There was just nothing there, a middle entry in desperate search for a reason to exist.  I think it wants to be a musing on mob justice, but it became mostly known for its constant, excessive refrain of “evil dies tonight!”.  Maybe it doesn’t want to be anything more than a completed project, and it arguably falls short of that.

*I ask again in search of a straight answer from somebody, anybody: what the fuck does “HALLOWEEN KILLS” refer to?  Does it mean the day itself yields the possibility of killing?  Does it refer to the kills that actually happen in the movie?  Something else entirely that I’m not thinking of?  I expected an explanation in the form of a stirring monologue within the movie itself that included the phrase awkwardly worked in, but alas, this moment never occurs.

The final installment, HALLOWEEN ENDS, is a step up in the sense that it at least has an interesting idea at its core (Michael “passing on” his evil to another young man in Haddonfield, a potent if simple metaphor for the cycle of violence), but when the first identifiable idea in your trilogy comes halfway through the third movie, it is catastrophically too late.  The genuine buzz that the project had in 2018 was completely dissipated by 2022.  It was starkly clear that the HALLOWEEN “trilogy” was green-lit mostly because “a new HALLOWEEN trilogy” is a simple and easy sell in the room.

All this to say that the announcement that the same creative team was handed the keys to create a new EXORCIST trilogy gave me pause.  1978’s HALLOWEEN is one of the best horror movies ever made, but THE EXORCIST might be even better in terms of aesthetic, performance and overall substance.  Also, as mentioned, nobody in fifty years had really cracked the formula towards creating one truly satisfying EXORCIST follow-up, so greenlighting three at once seemed ambitious.  Also, it should be noted that Universal and Peacock teamed up to purchase the distribution rights to this franchise at the tidy sum of $400 million.  Surely they wouldn’t have made such a bold and risky decision without the knowledge that there were creatives in charge who have made some real choices as to what they wanted to do with it.

So…now that THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER has arrived, what choices did Green and his eternal writing partner Danny McBride come up with?

Well…

Here’s the thing: it’s been a couple weeks, and BELIEVER has already been on the receiving end of some truly brutal reviews, both in print and in video.  Although this frankly didn’t surprise me, I really tried my best not to consume any of them prior to writing this.  Sometimes, when a bad movie arrives and flops, people can smell blood, a dog pile quickly forms and a race to publish the snarkiest or most performatively negative review begins.  I’m not all that interested in participating in that aspect of it; I really do try to give movies a chance, especially when I have to write about them.  So, although I didn’t have a good feeling about all of this, I was hoping that BELIEVER would at least take a big swing or two, in the same way HERETIC or EXORCIST III did.  At least they could provide me with something unalterably weird like the CGI hyenas.

You’re never going to believe this, but they played it safe.

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER is technically about a man named Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr., who is serving a massive leading role here; he’s in essentially every scene) who is still reeling from the loss of his wife in childbirth, the result of a choice he is forced to make during their honeymoon.  Thirteen years later, Victor is completely stripped of his faith, and is just focused on performing single fatherhood as best he possibly can.  Everything begins to collapse for him again when, while going on an unscheduled adventure after school, his daughter Angela and her best friend Katherine go missing in the woods.  Three days later, they reappear and begin to act….different.  Almost like there’s something…different about them.  You might even say…they’ve each been possessed by a demon.  Now what?  All that and the “now what” is what this movie is technically about.

What it’s really all about, though, is just doing THE EXORCIST again, with some superficial changes.  This time, it’s two possessed girls!  This time, it’s a dad trying to deal with his suddenly sick daughter!  Oh, look!  It’s Ellen Burstyn, only this time, she dabbles in exorcism, which is good because the actual priest character in BELIEVER is a complete non-factor (talk about missing the fucking point).  In an infuriating move that reeks of loss of confidence, Victor is also haunted by a choice he made many years ago, only this time, it’s presented to us as a twist to pull the rug out from under us, robbing us of any sense of doom or character.  Yes, the only other EXORCIST movie this takes inspiration from is THE EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING.  Take that for what you will.

To some degree, this might be the only bullet a potential EXORCIST sequel has left to fire.  But after almost a decade of this kind of IP film-making, it is perhaps the most ruinous decision it could have possibly made.  Friedkin’s original is a lot of things, but something that has gotten lost to the sands of time is that it felt legitimately dangerous to its contemporary audiences.  People reportedly fled the theaters, they vomited in the restroom, one woman even allegedly miscarried.  Now, like all stories of hysteria like this, I highly suspect them to be largely apocryphal.  However, the fact that the tales generated in the first place indicates that 1973 EXORCIST managed to tap into a fear very, very real to the average 1970’s American, that of leaving the door open for Satan.  America is 2023 is admittedly a very different place in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons.  However, it’s imperative for a movie that wants so badly to feel like the original to actually tap into a similar type of innate fear.  It’s not like it’s difficult; the average 2020’s American walks around terrified of any number of things of all levels of legitimacy.  In the Internet age, personifying evil is not a difficult task.

This is not to claim that the act of actually dramatizing it in screenplay form is easy.  It is not!  It’s fucking hard!  There’s a reason nobody has ever asked me to make an EXORCIST sequel; I would do a terrible, terrible job.  But, at this moment in time, Green, McBride and Jason Blum (and many others) were asked to perform a task that many other filmmakers (a couple of which are, frankly, better artists) had failed at.  Perhaps it was a poisonous premise for a film to begin with, but the instinct to just play the hits is simply a non-starter as a potential solution.  Plus, to be frank, unlike HALLOWEEN and STAR WARS, THE EXORCIST is not a franchise so ubiquitous in pop culture that a hard palette cleanser was required, so I don’t buy that as a potential excuse.  All in all, it’s creatively dead on arrival from the jump.

After a week of being drubbed in the press, THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER is profoundly fortunate that Taylor Swift and Martin Scorsese respectively entered movie theaters the next two weekends and took up all the oxygen.  As I write this, it is now available for purchase on streaming, indicating it may be gone from theaters altogether by next week.  You get a deep sense that losses might be cut and the other two entries of this “trilogy” will be quietly cancelled and everyone will just move on; in fact, it feels like Universal is already preparing themselves to do just that.  There’s an excellent chance BELIEVER will be merely forgotten about as opposed to being held up as a legacy sequel pariah, a low point in a subgenre that’s been made up of more valleys than peaks at this point in time. 

But…it shouldn’t.  There have been higher-profile IP catastrophes this year (here’s lookin’ at you, THE FLASH and ANT-MAN: QUANTUM-MANIA).  But EXORCIST: BELIEVER does feel like a real turning point in the cynical exercise of franchise necromancy.

You take a look around, and you can sort of see the tide turning in a different way for the types of movies people are really getting excited for.  Obviously, the BARBIE/OPPENHEIMER one-two punch was a big enough success that their opening weekends felt like a true end to the pandemic mindset: people flocked to the theaters in droves, often in costume, both ironically and (mostly) unironically.  Despite all the drama between Marvel and himself, there appears to be a real fervor for Martin Scorsese’s FLOWERS OF THE KILLER MOON (stay tuned to this space, by the way!), especially, and remarkably, with the demographics 35 and under.

Obviously, sequels and “do-overs” will always be a backbone to the Hollywood system and has been since it began.  But I do think (hope, pray) that the era of “follow-up to famous movie + bringing back one or two stars from retirement* + ‘we’re doing this for the fans!’ = money and press!” may be coming to an end, or at least a pause.  Because there are legacy sequels that have something to say; insert my mandated STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI mention here, but I’ll remind everyone that it was only one year ago that everyone went ape-shit for TOP GUN: MAVERICK and its thinly-veiled commentary towards Cruise’s position as the Last Movie Star.  It wasn’t long ago that Ryan Coogler directed Stallone to an Oscar nomination for 2016’s CREED.  These things can be done well.

*This reminds me that I haven’t yet mentioned THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER’s real low point: it wasn’t the trotting out of Ellen Burstyn, it was the trotting out of Linda Blair in a surprise cameo at the end that was met with dead fucking silence in the theater the day I went.

But every one of those, we get seemingly endless amounts of JURASSIC WORLDS and RISE OF SKYWALKERS.  Thus, more attention ought to be paid to EXORCIST: BELIEVER.  It’s not the worst legacy sequel, but it’s leaden and inert enough that it deserves to be the catalyst for a new American film revolution as anything Greta Gerwig and Jonathan Nolan provided us this year.  Maybe the era of the braindead legacy sequel is actually coming to a close.

And that would be the greatest exorcism of all.

ON THE ROCKS Is On The Nose

In a pre-Covid world, my wife and I were fortunate enough to find ourselves on a lot more international trips than we currently do nowadays. Admittedly, there aren’t a lot of negatives to setting jets, but one of the most prominent drawbacks are the mammoth length of international flights. Five, six, seven, ten hours plus on an airplane is a long time, even when you’re going somewhere fun. To fill the time, we typically would identify a movie to watch by scrolling through the seat-back screen while still on the runway. Once we reached cruising altitude, we would order a glass or two of wine, fire up our selection, then promptly fall asleep after a bottle or two of wine.

Seems like a simple enough process. However, you learn quickly that there’s an art to picking a movie for an lengthy airplane ride. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is picking something so jaw-droppingly obnoxious that it makes your trip even longer than the half-a-day it’s already scheduled for. A few reels of SHAZAM: FURY OF THE GODS and you may be praying for a hijacking.

However, an arguably even bigger error is picking a movie that’s actually good. Directors have long argued against the wisdom of watching a film on the flat tiny screen that an iPhone provides, and it’s true. But watching something like WEST SIDE STORY on the back of a stranger’s plane seat may be even more dismal. You tell yourself you’re making an educated choice, but you’re not. It’s a feint. A lie. Don’t do it to yourself.

The real skill is identifying movies that are perfectly fine, maybe even functional, but are so devoid of stakes or consequences that the movie, and all memories of having ever seen it, stay 30,000 feet in the air long after you’ve returned to Biosphere 1. It’s not easy, but my wife and I have started developing a real sense for what makes a good airplane movie, to the point that when certain trailers unspool in front of us in an actual movie theatre, we tend to whisper “save this one for the airplane” to each other.

For context, some past airline viewings for us have included JUNGLE CRUISE, DATE NIGHT, SISTERS, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT (Tina Fey is sadly a very common face in this type of movie), FANT4STIC FOUR (this one would have fallen in the “unwatchable” category were it not also about 65 minutes long), THE PEANUTS MOVIE, KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE and ZOOLANDER 2. All movies you probably knew existed at one point, but has since faded away, almost as if they were never really there.

The reason I bring all of this up is because in 2020, in the midst of a raging pandemic, as we all helplessly sat back and watched the few remaining threads of American society separate, possibly forever, Sofia Coppola gave me the greatest gift she could ever give me in a time of unbearable need.

She gave me an airplane movie.

ON THE ROCKS (2020)

Starring: Rashida Jones, Bill Murray, Marlon Wayans, Jenny Slate, Jessica Henwick

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Coppola

Released: October 23, 2020 (Apple TV)

Length: 96 minutes

Here’s the deal: this one isn’t going to be anything close to an in depth review. It’s not exactly how imagined the last entry of my Sofia Summer series to go, but frankly, ON THE ROCKS is not a movie that demands it. It’s fine! Honest and truly! There’s nothing really technically wrong with it. It’s functional and competent, the plot is simple but makes sense, it goes down quick and breezy. But, as a result, there’s no real meat to pick off its bones.

Laura (Jones) and Dean (Wayans) are a young married couple trying to make their way in New York. She’s an author, he’s a…tech entrepreneur of some sort (it’s a little vague). Together, they raise two daughters. The passion of their newlywed days seem to be over, and Dean is distant enough that Laura now harbors suspicions of infidelity. Not helping Dean’s case: Laura finds another woman’s travel bag in his luggage. Then there’s the night where Dean comes home in the middle of the night, starts making out with Laura, then abruptly stops once he recognizes her voice.

In order to end Laura’s worrying, her half-retired art dealing father Felix (Murray) enlists himself to help her follow Dean around, as he gathers intel on his wayward son-in-law, culminating in the discovery that he’s booked a mysterious trip to Mexico. However, a central question to the movie is whether Felix might be projecting his own lecherous past onto Dean’s actions. As it always seems to go between Laura and her dad, how much is he helping, and how much is he hurting?

For whatever reason, it took me until ON THE ROCKS for me to realize how just much of Rashida Jones’ stuff I’ve seen and enjoyed. Obviously, most people know her from either PARKS AND RECREATION or her season-long guest stint on THE OFFICE*, but I also remember the hectic weekend when TBS premiered her show ANGIE TRIBECA by running every episode over and over for 25 straight hours. As far as this movie went, I was at least invested in the outcome of her and Felix’s tailing of Dean. I have to chalk that up to Jones making Laura’s worry and anxiety feel real. She made me care. With her ability to project entire spectrums of emotion with just a facial expression or two, she turns out to be a natural lead for a Coppola feature, and you hope the opportunity arises for the two to collaborate again.

*In fact, she was kind of saddled with a thankless role on that show’s third season, playing the obvious third line in THE OFFICE’s big Jim Halpert-Pam Beasley-Karen Filippelli love triangle. Intellectually, you knew Jim wasn’t really going to end up with Karen, but it’s long been my belief that the only reason audiences entertained, or in some cases even supported, the very notion is off the back of Jones’ performance.

Bill Murray is perfectly fine here, although it seemed to me that he was sleepwalking through ON THE ROCKS more than a little bit. It also felt (again, at least to me) that this was a role expressly written in to cash in on Murray’s late-stage persona as an internet-adored eccentric (a persona I personally struggle with). It’s easy to forget now that he’s made a whole meal out of playing pranks on unsuspecting civilians and harassing coworkers or whatever, but his whole comedic sensibility used to be fairly detached, even slightly acidic. This went on years before stuff like GHOSTBUSTERS and STRIPES; just watch his old Academy Award predictions on SNL for an idea.

Now here he is, spouting off super writer-y sounding aphorisms and facts that I think are supposed to communicate color and goofball highbrow wisdom (“the celebration of the date of one’s birth was originally a Pagan tradition…” begins one of his little jags), but instead felt for all the world like Murray or Coppola (or both) trying to craft a “Bill Murray” character. Much like Jeff Goldblum before him, Bill Murray seems to have finally bought into his own shit, losing something genuine in the process.

The central issue facing ON THE ROCKS is that it’s nothing special. It tells a nice and relatable story that gets the emotional beats all correct. But it seems to lack that obvious “thing” that makes apparent what lit a fire in Coppola’s brain to even make it in the first place. Telling a tale of suburban ennui. A melancholy tribute to the city of Tokyo. A reclamation of the last queen of France. Hell, even the fucking BLING RING had an intriguing hook to it, even if the ball was ultimately dropped. Here, the only evident hook I can see for Coppola may have been the chance to work with Murray again.

And, look, I think it’s perfectly fine for a director, even a great one, to release something that’s no better than pleasantly average every once in awhile. I think we’d be wise to decouple ourselves from the expectations of “genius and paradigm-shifting” every time. Even Scorsese had a couple of ground doubles mixed in with his home runs. Not every movie Coppola makes has to be THE VIRGIN SUICIDES! You could even make the argument that ON THE ROCKS’ greatest virtue is that it’s Coppola at her most straight-forward. A couple of likable stars, an easy plot, a somewhat positive resolution…it’s not a bad entry point.

Except, it’s also completely devoid of the magic and reward that her very best movies provide. Near the very beginning of this run of articles, I talked about seeing LOST IN TRANSLATION for the first time twenty years ago as a teenager, and how it instantly gave me this….feeling. It burrowed its way into my brain, my spine, my heart and I’ve been floating around in its aura ever since. It was my first Sofia Coppola movie and seeing it in a genuine movie theater will forever remain a core memory for me. It’s the reason I spent my summer this year revisiting THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, and digging into the movies of her I had yet to see.

If ON THE ROCKS was my first Coppola movie, is there a chance in the world that my experience would be the same? It’s almost impossible to imagine so. And a director only gets so many chances at providing future generations those kinds of moment, especially when we’re talking about one as relatively un-prolific as Coppola; seven movies in twenty-five years isn’t exactly minuscule, but we consistently wait three to four years for her to return to the screen. As time marches on, the movies we do get from her have to count.

ON THE ROCKS could have been made by anybody, and that’s its true crime. In a way, it’s probably very lucky that it released during the Big Pandemic Quarantine Year. Like all things in 2020, everything feels a little hazy and forgettable, at least in terms of time and place. That’s the perfect time in history for ON THE ROCKS to exist in. If it had come out even one year prior, it may have generated serious questions about where Coppola goes from here. As it stands, though, it’s a forgettable movie that everyone saw during a hazy time.

It manages to be an airplane movie even when it’s on the ground.

THE BEGUILED Marks a Return To Form

(Don’t do it, Ryan.)

(I’m not joking. It’s hacky. It’s corny to the point that you trying to couch it by first writing a cute couple of lines acknowledging what you’re about to do is also hacky. It might actually be worse.)

(Sigh….)

Webster’s Dictionary defines “beguile” as “to deceive by wiles”, “to lead by deception", quite literally “hoodwink”. It follows, then, that to be beguiled means to be hoodwinked, to be deceived by false appearance.

THE BEGUILED, then, is a movie title that gives you a sense of the entire story before a frame has run through the projector (I’m not sure film really works like that, anymore, but…you get the imagery). Sofia Coppola’s sixth film, which both reunites her with a couple of her former leads AND allows her to collaborate with two modern powerhouses for the first time, deals directly with what happens when a deceiver enters a space of isolation through cowardly means and begins to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting.

It’s also a period piece, a suspense tale set in the American South smack dab in the middle of the Civil War, a time when pretty much everybody walked around with a significant amount of tension, distrust, and anxiety at all times. One could also make the argument that Coppola is dabbling in allegorical story-telling; many of the images and blocking in this movie seems drenched in double-meanings (there’s a lot of tilling of soil, much pruning of branches).

More than anything else, though, THE BEGUILED marks both a relieving return to form for Coppola after a confusing mini-disaster in THE BLING RING, while still representing something different altogether from her. Even if it doesn’t always work 100% of the time, it all at least hangs together. This is a victory in and of itself.

THE BEGUILED (2017)

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Colin Farrell, Elle Fanning, Angourie Rice

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Coppola

Released: June 23, 2017

Length: 97 minutes

Based off a 1966 Thomas P. Cullinan novel of the same name, and previously made as a 1971 Don Siegel movie starring Clint Eastwood, THE BEGUILED tells the story of a sparsely populated Virginian girls’ school in 1864, ran by Martha Farnsworth (Kidman) and staffed by just one other adult, Edwina Morrow (Dunst). As Edwina teaches the five students French, the Civil War rages ever on in the background.

