"Lick my injuries, bitches" -- Kathryn Bigelow has an Oscar for each gun; image courtesy of chroniclejournal.com
When I originally decided to do an entry on Juliette Lewis covering PJ Harvey’s “Hardly Wait” and “Rid of Me” in Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, it was to be written about in the spirit of righteous indignation. You see, Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker was nominated for Best Picture. Bigelow herself got a nod for Best Director. This is noteworthy because a) The Hurt Locker is awesome despite some minor problems and potential commonalities between it and the Lethal Weapon series, b) it was made for a pittance, and c) Bigelow is one of four women to be nominated for Best Director. And while Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, and Sofia Coppola preceded her, none of them won. So I was certain that James Cameron’s Avatar was going to take home those coveted Oscars.
But it didn’t! Bigelow won both awards last night. Cheers! Suck it, Cameron.
So, I haven’t seen Strange Days yet, as I didn’t get to it before the Oscars. Of Bigelow’s movies, it seems one most people are pretty “feh” about. All my friends seem to love Point Break and many critics champion Near Dark. I’ll get to all of these when I have the time. And from what I can gather from these scenes, Lewis’s Faith is very much to-be-looked-at by Ralph Fiennes’s protagonist Lenny Nero, a criminal who yearns to reunite with his ex-girlfriend. And she’s vulnerable to further objectification as the bad object I always try to problematize: the female singer shimmying about on stage without an instrument.
But I’d like to consider two other things about Bigelow and Harvey.
1. The foreboding attitude behind “Rid of Me” is somewhat poignant in the context of Bigelow’s career. Prior to The Hurt Locker, the last movie she made was 2002’s K19: The Widowmaker, which garnered disappointing reviews and box office returns. Though several other male contemporaries continued to work in that time, Bigelow couldn’t get a project greenlit. And she was only given $11 million to make The Hurt Locker, but clearly didn’t need billions of dollars to create the movie’s taut, gripping, visually spectacular action sequences. You may wish you never met me, but you’re not rid of me, Hollywood.
2. The discussion of Bigelow’s brief marriage to Cameron and how masculine her movies are suggests further kinship with Harvey. Harvey briefly dated Nick Cave in the mid-90s, and people draw comparisons between the two. People have also magnified the masculine quality of Harvey’s sound and lyrical approach, particularly early in her career. And like Harvey, Bigelow really wishes you’d stop focusing on her sex and gender in relation to her work.
While I can’t take emphasis away from these things, I can get excited at the influence these women may have on future generations of musicians and filmmakers. As Kristen at Act Your Age points out, director Emily Hagins may be a sign of things to come. Like Bigelow, who plays with conventionally “masculine” film genres, Hagins makes horror movies, which tend to be a dude’s game. I can’t wait to see and hear what is to come.
Jean Craddock "interviewing" Bad Blake; image courtesy of filmreviewonline.com
I caught Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart earlier this week, along with the underwhelming Bright Star and heavy-handed Food Inc.. Unless I sneak in a matinée viewing of Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, I should be done with my Oscar viewing for tomorrow night’s ceremony, which I will watch with a few friends at home. Pile my plate with helpings of “A Single Manicotti,” I’m uh, serious, man.
So, back to Crazy Heart. As I mentioned in a comment I left on Caitlin at Dark Room’s Oscar round-up, I thought this one was pretty boring. Very “for your consideration,” but with ultimately low stakes. Washed-up country singer Bad Blake has a chance at redemption, if he can just manage not to forfeit it all for another bottle of booze. Will he turn “Good”? Who cares really? It’s a victory lap for Jeff Bridges, who is predictably great as Blake. He’s a lock for Best Actor, though I really want Colin Firth to win for his devastating performance in Tom Ford’s A Single Man. If they gave Oscars to comedic performances, I’d have elected for Bridges to win for The Big Lebowski.
One actor I was pleasantly surprised about was Colin Farrell, who plays Blake’s more successful protegé Tommy Sweet. In a part that could have been one-dimensional, Farrell mines a lot of pathos for a character caught between his artistic integrity, conscience, and responsibilities as a career artist at a major label. My only complaint with Sweet is that his music is too similar to Blake’s. The lack of differentiation makes sense, as Ryan Bingham, the late Steve Bruton, and T-Bone Burnett wrote the songs for both characters. Yet if Sweet is meant to represent Nashville’s commercial sensibilities, I’d like more of a musical contrast between the two. Keith Urban is closer to how I imagine Sweet really sounds.
But my real problem is with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Jean Craddock. It isn’t to do with her performance, which is nominated for Best Supporting Actress. It’s purely a screenwriting problem, one I sensed would be there going in. I hate when my suspicions are confirmed.
Craddock plays a music journalist who is trying to get an interview with Blake. But her occupation is of little concern, as she’s in bed with him after their second meeting. We know very little about Craddock besides her profession, her residence in Santa Fe, her status as a single mother to a young son named Buddy, and that she’s made some bad decisions about men. We never learn what led her to music journalism. We actually never learn what music she might like beyond a passing comment about Lefty Frizzell that’s meant to prove to Blake that she’s knowledgeable enough to interview this particular fallen country legend. And we never get a sense of what being a music journalist means to her, though we do discover that she moves on to another publication at the end of the movie. Basically, she’s just Blake’s love interest, regardless of how Gyllenhaal tries to spin it.
Being cast as the supporting character to the male lead is de rigueur for actresses, and Gyllenhaal is no exception (see also The Dark Knight). Quality pictures are vulnerable to this trap. Contrast Gyllenhaal’s Jean with her leading role in Laurie Collyer’s 2008 indie feature Sherrybaby, where Gyllenhaal also plays a single mother. However, there she’s the protagonist and struggling to overcome addiction and earn back the custody of her daughter. I haven’t seen Sherrybaby yet, but I wonder if it does a better job developing Gyllenhaal’s character than the rushed, sketchy Crazy Heart.
But my biggest problem is with Craddock’s lack of professional integrity. Now, I’ve never worked at a publication. Thus I can’t say for certain whether journalists have engaged intimately with interview subjects. Assuredly, some have. But my journalism degree and sense of ethics assure me that it’s a clear breach in conduct. It could have been avoided or at the very least should have been made by Craddock with more internal conflict toward her personal life and professional aspirations. This isn’t to say that Craddock doesn’t value her job. Rather, I think it’s that screenwriter/director Cooper doesn’t value Craddock’s characterization. It’s all about Blake, and that’s too bad.
Aretha Franklin making a strong case for staying in both a marriage and the food service industry; image courtesy of photobucket.com
I finally saw The Blues Brothers a few weekends back. Even for someone who hasn’t seen the majority of SNL-related movies from the 1980s, it’s pretty weird that I haven’t seen this one. My parents were moving from Chicago to Houston around the time it was shot. They actually lived near the mall that got demolished by one of the movie’s many car chase sequences.
Barring my parents’ living situation and my interest in music, it’s also strange that I’ve been in a relationship with someone who notes John Landis’s 1980 Dan Akroyd/John Belushi vehicle as a childhood favorite and hadn’t seen it in our six years together. It led one of us to a lifetime following the blues and launching KVRX’s “Blues At Sunrise.” In addition, Briefcase Full Of Blues has always been go-to cooking music at our house. So when Wax Fax decided to devote a category to the movie for last month’s game, it seemed like the perfect time to bring me up to speed.
As for the movie itself, I liked it fine. It had been talked up so as to fall short of expectations, but I like car chases, black suits, Steve Cropper, and shit getting blowed up as much as the next girl. I still don’t get the appeal of Akroyd or Belushi, but I’m not a Chevy Chase fan either. Bill Murray is another story, and a welcome second season replacement for Chase on SNL.
For me, the movie’s appeal was the music, particularly its musical cameos. Cab Calloway as Jake and Elwood’s mentor? Sure. Ray Charles as a gun-toting music store owner? Sign me up. James Brown as a gospel minister? Of course.