One fateful morning, one of Edwina’s young students, Amy (Oona Laurence), makes an odd discovery while picking mushrooms: a wounded Union deserter, Corporal John McBurney (Farrell). After some debate whether to turn or take him in, Martha allows McBurney inside the school in order to rest and recuperate. This decision ultimately comes at a cost, as McBurney starts slowly and methodically seducing each of the girls, as he shows a talent for showing only the parts of himself he thinks the woman in front of him needs to see (psychologically speaking, not physically. It’s not that kind of movie).

His charm turns to violence as he gets busted sleeping with teenage Alicia (Fanning) by Edwina, whom he had previously declared his love to. Edwina responds by pushing him down a flight of stairs, which wounds his leg to the point of amputation (whether this amputation is truly medically necessary, or merely an act of revenge is a deliberately unanswered point of contention). He’s furious, the women are trapped, and the story shifts to one about how one removes the wolf from the hen house.

In many ways, THE BEGUILED almost plays like a Best Of Sofia Coppola movie, with elements of her past films all mixed together to create something new. There’s Kirsten Dunst! There’s Elle Fanning! There’s that palpable PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK aesthetic and tension at play again! Oh, is that the French language I hear?

And yet, many pillars and tenets of what a typical Sofia Coppola movie looks like is almost entirely absent here. No longing, colorful, fast-paced looks at wealth here. In fact, THE BEGUILED is almost entirely shrouded in darkness in its key moments (a decision that I have mixed feelings about, more on that in a second!). Even though it clocks in at her typical 90 or so minutes, its pace is quite intentionally slow and methodical.

Yet many of her themes remain. Loneliness. The want for freedom. The repression of desire. And perhaps no single character best exemplifies those classic Coppola themes than Edwina, the schoolteacher. All of the girls at the school develop feelings of some sort for McBurney, but Edwina is the one who most obviously falls in love with him. She’s a woman who’s lost in her current role, with no real future ahead of her. War surrounds her. She’s just a schoolteacher, and that’s all she’ll ever be. Then comes this handsome, somewhat dangerous Corporal. Even though it’s clear he’s writing her a check he has no intention of cashing, a large part of her wants to believe it. She has to; it’s her only chance at another kind of life.

This isn’t my original observation, and I do not remember exactly where I first saw it, but it’s worth aggregating it anyway; THE BEGUILED completes the Sofia Coppola Trilogy of Movies Where Kirsten Dunst Plays A Character Who’s Trapped In A Social System With No Easy Way Out Of It (the first two, of course, being THE VIRGIN SUICIDES and MARIE ANTOINETTE). Here, it might be that archetype at its most heartbreaking. She wants so badly, maybe more than any of the other women at the school, to believe McBurney and his seductions. Even to the very end, as McBurney’s deadly dinner begins, it’s not clear to us as an audience if she’s going to actually eat the poison mushrooms and die alongside him (whether she does or not, I’ll leave for you to experience).

It shouldn’t be surprising that Coppola keeps going back to Dunst for these kind of roles. She’s good at them. Dunst is really, really skilled at communicating heartbreak and desire non-verbally and always has been (she’s a big reason those Raimi SPIDER-MAN movies have the emotional punch that they do), which makes her a valuable tool in Coppola’s workbox. We’ve actually reached the end of their collaborations, at least as of this writing (Dunst isn’t in ON THE ROCKS or the upcoming PRISCILLA). One has to imagine there’s more to come on that front. One day.

Another pleasant standout is our sole male lead, Colin Farrell.

Farrell is a guy whose presence has been interesting to grow up around. I distinctly remember that period in the 2000’s where it felt like he was everywhere. As a young man, he had a knack for picking the exact right, fun project (MINORITY REPORT, MIAMI VICE, IN BRUGES) except for when he didn’t (PHONE BOOTH and DAREDEVIL to pick just a couple). He also had a very distinct bad boy reputation, and was at the center of one of the only entertaining and interesting moments in Jay Leno’s TONIGHT SHOW tenure (naturally, it never aired). And now, here he is at the age of 41 (at least at the time THE BEGUILED was released), and all of a sudden a different kind of guy has emerged. Farrell is now a man who connotes danger without living it, a man with that great combination of handsome and seasoned.

All of that to say that, as far as the only main male role in the entire film, Colin Farrell is the exact right fucking choice in 2017 for Corporal McBurney, a man who has to be both many things to many people AND ultimately a man only interested in himself. It’s a tough role to play, but Farrell is maybe one of the only leading men in his current age bracket that could pull it off. It requires a guy who can be charming in an understated way; McBurney is never a “light up the room the second he enters it” kind of man. He’s more of a “slowly nestle his way into your soul” kind of man. Yet, he also needs to be able to provide that believable rage when pushed and cornered. Near the end, McBurney starts dipping into horror movie villain territory, ranting and raving and carrying on while our core women leads are locked in a room, waiting for the tempest to pass.

You basically need to both believe him when he’s charming AND when he’s insane. With age on his side, Farrell’s the guy. We’re lucky to have him.

———

On the matter of how the movie is shot and its relationship with literal darkness, I can’t decide if it’s an exercise of form over function. Yes, it makes a lot of sense that the movie would be only lightly lit. The symbolism of the house being covered in shadow once McBurney enters it (as well as the follow-through in thought of key exterior shots being shot through the leaves of a tree) is clear and easy to track. And, of course, the dinner scenes lit only by candlelight evokes a technique mastered by Stanley Kubrick 40 years prior.

On the other hand….well, the movie is hard to see! I know it sounds stupid, but that matters! To be perfectly honest, THE BEGUILED is on Netflix as I write this, and it’s how I screened it for myself. I was ready to blame my visual issues on a touched-up streaming upload or something, so I was somewhat relieved to hear that one of the top Google results for “THE BEGUILED” is “Why is THE BEGUILED filmed so dark?”. For a movie that rests a lot of its storytelling on quiet moments, glances, and facial expressions…bust out a couple more candles, that’s all I’m saying.

(Note: this could be all the result of some setting on my screen that I’m overlooking. Let me know if you had this issue when you watched it, too.)

———

Something I’ve been avoiding mentioning this entire article, minus a brief mention near its beginning, is the 1971 version of this same story which, again, starred Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page in the Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman roles, respectively. Normally, whenever there’s a prior version of a movie I’m reviewing, I have no problem comparing them directly. For instance, 1991’s CAPE FEAR is a direct remake of the 60’s original; therefore, it seems fair to be able to view them side-by-side and judge them accordingly.

Here, though, up until the very last minute, I hadn’t even watched Siegel’s version of the Cullinan novel because Coppola isn’t technically remaking his movie. She’s just taking another crack at the same source material. So it didn’t seem fair to compare them. Yet….curiosity got the better of me and I ultimately fit in an opportunity to sneak in a viewing (one of the big reasons this article is coming out a day late).

And…well, I liked it better.

It’s not an overwhelming victory or anything, and it doesn’t necessarily invalidate Coppola’s vision; a lot of the differences between the two simply come down to style choices. The story remains largely the same. However, there are some notable departures that Coppola takes that gives one pause (although I think they’re slightly defendable).

The first thing to point out is that there’s a female slave character, Millie, in the 1971 BEGUILED that Coppola excised completely from the 2017 version. This doesn’t exactly help her beat the allegations that she tells stories from a strictly white (and privileged) perspective, something that has plagued her since the LOST IN TRANSLATION controversy. On one hand, it’s a shame; Mae Mercer brings a lot of humanity to the role (she actually gets one my favorite lines and moments in the whole thing; “You better like it with a died black woman. Because, that's the only way you'll get it from this one”), and I think bringing race in as a component adds even more dis-ease to the story, especially considering it’s a Civl War tale set in the South (with its villain a coward Union soldier). On the other, I think it’s reasonable to assume Coppola simply didn’t think she had anything to provide to the race angle and thought better to avoid it altogether (and considering the tense implications of Millie’s presence in the story, something that could have gone even worse for Coppola if she had bungled it).

All things being equal, it would be nice if Sofia Coppola had some deep insight to provide in regards to race. But she doesn’t. If she did, she would have done so by now. Thus, it doesn’t seem like the scathing indictment people think it is to continue to point out that “she only tells stories about white people!”. I think she knows. Frankly, it’s part of her style at this point. Anyone continuing to watch her movies looking for that kind of insight, when there are twenty-plus other directors that can, feels like torturing yourself on purpose. It’s what it is.

The second, and bigger in my opinion, is that the 2017 BEGUILED frames the story from the perspective of the women. This wouldn’t seem to be a huge deal; after all, there’s only one man in the whole movie (more or less). The thing is, though, that I think Corporal McBurney might be the most compelling character in the whole thing (save for arguably Edwina). Yes, the women are the ones who are changed from the experience, so it would make sense to put the dramatic focus on them. But, when you have such a bizarre and dark central character provided to you, sometimes you gotta roll with it. Focusing on McBurney and his headspace is a large reason why Siegel’s version has such an offbeat and unforgettable vibe (well, that and the incest subplot….it sort of makes sense in context….you should just watch it.) Coppola’s version lacks a punch by comparison.

(Also, it doesn’t do the 2017 version any favors that Geraldine Page blows Nicole Kidman out of the water in terms of performances. I hadn’t brought up the Coppola version’s biggest star yet up for a reason, and it’s because Kidman made no impression on me whatsoever. Considering she used to be one of the most compelling leading women we had, this was rattling for me.)

AND YET. Unlike THE BLING RING, THE BEGUILED has ideas and a point of view and a palpable artistic vision. This was a relief to me, because Sofia Coppola obviously means something to me. I wouldn’t have dedicated my summer to her movies and inspirations if she didn’t! It sucked to see her take such an artless turn seemingly out of nowhere. If nothing else, THE BEGUILED at least showed me that she hadn’t lost it.

But, you know….you should watch both versions. Just because.

THE BLING RING Goes In Circles

The 2000’s were a terrible time.

I’m allowed to say that. I was there.

Demographically (and calendar…ically) speaking, my adolescent years ran from 1998 to about 2009 or so. With a birth year of 1988, I didn’t experience the 1980’s in any meaningful way, and most of the 1990’s are actually kind of a blur; I don’t think I really processed things in front of me as “oh, a new TV show/cartoon/movie/song” until 1997, 98 or so. Thus, the 2000’s were the first decade I got to consciously experience from beginning to end.

It was a bad time.

To be clear, I didn’t necessarily have a bad time; my adolescent and teenage years had the ups and downs you might expect, but the average day was probably no worse or better than yours. I went through the same peaks (realizing there are a few things I’m actually really good at! Developing a close-knit friend group!) and valleys (realizing there are many more things I’m not good at! The realization that there was more darkness in my family than anyone let on!) that most kids go through.

It was just….all the stuff around us. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what was so awful about the detritus that was the Aughts. The things that come to mind aren’t exactly unique to that time; parasitic celebrity gossip wasn’t new in 2000, loud and obnoxious blockbusters meant to be consumed and forgotten were in their third decade at that point, an weird shifts in popular music taste** just kind of comes with being alive.

* That was part of it too, we never landed on a satisfying, rhythmic name for the decade.

** Although, man, if you weren’t there for that moment when boy bands were out and nu-metal was in, seemingly overnight, you missed out. It was hilarious, like someone hit a switch or something.

However, it did kind of all feel vaguely like maybe we were in the beginning of the end. Cheap reality television exploded, first off the backs of solid network hits like SURVIVOR and THE AMAZING RACE, then accelerated by cheapie celebrity fodder like THE OSBOURNES and THE SIMPLE LIFE, before practically mandated after a late-decade writers’ strike that ground the only decent programming out there to a halt. Media outlets like TMZ added a really sadistic and snarky streak to the gossip rags, encouraging us to giggle and roll our eyes at the deteriorating health of public figures like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Amy Winehouse (semi-related note: most stand-up comedy in the 00’s was godawful, too). And, although I personally believe them to be pretty great in their own ways, the 2008 summer releases of IRON MAN and THE DARK KNIGHT are more or less responsible for the current collapse of the superhero movie genre, and maybe all of Hollywood.

Oh yeah, and 9/11. That sucked, too.

So, when I learned that a filmmaker that I really liked, and one that always managed to have something to say about her favorite subjects (the ennui and isolation of upscale life being a big one), made a film based off one of the last “celebrity culture” news events of the decade, I got excited. Sofia Coppola making a movie about the Bling Ring felt like a match made in heaven.

So, of course it sucked. Why wouldn’t it? Everything else about the 2000’s did.

THE BLING RING (2013)

Starring: Emma Watson, Israel Broussard, Katie Chang, Taissa Farmiga, Leslie Mann

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Sofia Coppola

Released: June 14, 2013

Length: 90 minutes

“THE BLING RING? More like Bore Ring!” - my wife

Yeah, look, I’m just going to get straight to the point. I didn’t like THE BLING RING much, if at all. It was a shocking crash following the high of Sofia Coppola’s previous film, SOMEWHERE, a movie I just about loved due to her instincts as a director guided her to an unbroken series of good decisions. Here, the complete opposite occurred, and I’m left to try to figure out what happened.

For those not in the know, THE BLING RING is a movie based off a real event (specifically, it’s based off a 2010 Vanity Fair article), where a group of seven Calabasas teens who started just kinda walking into the mansions of nearby celebrities when they weren’t home and taking off with some of their outfits (one of the teens referred to it as “going shopping”). They were all mostly fashion, reality television and social media obsessed. In fact, one of them, Alexis Neiers, was in the middle of shooting a reality show pilot for E! when the arrests were made (that show, Pretty Wild, ended up airing in 2010 and lasted nine episodes).

In the actual movie, the names have been changed, presumably to make it more of a fictionalized account. Nick Prugo becomes Marc Hall (Broussard), the repressed outsider and de-facto audience surrogate (and perhaps the only character in the entire movie Coppola actually empathizes with, more on that in a bit). Rachel Lee becomes Rebecca Ahn (Chang), the ringleader. Neiers becomes Nicki Moore (Watson), perhaps the most ready for fame of them all. Tess Taylor and Courtney Ames become Sam Moore (Farmiga) and Chloe Tainer (Julien), who…well, I don’t really know. The movie is largely uninterested. Together, they decide to start breaking into the mansions of the biggest celebrities the 2000’s could allow. Audrina Patridge. Megan Fox. Orlando Bloom. And, of course, Paris Hilton.

It’s not the worst source for a movie premise ever (especially since I’m writing this in a week where a trailer just dropped for a movie based off a fucking Twitter thread from a Buzzfeed employee), and it presents several opportunities. For one, it sets the stage for a unique take on a standard crime/heist film. For another, the idea of glitz and glamour glossing over a sadder reality is right up Coppola’s alley. Heck, it even provides avenues to explore a lot of sneakily-fascinating themes, the most prominent being the fact that, for as racialized and class-based the depiction of crime has traditionally been in media, it was ultimately fellow rich kids that brazenly robbed the affluent this time around.

It doesn’t even really matter that the ending is a forgone conclusion; the mere fact that we even know about this story at all implies they get caught. That’s okay! Not every story needs to be full of twists and turns. Heck, many crime films deal with this. As long as the characters are somewhat compelling (even if (especially if!) we don’t like them), watching the noose tighten around the necks of amateur criminals can be thrilling!

Funnily enough, the moment I accepted that THE BLING RING probably wasn’t going to suddenly make a comeback was when we inevitably reached the scene where the members of the ring are systematically arrested. Theoretically, in a crime story such as this, when you reach the moment justice catches up to our criminal protagonists, you want to feel one of two emotions:

1. Catharsis - these unlikable burglars are finally getting what’s coming to them and you can’t wait to see them squirm under the pressure;

2. Sympathy - you somehow feel for these admittedly shallow, privileged teens who were too bored and stupid to realize they were about to ruin their lives

What you don’t want to feel is what I felt, which is nothing. I felt roughly equivalent to the way I would had I merely skimmed to the Arrest and Aftermath section of the Bling Ring’s Wikipedia entry. And I realized the whole movie up to that point had felt like that, like I might have been better off just reading the Vanity Fair article and calling it a day.

This was…really shocking to me. And disappointing in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Because Sofia Coppola has spent seemingly her entire career dodging accusations of making boring movies with nothing to say about the lives of the rich people she depicts. I’ve always found this to be a really reactionary and frankly surface-level take, one borne of a willful refusal to sit down and engage with her material. Even her worst movie up to this point in her career (MARIE ANTOINETTE) absolutely has something to say about its titular subject. Whether or not you agree with her take on the famous French queen, she found an angle that she was intrigued about, and executed on it. It’s not my favorite, but it isn’t boring, and it isn’t about nothing.

So it went previously with LOST IN TRANSLATION and afterwards with SOMEWHERE, two movies about actors implied to be of means that aren’t all that likable on the page, but manage to break your hearts by the end. Hell, even THE VIRGIN SUICIDES found a way to depict frightened religious parents with a large degree of empathy and understanding, where a lesser movie would have made them the clear and obvious villains. Making the inherently vacuous kind of compelling (Midwestern suburbs, rich performers, the French aristocracy) has long been Coppola’s superpower. Tackling mid-00’s little Hollywood Hills shits should not have been that big of an issue.

But with THE BLING RING? What else can I say? She finally made the kind of Sofia Coppola movie everyone thought she had been making all along.

———

THE BLING RING has good moments and items of merits here and there. I really liked Leslie Mann as Nicki’s “The Secret” spouting stage mom, who’s written with just the right amount of blank-faced vacuousness to set the stage for a larger theme to the film (did these kids ever really have a chance?) that never comes. Emma Watson is an obvious highlight in the cast, although I was expecting something more transcendent from the way everyone was carrying on about her (I can only surmise that in 2013, people still associated her with Hermione Granger, and were amazed that she could play a completely different type of role, i.e. what an actor does).

The closest the movie gets to evoking an emotion is a scene where Sam finds a gun in Megan Fox’s house and starts waving it around wantonly in Marc’s face. Despite his protestations, she never seems to practice any common sense with the stolen weapon, and a weird tension emerges. There’s no music playing underneath any of this, and given what we know about this found friend group, it sure doesn’t seem like Sam’s coming to her senses anytime soon. Although nothing ultimately ends up happening, I genuinely feared for him here.

Finally, there’s a grim theme that the movie is practically begging for its creator to explore, that of the toxic parasocial relationship people have with fame. The central conceit of rich suburbia feeling entitled to just walk into a celebrity’s mansion and start taking off with stuff is so palpable and so relatable (this entitlement, more than COVID-19, is what derailed the possibility of any future secret album sessions for Taylor Swift fans, I reckon), you kind of can’t believe it doesn’t get addressed much here. It almost feels like a point the movie makes accidentally.