(Note: Do seek out James Brown’s short-lived Future Shock. My friend Evan brought it into my household before he moved to Baltimore with his partner Kit, and we’re all the better for it. Basically, it’s an Atlanta-based public access version of Soul Train hosted by Brown around the time he released Body Heat. In other words, it’s amazing. Tim and Eric can’t make this up.)
But ya’ll know why I really wanted to see The Blues Brothers. Her name starts with an “A.” Before she wore the most amazing hat ever to sing at Obama’s inauguration, she’s was doin’ it for herself with Annie Lennox. She built Atlantic Records. She was young, gifted, and black. She demanded R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Franklin at Obama's inauguration -- even the Clintons can't compete with the hat and the voice; image courtesy of huffingtonpost.com
Aretha Franklin has a cameo in The Blues Brothers. The general premise of the movie is that Blues BrothersJake (Belushi) and Elwood (Akroyd) are reuniting their band upon Jake’s release from jail for shoplifting. One member being brought back in the fold is guitarist Matt Murphy. Trouble is, Murphy is manacled to his wife (played by Franklin), who runs a diner. She doesn’t want him back out on the road, and explains why with “Think,” a Franklin classic.
Rousing, right? Fuck yeah, I’ll stay home and fry chickens and toast white bread for your customers. Why would I ever leave when I’m married to a goddess? Better yet, why don’t we put our own project together because you have those pipes? At the very least we can make room for a Blues Sister.
But the scene ends with Murphy handing in his apron, a symbol of his emasculation, to split with the Blues Brothers. In doing so, not only does Murphy abide by the conceptualization of musicians as feckless nomads, but he also plays into the stereotype of the noncommittal heterosexual black man.
I feel like Franklin is totally cheated here. In addition to playing a supposedly unsympathetic character, employing one of Franklin’s own songs in this way seems a way to cuckold both the character and the actor, who is also the singer. It bums me out.
Admittedly, I haven’t seen the sequel. I know that Franklin reappears with a cadre of ladies in some snazzy duds. I also know that Erykah Badu also makes a cameo and am curious about her involvement. Until then, I’ll cross my arms and hope Mrs. Murphy gets the last laugh, or at least her own Dr. Feelgood. For now, Franklin can play herself off.
In preparation for the Oscars, I’m catching up on my “quality” viewing. I saw The Cove yesterday, which is nominated for Best Documentary and might officially get me to stop eating meat. I also saw An Education, which I previously mentioned having an interest in seeing because protagonist Jenny Miller is shown playing a cello in the preview.
Run away, Jenny Miller!; image courtesy of pastemagazine.com
A lot of people are into this one. And there’s a lot to love. Lone Scherfig directed it. There’s a girl protagonist played by Carey Mulligan. The cast of supporting actresses is substantial. And Peter Sarsgaard mines unexpected pathos in his portrayal of David Goldman, a man who is in essence a sexual predator. I wasn’t so enamored with it, but I thought it was good.
For me, it played out less like a coming-of-age narrative and more like a horror movie, thus enforcing that oftentimes the genres come together. I saw Teeth earlier in the week, but An Education was much scarier. A bright teenage girl succumbing to the dubious charms of a much-older shakedown artist (who, as unfortunate stereotypes go, is also Jewish)? Her parents going along for the ride because he is a man of means that might allow their daughter to bypass going to college though they have no idea who he is or what he does for a living? Aforementioned brainy girl protagonist potentially throwing her life away for the romantic idea of a life with a man who exhibits obvious signs of creepiness (apart from swindling and picking up teenage girls at bus stops, I’m never going to think about a banana the same way again)? That said girl blinds herself to the reality that she couldn’t be the first girl he’s preyed upon (and, we discover later, isn’t)? The fact that all of this is based on Lynn Barber’s memoir and thus “actually” happened? Danger, Will Robinson! I literally said “it’s a trap” and shook my head “no” several times during the screening. And as much as I’d like to think gender politics have changed since the 1960s when the story is set, there are still girls who fall for suspicious men and parents who fall right along with them.