That’s….kind of it as far as positives go! It’s not offensively bad or anything, and I’ve definitely seen much worse. But there’s no insight, not even any active parody. Coppola acknowledges the artificial celebrity trappings that surrounded us in the late-00’s; there are frequent cuts to red carpet photos of Lindsay Lohan and Lauren Conrad and the like. But….so what? Yes, it existed. Now what? So it goes with the final reveal that Nicki is attempting to trade in her notoriety for clout, plugging her website in a tell-all interview. But this is hardly an original thought or insight; much better movies have been riffing on that them for decades. For the most part, THE BLING RING just sits there, content to be a flat and superficial film.

And I can already hear it now: “might this be the point? To reflect the flat and superficial nature of these teens?” And…possibly! This might have absolutely have been exactly the texture Coppola was after. But if that’s the case….well, the movie doesn’t really commit to this, either. Because satirical superficiality can still sing and pop off the screen; Amy Heckerling did it masterfully almost thirty years ago. But here….our core group of teenagers definitely don’t have a lot going on between their ears (outside of maybe Marc), but that’s as far as the satire goes, at least as far as I can tell.

If Coppola’s plan was to make a movie with nothing behind it, as a method of establishing character, it was a bad plan.

———

It dawned on me what the core difference was about THE BLING RING compared to the Sofia Coppola movies that came before. Whether she’s aware of it or not, I don’t get the sense she likes any of her central characters (again, outside of Marc). Yes, you can make the argument that they’re not meant to be likable, and that’s fair. Some of the greatest motion art features unlikable people at their core (hell, AMC gained a second life off the backs of two of them, Walter White and Don Draper). But in both of those cases, Vince Gilligan and Matthew Weiner found their creations fascinating, even when they were being awful. They, and their crack team of writers, liked exploring these guys.

The problem here is that I don’t get the sense that Coppola really cracked what could have been interesting about The Bling Ring themselves. I genuinely think she thought she could, or she certainly wouldn’t have spent two years of her life making it. But at the end of it all, it wasn’t there.

Ultimately, it turned out Coppola just kinda had nothing to say in regards to late 2000’s pop culture, which is a shame, because it was actually a pretty dark time. And maybe diving into the production of a movie set at that time in 2011 was too soon. But you figure if anyone was custom built to come up with something insightful about a very strange era in American culture, you’d figure Sofia Coppola would be the one.

And yet, she found nothing. It provided nothing for her, and she reflected it back in kind. And in a way, doesn’t that make it the ultimate 2000’s movie?

Getting Lost in the Middle of SOMEWHERE

People often ask me, “why do you primarily focus on chronological filmography reviews on your blog?”

(All right, nobody’s ever asked me that. About the only question anybody ever asks me in regards to the blog is, “why do you keep trying to get me to read one of those SANTA CLAUSE articles?”. But just for the sake of storytelling technique, let’s just pretend I get this question a lot. Theater of the mind and all that.)

Okay, so people often ask me, “why do you primarily focus on chronological filmography reviews on your blog?” And the simple answer is that I enjoy the simple thrill I get of charting growth from even the medium’s most established filmmakers. It can even provide context to movies that are already pretty well-regarded; something like Fellini’s JULIET OF THE SPIRITS is a monumental work on its own, but when taken within the full context of LA STRADA, NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, as well as his relationship with the star of all three, Giulietta Masina, it becomes a masterpiece of almost jaw-dropping audacity.

It’s just fun to see creators grow. When you go through a director’s filmography from start to finish, you start discovering things both big and small. What they did to get their first hit. What they do when their budget gets increased (or taken away)*. But, more than anything, you start notice the things they learn from their bigger successes or failures and start carrying with them going into some of their smaller films.

(*I think a lot of this is why the BLANK CHECK podcast, a show with more or less this exact premise, has been such a runaway success the past half-decade or so.)

So it goes with SOMEWHERE, a Sofia Coppola film that you don’t hear a ton about for whatever reason. It came out in 2010, which I wouldn’t really call a banner year for American film. Not that it’s the ultimate arbiter of quality, but the Best Picture nominees that year included THE KING’S SPEECH, THE FIGHTER, BLACK SWAN, and 127 HOURS, four well-received movies that I bet you hadn’t thought about once in the past ten years.

Yet it felt like SOMEWHERE just kind of came and went. I’m not even sure I remember hearing about it at all, and I was still firmly in my "keep tabs on this kind of stuff” era (my beloved Entertainment Weekly at my side most of the time. It certainly seems to be a faded memory in Coppola’s fairly scant filmography. THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, LOST IN TRANSLATION and MARIE ANTOINETTE all still loom large after all these years. But SOMEWHERE kind of went nowhere.

And it’s a shame because it’s terrific, and certainly belongs in the same echelon as her first three. More to the point, SOMEWHERE is the exact type of movie that ends up shining like a jewel when watched in the context of what a given filmmaker had done before.

In isolation, it’s a small character-driven odyssey in the desert of Hollywood. On the backs of the movies mentioned above, however? Sofia Coppola’s growth as a filmmaker from the end of the 90’s to the beginning of the Roarin’ 10’s is fully on display here, and it’s a wonder to behold.

Let’s dig into why.

SOMEWHERE (2010)

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Starring: Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Chris Pontius

Written by: Sofia Coppola

Released: December 22, 2010

Length: 98 minutes

Johnny Marco (Dorff) is a rising Hollywood actor crashing indefinitely at the Chateau Marmont, healing from an unexplained wrist injury. Passing the time between publicity obligations, he invites strippers over to his room, has casual sex with younger women, and kinda just hangs out with his childhood friend Sammy (Pontius). His marriage is long over, and he’s not exactly making a ton of new friends in his chosen industry; his most recent costar (played by a micro-cameoing Michelle Monaghan) fucking hates him after a failed night together.

Johnny is just nowhere.

In between all of these passionless activities, he does his perfunctory divorced-dad duties for his eleven-year old daughter Cleo (Fanning), He takes her to her ice-skating lesson, he drives her to things when her mom isn’t able to, he’s technically there. But it’s just one more checked box for him and nothing more. It’s not out of malice (he doesn’t seem to resent Cleo in any way), it’s just…it’s one more thing that fails to bring Johnny any meaningful happiness.

The “meat” of the movie is when Cleo gets dropped off at his door when her mom decides she needs a break. This coincides with a European leg of his promo tour for his new movie. Johnny has to make the most of this unexpected family time before Cleo goes off to summer camp. So….can he?

Admittedly, this all sounds a little dull written out. A movie about a burned-out actor who now has to connect with his precocious daughter, and maybe along the way he learns something. It all sounds like well-worn material at best, twee and annoying at worst.

Of course, the game gets played on the court, not on paper. Because the above forms the basis of one of Coppola’s more thrilling and underrated works, in no small part because it feels like she’s returning to what made her early movies work so well. Although I will never begrudge a director going in a completely different direction between films*, SOMEWHERE does feel like the natural successor to LOST IN TRANSLATION.

(* In some ways, her “return to form” for her fourth feature made me respect and appreciate just a half-inch more the expansion of her style palette in MARIE ANTOINETTE.)

The parallels between the two films are numerous; they are both about burned-out actors at a crossroads (although I would classify Bob Harris as more aloof and lost, while Johnny is truly a Fucking Loser when we first meet him), both feature leads living long term in a hotel, both leads find themselves desperately trying to connect with a younger girl (in SOMEWHERE’s case, it’s Johnny’s own daughter), and both films drip with ennui. Oh, and in their own ways, they’re about the mundanity and borderline humiliating nature of professional acting.

What struck me about SOMEWHERE is that it truly felt like Coppola showing us how sharp the knives in her tool belt really are. She’s come a long way in just four films, especially considering her debut (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES) was plenty strong already. She’s never been a director afraid to show off a little style, to say the least; both VIRGIN SUICIDES and MARIE ANTOINETTE told its stories with some visual heft. Here, though, she goes for a more austere style. It was the correct and perfect choice.

As a result, SOMEWHERE has a palpable confidence to it. Here, Coppola has visual storytelling down to a science, to the point where anyone claiming this movie is “boring” (and, oh goodness, are they out there) is almost actively trying not to pay attention. Coppola tells you the entire story of Johnny, the way he’s passively cruel to the people around him, the ways in which his supposed success in an impossible industry has only exacerbated his depressive state, the way he can’t ever seem to take the obvious steps to get out of his own way.

The best part is that Coppola communicates all of this in really simple ways.

Take something like the two scenes that bookend SOMEWHERE, which both boil down to Johnny just kind of driving around. The opening scene: Johnny driving in long, slow, drawn-out circles in the middle of nowhere. The ending scene, after he really and truly does forge a connection and genuine bond with Cleo: Johnny driving in a straight line on a road to…well, we don’t really know. It’s to somewhere (cue that Leonardo DiCaprio pointing the screen meme). All we know is that it’s away from the hotel he’s been wasting away at. It’s in a direction, and maybe that’s enough.

It’s not a reinvention of the wheel by any means. It’s super simple, almost to an absurd degree. It’s Film 101. And yet, it’s also crystal-clear storytelling to a degree you almost never see in the twenty-first century. Without a syllable of dialogue (hell, in the opening scene, you don’t even get a good look at Stephen Dorff), you get exactly what’s up when we start, as well as the significance of where we end.

The whole movie plays off with this kind of simple confidence. Early on, we’re treated to an extended shot of a somewhat awkward and monotonous pole dance (to the tune of Foo Fighters’ “My Hero”) going on in Johnny’s hotel room. It’s, um, technically sound and it’s certainly synchronized, but Coppola’s refusal to really cut away from it, like she’s Chantal Akerman all of a sudden, serves to remove the luridness from it all. Instead, it feels vaguely sad. We don’t get anything resembling titillation, and neither does Johnny.

Then there’s the scene of Johnny getting his head sculpted for a special effect on his next film. He’s called in by the special effects team of his latest movie to sit in a chair for several hours as they cover his entire head in plaster in order to make a mold of his face for some sort of practical effect. His eyes, his ears, his mouth and, eventually, his nose (sans two little holes for his nostrils).

And then, as they wait for the mold to dry, the makeup team just kinda….leaves. The camera zooms in slowly as we wait for something to happen. The only soundtrack is the sound of Johnny breathing as deeply as he can, given the circumstances. A lone phone ringing breaks the silence, confirming that everyone has moved on for the moment.

Again, super simple in that perfect “why didn’t I think of that?” way. There are few better ways to establish building tension than with a slooowww, silent close-up; it’s done so effectively that out of context, it genuinely seems like something from a horror movie. But it helps to both further Johnny’s story along (this is what his life has been reduced to, sitting alone, unable to connect, at risk of being molded over and forgotten) as well as serve as metaphor for the suffocating effects of Hollywood*.

(*It’s also a reminder that many of your favorite actors have had to go through this ridiculous process, and for a lot longer than Johnny does here. Jim Carrey had to sit in the makeup chair for 8 hours to do the fucking Grinch movie, in case you’re wondering why he’s been off the rails seemingly ever since.)

Just through the nature of the film’s content, we’ve talked about actors in this article already. So let’s pivot to talking about the three people we spend the most time with in SOMEWHERE.

Stephen Dorff is an actor I don’t really think about all that often, which is admittedly kind of an asshole way to open up a paragraph meant to praise him. What I mean by it, however, is that was able to take me by complete surprise here. His big claim to fame is probably as the villain in 1998’s BLADE, or maybe more recently from the third season of TRUE DETECTIVE. But he seems to have mostly made his trade by appearing in genre fare. Coppola picked him for this role basically both due to his supposed bad-boy exterior and the sweet, almost shy interior, both of which would be great tools for this particular movie.

Mission totally accomplished there. You buy him so completely as this guy who’s completely burned out and in need of a change that’s he incapable of providing to himself. Dorff just becomes Johnny, one of the finest compliments you can give to a performance. For whatever reason, I keep reflecting back on the moment where he’s kind of stumbling through an awkward press conference, where he seems incapable of providing a satisfying answer to even the most softball question. It’s one of those “can’t see the acting” moments.

Elle Fanning, famously the younger sister to Dakota, holds her own as Cleo and portrays a strength and maturity beyond her years in her scenes with Dorff. Coppola allegedly screened PAPER MOON for Dorff, presumably as a reference point for him as to Johnny and Cleo’s dynamic. However, it feels for all the world like Fanning absorbed that Bogdanovich classic too, because she portrays her end of that dynamic better than could be expected for a performer of her age, More likely, this is another testament to Coppola’s maturing directing skills, a sign of her ability to pull exactly what she needed from her actors.

Out of fucking nowhere, Chris Pontius of JACKASS fame does a great job with a supporting role as Johnny’s friend Sammy. The ease in which Sammy relates to Cleo, is able to play and connect with her…Sammy is the guy Johnny could be if…well, if he weren’t Johnny. Pontius’ normal dude energy is actually what was needed here, and he provides a heartbreaking counterpoint to our lead.

———

It’s beyond weird, and vaguely condescending, to say you’re proud of an artist whom you have no personal connection to. But, damnit, I’m hard pressed to come up with another word for it. Especially for filmmakers with somewhat limited filmographies (she averages about a movie every four years; her upcoming PRISCILLA is only her seventh since THE VIRGIN SUICIDES came out in 1999), it’s so easy to lose the thread. And, to be honest, there’s still three left to go in this series, and they’re not well-loved classics. There’s still time to misplace that thread, Sofia!

But, at this point in her filmography, it feels like she’s only gaining strength. It’s really exciting to find a new favorite from someone who already provided me one of my favorite movies. If you haven’t checked out SOMEWHERE, consider doing so. It might be one of your new favorites as well.

Sofia Coppola and The (Possible) Reclamation of MARIE ANTOINETTE

MARIE ANTOINETTE has had a really fascinating lifecycle of discourse.

The movie, I mean. Not the person.

Well, maybe the person, too.

Anyway.

I remember pretty acutely that Sofia Coppola’s third feature and follow-up to LOST IN TRANSLATION, the film that won her a screenwriting Oscar, was fairly polarizing at the time of its release. The written record seems to back this memory up; it currently has a 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (not that the famous aggregator site has ever been a real reflection on a movie’s true qualities), and a review of some Wikipedia snippets confirm some critics at the time really loved it, while others….really didn’t.

General audiences didn’t seem particularly high on it either. Its CinemaScore landed right in the middle, at a C*. It made its $40 million budget back, but just barely: it made $60 million worldwide, which admittedly isn’t exactly nothing. Still, LOST IN TRANSLATION made $118 million worldwide off a $4 million budget, so MARIE ANTOINETTE’s relative failure must have given producers pause.

*Although, again, a CinemaScore is really only a measure of how much fun a given average audience just had, period. Consider that EYES WIDE SHUT received a D- CinemaScore, BOOGIE NIGHTS a C, while Michael Bay’s PEARL HARBOR received an A. Simply put, who gives a shit about CinemaScore?

Is any of this fair? Maybe, maybe not. All I can tell you is that, for as obsessed with LOST IN TRANSLATION I was as a lad (and, boy howdy was I), I was a little disappointed by her choice in direction for her next film. Marie Antoinette was not a historical figure I was all that interested in (I was admittedly an uncurious teenager in many ways), and the prominent usage of modern music in the trailers made me hesitate. It all felt…surface level somehow. Immature. To that end, I didn’t even see it, something that would have seemed unfathomable to me in 2004 or so.

It didn’t help that I had friends at the time who also rolled their eyes every time the movie came up in conversation. People definitely had feelings about it, although the sands of time prevent me from recalling exactly what they were, or why they were felt. But the facts were, nobody I knew really wanted to see it, I certainly wasn’t going to see it by myself, and I barely wanted to buy a ticket in the first place. So that was that.

And yet! Here in 2023, I have now seen MARIE ANTOINETTE. Furthermore, a quick scan through Letterboxd (which, because I actively use it, is in fact a completely objective way of deciding a movie’s value and worth) shows that there are many, many, many people out there who quite adore this Kirsten Dunst historical vehicle! My rushed math suggests the aggregate rating for MARIE ANTOINETTE amongst my friends is an easy four stars out of five. A reclamation appears to be at hand.

So, now having finally seen it for the first time, over sixteen years from its release, what did I think? Well, I liked it way, way, way more than I would have ever expected. Yet, it’s the first Sofia Coppola movie out of her first four (a de-facto spoiler for next week’s article, I guess) that I didn’t exactly love. This means I now have to use this space to figure out precisely why.

So…let’s find out!

MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Rose Byrne, Judy Davis, Rip Torn

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Sofia Coppola

Released: October 20, 2006

Length: 123 minutes

MARIE ANTOINETTE tells the story of…well, Marie Antoinette (Dunst), an Austrian teenager who, in 1770, becomes betrothed to the Dauphin of France (Schwartzman) in an attempt to form an alliance between the two countries. As most of you are aware, Antoinette will become the future Queen of France. As history will turn out, she will also become the final one, as the French Revolution continues to foment in the background of her rule before finally consuming the country and the monarchy by the 1780’s.

Coppola’s film, based off Antonia Fraser’s biography MARIE ANTOINETTE: THE JOURNEY, frames Antoinette as somewhat of a tragic figure, a young girl who gets married into a life of luxury and power essentially against her will, then gets swept up in the excesses afforded a woman of her stature before getting executed by the masses at the ripe old age of 37.

Whether this is a fair depiction of Antoinette is up for debate, to say the least (and probably depends on the individual). For what it’s worth, it’s probably not a discussion I’d be able to have with much clarity, given that I’m not as studied on her as a figure as many others. What I could purport to know about her are items that basically come down to legend, with the “let them eat cake” quote looming largest.

It’s easily the most well-known thing about Marie Antoinette’s short but infamous life, the ultimate “too wealthy elitist leader who is completely out of touch with the common man”, a response to the information that the peasants had run out of bread.

Naturally, she almost certainly didn’t actually say it.

The primary evidence against the claim is the fact that the quote was coined in 1765 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his autobiography CONFESSIONS, when Antoinette was only nine years old and hadn’t yet left her native Austria. Even in that context, it’s hard to tell whether Rousseau’s tale that spurned the phrase was itself truthful (he attributed the “let them eat cake” to simply an unnamed “great princess”). It’s equally unclear how exactly the quote got attached to Antoinette in the first place. But, in the decades after her reign, it certainly felt like something she could have said. So if pro-revolutionaries recognized the symbolic power of the phrase implied as such, what’s the harm?

Thus an entire legacy is altered permanently in culture.

So, I ask: if the “let them eat cake” quote turned out to not be anything I can attribute to her, what else do we think we “know” about Marie Antoinette?

This is the same question that MARIE ANTOINETTE has on its mind as well, and it’s probably the best prism with which to view Coppola’s film here, although it’s also what I think ultimately ruffled some feathers. The movie’s distinctive feature is its committal to depicting Marie Antoinette not necessarily as an out-of-touch member of the ruling class, but as an outsider trying her best. This runs somewhat counter to our popular understanding of her and, thus, has the vague cadence of someone stirring the pot*.

(* It should be noted that the 2001 biography Coppola’s script is technically based off of, Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey is also known for being a quite balanced and sympathetic account of her life, although it should also be noted that I have not read it.)