Thus the content of the story has informed my enjoyment of the movie. And while the movie is well-made, I find it more than a little disconcerting how race, class, and gender inform outcomes and expectations for girls. Miller almost throws her life away for a man she knows very little about, but still gets to go to college despite skipping her entrance exams. This has much to do with being a middle-class white girl as it does with her intellectual capability, which of course is nurtured by her private school education. Juxtapose An Education with Precious, another period piece that instead focuses on an illiterate, fat, poor, dark-skinned black girl with an extensive history of family abuse. The disparity between our societal expectations and allowances for white girls and black girls is profound. One girl goes to Oxford despite making poor personal decisions because she’s guided by her heart. Another girl is a single mother living with HIV in inner-city New York because the system is set up against her. These girls are never going to cross paths.
But one thing that I thought was interesting about An Education and wished got more emphasis is Miller’s relationship with music. She does play the cello, though not on her own accord. Her father has her take it up so as to seem well-rounded to Oxford’s admissions board.
That said, she does have knowledge of classical music and is a fan of Maurice Ravel. And in the pantheon of white girls in cinema who use phonographic technology in their bedrooms, Miller is but one more example.
Miller with her record player; image courtesy of vogue.co.uk
It’s especially interesting what she listens to. Miller is a Francophile and loves Juliette Gréco. In the scene highlighted above, Miller is listening to Gréco’s No. 7. The movie also features Gréco’s “Sous Le Ciel de Paris,” an idealized take on the city of lights that was recorded by Édith Piaf in 1954.
Miller’s fandom is much to the chagrin of her father, who believes her love of French chanteuses takes her away from with her studies. As he doesn’t feel the same way about her boyfriend, there’s potential for queer panic. However, I think in her father’s case it’s more consciously informed by the belief that interests and hobbies cannot elevate the social status of girls as much as being paired off with a man. I’m glad Miller ultimately chooses her own livelihood over the wishes of men. I hope she kept the records too.
We're talking about a revolution -- the women of Olivia Records (from left: Judy Dlugasz, Meg Christian, Ginny Berson, Jennifer Woodul, and Kate Winter); image courtesy of maggiesmetawatershed.blogspot.com
The other day after work, I caught a screening put together by UT’s Center for Women and Gender Studies for Dee Mosbacher’s Radical Harmonies, a documentary about the emergence of women’s music starting in the late 1960s. My friend Carrie was good enough to let me know about it, and I’m glad I went.
I’ll be clear. I know very little about women’s music, apart from it developing out of the lesbian separatist movement of the second wave in the 1970s. I have a cursory awareness of continuations of the tradition, particularly evident in the work of Ani DiFranco, The Indigo Girls, and (my personal favorite) The Murmurs.
I went into the screening with some background knowledge about cult figures like Malvina Reynolds thanks to Jessica Hopper’s Tweets about getting into her music.
And I recently attended a trans education workshop put together by OutYouth, where GRCA volunteer Paige Schilt gave an great presentation that outlined instances of transphobia from within the feminist movement, touching on the ongoing rectification of exclusionary policies that dictate the parameters female-only spaces at women’s music festivals.
Going in, I had some hesitations. While I appreciate the efforts of these women, the earnestness behind much of their efforts was a bit off-putting at first. For one, with some exception, women’s music is most closely identified as the work of college-education, middle-class liberal white ladies. I’ll map out the ways in which they were cognizant of this and resistant to it in a moment, but at first hearing I felt a little uncomfortable about the precious sentiments in some of this music, particularly in songs like Margie Adam’s “Song to Susan” and Cris Williamson’s “Joana.” To be clear, I wasn’t embarrassed by what they were singing about, but how they went about delivering their message. As I described it to Kristen at Act Your Age, the music has a very “I held hands with my lover in the park” feel to it. Ugh. Eye roll. Insert ironic comment to offset my discomfort. LOL.
I think my initial misgivings speak most closely to a different generational sensibility afforded to women my age who are allowed to have an irreverant, sardonic attitude toward romance, sex, and sexuality. While considerable gains still need to be made for the equality of LGBTQI folks, attitudes have changed that my peers may take for granted. But in the late 1960s, a woman performing a song about being a lesbian was grounds to shut down a concert. This very thing happened to Maxine Feldman when she had the “nerve” to sing “Angry Atthis,” an ode to her lover and a wish to not have to live life in society’s closet.
Cover of Closet Sale (Galaxia, 1979); image courtesy of maggiesmetawatershed.blogspot.com
In addition, these women were fighting rock music’s sexism and misogyny. Not only were they up against having to prove that they were musicians and not groupies, but they were also in opposition to rock’s use of euphemism and suggestion. One need only look toward the mainstream success of rock’s bad boys The Rolling Stones, whose catalog boasted songs like “Brown Sugar” and “Under My Thumb” to get a sense of what women’s music was fighting against. Within folk music, some male artists like Tim “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain” Buckley were denying any responsibility past their own carnal interests. Even a woman like Joni Mitchell wasn’t safe from rock’s patriarchal strangle-hold, as she was once given the dubious honor of being named Rolling Stone’s Old Lady of the Year early in her illustrious career.
Actually, Joni Mitchell seems pretty unwilling to be Graham Nash's old lady in this photo; image courtesy of morrisonhotelgallery.com
So I understand the mindset of these women. These songs seem to say “not only are we going to sing about the complex poetics of lesbian desire, but we’re going to make absolutely sure that you know exactly what we’re singing about and to whom. For good measure, we’re going to sound as stripped down and intimate as possible.” Take that, Glimmer Twins.
That said, some associated acts with women’s music knew how to shred. Take Fanny as an example. Boasting Philippine American sisters June and Jean Millington on guitar and bass, the group was, at their time, one of the few all-female bands recording and touring with support from a major label (in their case, Reprise). They also rocked.
As mentioned earlier, women’s music tended to be a white woman’s game. That said, there were women of color on the rosters of female-only record labels like Olivia and Redwood. Some of these acts, like Sweet Honey in the Rock, did not identify as lesbians but were on board with Redwood’s pro-woman message. Leader Bernice Johnson Reagon, who was a member of The Freedom Singers and founded Sweet Honey after being moved by Joan Little’s case, could also identify with the label’s political leanings.
Other artists, like Gwen Avery, Judith Casselberry, and Deidre McCalla were openly gay African American women and developed substantial followings. Apparently Avery developed quite a following with her song “Sugar Mama,” which was featured on Olivia’s Lesbian Concentrate compilation.
Cover for Lesbian Concentrate, rendered in direct opposition to Florida Citrus Commission spokeswoman/world-class homophobe Anita Bryant (Olivia, 1977); image courtesy of queermusicheritage.us
In addition, I really appreciate women’s music’s emphasis on historical context and continuation. In addition to their fandom of older artists like Reynolds, artists like Holly Near helped resurrect the career of artists like Ronnie Gilbert, once a member of a fairly obscure country band called The Weavers. By the 1970s, Gilbert had gotten her therapist’s license and come out. By connecting with a younger generation of listeners and working with younger artists, Gilbert helped to forge links between queer and straight women across age ranges and strengthened women’s historical significance in popular music.
As musical artists began developing their repertoire and labels like Olivia, Redwood, Goldenrod, and Ladyslipper took shape, more women forged careers in technical positions. Musician Linda Tillery was perhaps Olivia’s most noteworthy producer. In addition, women like Olivia Records’ co-founder Ginny Berson taught fans how to become concert producers so that her artists had gigs to play, which were usually run by female-only personnel. Some of these fans, notably Kristin Lems, started events like the National Women’s Music Festival in 1974 because no female artists were deemed good enough to play a local festival.
Linda Tillery behind the drums; image courtesy of stanford.edu
One thing festivals like the National Women’s Music Festival and the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival emphasized was inclusion of women with disabilities. As a result, ASL interpreters like Susan Freundlich and Sherry Hicks developed reputations as instrumental virtuosos. They also allowed for many deaf women to experience music for the first time.
Sherry Hicks; image courtesy of aslfestival.com
While I find the notion of the ASL interpreter as instrumentalist to be fascinating, it cannot be overlooked that sign language is culturally developed and thus has regressive potential. In the documentary, Reagon talks about an interpretter tugging on her nostrils to sign the word “Africa” and requested she spell it out instead.