MARIE ANTOINETTE would seem to be an even more controversial watch in 2023, when “eat the rich” sentiment is, not unreasonably, at an all-time high. What is one to think now of a giant shopping scene set to “I Want Candy”? Couple all of that with the friendly reminder that this is a film birthed from a director who happens to be the child of one of the most well-regarded filmmakers of all time, a woman who for all intents and purposes was born on third base. Simply put, one may ask: why would I care about a rich, privileged woman’s sympathies for another rich, privileged woman?

So I get the instant hostility.

AND YET. I think it’s this marriage of creator and subject matter that gives MARIE ANTOINETTE its…something. Because what the movie seems to be about, more than class, more than French history, is about celebrity and what it means to be swept up in it, accept it, embrace it, then ultimately get destroyed by it.

A major aspect of the film are how concerned people are about Marie needing to be doing things “correctly”. She needs to act a certain way in public. Her marriage needs to be of a certain passion. She’s taking too long to provide the Dauphin a heir (her mother writes her letters on how to help things along in that regard). She’s inappropriately giving the cold shoulder to the current king’s mistress (Asia Argento). She needs to be comfortable in power, but shouldn’t enjoy it (In the film’s less subtle moments, Marie hears all the gossip directed at her as she walks through the halls of the Palace of Versailles). On and on it goes.

Her marriage is amiable, not unfulfilling. Her only role is to be by her side and be “perfect”. The only thing that allows her any sort of joy is partying and buying beautiful clothes. So, naturally, she gets advised by her own damn brother, The Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (Danny Huston), not to do that stuff anymore. Her lavish lifestyle coincides with a major financial crisis in France, which puts her in the crosshairs of the public. She eventually sires a son, the thing everyone wanted her to do, and settles down into a family role, but it’s too late. Louis XVI’s perceived indecisions and foppish leadership has doomed him, her and the monarchy as a whole.

Her public decides they’re done with her, and they kill her. They have their reasons, but then, everybody does.

If you separate Marie Antoinette from the context of European politics and put in a more modern context of a public figure, this all sounds familiar, right?

This is more or less how we expect our most notable personalities (usually performers and entertainers, although not always!) to conduct themselves. Women are either too fat or too skinny. Men are either total assholes or they’re little smol beans that must be protected. We demand unfettered access to their personal lives, only to turn around and mock them for being “sloppy”. And lest you ever feel bad for celebrities…well, that’s what the money’s for, right?

This is an intentional line Coppola is drawing, at least it seems to me. And I think that’s why MARIE ANTOINETTE is worth checking out at least once to see how it hits you.

And, I get it. How do you feel bad for the powerful, either onscreen or off? But I think Coppola is maybe one of the few who can find a path towards possibly getting someone to. Considering her entire formative years and beyond must have been populated with figures exactly like this, the influential, famous and beautiful who nevertheless have feelings, desires and anxieties…it doesn’t exactly surprise me that Coppola found this aspect of Antoinette completely compelling.

Kirsten Dunst is a good fit for Marie Antoinette in this regard, and it’s fun to see how much she’s grown, both as an individual and as a performer, since we last saw her in 1999’s THE VIRGIN SUICIDES. Between those two films, Dunst’s career had skyrocketed thanks to her costarring role as Mary Jane Watson in the first two Sam Raimi SPIDER-MAN films. She had also gained cool cult-film cred with 2000’s BRING IT ON and 2004’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.

But I think it’s easy to forget how skilled a performer Dunst can really be. It helps that she’s able to pull off the glamour you imagine Antoinette to be associated with; she doesn’t exactly look like her, but she does feel like her, and maybe that’s all the difference. But, she plays the somewhat contradictory emotion of this somewhat lost and naive soul well. Every scene of her and Louis XVI trying to connect, trying to make something out of this arrangement they’ve been thrown into…it’s bittersweet and kind of heartbreaking. Crucially, when the movie reaches its inevitable conclusion, your heart sinks more than a little bit. I think this wouldn’t be the case if Dunst weren’t so compelling in the role, which makes her perhaps the most important piece of this film’s foundation.

We haven’t talked about him much, but by the way, Jason Schwartzman is phenomenal as Louis-Auguste, the Dauphin of France. In a bit of perhaps-unintentional meta-comedy, he’s a legacy hire, likely cast for his familial connection to Coppola (they’re cousins). But that would only be an issue if he weren’t as good in the role as he is. He fully realizes the Dauphin as a character, a boy given a man’s position that he is completely not ready for. As far as all that hand-wringing from the royal court that Marie cannot provide the country an heir? Yeah, turns out that’s more on the Dauphin than people want to admit.

Despite the lack of solid evidence that Louis XVI was in fact gay, it’s a rumor that has dogged him even to this day (possibly as a during-his-time explanation as to why they had such trouble consummating). The movie seems to at least flirt with this as a possibility, although it’s just as likely that Louis XVI was too young, too indecisive, too introverted, too unattracted to his assigned wife (he would have made an incredible Redditor).

Schwartzman plays this ambiguity perfectly. Whether or not he was a latent homosexual, or whether he was just a sweet weirdo under pressure, all that matters is that he’s a recipe for disaster, a heavily introverted leader who does as much to sour the people against the monarchy as Marie ever did. And, look, if you’re going for that kind of guy, there’s no reason to look further than Jason Schwartzman.

———

Interestingly, the aspect of the movie’s production that I thought for sure would drive me crazy was easily my favorite part about it, that being its modern soundtrack. I often find that using modern music or production aspects to gussy up an old story or period piece is a corny crutch that implies a distrust of a given audience’s interest in the very story it’s invested itself in.

Here, though, Coppola’s ear for the perfect “needle drop” comes through. Take the infamous use of The Strokes’ “What Ever Happened”; for whatever reason, more than any other song on the soundtrack, this gets singled out as something egregious. My first counterpoint is that the song rocks, so who cares. My second and more productive counterpoint, though, is that the song happens to sonically match the emotion of the moment in the film perfectly.

As a reminder, the song arrives as Marie is giddily arriving back from the beginnings of her affair with Axel von Fersten (a mid-twenties Jamie Dornan!). She’s running as quickly as her uptight, high-end outfit can allow. She finally crashes onto her canopy bed, and just kinda….stares into space. She’s a teenager in love, maybe for the first time. Tell me “What Ever Happened” doesn’t sound like how that feels.

(Also, I think “What Ever Happened”, a song whose exact meaning appears to be somewhat open to debate, sure seems like it has the trappings of celebrity on its mind. It doesn’t seem to mach this moment lyrically, but it does seem to align with the deeper themes of MARIE ANTOINETTE as a whole.)

The soundtrack to MARIE ANTOINETTE goes on like this. There’s an inherent emotional truth to the songs being used, and that’s why it works. It’s not cheesy novelty (this isn’t peasants screaming”WE WILL ROCK YOU” at a jousting match in A KNIGHT’S TALE) or an incongruous attempt to force the text to support an invalid interpretation (everyone calling their guns swords in ROMEO + JULIET). It’s a way to paint the feeling of a given scene with whatever sound is deemed necessary. Using modern and semi-modern rock as the sonic palette is a conscious choice, but it’s also one with a purpose.

If nothing else, it’s a choice that gets us that coronation scene where The Cure’s “Plainsong” begins blaring, as the future of France (and its two new in-over-their-heads rulers) has changed forever. A top Sofia Coppola musical moment if there ever was one.

———

Dang, Ryan, it sure sounds like you liked it! Well, and I did. But, as I indicated at the top, I didn’t quite love it.

The issue for me is…the movie doesn’t quite have a secondary gear beyond its unique interpretation. I think I enjoyed this idea of who Marie Antoinette might have been like, but I’m not sure it inspired any desire to dig further into the subject, if even just to fact-check the movie.

Now, I try to be really careful not to judge a piece of art for what it isn’t. Thus, I want to make sure I’m not railing on MARIE ANTOINETTE for not being a full-fledged biography or historical document. It’s not trying to be. Its aim is to be a moody and dreamy character piece. In fact, her stated desire for the film was, allegedly, thus:

It is not a lesson of history. It is an interpretation documented, but carried by my desire for covering the subject differently.

In that sense, it’s 100% mission accomplished. And it created a good movie (refer back to everything we just talked about)!

However, I can’t help but think about a movie that Coppola had mentioned as an influence for MARIE ANTOINETTE: Ken Russell’s 1975 ode to Franz Liszt LISZTOMANIA.

There are superficial similarities between the two films. Their principal subjects are famous “celebrities” of their time (and I had little to no historical knowledge of either). They are both anarchic historical biopics in their own way, with equal concern for emotional accuracy as opposed to historical accuracy and, of course, they’re both infused with a modern sensibility. And both films have evoked extremely strong reactions, both positive and negative.

But, of course, they are deeply different films at the end of the day. Russell goes full fucking Ken Russell on LISZTOMANIA (if you haven’t seen it, you must), while MARIE ANTOINETTE is a much gentler type of movie. And there isn’t anything wrong with that. But, maybe just out of its sheer audacity, LISZTOMANIA immediately triggered a strong response from me the second it was over: “I guess I need to bone up on Franz fucking Liszt”.

Alternatively, I guess MARIE ANTOINETTE the movie, as interesting and maybe as underrated as it was, didn’t really get me that excited to learn any more about Marie Antoinette the woman. Further, I don’t know that I was left with much more to chew on when it was over than the notion of “maybe popular history has misunderstood her”. Paradoxically, some solid prior knowledge of this time in world history would almost certainly be a boon to the experience, since the movie’s primary directive is to riff off that knowledge.

Basically, if I had done some studying beforehand, I might genuinely have loved MARIE ANTOINETTE. Further, there’s a very real chance that with some studying, this could become a movie I love on a re-watch. I just don’t know that I’m going to do that solely because I liked it.

Sorry, Sofia. On this one, it’s not you, it’s me.

On the other hand, I think of something Marie says to her first-born child, a daughter instead of the anticipated son, in a moment of quietness about midway through the film. Marie says to Marie Therese, simply:

“You are not what was desired, but that makes you no less dear to me.”

Yeah.

LOST IN TRANSLATION and The Power of Connection

One of the hardest questions for me to answer is “what’s your favorite movie?”

Responding to any variation of the “what’s your favorite ___?” inquiry is a daunting task, mostly because…well, nobody ever seems prepared to receive the almost infinite number of possible responses. There are always hidden right and wrong answers, but even the right answer can often be deemed wrong. For instance, say you asked someone “who’s your favorite musical artist?”, and they answered with “The Beatles”. It would be a technically appropriate answer (maybe even The Answer), but it would feel somewhat unsatisfying, right? Deep down, it feels a little too easy or something, doesn’t it? On the other hand, say they responded with a sincere “Imagine Dragons!”. You wouldn’t be able to hide your instantaneous eye roll, begging the question as to why you even asked in the first place if you were going to throw attitude at an “incorrect” answer.

It’s a piece of common communication that often breaks down before it even begins.

Because what we’re really looking for is something interesting, an answer that provides a little insight into the inner workings of the person being asked. You’re kinda hoping the question “who’s your favorite musical artist?” gets responded to with something like “King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard”. So the natural anxiety, at least for me, is the feeling that I have to come up with something cool when asked about my very favorite things.

Thus, when people ask “what’s your favorite movie?”, I’ll mention a range of candidates and maybe spit out one or two titles that mean something dear to me, both in terms of its content as well as its significance in a certain time of my life.

But when it comes to “Favorite Movie”, I stay away from defining it altogether. I have too much trouble communicating it.

Anyway, LOST IN TRANSLATION is my favorite movie.

Or at least it has been. Maybe it still is! All I can tell you is that it’s one of the very few movies that still conjures up the exact feelings I had the first time I ever saw it.

It was November of 2003, I was fifteen years old and my mom and I were knocking out movies that were starting to get awards buzz. It’s a process that caused me to see quite a few films that I enjoyed (ADAPTATION, SIDEWAYS) and many that ended up going in one ear and out the other (RIP to SEABISCUIT and MILLION DOLLAR BABY). LOST IN TRANSLATION was quickly becoming an indie darling that particular year, so we headed down to the Tower Theatre, one of the only two theaters in town that really played stuff like this. I didn’t walk into the theater with any preconceived notions. I mean, I liked Bill Murray from all the stuff a fifteen-year old boy would have seen him in (GHOSTBUSTERS, GROUNDHOG DAY), but I didn’t know Scarlett Johannson and I certainly didn’t know Sofia Coppola.

Oooh, boy, did that change.

I had never really seen a movie that…not spoke to me, exactly, but allowed me so totally to enter its dreamlike haze. Part of it was the soundtrack, part of it were the characters’ knacks for expressing entire lifetimes of thought without actually saying anything, part of it was just its specific color palette. I had never seen a movie that had so completely absorbed me. I’m not certain I’ve ever seen another.

And, man, for years afterwards, I just would not shut up about this movie, so attached I had become to its dreamy melancholy. If someone else mentioned it at school, I desperately wanted to slide into the conversation (and often did, much to their chagrin). I lamented THE RETURN OF THE KING’s historic Oscar sweep that year, if only because it came at the cost of mostly freezing out LOST IN TRANSLATION (at least in my mind; Coppola did walk away with a Best Original Screenplay trophy). The second it got released on home media, I chronicled my pursuits of finding a DVD that was specifically in widescreen on my LiveJournal. There are people I went to high school with who will text me to this day whenever the movie comes up in the course of their natural lives. To them, I say, thanks for bearing with me.

It may surprise you, then, to hear that I really didn’t revisit LOST IN TRANSLATION once I graduated high school. The thing of it is, once you reach your college years and beyond, you begin the process of slowly reappraising and revisiting things you used to enjoy. You dig up old episodes of your favorite cartoons. You pop on all the albums that shaped you. You fire up the movies that formed your tastes. And you often start noticing…hmmm, a lot of stuff I used to like was actually pretty bad! Turns out there’s no accounting for taste when you’re a toddler, and who the fuck knows what goes through your mind when you’re a teenager.

Because of this, I hesitated for well over a decade to revisit LOST IN TRANSLATION, because I just didn’t want to face the possibility that the reason it stirred me so was simply because I was a dumbass.

So there it sat. Until this week.

No, just kidding. I revisited it a couple of years ago first. Fuck, it would have been a way better story if I hadn’t, though, huh?

In February 2020 (yes, there really was a brief period of that year that vaguely resembled real life), the very same Tower Theatre that I had originally seen LOST IN TRANSLATION was doing a promotional event. Dubbed The Director’s Cup, it was a sort of March Madness bracket where eight different directors’ filmographies would be competing head-to-head against each other. Two movies would square off and be ran as a double feature over a weekend. You at home would get to vote for which director gets to move forward. So on and so on. They…uh….never got a chance to finish it.

Anyway, as a result, LOST IN TRANSLATION was playing in town to represent Sofia Coppola’s ouevre. Nervous as I was, I finally got to take my wife to see it how I saw it. This was it, the movie I had often talked about but never worked up the courage to actually pop in. In front of my spouse, no less, I was about to find out if my taste held up or not. And….

It held up. Of course it did. If anything, LOST IN TRANSLATION took on even more meaning now that I was an adult (we’ll get into it).

Now, it also revealed itself to be a movie with its own unique flaws, and we’ll talk about them as we get there. But it turns out there’s something universal about the feeling of disconnect, of being profoundly alone, and forging unexpected bonds in the middle of nowhere.

LOST IN TRANSLATION (2003)

Starring: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johannson, Fumihiro Hayashi, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Sofia Coppola

Released: September 12, 2003

Length: 102 minutes

Bob Harris (Murray) is an American actor, one who has likely left his prime, who has arrived in Japan to shoot a series of Suntory Whiskey ads. He’s immediately and hopelessly out of his element; his translator has a habit of broadly summarizing the meticulous instructions being thrown at him, the hotel shower is much too small to accommodate him, and he can’t really adjust to the jet lag. His extensive travel is also clearly putting a strain on his marriage; his wife still needs him to pick out carpet samples, and she faxes him messages that come in the middle of the night.

Bob is a man who, in this particular moment, belongs nowhere.

Charlotte (Johansson) also happens to be staying in Tokyo, in the very same hotel in fact, as her rock photographer husband John (Ribisi) tours along with the band he’s currently working with. He’s sweet and well-intentioned, but neglectful in the way that only young career-oriented men can be. He’s always got somewhere to be so, most days, Charlotte’s left to wander the city alone. She’s far too young to be this disillusioned about her marriage and future, but here she is.

As any star-crossed people must, their paths soon intersect. Bob and Charlotte run into each other at the hotel bar, and they quickly spark up a friendship (or something deeper?) as it soon becomes clear that they are the only two people in the entire city, maybe the world, that they can actually communicate with.

What follows is what some people have uncharitably referred to as “nothing”. The body of the film is a series of events detailing the remainder of Bob and Charlotte’s stay in Tokyo. They spend a night on the town with some of Charlotte’s friends, as they hop from bar to karaoke bar. Bob reluctantly extends his trip for a few days in order to honor a booking on Japan’s version of “The Tonight Show”. Charlotte seeks something resembling spiritual awakening. They take a trip to the emergency room. Most of all, they both sit up at night and just…talk.

Again, not exactly what one would call the A to B to C method of screenwriting. But dismissing all of this as boring, as a not-insignificant amount of people seemed to do at the time, is an unfortunate way to dismiss what I would consider to be a very exciting and rousing film.

It’s through these vignettes that we learn so much about our two principals. More to the point, we learn just as much about them through their actions as we do through what they say. The stark differences in their demeanors when they’re together compared to when they’re apart. The way Bob’s malaise turns into joie de vivre. The way Charlotte suddenly seems able to articulate what she normally can’t even define to herself. That’s the movie in a nutshell.

Not to say that their words aren’t important. It struck me watching it this time around that Bob and Charlotte are both people who, despite them being at completely different points in their lives, find themselves in the same marital crossroad. They seem disillusioned, unsure of how they got here with their partner. It’s even interesting how their respective marriages kind of mirror each other; Bob is clearly the aloof partner in his marriage, similar to John in Charlotte’s.

All of this to say that this set-up leads to one of the more devastating exchanges in the whole film. During one of their middle-of-the-night talks, Charlotte bluntly asks Bob, “Does it get easier?” His reply: “No.”

He corrects himself, saying “yes, it gets easier”. But it’s too late.

This feeling of relief and honesty that Bob and Charlotte share with each other hits so nicely, not only because of the two astounding performances at the center of the narrative, but because Coppola so fully dramatizes their previous isolation within the first two minutes of screen time. Consider the first time we meet our central leads.

We can start with Bob, who is hazily sitting in the back of a taxi cab on the way from the hotel to the airport. He’s barely awake, and completely disoriented. The lights from the various billboards whiz by. Suddenly, as Death in Vegas’ “Girls” plays in the background, he sees it. One of his Suntory ads. The first thing he recognizes in this vast city he’s found himself in, and it’s a picture of himself, surrounding by Japanese type.

On the other hand, consider the first time we meet Charlotte. No, not the scene of her looking out the hotel window. It’s the famous first shot, a quietly framed shot of her rear end. It’s interesting to track people’s reaction to an opening like shot this, a desexualized picture of a private part. The first instinct I think anyone might have would be to giggle. However, the second is to get…a little uncomfortable, right? We’re used to shots of female body parts being depicted as sexual (consider that if the context were exactly the same, but with Bill Murray’s rear end, we’d likely know what to make of it more). But, in this instance? A female butt just…existing, as the opening credits roll?

So we just sit, slightly uncomfortable.

We’ve entered the characters’ headspace and it’s been thirty seconds.

———

The world of cinema has many examples of two unconnected people forging intense bonds due to random chance. BRIEF ENCOUNTER is probably the most famous, thanks to the heartbreaking performances of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, but also due to David Lean’s deceptively simple and efficient direction and the eloquent, Noel Coward inspired screenplay. It’s also not hard to make a connection between LOST IN TRANSLATION and Wong Kar-Wai’s international hit IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, a similarly lush and devastatingly understated film about two accidentally connected people whose feelings cannot be fulfilled, released just three years earlier. Lest anyone think that movie wasn’t firmly in Sofia Coppola’s mind when she was putting LOST IN TRANSLATION together, consider that it appeared on her most recent Sight and Sound ballot.

However, there’s a key difference between the connections between Laura/Alec and Mrs. Chan/Mr. Chow compared to Bob and Charlotte. Bob and Charlotte is the one relationship out of those three that doesn’t feel explicitly romantic, or at the very least fueled by sexual desire.

The exact nature of Bob and Charlotte’s relationship is absolutely open to interpretation (it’s part of the beauty of Coppola’s creation) but to me, I’ve always read it as non-sexual, yet wildly intimate. Over the brief time that they share space with each other, these otherwise unrelated and unconnected people are almost quite literally soulmates.

Yeah, sex does enter the equation, in a roundabout way. A running joke about a lounge singer who warbles in the background throughout many of the scenes at the bar resolves with Bob sleeping with her. It comes to a head when Charlotte catches him with company the next morning. And, sure, it all makes things awkward for Charlotte (Johansson’s choice of expressing bemusement rather than shock in this moment has always fascinated me). However, it never feels like a matter of jealousy, at least not to me. It’s more like a bubble bursting, a reminder that this….whatever it is…has an inherent end date.

It can’t just be the Bob and Charlotte show forever.

This “soulmate” character dynamic is key for a couple of reasons. The primary one is that it assures that the significant and blatantly obvious age gap between the two leads never feels lecherous; for all the subsequent criticism levied against the film, I’ve never heard anybody ever accuse it of being “gross”. The second reason is that this difference is what ultimately gives this movie its power. It’s what gives it its universality.

Despite everything, humans are inherently social creatures. Even introverts (of which I consider myself one) can only isolate for so long before a desire to communicate arises; it’s why the Internet can be both a wonderful and dangerous place. I think there’s something more beautiful, then, about Bob and Charlotte’s respective yearning is just for someone to finally get them, rather than a desire to get into bed. Just my two cents.

———

Coppola has stated she drew much of her inspiration regarding Bob and Charlotte’s dynamics off of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s chemistry in THE BIG SLEEP. I found this sort of surprising at first, as those are humongous shoes to fill, and I wouldn’t exactly say it’s a one-to-one translation. However, viewed through this prism, I see what Coppola is going for. There’s an comfortable rhythm to Bogart and Bacall’s dialogue and interactions, maybe the best real-life couple to ever do it (there’s a reason THE BIG SLEEP instantly jumps up a few notches whenever the two are on screen).

Murray and Johansson are absolutely no Bogart and Bacall (who in the history of cinema ever was?), but that easygoing nature is totally there, and I think it helps fuel the storytelling so well. Again, when you think about the major theme of “communication”, it’s a good instinct to have our two leads be so at ease with each other after a few days (and maybe a lifetime) of not really being understood, either by others or by themselves. Why not draw inspiration from the most communicative screen couple in film history?

For their part, both Murray and Johansson are fucking revelatory here, perhaps the crowning achievement in two equally successful filmographies (in completely different directions). Though it’s pigeonholed her at times, Johansson’s power has long been her old soul, her ability to project lifetimes of experience beyond her years. Although she isn’t often doing much at all throughout the film, her world-weariness is so apparent from the jump. To that end, consider Scarlett is actually playing OLDER in this (Charlotte is supposed to be 22, Scarlett was 17 at the time of filming). Not everything she’s made between then and now has been brilliant, but there’s a reason why, unlike many of her costars, she’s unlikely to have suffered much from spending a decade in the Marvel machine.

On the other hand, the most jarring thing about Bill Murray’s portrayal of Bob Harris is how un-chatty his depiction of the character is. It’s so against type; Murray had made his career playing smarmy wise-asses on SNL before perfecting the formula in things like GHOSTBUSTERS, WHAT ABOUT BOB? and GROUNDHOG DAY. He’s mostly known now, I suspect, for kinda being an Internet meme, one of those guys who’s famous for being eccentric, although I suspect that’s a mostly self-promoted persona (and one that has its damages; we’ll get there).

Point being, his performance here seems to be this real turning point for him. It came off his career-pivoting work in Wes Anderson’s early stuff like RUSHMORE and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. Those were supporting roles; here, he’s front and center. Intense melancholy hangs on him just as well as detached sarcasm ever did. The relative lack of a full screenplay (the final document was apparently only 75 pages) also allowed for Murray to do what he does best: improvise and give little wisecracks. The “Roger Moore” photoshoot scene is one of those little “can’t see the acting” moments that are so rare in film, and it’s because of Murray.

I still think he was robbed of the Best Actor Oscar that year (as far as who did win that year? My only comment about Sean Penn in MYSTIC RIVER is that oftentimes acting awards interpret Best Acting as most acting).

———

It’d be disingenuous to talk about LOST IN TRANSLATION without diving its most common criticism, that of its “otherism” and “Orientalism” of Japanese people. However you may feel about it, it’s hard to deny that a large chunk of the movie hinges on the differences between our two leads and the people that surround them. In fact, Coppola wrings a lot of comedy out of it; an early shot of Bob towering over everybody in an elevator gives you an idea of what we’re talking about.

To be clear, this is not “woke mind virus” trying to re-evaluate a decades-old piece of work; charges of uncomfortable racism has dogged the movie since the week it came out. I distinctly remember people on internet forums banging this drum very early on in the movie’s run (including one person who ran a website called Lost In Racism, a name so hilariously blunt that I’ve never forgotten it). And in an era of heightened scrutiny and hate towards Asian-American communities, LOST IN TRANSLATION can admittedly be an uncomfortable watch at times. A not-insignificant amount of Bob and Charlotte’s banter revolve around the way Japanese people speak English. There’s a joke at a restaurant where every picture of the different specials are exactly the same. There’s at least two more “L and R” jokes than you probably remember.

Here’s the thing, though. Outside of a few instances that I’ll get into in a minute, I don’t know that the joke is often specifically on the people of Tokyo. In that elevator shot mentioned above, the interpretation “the movie thinks it’s funny that Japanese people are short” feels like a disingenuous read, at least to me. If anything, the joke is that Bob is different. He’s already a man out of place, and now he barely has anywhere to hide. We laugh due to his discomfort. At least I do (I’m not interested in altering art for the sake of accommodating for those who are laughing because “lol, Japanese are short"!” Fuck you. Stop watching movies.)

One of the bigger themes of the movie is an inability to communicate. Hell, the title is an obvious giveaway. Viewing the film through that frame, sequences like the commercial shoot become clearer in intent. The commercial director rapidly firing off long and eloquent acting notes to Bob, only for his translator to boil them down to a vaguer “more intensity”…it’s a good bit! And the scene isn’t trying to illustrate how crazy these Japanese people are, it’s driving home Bob’s isolation, how there isn’t one single person in his world at this moment that is able to talk to him, or for him to talk back to. Without these scenes, Charlotte and Bob’s stories intertwining wouldn’t have half the impact. The intent isn’t to offend, it’s to dramatize.

Now, that all being said….

Back in 2020, sitting there watching it in an actual theater, the only scene that truly landed with a thud was the “lip my stocking” sequence with the female sex worker. For context: an early scene shows a madam coming up to Bob’s room and giving him instructions that he doesn’t understand, including a command to rip her stocking. You can probably do the racist math from there.

It’s not that it doesn’t fit the movie, per se; it’s another example of a communication breakdown between Bob and a person in his space. The issue is that the joke of the scene truly does seem to be on her, the Japanese woman whose behavior is so crazy and weird, despite her being on her own home turf. To that end, this was the scene where you could sort of feel the 2020 theater audience get a little tense (for comparison, the scene received hearty laughter when I saw it back in 2003. Make of any of this what you will).

Everything else, though? Bob and Charlotte poking fun at everyone’s poor English? It sort of made sense to me within the confines of the characters’ situations at hand. To be clear, the characters making the occasional “L’s and R’s” jokes isn’t, like, great behavior or anything (and you could strongly argue it was irresponsible of Coppola to include such dialogue in the first place), and if people in real life were called out on this sort of thing, they’d hopefully feel pretty embarrassed. And the movie doesn’t really provide comeuppance or consequence for any of it, although I’d also argue it’s not obligated to, either, depiction not equaling endorsement and all that.

On the other hand….two outsiders talking shit to each other about their unfamiliar surrounds feels realistic to me. We all do it, even if it’s an uncomfortable thing to admit. I find it highly believable that two white Americans basically stranded in Tokyo with nobody else to talk to would begin rolling their eyes and saying, “why does everyone here talk funny?”. It’s not nice, but it’s a defense mechanism. It’s what people do.

Oh, and I guess another thing to address is the Bill Murray of it all. I grew up with Murray as a presence for as long as I can remember. He’s a guy who made his career off of being funny in front of a camera, but built his legacy off of cultivating eccentric stories about himself, some of which can sometimes sound a little too good to be true. There’s also a large chance that he’s just a genuine asshole; Geena Davis and Lucy Liu have both recently opened up about how poorly they got along with him on their respective sets, and he managed to get Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut scuttled by getting a sexual harassment complaint made against him. In isolation, one can rationalize any one of those things as “Bill being Bill” and retroactive judgment being made against him. On the other hand, it’s possible he’s just always been a dick and has successfully gotten us to look at it as just “funny troll” behavior. You’ll have to be the judge, but I felt like it should be mentioned regardless.

———

Back to what makes this movie such a treat.

First of all, we’ve talked a lot about Murray and Johansson, but there are other actors who shine in this. Fumihiro Hayashi almost walks away with the whole midsection of the film as “Charlie Brown”, a friend of Charlotte’s who adds some gleeful anarchic danger to their nights on the town (in a instance of life possibly imitating art, Hayashi is a friend of Coppola’s in real life). Giovanni Ribisi is perfectly cast as Charlotte’s aloof and flighty husband.

And, my favorite of all: Anna Faris makes a couple of brief, but important, appearances as Kelly, an American actress also in Toyko on a press junket. Her depiction of that superficially nice, yet completely vacuous celebrity is so perfectly realized that it’s been long rumored to be a spiteful caricature of Cameron Diaz, which has never really been confirmed or denied (I don’t really see it, FWIW).

I also think LOST IN TRANSLATION perfectly captures the hazy romance of travel, including the weird sensation of posting up in a hotel for days at a time (in some ways, it’s even stranger when it’s a nice place). I especially have always loved how the movie takes the time to show all aspects of Tokyo, both the big urban hubs and its smaller, more serene spiritual side, all without ever feeling like a corporate travelogue.

Finally, as will become a recurring theme in this series, I simply cannot wrap this up without talking about the soundtrack. I wouldn’t say LOST IN TRANSLATION has a score, per se. Every piece of music within it is a pre-existing song, although there are a handful of Kevin Shields songs that were written specifically for the film. But every track is chosen so thoughtfully in building the atmosphere and vibe (people have described the sound as “dreampop”; couldn’t have said it better myself). It’s a big reason why the movie made such an impression on me in the first place; the scene of everybody singing 80’s hits in the karaoke room was responsible for putting me on a New Wave kick for a while in my 20’s.

And when the final song in the final scene starts, as the opening riff to Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey” begins to play as our two leads separate, likely never to meet again…twenty years on, and I still get chills. And if you don’t, I don’t want to know you.

No, I’m kidding. It’s not that serious. I really love that moment, though.

———

This is silly, but I think about Bob and Charlotte a lot. I wonder how their respective marriages turned out, if Charlotte realized just how much goddamn life is ahead of her, and that she doesn’t need to play mistress to her husband’s occupation. I wonder how, or if, Bob navigates his starkly obvious midlife crisis. If he patches things up with his wife. If the whiskey ads were lucrative enough to have been worth it. Hell, I wonder if, in the advent of social media, Bob or Charlotte started chatting again or even braved figuring out a time and place to meet again after all these years.

It’s a movie I desperately wish could be given a follow-up, a BEFORE SUNSET-esque check-in on these two fascinating people. Yet I know that the very reason LOST IN TRANSLATION has any power at all is that it is an unresolved note. It’s a film that famously preserves its most cathartic moment (Bob’s final words to Charlotte) from its audience; Bob’s final words to Charlotte are whispered and rendered inaudible to us, a bold moment of dignity. They don’t know what happens next. And neither do we.

It’s a movie that gives you exactly as much as you need while leaving you wanting more.

I don’t think there’s a greater compliment I could pay a movie than that.

Reflection and Repression: THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

This summer, I’m doing a deep dive into Sofia Coppola’s filmography, mostly because….I’ve always meant to! We start, as always, at the beginning….

———

“You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.”

It’s awful being a kid.

It’s an easy thing to forget once you become an adult, when your soul becomes leaden with life’s curses, and you begin to feel the undertow of the boundless sea of nostalgia pull you in. As bleak as it starts to feel once you pass the legal voting age, though, adulthood at least comes with its own certain freedoms. The freedom, for instance, to crack open a beer (or two). The freedom to drive out to the middle of nowhere if the mood strikes. The freedom to hang out with pretty much whoever you want. Sure, those things can all have consequences attached to them, but there’s typically nobody in your way of doing much of anything.

As a kid? Your freedoms depend mostly on the mercies of the guardians surrounding you. You’re too young for beer; you’d be lucky if you’re allowed to even drink a sugary soda every once in awhile. Your ability to travel hangs on the ability and desire of a parent to give you a ride, there and back. And god help you if one of your friends (or…gulp…boyfriend) fails to merit your mom or dad’s approval. And this is all assuming your parents are anything resembling normal. Your already impossibly small world can become almost unbearably tiny if you’re dealt an especially bad parental hand.

How you deal with the restriction of freedom inherent to your adolescence and teenage years can make or break you. One option is to just sort of accept the ennui and decide to start doing things to amuse yourself, like writing crappy stories in a composition notebook, which can lead you down the path of eventually writing articles about Scorsese’s THE IRISHMAN and Lembeck’s THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE within weeks of each other during a pandemic (just as an example).

Or…you can rebel. And there are lots of ways to reclaim your freedom. You can lie to your parent’s faces just because. You can thumb your nose at their religion or beliefs. You can secretly call or text that boy they disapprove of.

Or, in the most extreme of cases…you can opt out of it all entirely.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Kathleen Turner, James Woods

Directed by: Sofia Coppola

Written by: Sofia Coppola

Released: May 19, 1999 at the Cannes Film Festival, general release April 21, 2000

Length: 97 minutes

Based on the 1993 Jeffrey Eugenides novel, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES takes us back to 1975 Michigan to tell the story of the Lisbon family through the perspective of a group of neighborhood boys, reflecting back on their youth as grown men in the present. Seemingly living comfortably in a Grosse Pointe suburb, the Lisbons consist of the mother Sara (Turner), the father Ronald (Woods) and five daughters: Lux (Dunst), Mary (A.J. Cook), Cecilia (Hanna R. Hall), Therese (Leslie Hayman), and Bonnie (Chelse Swain). One summer day, Cecilia attempts suicide by slitting her wrists in a bathtub. From there, the movie tracks the Lisbons’ reactions and behavior to this unexpected turn, as well as the boys in the neighborhood that become oddly fascinated with these mysterious girls.

Initially, nobody really knows what to make of Cecilia’s attempt on her own life. Even the well-meaning child psychologist, Dr. Horniker (a role that gives us a wonderful and unexpected Danny De Vito cameo) chalks it up to a cry for help, and suggests increasing her socialization. In response, Mrs. Lisbon instead tightens the reins she has on her daughters, increasing their curfew. After a very forced, very sterile, and very supervised “party” with a couple of neighborhood boys, Cecilia excuses herself and leaps off the balcony onto the metal fencing below.

We follow as Lux begins a secret love affair with one of the hottest boys in school, Trip Fontaine (Hartnett). Their romance burns brightly before being inevitably extinguished in a cruelly arbitrary manner, and curfew becomes tighter and tighter for the Lisbon children. The daughters are pulled out of school and are essentially on house arrest. In response, Lux sneaks onto the roof at night to have random hookups with strange boys. From there, the movie chugs along towards the ending indicated by its title.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is about…well, it’s about a lot of things. It’s partly a story of feminine interiority. It’s also partly a story about the struggle for identity and autonomy in an inherently restrictive environment. Most interestingly, though, it’s also a story mostly told through the eyes of a group of boys. As mentioned, the film is narrated by one of the neighborhood kids (voiced by Giovanni Ribisi), now a grown man, reflecting back on this time of his life where he and his friends were obsessed with the Lisbon sisters, due mostly to the fact that they were so completely…unknowable. They’re not really allowed to go out much, they don’t really socialize….they’re essentially blank slates for others to project their dreams onto. Although we never see the boys as men in the present (although we do see a grown-up Trip, more on that in a minute), their perspective ultimately serves as audience surrogate, our window into the story’s central family.

This would seem, at first glance, to be counter-intuitive. A story about women told from the perspective of men? Phooey! However, I think this extra layer of narrative removal achieves the effect of keeping the girls further away from us. For instance, the only way the boys ever really get any insight into any of the sisters is through Cecilia’s journal after she passes. Even then, they’re only left to imagine what their documented experiences might have looked like, or how those experiences may have played out. Other than that, they really only have their assumptions and gut feelings. And so do we. When it comes to the Lisbon sisters, we know about as much about them as the boys do, which adds to the film’s mysterious and dreamlike haze.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is also a story that Coppola almost didn’t get to tell at all. Before pivoting to filmmaking, it felt like she was best known for most of the 1990’s as the scapegoat for why THE GODFATHER PART III fell short of its astronomical expectations. By the time she was given a copy of Eugenides’ book in 1998 (by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore), she was technically too late to turn it into a film, as a studio had already greenlit a production. However, she just wasn’t able to shake how the book had made her feel, specifically citing it as the reason she decided to finally enter the family business:

I really didn't know I wanted to be a director until I read The Virgin Suicides and saw so clearly how it had to be done.