Another thing I was surprised about is where these festivals started to develop. They didn’t originate from the coasts, but instead in parts of the Midwest — particularly Michigan and Illinois. They also caught on in parts of the South. Thus, it can’t be overstated how brave these organizers were. Many of them had no professional experience putting together gigs and events. Several of them also had not yet come out to their communities and faced considerable opposition, if not outright threats to their livelihood.
The one big elephant in the room in this documentary is the transphobia that maligns feminist history. In addition to many festivals’ exclusionary women-born women policy, some feminists were far more invective against transgendered women. Janice Raymond wrote The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male in 1979, a book wherein she reportedly espoused that transgendered women were she-males, male rapists, and associated with Nazis. She also went after Olivia recording engineer (and UT faculty member) Sandy Stone, organizing a boycott of the label’s output.
Transphobia is an ugly presence in feminist history, but one that I think requires greater context besides the uncomfortable head nod and polite smile. Here’s hoping that future feminist historians confront it, learn from it, and work to correct it.
The first time I saw the trailer for Sofia Coppola’s third movie, which featured New Order’s “Age of Consent” . . . the word you’re looking for is “stoked.”
Some friends at the time dismissed the song selection as evidence that this was to be Coppola’s A Knight’s Tale. To me, this suggested short-sightedness (short-hearedness?). While I wasn’t sure whether the movie was going to be good so much as pretty, I knew the meaning of this biopic on Marie Antoinette would be gleaned from the music. Selecting a song about coming of age and its desperate, doomed implications from a band who, at the time of the song’s recording, had reformed after the recent loss of their young lead singer to suicide at the dawn of the Reagan/Thatcher era? Using it to frame the inevitable tragedy of a young woman who unknowingly inherited a fallen regime? Pitch perfect, if you ask me. You can say what you want about Coppola’s movies, but she knows how to pick a song. Or at least she knows how to pick a song selector, in this case music supervisor Brian Reitzell, and entrust him to clear some post-punk classics from her youth.
The movie itself appears apolitical, as would seem appropriate as it focuses on a clueless and ridiculously wealthy group of young people who have no idea what kind of tragedy they’re about to inherit after generations of neglect. The audience, on the other hand, know Marie Antoinette’s life will end at the hands of righteously pissed poor French people who cut off her head. Some characters clue others in on the contentious relationships France has with itself, Austria, Poland, and a set of colonies that was becoming the United States. Most people are too busy buying shoes, throwing parties, trying to extend the family line, or having affairs to listen.
The musical selections serve to politicize the movie. The deliberate use of anachronism intrigued me, particularly when creating analogues between the political unrest of pre-Revolutionary France and England’s recessionary 70s and the early days of Thatcher’s reign. Class distinctions aside, it’s easy to draw connections between the unseen revolutionaries and the somewhat subcultural art school punks and New Romantics, many of whom drew from this era in their own work. Thus, I was thrilled that Coppola’s imagining of Versailles last days included Adam Ant, Siouxsie Sioux, Bow Wow Wow, and Converse sneakers.
Take the opening sequence as an example. The movie begins with an opening credit sequence accompanied by “Natural’s Not In It” from once-anti-capital post-punk band Gang of Four. The song indicts the empty pleasures of consumerism. The screen is black, with personnel credits appearing in hot pink. Only one vignette is shown during this part of the movie. It is of the young queen complying with the mythology of the frivolous heiress. In this scene, she lazes while an attendant puts on her shoe. She absent-mindledly runs a finger across an elaboratedly iced cake, licks off her treat, and addresses the camera with a decided air of self-satisfaction. Let them eat cake off my finger, bitches.
In tribute to my friend Kit, who could watch this scene on a loop; image courtesy of tinkersdamn.wordpress.com
Unfortunately, Gang of Four sold out big time. Did anyone see catch reunion tour? I didn’t, but I heard they charged $20 for merch. Upon hearing this news, I let out of a sigh, looked up, and nodded to irony’s unseen deity.