So, she wrote her own script anyway, mostly as a private project for herself. As fortune would have it, the original production subsequently fell through, and she was able to pitch her script to the production company that owned the rights to the book. She made a strong enough impression that she was hired on to be both the writer and the director.

The cast was assembled fairly quickly. Turner, who had previously worked with Coppola on 1986’s PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED, was allegedly the first to sign on. Woods was next, having been impressed both with the script and with the young director. After a extensive search for the right fit for Lux Lisbon, Coppola eventually went with her gut and selected 16-year old Dunst, who was transitioning from a child star to someone on the cusp of adulthood. Hartnett won the role of Trip Fontaine by seemingly embodying that mix of swagger and unbridled youth that Coppola saw in the character.

In the same quote above, Coppola went on to explain exactly what she saw so clearly about the story:

I immediately saw the central story as being about what distance and time and memory do to you, and about the extraordinary power of the unfathomable.

With that in mind (especially that part about the “extraordinary power of the unfathomable”), it immediately becomes clear when watching THE VIRGIN SUICIDES what film influenced Coppola most directly in the crafting of her debut feature: Peter Weir’s 1975 mystery magnum opus PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK.

If you’ve never seen it, HANGING ROCK is ostensibly about a group of Australian girls at the turn of the century that mysteriously disappear during a picnic at…uh…Hanging Rock, an intriguing (and apparently very real) rock formation. But it’s a movie that’s also about…well, it’s also about a lot of other things. It’s about trying to seek understanding of events that will never be clear. It’s about trying to understand the motivations of people that are ultimately unknowable. It’s about the way nature can compel us to do all sorts of things that defy logic and reason. It’s about…look, you should just watch it, it’s great.

As you might be able to surmise, there are lots of similarities between HANGING ROCK and VIRGIN SUICIDES, to the point where it would make for a fascinating double feature. Besides the obvious parallel of a story (adapted from a novel) regarding a group of girls and their seemingly inexplicable removal from this life, it also features a boy trying (and failing) to understand the girls he admires from afar. Hell, even the costumes in Weir’s film seem to have parallels in Coppola’s; the Lisbon daughters’ unfortunate set of prom dresses bears a very close resemblance to the Appleyard school uniforms.

Another key similarity between the two films is this sense of extreme feeling being intentionally buried beneath the surface, just waiting for enough heat to cause an explosion. Yes, they deal with different types of feelings (in HANGING ROCK, it’s existential and indefinable dread; in VIRGIN SUICIDES, it’s the relief of human passion), but in both cases, the narrative is driven by this urgent sense that something bad is going to happen sans the resolution of this imperceptible note.

To be clear, they are ultimately very different movies, both in tone and in texture; THE VIRGIN SUICIDES feels like a foggy dream you keep trying to hold onto, while PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK feels more like a vivd nightmare you can never shake again. But seeing this kind of connective tissue is exciting nonetheless! And it’s thrilling to be able to see a very young Sofia Coppola consume an international masterwork and learn all the right lessons from it.

———

One of the most striking things about THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is how understated everything driving the narrative is. It’s a story that’s driven by behavior and feeling, which can sometimes get interpreted as '“boring” (an opinion that also gets levied against Coppola’s follow-up feature, LOST IN TRANSLATION). And it’s true, VIRGIN SUICIDES perhaps doesn’t precisely have that A-B-C structure that we normally look to in stories. Yes, there’s a lot of scenes that consist of things happening, but if a viewer isn’t able to connect with the film on an emotional level, it might not be clear what exactly Coppola is trying to say.

But the beating heart of a dramatic story is so definitely there, and being able to lock in on the emotions most of these characters want to express here is what makes for a thrilling watch. Zeroing in specifically on that feeling of longing and repressed desire is the key to unlocking what THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is all about. When you do, you can see two simultaneous and intertwined ideas within the film emerge: the suffocating effect of “normal suburbia” on youth, and the foggy effects of nostalgic memory.

We experience the first idea through what we get to see of the Lisbon sisters and the way at least two of them react to their parents’ fierce clinging to what they can control, out of a complete and paralyzing fear of the uncertain. Cecilia chooses to opt out entirely, successfully committing suicide early on. Lux tries to find feeling and take control in other ways, both through her passionate fling with Trip, then later through random trysts on the roof. In both cases, it’s a call and response to the panicked restriction of control, motivated by the Lisbon parents’ misguided attempts to keep things “normal” and mitigate risks against that normalcy. Ultimately, this push and pull between the parents and the sisters ends up being a race to the bottom.

We experience the second through the narrative framing of the movie. It’s important to reiterate that the narration is reflective, someone in the present trying to recall events of the past, making the entire movie a flashback of sorts. When taking the events of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES in totality, it becomes clear that this is also the story of a grown man trying to sort through maybe the craziest thing he’s ever experienced, desperately searching for an answer to the inexplicable events of his past, trying to make sense of the seemingly nonsensical.

In both threads, the idea of repressed passions keep coming up to the surface. Let’s go back to the boys reading Cecilia’s diary entries. It’s fascinating just how vivid their imaginations become when envisioning those diary pages playing out, and the visual language of the movie changes in kind. The moments that take place in their mind’s eyes are all shot like scenes from a particularly relaxed music video; dreamy shots of unicorns, silhouettes of the sisters superimposed against a normal blue sky (I’d also argue this is the visual influence of HANGING ROCK seeping through again). It’s all a stark contrast to the more washed-out world of 70’s suburbia the movie normally resides in.

Coppola directs all of this with a surprising amount of control and confidence. She does a wonderful job with a difficult assignment: making the invisible visible. To be blunt, subtle filmmaking is really fucking hard. To some degree, more “kinetic” directors have an easier job. Not that action movies are easy (compare the level of craft in an average Mission: Impossible to the endless parade of bullshit Netflix has been crapping out, lest one think action filmmaking is a lesser art form), but the story is usually there in front of you. Motivations are explicitly stated. The twists and turns in a given scene can be seen through a pair of fists. In something like VIRGIN SUICIDES, all those emotions need to be invisible, yet still deeply felt.

All this to say that this makes Coppola’s debut feature an astounding achievement. I’d stop short of saying it’s a perfect film. I have quibbles: I don’t think the boys themselves are all that memorable, unfortunately. Also, the toxic gas leak at the debutante ball near the end of the film is on-the-nose in a way almost nothing else in VIRGIN SUICIDES is. Even still, there are all these little touches throughout the film that inform the story without drawing a lot of attention to themselves. Like the tree in the front lawn that’s dead from the roots, an early symbolic sign that something is deeply wrong in the foundation of the Lisbon home. Or the sad insistence within the community that Cecilia’s suicide was actually just an unfortunate accident; they always knew those metal fences were dangerous!

A less dire example that also comes to mind is the reveal that Lux has written Trip’s name on her underwear are shot and crafted to align with this “under the surface” nature; we see the relevant part of her underwear via a superimposed iris over her prom dress. Like every emotion felt by every kid in this movie, it’s only there if you know where to look.

———

Even know you’re clued into them ahead of time just by reading the title, the suicides that bookend the film still come as somewhat shocking surprises on a first watch. On a second go, however, when you can really take in the behaviors on display, and the undercurrent of unexpressed (and unfulfilled) desire that infuses every primary character….it becomes clear that for these sisters, there’s truly no other way but out.

Given all of this, the unexpressed pain our main characters feel, and their ultimate fates, it’d be easy to paint the Lisbon parents as abusive monsters. But that’s the beautiful things about THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, at least as a screenplay: it’s really, really careful not to dramatize them that way. As presented here, they’re not actively abusive, not really. Not in the way we normally see abuse depicted in film. Instead, they’re presented as terrified. The Lisbons are 70’s-era religious, scared and confused. They’re overprotective to the point of genuinely repressing their children’s feelings, which creates an ouroboros of action-reaction (the Lisbon sisters desire even further rebellion and social interaction as it becomes further and further restricted, and that desire leads to further restriction….and on and it goes).

Kathleen Turner plays all of this with stark realism. In lesser hands, Mrs. Lisbon could have been a caricature of a religious head of household (and to be clear, she is The Head of This Household), an unfeeling zealot that craves complete dominance over her progeny. But, in Turner’s hands, she manages to be weirdly sympathetic, even as you desperately want to shake her and make her realize the damage she’s doing.

The biggest surprise, though: despite currently spending his twilight years being a complete ghoul, James Woods is….quite good! It helps that the character is wildly well-written, another understated Lisbon parent who has no idea how to even function, let alone do right by his daughters. Again, he isn’t a mean, abusive villain. He’s a total dork, a high-school science teacher, all white shirt and earth tones. What help can he really lend to his five daughters dealing with the pain of being a teenager? What counter-balance can he possibly provide to his scared-out-her-mind wife? So he doesn’t. It’s a realistic (and under-discussed) scenario, that of the man who applies for the job of father, only to turn out to only be just okay at it once he gets it.

Of the five actresses that play the Lisbon daughters, easily the one with the most to do is Kirsten Dunst. Although she’d already starred in major hits like JUMANJI and SMALL SOLDIERS, with future hits like BRING IT ON and SPIDER-MAN right around the corner, this still manages to feel like a career-making performance. Effortlessly sexy (but, crucially, only mysteriously so), she serves as good of a gauge as to the headspace of the Lisbon daughters as a collective as anyone else. When Trip makes the boneheaded decision to abandon her after having sex on the football field the night of homecoming, your heart sinks. It’s not just because we know what this is going to portend, but because Dunst embodies Lux’s heartbreak and shame so perfectly.

Hartnett is also dynamite as Trip, the perfect embodiment of the 70’s high school heartthrob. He and Dunst are just perfect together, and their chemistry is insane. There’s a very simple scene in a movie theatre where the two touch hands for the first time; you almost can’t breathe during it, a consequence of a film repressing its passions until two characters can’t help it anymore. When they finally begin to make out in his car, as the needle drops on Heart’s “Crazy on You”*…you can’t help but get swept up.

*(Shout out to the soundtrack, by the way. Coppola was careful not to overload it with a bunch of music from the period in order to preserve a little timelessness, but the few tracks that she does opt to use hit like gangbusters; sorry, James Gunn, but Sofia got to 10cc a decade and a half before you. But the actual film score by Air? Beautiful. “Playground Love”, the defacto theme of the film? Just great. It’s sometimes silly to break down loving a movie to something this reductive, but….a movie with a cool soundtrack makes me feel cool for watching it. In this sense, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is an A+.)

However, I’ve always been most intrigued by the somewhat-incongruous flash-forward to an adult Trip (Michael Pare), who appears to be in detox treatment and deeply, deeply regretful for taking off on Lux all those years ago. In no other scenario in the film’s 97 minutes do we ever leave the confines of mid-70’s Michigan. So to all of a sudden be in 1999 for a minute or two in the middle of the film feels like Sofia intentionally drawing our eye.

It’s a diversion that the book takes as well, and I think it’s a way for both mediums to illustrate how the inexplicable casual cruelness that only teenage boys can truly exhibit tends to come back to haunt them as adults. It’s heavily implied in the film that his addictions as an adult stem from the guilt of leaving Lux at the football field. Now she’s dead, taken by her own hand, and all he’s left with are the feelings he felt and the inexplicable dick move that he probably couldn’t even justify in the moment, much less twenty-five years later.

As to why we get specific insight into Trip and not our narrator or any of his friends? I chalk that up to Trip no longer being an outsider. He got to tango with at least one Lisbon. He knew Lux, at least a little. So we get to know Trip. At least a little.

More to the point, adult Trip shows us directly the devastating power of memory. Trip is left with only his recollections as a young buck, when the world was rife with opportunity, when you could put basically anything into your body with minimal consequence. Now, as he sits with regret, he has only memories.

In the end, that’s all the Lisbon sisters are to our boys: the physical representation of a time gone by, never to return. A time where the world seemed like a dream, where even the unique horrors of childhood felt a little magical, detached from reality. That’s the nature and power of nostalgia (and THE VIRGIN SUICIDES): it can make you even miss the ghosts.

BABY J Births a New Era for John Mulaney

“Don’t believe the persona.”

It’s a brief comment made early and quickly thrown away, a phrase not particularly positioned as a punchline in John Mulaney’s new standup special Baby J, which started streaming on Netflix April 25th. All the same, it serves as the mission statement of his set, and perhaps this entire phase of the comedian’s career.

It’s been a long road for the Chicago-born standup Mulaney to reach this moment in time. Just a couple of years ago, it wasn’t all that clear that another special was even in the cards. So it goes when a comedian enters rehab and proceeds to both dismantle and rebuild his life and entire stage presence in the process. When an artist loses their persona, who the hell knows what comes next?

———

A lot of stand-up comedy depends on artifice (or, to put it less cynically, just some good ol’ fashioned magic). I don’t mean to shatter any illusions, but…many of the great stories your favorite comedians tell aren’t precisely true. They’re either greatly exaggerated in the details, stolen experiences from friends or family, or even just flat-out made up. But deep down, you kind of knew that, right? What are the odds that all these funny people have something hilarious and odd happen to them every time they leave the house? As Mark Twain may or may not have once said, “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”. Developing a joke, a funny story….it’s all work. And it’s work that’s done in the name of creating a persona that any audience on a random Tuesday can immediately identify with.

Personas are a really, really hard thing to develop in comedy, and an even harder thing to shake once you have it. All of the greats have a “character” that they’re playing, even if it’s only lightly enhanced for the stage. Norm MacDonald played the gleeful anarchist, Jerry Seinfeld the exasperated observer. Anthony Jeselnik embodies the amoral rogue, Sarah Silverman the sweet shock artist. But if you ever had the fortune to meet these people in real life, odds are you’d be amazed to learn just how little of their actual selves they’re revealing to their audience (okay, except for maybe Norm).

The persona extends to comedians you probably don’t even think are all that funny, maybe even more so! You understand intellectually that Larry the Cable Guy probably isn’t actually hooking up Spectrum boxes during the day. Hell, his name isn’t even Larry, it’s Dan Whitney. What part about this dude isn’t a lie? Yet he’s one of the biggest jokesters of all time. Note that I’m not signing off on him being objectively funny per se, but he has an astronomically large audience that’s into the idea of him. The mere fact that we all know who he is puts him, in terms of “success” head and shoulders above just about everyone who’s ever tried to pick up a mic and make people laugh. He worked out a character, fine-tuned it, and popularized it. His persona works.

But consider this: Larry is now trapped. I don’t really get the sense he’s looking to make a pivot at this point, but if he tried to…if he went back to just being Dan Whitney in public…well, it’d be a potential leap off a cliff for him, yeah? Who knows if his fanbase, who likes him specifically for what he’s selling, would go with him on that? He’d be a fool to try.

Let’s take this one step further: what if there was some sort of public scandal that went directly against the core of that persona? Say TMZ ran an article next week revealing that Larry the Cable Guy cut the cord back in 2019 and, in fact, is rumored to not even own a TV (note: I’m assuming most of his comedy is about telecommunications). Well, he’d be kind of fucked, wouldn’t he?

This is more or less the abyss John Mulaney was staring down as the pandemic surged.

———

For those who weren’t previously aware, it’s hard to describe how ubiquitous John Mulaney was/is among even the most casual comedy fans on the internet. GIFS and images of him were/are everywhere. Phrases, quips and punchlines from his many specials were/are so commonplace on message boards and social media sites that there’s an entire subreddit dedicated to unexpected uses of his material.

And, look, you couldn’t say the dude didn’t earn it. He worked his ass off to get to where he was. And his resume isn’t contained to just his four stand-up specials and countless talk show appearances. After being forged in the burning kiln that is the Saturday Night Live writers’ room, he turned out to also be an insanely prolific creator, finding himself working on projects as diverse as Documentary Now!, his own fucking Broadway show, and even a network sitcom*. He’s even in the Marvel universe, as the venerable Spider-Ham in Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.

*A sitcom that, by the way, I desperately wished had worked. In a time when network TV was beginning its full-throated death rattle, Mulaney at least had the sincere desire in its style and aesthetic to return to a time when the network sitcom was king. The cast was a good balance of up and comers like Nasim Pedrad and Seaton Smith, alongside old pros like Elliot Gould and Martin Short. He even opened and closed each episode with a little stand-up act, a-la Seinfeld. Alas, it just wasn’t that funny and was never going to be granted the time it needed to find its comedic voice. Whatareya gonna do?

On a personal level, my wife and I have been fans of his comedy for probably over a decade at this point. We’ve had the opportunity and great fortune to see him live at least five times, in rooms as small as the local Punch Line club (where he mentioned that in the years between his gigs at this club, a timespan that included innumerable worldwide changes, the Nordstrom Rack next door had remained exactly the same), and as odd and huge as the Golden 1 Center (aka that place you all saw the Kings take the Warriors to seven last month, light the beam). In fact, we even got to see him work out his material that eventually became this special (back when the set was called From Scratch, a title I admittedly liked a little better).

One of my most treasured live show memories is Mulaney coming out and immediately unleashing his J.J. Bittenbinder material on an unsuspecting San Francisco crowd. Well, actually, the first thing he did was start profusely mocking the four prominently vacant seats right in the middle of the front row. From there, though, he launched into his whole bit about school assemblies, leading to his full breakdown of “Street Smarts!” by the aforementioned Bittenbinder, an insane former Chicago cop and, as it turns out, a very real guy. It probably isn’t literally what happened during this bit, but it sure felt like I laughed for ten minutes straight.

On stage, his comedy persona, at least before 2021 or so, was generally one of a boyish charmer with a briskly-alluded-to dark past. The combination of his old-school showman presentation (the suit and tie, the pseudo-50’s-newsboy quality to his voice) belies a not-so-clean lifestyle under the surface. As he describes it, college was a rough time for him(“I lived like a goddamn Ninja Turtle. I didn’t drink water the entire time”), and his continuing struggle with his Catholic upbringing provided a never-ending source of tension as a child. In the comedy present, however? A lot of jokes about his mother and father. A lot of stories about his wife, their dog and the happy, childfree existence they share. There was this intentional dichotomy between where he once was and where he now is. As he puts it:

I used to drink and then I drank too much and I had to stop. That surprises a lot of audiences because I don't look like someone who used to do anything. I look like I was just sitting in a room in a chair eating saltines for, like, 28 years and then I walked right out here.

Regardless of whether or not jokes about his married life truly made up the plurality of his routine or not, he pretty quickly earned the moniker of a “wife guy”, mostly because, when he did talk about his wife, they were stories about when he was the dope. For instance, his famous screed about the horrors of Delta Airlines opens with an admission that he doesn’t stand up for himself without her help. Yes, another famous punchline about her involves her being a bitch that he loves very much, but I think any normal person would look at that as the inversion of expectation that it is, and not Mulaney the comedian literally communicating with us that he genuinely thinks his wife is a bitch (seems like it would go without saying once you listen to, but I’ve seen people use this as evidence against him)

And, putting everything else aside, I think he’d still develop a fiercely loyal and clingy fanbase because…I mean…look at him. He’s jumping around the stage, making movie and Broadway musical references, he’s up there describing himself as a little courthouse mannequin. How could you not wanna put him in your pocket? Thus, his internet fanbase doomed him in the category of a “smol bean”, a room that ultimately only ever has one exit.

———

Now, as mentioned, John Mulaney has never precisely been dishonest about his vices and past struggles. As alluded to above, he’s had entire sections of his past material talking about the usage of cocaine, pills and alcohol. Still, like every other fan in 2021, I didn’t quite know what to make of the news that Mulaney had checked into rehab, completed rehab, divorced his wife, gotten together with Olivia Munn, and made a pregnancy announcement, all in what felt like rapid succession.

Despite all of my intellectual capacity to understand that, of course, there are no celebrities that we truly know (we all barely have friends and family members about which we can make that claim), it all felt at odds with what was presented to me. My immediate first thought, insomuch that they mattered at all, was how I was ever going to be able to listen to the aforementioned material about his wife again. How could he do that to a woman he made such a part of his persona, as if somehow I could possibly be the one betrayed in this scenario. My second thought was that none of this felt like the behavior of a man successfully in recovery, as if somehow I was the one that could be victimized by his addictions here. My third thought was that I desperately wanted to be able to laugh at his stuff going forward, as if I all of a sudden don’t possess free will.

All very dramatic feelings for a guy I didn’t know in real life. And I wasn’t even particularly as pot-committed to him compared to some of his biggest fans! Even though it was none of anybody’s business, really, Mulaney’s relapse and subsequent rehab constituted a genuine pubic image crisis. It got even worse when people started going down the rabbit hole of “figuring out the timeline” of when he got together with Munn compared to when he officially split with his wife. It was rough to see one of my favorite comedians become grist for the gossip mill and Deuxmoi crowd.

By the way, if you’re waiting for this to eventually morph a piece about the parasocial relationships we tend to develop with celebrities*, it isn’t going to happen, I’m afraid. There are a million articles all about it that are frankly better-written and more comprehensive than anything I can provide. What this is sort of settling into, though, is me wrestling with my feelings about John Mulaney as an entertainer and celebrity going into From Scratch, then again going into Baby J.

*(By the way, I sort of rue the day the internet discovered the word “parasocial”; that word can go right in the trash, alongside the words “MacGuffin” and “problematic”.)

When the time came to buy tickets for one of his shows again, it became clear that Mulaney’s persona crumbling down didn’t ultimately turn me away. Yes, the, um, character flaws that had been revealed as a result of all the drama weren’t great or anything, and served as a stark reminder to never worship a celebrity for any reason (it’s just better off that way for everybody). I want him to be well. But I ultimately landed on this thought: the fact that this kind of public fallout contradicted some of the vibes of his material wasn’t ultimately enough to push me away as a fan.

As a counter-example, there’s a reason I found it easy to drop Louis CK like a hot sack of doggie doo-doo once the long-rumored allegations of making women watch him beat off were confirmed. It’s mostly because his material conveyed the idea of a lazy man who wants to just sit and be gross and masturbate. Well, clearly that’s just a persona; anyone who has made two TV shows, several stand-up specials and countless amounts of money can’t be lazy. In fact, Louis CK might be one of the most motivated entertainers of the past fifty years. But when the rest of it turned out to be him telling us who he is? Like, that one part of his act wasn’t really a joke? It’s difficult to return to it*.

(*Although return to it, I eventually did. Out of curiosity, I fired up Louis’ comedy for the first time in years, just to see if the recent Grammy winner Sincerely was anything. I admit to laughing here and there, but I was also kind of stunned at how….sophomoric and shock-humory it all was? Like, “raping dead grandmothers” kind of stuff. I had held Louis in esteem as one of the more brave and intelligent comedians of his time. Was his shit always like this? Or is this just what he’s been reduced to at this point? To his credit, he does eventually Talk About It, but it’s only towards the end, brief, and frankly only sort of insightful. On the same day, I gave a listen to Jen Kirkman’s OK, Gen-X which also has “Louis C.K. is a creeper” material, and was five times as interesting. So. There you go.)

But for Mulaney?

There are those out there for whom things just aren’t ever going to be the same, or even recoverable. I have friends who just aren’t that into John Mulaney anymore, so palpable was the hurt he specifically inflicted on his now-ex wife. I suspect they’re extrapolating their own personal pain onto this public situation, but…that’s kind of understandable, right? That’s the issue with knowing, or loving, an addict (or even just a narcissist). You don’t tend to forget the hurt that is inherent to someone callously abandoning someone they love*, even if it’s a situation not your own.

(*Again, I must say, allegedly. Who the fuck really knows what their life was like together. At a certain point, trying to specifically justify and ground your gut instincts on these kinds of things requires you to make assumptions and run with them. Probably best not to unless/until someone writes a tell-all.)

———

This is why, I think, Baby J was the right type of material at the right time for John Mulaney. Outside of a couple of bits at the very beginning, the entire 80 minutes is dedicated to Talking About It (well, at least the rehab part of it; his current partner goes completely unnamed, which is probably for the best). Mulaney doesn’t swerve from the conversation at all; if anything, it’s kind of amazing how all-consuming the rehab talk really is, a few brief tangents here and there aside.

What’s most remarkable about the special is how willing he is to paint (or reveal) himself throughout the special as kind of an unpleasant dick. There are several stories told in Baby J that aren’t particularly flattering for him, including a harrowing tale of him buying an expensive watch in order to pawn it for drug money. He describes trying to turn his friends against his interventionist, as if maybe he could convince them she needed to go to rehab instead. He describes his frustration that nobody at his rehab facility seemed to know who he was. And, as he reminds us, these are the stories he’s willing to share.

If you’re a longtime fan, you can feel something being different post-rehab, even if you’re not really looking for it. Even though his signature style of delivery is still intact, he no longer comes off as an easy guy to be around, which is directly at odds with the classy imp persona that he had previously enjoyed. Watching this material both live and on Netflix, the aforementioned five minutes straight of laughter never quite materialized for me. BUT, I was strangely riveted in a way none of his other stuff has kept me. Stories about himself finding a quack doctor operating out of a New York apartment building who’s willing to give me Klonopin he didn’t need, a seeming minute by minute breakdown of his intervention….we’re a looooong way from J.J. Bittenbinder.

However, all of the above is actually why I think John Mulaney is going to be able to recover from his fall, even if his persona is never going to quite be the same again; he doesn’t provide a lot of excuses, if any at all. Instead, almost every joke in Baby J is directed at himself. He’s the butt of pretty much every punchline and that’s why it works. Even a joke about how the kids like Bo Burnham more than him now doesn’t seem so much a complaint as it does an admission of how the plates have shifted since 2020. Being able to wring an hour and a half of comedy by being able to nail down precisely what was funny about objectively the darkest time of his adult life…it’s impressive. Regardless of everything, The Kid’s Still Got It.

Compare this, again, to Louis CK’s first round of material after his exile, where he essentially blamed the kids. On the other hand, Mulaney’s ability to darkly laugh at himself may be what sets him free from his self-described “likability prison”. The “out of context Mulaney” Tumblr accounts or “every Tony winning musical as a John Mulaney quote” Twitter threads or whatever the fuck were good and fun and all, and it undoubtedly got him to the hyper-celebrity status he enjoys now. The persona has worked. It was a really fucking funny one. But now that it’s essentially been extinguished, a new and evolved one can now take its place.

The man turned 40 last year, which is usually an age that comes with introspection. And who knows how inward his first special as a quadragenarian would have focused in an alternate universe where his sobriety and marriage had stayed intact. But this is the universe we currently inhabit, and it’s imperative we make the most of the experiences we have. It’s hard to argue that Mulaney hasn’t done just that, especially *again* when you consider how poorly some of his contemporaries have done post-cancellation*.

*If you can even consider Mulaney as ever properly cancelled (or if anybody outside of a select few ever have, but…different conversation). Yes, his fans were pissed for a while, and some aren’t going to return. But the longest he was ever “gone” from the stage was his rehab stint during a global pandemic. Sorry, it bugs me that he occasionally gets hit with this tag.

Baby J proves Mulaney not only still has the chops, but he may be an even stronger comedic voice that we’d thought, even if the “internet’s precious little boy” aspect of his career is gone for now, and possibly forever. Mulaney has a gift for introspection, for zeroing in on an experience and nailing down what’s funny about it, for developing his act. And he’s spent the last year and a half using his weapons on himself. As a result, he’s capable of rattling off lines such as “when I’m alone, I realize I’m with the guy who tried to kill me”.

Despite losing a substantive part of his onstage self, something even more interesting may have emerged. A slightly slower, slightly older and slightly wiser Mulaney has been a good look so far. And besides, if the previous quicker version was a result of cocaine, what use is it anymore?

Wholesale change, even positive ones like sobriety, is fucking terrifying. It’s even more terrifying when you’re a public figure. I don’t know for a fact, but I wouldn’t be surprised if people like Mulaney sometimes resist cleaning themselves up out of fear that they may lose their creative self. It’d be understandable if what if I’m not funny anymore crosses their mind, even as they’re saving their own lives. If we presume that to be true, Baby J might be the best thing to ever happen to John Mulaney.

We Are The Story: Robert Altman Walks in NASHVILLE

As there must always be in every subculture across the Internet, there’s an ongoing discussion currently being held amongst the denizens of Film Twitter. This time around, it’s about the necessity of sex scenes in movies. I promise this is going somewhere.

Like many, I’ve been burned many a time by a sex scene popping up out of nowhere, usually when a parent or relative has just walked into the room (thanks, THE TERMINATOR!). And no doubt, there are many, many, many films and indeed entire genres that have sex scenes that exist only to (at best) titillate or (at worst) leer at a unsavory circumstance. However, I will mention that determining that kind of intent usually requires at least a little context, both onscreen and off, as well as some prior knowledge into the director’s prior work.

This is why a sincerely-held blanket “get rid of ‘em” philosophy gives me pause. Some are needed, some aren’t. And even if it’s not needed, I often think, who cares? Are jokes in film needed? Shouldn’t the characters stop being silly and just get to the point? But people joke in real life, so it becomes a movie thing. So it goes with sex.

As near as I can tell, a lot of the pushback on characters fucking is coming from intense old man voice Gen Z-ers on TikTok (Enjoy being blamed for everything for awhile, kiddos! We millennials had our turn). To some degree, then, this “discourse” can simply be chalked up to a lot of young people working out their feelings towards art, maybe for the first time, all against the backdrop of an increasingly complicated world. They’re just doing it on a never-ending public forum, something that a lot of us are extremely fortunate didn’t exist when we were in our teens and early twenties (a lot of my dog shit opinions are gone, nothing but so much internet dust now).

I also think the slow development over the past two decades of blockbusters becoming sexless, almost asexual, has pushed this topic to its boiling point. The FAST AND FURIOUS franchise serves as an almost too-perfect litmus test. Consider Dom and Letty, the defacto “main relationship” of the entire series (if you don’t count Tej and Roman), a couple that goes from grinding on each other in the first movie, 2001’s THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, to barely touching by F9: THE FURIOUS SAGA. Whether this is a development of people being able to get their kicks and thrills for free from other media, or a consequence of film franchises now mostly being so many action figures being smashed together, I couldn’t quite tell you.

However (I’m arriving at “the point”!), others have identified a less obvious, but more consequential, source of sex scenes being considered by some as “unnecessary” to the plot of a given movie. It’s this: in a world where everything is “content”, anything that doesn’t move that “content” forward is thus anathema to enjoyment. In other words, the plot is now the thing. You can see this in action within, say, the MCU fan circles, where the multimedia franchise’s quickly-atrophying critical and popular acclaim over the past couple of years is getting explained away as the recent movies simply just “not moving the plot forward yet” (ignoring the fact that a few of them since AVENGERS: ENDGAME have just plain not been good movies).

This theory makes the most sense, at least to me. This mindset, if sincerely held by a significant amount of film fans (and in a world where exaggerating complaints to generate outrage, who knows if there’s truly a majority at play here), is a shame! On the one hand, yes, stories are what we ultimately go to the movies for. But stories come in so many forms, and can be told in so many different styles. A binary system of determining whether a story is “being moved forward” or not shields you from a bunch of different storytelling possibilities.

Case in point (see? “The point”! We’re here!), the story of 1975’s NASHVILLE is wide in scope and breadth, yet it’s told via tiny scenes that seems disconnected until they’re not. And often, the disconnect is sort of the point, too. Most scenes in it are explicitly not “moving the story forward” in a macro sense, yet when it’s all taken as a singular piece, not a single thread of the tapestry turns out to be out of place.

It’s an ambitious film, and one that is regularly considered Robert Altman’s magnum opus. Without having seen the entirety of his filmography, I’m still willing to go along with that, if only because of its wild confidence. There are so many characters and so many overlapping developments and movements that you’d expect it to collapse under its own weight, were it not for Altman’s light touch and almost audacious assurance.

More than anything, NASHVILLE shows that stories can be told any number of ways and be just as impactful in its totality than almost any film being made in the modern market. And that makes it worth a watch no matter who you are.

NASHVILLE (1975)

Directed by: Robert Altman

Starring: too many to count

Written by: Joan Tewkesbury

Released: June 11, 1975

Length: 160 minutes

What is NASHVILLE about? Well, there’s a short answer, and there’s a long answer.

In short, the film provides a snapshot (or maybe a panorama) of the beating heart of the titular city’s music industry, at least as it stood in the mid-seventies. A bevy of singer/songwriters and producers, some well-established, some who are aspiring, and some who have had better days, descend upon the Tennessee town in advance of an upcoming concert/fundraiser for Hal Walker, a rousing underdog Presidential candidate for the fictional Replacement Party (a candidate we hear a lot from but, tellingly, never actually see).

In long, though, it’s almost impossible to really illustrate what it’s “about” at first watch-through. The sheer scope of everything you see, of the criss-crossing storylines, of the absolute volume of characters at work here, and the way many of them disappear from the film juuuuust long enough to make you think maybe they’re not coming back, just in time for them to get a showcase scene….it’s probably best to just take it in the first time.

Oh, and NASHVILLE is also a de-facto musical, and one of significant heft. By someone else’s count, there’s about an hour’s worth of music (about a third of the film’s runtime), but it truly feels like a constant throughout. Infamously, many of the key songs (including the Oscar-winning “I’m Easy”) were written by the actors who sang them, something that apparently rubbed actual contemporary Nashville musicians the wrong way at the time. A fascinating New York Times article details the community’s reactions to the movie’s premiere in the real-life Nashville. There weren’t any riots or anything, but honest-to-god country superstars like Loretta Lynn seemed a little riled that actual country music artists weren’t used to develop the music.

Most of the time, I’d be on their side; a lot of the creative work (and the expertise to be found among it) has slowly been slid onto the plate of the onscreen performer, to the point that it seems most people assume everything is now improvised on set (seriously, fire up an episode of the OFFICE LADIES podcast sometime; 85% of the questions they get are some variation of “was [insert line or moment] improvised????”)

But, here’s the thing. I actually didn’t know the actors mostly wrote the music going in, and was a little shocked to learn it as a fact. It just all sounded like mostly legitimate country and bluegrass to my untrained ear. So, my sincere props, y’all! The New York Times article talks about how many of the lyrics were met by the country insiders in the audience with smirking recognition, perhaps indicating a level of parody at play here that mostly flew over my head. I just thought the music was actually good!

Another reason country stars, and thus Nashville proper, didn’t warm up to the film right away was this uneasy sense that they were being made fun of. After all, what is there to make of these exaggerated characters representing your home turf? Rumors also swirled that some of the major characters were one-to-one stand-ins for major current country stars which is, uhhhh somewhat true, actually; for instance, Barbara Jean is based on the aforementioned Lynn, Tom Frank (Keith Carradine) is based on Kris Kristofferson. Some characters were merely composites; Connie White (Karen Black) is a mix of Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Lynn Anderson, while Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) is a cross between Porter Wagoner, Roy Acuff and Hank Snow.

Naturally, Altman had always resisted this literal interpretation. To hear it from him, NASHVILLE is, if anything, a movie about Hollywood. This narrative framework was just set in Nashville mainly because of his growing affinity for the area. Although the film was mostly improvised on set, the standard modus operandi for Altman by this point, Joan Tewkesbury had provided the road map, filling up a diary of her notes, experiences and observations. Some of them made it directly from her pages to his film, most notably the freeway pile-up that begins crashing the characters together.

But the actual tapestry of NASHVILLE? The ecosystem of country music and the eccentrics that it attracts, all amidst this feeling of unseen, intangible hope, could just as easily be applied to the film scene in California. Or the theater scene in New York. Or a million other subcultures in this strange, bizarre, wonderful world we live in. Anyone who’s found a community through passion can recognize the archetypes at play; the fallen star, the up-and-comer, the knowing cad, the overzealous fan, the service man who wants to climb the ladder.

More to the point, NASHVILLE is so clearly about the American experience, both in broad and specific terms. It is both intensely of its time, yet unbelievably timeless. Hell, many of the key creatives behind this might be shocked (or appalled) at how relevant it all still is.

NASHVILLE is very much captured in 1975, in particular when considering how much shit had gone down in America the previous fifteen or so years. JFK, MLK, Malcolm X and RFK’s assassinations had all been in the past twelve years (something that is so clearly on this movie’s mind; more on that in a second), and the Watergate scandal earlier in the 70’s had done much to erode what was left of the population’s confidence in its government after the prolonged war in Vietnam.

A strong desire for change was in the air, although if NASHVILLE is to be taken at face value, there was skepticism that it was really going to be possible, at least not without a fight. As mentioned, Hal Walker, the reason the story of the movie is even happening, the speaker of many amazing and rousing platitudes….dramatically speaking, he’s a ghost. We never see him, his words just sort of float through the atmosphere. Everyone gathers for the mere possibility of change, even if we don’t know what it looks like.

A lot of NASHVILLE’s thesis statement can be gleaned from its pretty glorious opening scene, two songs being sung in completely different styles, recorded in completely different contexts, and sung by people of completely different races. One half of the scene is Hamilton attempting to record a very straight-laced and traditional Bicentennial song, a literally-titled “200 Years” (written by Hamlin and Richard Baskin). Its chorus refrains, proudly if a little naively “we must be doing something right to last 200 years!” It’s rousing, if staid to its core.

The other half, in another room within the same recording studio, is Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin) and the all-black Jubilee Singers (from Fisk University, at the very least based off a very real choral group, although I couldn’t confirm if they were appearing as themselves here) laying down a rousing gospel track. As the piano joyously pounds, Linnea struggles to be heard over the voluminous sound behind her, asking over and over if we believe in Jesus.

Two completely different and unique styles, borne from diametrically opposed lived experiences and perspectives, living right next door to each other. That’s Nashville. That’s America.

******

It’s difficult to figure out exactly who to best highlight amongst NASHVILLE’s cast. There are so many moving pieces within its ensemble cast that you could probably watch the movie ten times and have a new favorite every single time. However, I’ll highlight a couple that took me by surprise.

Like many comedians from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, I was primarily familiar with Lily Tomlin from her hosting stints on Saturday Night Live, although most people at the time probably knew her from ROWAN AND MARTIN’S LAUGH-IN. Folks nowadays likely know her from stuff like GRACE AND FRANKIE, a comedienne from previous generations that thankfully appears to be accepted and loved by younger generations (also known as the Catherine O’Hara Club). I hadn’t really ever seen her do a non-comedic role, however, although I had little doubt she’d be great.

She comes through! I think what really surprised me and made her stand out is that Linnea is so normal compared to both everyone else in the dang movie as well as every other character I’ve seen Tomlin play. She’s heartbreaking in her simplicity and nobility, a gospel singer that takes care of her two blind daughters, all the while being left unsatisfied by her husband (more on him in a second!). When she gets the chance to sleep with Tom, she can’t resist.

Linnea could be a really difficult character to sell to an audience, but Altman or somebody must have known that we were going to love her because she’s Lily Tomlin. They were right. One of the most unforgettable and memorable moments of NASHVILLE’s entire 160 minutes is her staring silently at Tom singing her “I’m Easy”. Maybe she knows she’s making a mistake, maybe not. All she knows is she’s doing something for her. She does all of us without a single written line of dialogue. I’m convinced she’s why the song won an Oscar.

If there’s a main backbone to the film, it’s probably the story of Barbara Jean’s recovery from a nervous breakdown. Ronee Blakely plays half of her scenes laid up in a wheelchair, but I found her entire arc pretty engaging, if only because it reminded me so much of how celebrities, especially women, tend to get squeezed from all ends until they collapse, sometimes emotionally and sometimes literally. Every aspect of her arc here happens publicly; her return, her collapse, her heartbreaking failed performance at Opryland (a scene so beautifully acted by Blakely, by the way, that I felt like I was watching a concert doc, not a narrative film), her violent death.

About the only thing she gets to do in private is recuperate. Even then, she gets to watch from her wheelchair as more glamorous performers take her now vacant slots, and she gets to observe her well-meaning manager/husband Barnett dismiss her anxieties as the beginnings of another nervous break. She never catches a break once in the film, but that’s how it goes for female celebrities throughout the past, present and future. We feel for them only when they’re finally at rest.

Barbara Baxley, star of both stage and screen, provided one of the other most memorable moments of the movie for me as Lady Pearl, the wife of Haven Hamilton. Midway through NASHVILLE, she gives this speech to Opal, a British reporter and our de-facto audience surrogate. Within this monologue, she talks about the reach John F. Kennedy Jr. had on areas of the country not previously thought possible, his subsequent assassination and. In doing so, she verbalizes and dramatizes the deep national tension at the time (and was still very much lingering in 1975) that NASHVILLE taps into so well:

And then comes Bobby. Oh, I worked for him […] he was a beautiful man. He was not much like John, you know. He was more puny-like. But all the time I was workin' for him, I was just so scared - inside, you know, just scared.

It’s here that the film starts to contextualize its ending. More on that in a second.

Finally, was there some sort of presidential order signed that mandated Ned Beatty appear in every single great American 70’s movie? This marks his third appearance on this blog in just under a year (including NETWORK and MIKEY AND NICKY). And, no surprise, he’s fucking great. You’re never going to believe it, but he plays an unsavory lush in this, although it’s notable that he never really does anything unsavory. He’s just not there for this saint of a woman he’s lucky enough to share a roof with. I’m a little shocked that Beatty only worked with Altman one more time (1999’s COOKIE’S FORTUNE). He’s a natural for the expository nature of his film set.

I could go on and on and on about every single character, and a real legitimate breakdown of this movie would almost have to in order to really dive into every nuance. You’d have to because these characters are the story. They are the plot, and the plot is them. Their human decisions affect the decisions of others. Or they don’t. Maybe their stories are purely internal. But that’s the story of humanity.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the ending, and why it’s so powerful in the midst of a world where just stepping outside can feel fraught with peril, where scanning the news invites you into a nightmarish hall of mirrors. In NASHVILLE’s final scene, as we finally reach the Hal Walker fundraiser, Barbara Jean gets assassinated on stage by a quiet, seething fan (a moment that seems eerily prophetic in the aftermath of Christina Grimmie’s 2017 murder, resulting in a world where stars like Taylor Swift have to walk around with what is essentially human Fix-a-Flat), and her limp body is immediately (albeit slowly) taken off the stage.

Amidst the shock, however, the indomitable human spirit endures. A new star takes the stage, and Hamilton urges the crowd to not give up, chillingly stating “we’re not Dallas!”. The entire crowd takes up in song.

It’s both ghoulish, bizarre yet simply moving. It’s America.

Although there is an uncharitable interpretation to be made of these final moments (a prediction of our current “the show must go on” culture that has essentially rotted our brains), I took it as perversely positive. For everything that this fucking country has had happen to it (and, of course, what it’s unleashed on others, both within and beyond its borders), we have a knack for moving forward anyway. Concerts endure. Sporting events endure. Beyond all reason, we still find political candidates to rally behind. We just kind of keep going.

Just, you know, try not to get too much blood on you while you do it.

*******

Not that it ultimately really matters, but Altman seemed to find his juice at the Academy Awards again after the success of M*A*S*H had thus far eluded him in the early to mid 70’s. NASHVILLE was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. It lost both of those, although it must be said that this particular Oscar race was incredibly stacked. Its competition for Best Picture:

• ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (eventually won)

• BARRY LYNDON

• JAWS

• DOG DAY AFTERNOON

Altman’s competition for Best Director:

• Milos Forman (CUCKOO’S NEST, and eventual winner)

• Federico Fellini (AMARCORD)

• Stanley Kubrick (BARRY LYNDON)

• Sidney Lumet (DOG DAY AFTERNOON)

What are ya gonna do? Altman had to settle for it being considered his magnum opus almost immediately, and probably his most enduring and popular film, besides maybe something like the aforementioned M*A*S*H*. Oh, and it still holds the record for most Golden Globe nominations for a single film, even all these years later. Not bad!

This brings me back to the “discourse” at the beginning of this article. By the same metric of “not ostensibly plot related = wasted calories” that leads to the very existence of sex scenes being questioned, NASHVILLE fails any possible equation you could run it through. Yet, do you want to live in a world where a movie like it could possibly be considered bad storytelling by any measurement?

Almost fifty years later, NASHVILLE remains an astounding achievement, both in scope and scale. It manages to reflect how stories can come from anywhere and everywhere. They surround us, both small and large. They are us. And there’s no “right way” to tell them. Let movies indulge! Let them take their time! Let them take you down oddball paths! The best ones have a way of enduring even when they’re weird.

That’s America.

3 WOMEN, 1 BLOG: Altman Goes To Dreamland

As a general rule, I like to go into the movies I review in this space as cold as I possibly can. I try not to look up analyses or reviews ahead of time, and I definitely don’t peruse any plot details. Sometimes it’s just not possible with something that has completely permeated popular culture to the point that references are simply unavoidable (say, something like GOODFELLAS or A CLOCKWORK ORANGE). Sometimes, it just doesn’t matter; what difference does the element of surprise make when you’re breaking down fucking JAWS 3-D? But in general, I only allow myself basic story setups and cast lists for review. This theoretically gives me two advantages:

1) the movie is given the opportunity to unroll on its own terms, without any sort of behind-the-scenes drama or famous inspirations behind it attempting to inform me what it should be;

2) it gives me the chance to experience movies that have been around for twenty, thirty, almost fifty years in the way that audiences at the time might have. I want it to feel like picking up a newspaper, browsing the entertainment section for showtimes (yes, this used to exist) and exclaiming “Hey, it’s a new Altman! I like him! Let’s check it out” before heading down to the theater and just….seeing what happens.

Well, this week, this process really put me in a pickle. 3 WOMEN got on my radar essentially off of a recommendation (thanks, Tony!). I had vaguely heard of it, I was aware of who starred in it. But that’s it. So far, Advantage #2 was coming through in spades.

However, as you probably are already aware, Altman’s 1977 impressionist classic is not an easy movie to just go ahead and unpack the first time around, unless you happen to have a degree from Johns Hopkins or something. Let me tell you, living in a time where every other film is booked as having “psychological thriller” elements, 3 WOMEN is one of the true “psychological” films I really can think of.

More to the point, it really, really is a film where some prior research into Altman’s intent and inspiration would have been handy. Because it’s palpably different from Altman’s most famous works, so unbelievably so that, even as I struggled to grapple with the film in the days after watching it, the thought crossed my mind that Altman might really be the best American director of his generation, so deep is his versatility.

For anybody hoping to see a man stumble through a psych class term paper, you’ve come to the right place. 3 WOMEN!

3 WOMEN (1977)

Starring: Sissy Spacek, Shelly Duvall, Janice Rule

Directed by: Robert Altman

Written by: Altman

Released: April 3, 1977

Length: 124 minutes

The story: timid and wide-eyed Pinky Rose (Spacek) starts her first day at a geriatric “health spa” located in a middle-of-nowhere California dust bowl town and immediately becomes infatuated with her gabby, effortlessly cool coworker Millie Lammoreaux (Duvall). When Millie’s roommate moves out of their room at the Purple Sage Apartments, Pinky immediately snags the opening. The two spend their time hanging out at the Dodge City saloon, owned by ex-stunt double Edgar Hart (Robert Fortier) and his mute painter wife Willie (Rule). As Pinky’s infatuation grows, her personality begins to resemble that of Millie’s. Subsequently, Millie seems to regress the further the film goes on.

The movie obviously goes on from there, but to continue would technically be to….well, not ruin the movie entirely (it’s not a film that can really be ruined by reading the plot synopsis); it’s just…well, it’s hard to describe in words exactly what the movie is fully about. Put it this way: it’s one thing to read the story of 3 WOMEN, it’s quite another to experience it. It’s both loosely plotted and intensely fixated on character dynamics, both subtle and quite bold, at once emotional and cerebral.

3 WOMEN is surreal in the sense that every moment feels both disconnected from the ones before and after it, yet it all feels completely intertwined as a piece. In that sense, the filmography that came to mind while watching this was David Lynch’s, and I became convinced 3 WOMEN was a major influence on the future TWIN PEAKS creator’s work. However, I really couldn’t find any evidence to corroborate that, and I was reminded that Lynch is sort of infamous for not watching that many other movies, so who knows.

Still, it’s hard not think about MULHOLLAND DRIVE, a movie with very similar themes and a somewhat analogous setup (two women meet by chance, and find their identities becoming intertwined), as well as a movie that saw Lynch go up directly against Altman’s GOSFORD PARK in the 2001 Best Director Oscar race (they would both lose to Ron Howard for A BEAUTIFUL MIND. Hollywood!). I’m also aware that there are strong comparisons to be made to Bergman’s PERSONA (in fact, it was a direct influence for Altman), and I feel caught a little flat-footed that I haven’t seen it. Another argument for my ongoing film literacy!

To that end, something else that made 3 WOMEN such a difficult movie for me to go into cold was that my still only cursory knowledge of Altman’s major works did nothing to prepare myself for it. There’s nothing in M*A*S*H, MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, CALIFORNIA SPLIT or THE LONG GOODBYE to indicate the man was capable of something so impressionistic (although subsequent research suggests something like BREWSTER MCCLOUD might have clued me in; can anybody confirm?). Sure, it’s rooted in that improvisational looseness that had long since become Altman’s trademark (more on that in a second), and his impeccable knack for casting actors who would wind up legends of their time is on full display. But it’s such a departure of what I’ve seen so far, it kind of threw me for a loop.

If you haven’t caught on yet, I feel completely unequipped to really unpack 3 WOMEN, at least not on just one watch. The first screening seems to be meant solely to just take it all in. It feels like it practically demands at least a couple of subsequent re-viewings to start taking in details and themes. For instance, I definitely know what feelings Pinky’s bad dream and the pool murals evoked in me (in both cases, an intense dissettlement); I just couldn’t tell you what they precisely mean.

To be clear, this isn’t the same thing as the complaint I levied against Kubrick’s THE SHINING, which I’ve always found so vague in intent as to be almost meaningless (an opinion that I sense I am increasingly alone in holding). No, here Altman is being very specific, I’m just missing what some of the details are supposed to indicate. In this case, Bobby, it’s me, not you.

For what it’s worth, Altman has claimed the inspiration for 3 WOMEN came to him in his sleep in the form of an anxiety dream that developed while his wife was laid up in the hospital. Specifically, he dreamt that he was shooting a movie about stolen identities in the desert that starred…Shelly Duvall and Sissy Spacek. He woke up in the middle of his dream, started writing notes down on a pad, then went back to his strangely prophetic dreamscape.

Post-dream, Altman collaborated with screenwriter Patricia Resnick (who would go on to work on, among other things, 9 TO 5 and the final season of Mad Men) to develop a treatment for this project, which wound up being about fifty pages. Resnick, by the way, would go on to collaborate with Altman many times after this, starting with 1978’s A WEDDING. That screenplay was largely skirted in favor of in-the-moment improvisations, allowing Duvall in particular to have a lot of agency in developing Millie’s character on the set. his was just as well: Altman didn’t intend to really have a screenplay at all, which tracks with what the movie truly felt like, and what made it sing.

Because 3 WOMEN isn’t so much a movie about words as it is about characters, behavior and images. The power of the film comes down to establishing firmly and quickly the differences between Pinky and Millie, then slowly watching as their personalities begin to intertwine, then shift back. Right off the bat, we can palpably feel the differences between our two leads. Where Millie is chatty and outgoing (even as, it turns out, she isn’t as beloved by her peers as she wants to believe), Pinky is intense, eager and interior. Much of the power of the film is seeing the two change as they continue to interact, almost as if they’re being brought together by some cosmic (or dream) force.

What might stand out amidst all of the above is that, hmmmm, I only really count two women there. Well, the third woman is the aforementioned mute wife Willie, and it’s here that I admit to being a little stymied. Her big contribution to the film are the creation of the aforementioned murals at the bottom of the pool at Dodge City. Plot-wise, she suffers a stillborn birth and is probably complicit with the other two women in the murder of Edgar.

So, yeah, someone smarter than me may need to jump in here and give a dissertation on Willie. If I had to make a guess (and since you’ve been nice enough to read this, I think I at least owe you a blind stab), I’ve taken Willie’s stillness, in every unfortunate sense of the word, to be the sort of axis against which Willie and Pinky shift up, then down again, throughout the course of the film. I also feel like it isn’t coincidence that all three women essentially have the same name; Millie and Willie are separated by just one letter that are basically identical. As well, it’s revealed that Pinky’s birth name is Mildred, or Millie.

Now, there are much, much, much deeper analyses of 3 WOMEN out there that views the movie through the prism of dream theory, and the way that people in a dream are able to kind of shift characters within that dreamscape. To that end, the common interpretation is that the three women represent the shifting psyche, personalities and lifetimes within one woman (the infatuated child, the liberated young woman, and the older mother). It all sounds right to me, although I certainly don’t have the credentials to really dig into any that.

But, the thing is, even if you didn’t give a whiff about any of the psychoanalysis of it all, the damn thing works kinda just on the surface level of “creepy roommate” movie. Spacek plays her wide-eyed obsession so well! It’s certainly not necessarily a subtle performance (you know almost immediately there’s something off about her), but it’s also not overplayed, a mighty difficult balance to strike. Spacek is a performer that I actually haven’t seen in as many things as I had thought, yet her biggest hits loom so large that it feels like I’ve grown up with her anyway. Here, Spacek plays Pinky’s obsession straight instead of going for overtly creepy. She also plays Pinky’s lack of clear identity perfectly. You even feel a twinge of weird sympathy for her as she appears to freak out on the couple that claim to be her parents after her suicide attempt (the movie takes turns).

I’ve alluded in the past to how I’m mostly on the outside looking in in regards to the allure that Shelly Duvall has held on people over the last few generations. I’m not a hater or anything, I’ve just observed that people genuinely adore her to a somewhat intense degree. I don’t know if it’s just that I never grew up with Faerie Tale Theatre as a kid (I am making an assumption this is where most people were introduced to her), paired with the aforementioned lack of strong affinity for THE SHINING. That all said, 3 WOMEN is easily the most I’ve ever liked her. Crucially, you buy her playing “both personalities”, as Millie and Pinky start to swap dispositions and demeanors. She actually might be the biggest reason why the movie works as well as it does.

As for that third woman, crazy thing about Janice Rule: a few years before this movie’s release, the already wildly accomplished actress started studying psychoanalysis, using her fellow acting colleagues as her patients in 1973 (a veritable cornucopia of research opportunities there). She eventually earned her PhD in 1983, and practiced all the way to her death in 2003.

Two other things I wanted to mention: outside of a brief detour into the lyrical content of “Suicide is Painless”, I haven’t talked much about the scores of the Altman movies I’ve already reviewed (an especially egregious error when considered how important the different version of the title tunes are to THE LONG GOODBYE). Something in the opening seconds of 3 WOMEN that struck me immediately, however, was the dichotomy between the setting of the opening scene and the music that accompanies it.

Visually, we are plunged into a senior rehab facility (or “nursing home”, if you want to get pejorative), and it’s the type of facility you’d expect it to look like. It’s sterile, and moderately depressing, but otherwise non-descript. Yet, the Gerald Busby-composed music is quietly tense and sinister, almost like a warning. It sets up how the whole movie feels at times; everything seems recognizable, but you just keep waiting for it all to take a turn (and boy, does it ever).

One last little thing I loved about 3 WOMEN: it is a superb 70’s food movie. Tuna melts, pigs in a blanket, chocolate pudding tarts, something called “penthouse chicken”….although we don’t see much of these 70’s dinner party staples (well, except the tuna melts), the mere threat of them permeates seemingly the entire runtime. Whether this is all part of the dreamscape, or just a quirky little happenstance, it greatly delighted me. I would attend your dinner party, Millie!

In the end, film is a visual medium. More to the point, it’s an art form meant to use images as a vessel for emotion. Thus, even without a PHD in psychology in hand, 3 WOMEN was still able to make me feel strong emotions, even if they were sometimes clouded in confusion. It’s certainly unlike quite anything I’ve seen up to this point, and is possibly the movie that has screamed “revisit me!” the loudest.