There are several moments where post-punk is used. In the scenes highlighted below, I believe that the music indicates these things. One scene uses a cover song to highlight the sexy but empty promises of commodity fetish from a pre-fab band with a pre-teen girl lead singer who was marketed as sexually available by their producer. Another scene highlights the thoughtless spoils of youth during timeless moments of celebration, and is performed by a band that were supposed to be Joy Division but became New Order. The next scene suggests a Western mindset that criticizes the packaging of girls like consumer goods by using a song that has racist assumptions about Eastern traditions from a female punk who played with fascist and Orientalist imagery. The last scene seems to endorse the belief that sexual awakening, like many white people’s romantic notions of a monolithic Native American culture, is primitive and innate. Yowza. Of course, if you don’t know these songs you may lose these layers of interpretation. Thus Coppola’s movie demands that you listen as well as look for meaning.
Coppola also does a good job stealing from other people’s movies. The jump cuts might suggest a considerable indebtedness to the French New Wave and the mise-en-scène recalls Barry Lyndon and The Leopard. But musical cues suggest other cinematic references. Witness Antoinette’s morning routine, which is shown three times during the movie. It’s scored by Antonio Vivaldi’s “Concerto alla rustica,” originally composed in the early 1730s. These scenes are supposed to convey the repititious and dehumanizing nature of her existence. The song is used the same way in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, except instead of playing when a young heiress gets dressed in front of the female members of the court, it scores a director-choreographer pounding Dexedrine and Alka-Seltzer.
Coppola hedged her bets by casting Steve Coogan, known for his a spot-on performance as Factory Records impresario/post-punk godfather Tony Wilson in Michael Winterbottom’s 24-Hour Party People, as the queen’s long-suffering advisor who knows Versailles, like Rome, is about to fall. It could also be argued that Marianne Faithfull serves a similar function in her role as Antoinette’s mother Maria Theresa. Not only did she inherit a matrialineal heritage of Austrian nobility, but she’s also a hardened, toughened relic of the swingin’ Sixties and a survivor of the sexism behind its free love ideals.
Marianne Faithfull as Maria Theresa; image courtesy of artandmylife.wordpress.com
I watched the movie several times when it came out. Indeed, the subject of my first grad school conference presentation (originally developed as a term paper) was about the use of popular music in Coppola’s movies and paid particular attention to her third feature offering.
This movie could’ve been really great. I think it sets out to do something fresh and modern with period pieces, particularly by deliberately disorienting the viewer with moments of anachronism, not only in music, but also in dialogue, characterization, and costuming. Coppola said the intent of these moments is to humanize the people behind this history, some perhaps interpretting the movie to be an autobiography by proxy. I don’t think Coppola ever fully humanizes her subject. I also don’t believe the movie is really supposed to be about her, her jet-set life, or the ridicule she received for her performance as Mary Corleone in the final installment of her father’s Godfather series. Though if you want to read Marie Antoinette as Coppola’s attempt at a biopic, she does cast her boyfriend Thomas Mars in the movie, whose band seranades the young queen.
But I think Coppola accomplishes something far more interesting here: by distorting place and time to such an extreme, she obliterates the idea that period pictures adapted from historical biographies ever attempt to be historically accurate. Indeed, there is no real history. The past then becomes open to interpretation, with no reading a true, definitive version. Indeed, history as a discipline becomes an unreliable narrator.
But the movie never quite works for me as a text so much as a theoretical exercise.
I hate to blame the success of a project on one person, but I think Coppola made an unwise decision in casting Kirsten Dunst. Past her performances in Little Women, The Virgin Suicides, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, and what I’m told is a noteworthy turn in Interview With a Vampire, I’m of the mind that Dunst is . . . limited . . . as an actress. I don’t think she does a good job here. I used to think that Dunst was believable in her portrayal of the young dauphine and that, once she had to play the queen of France and had to demonstrate (or believe she was demonstrating) emotional maturity, I was kicked out of the text. This opinion presents two interesting challenges, one of which I’d pose to Kristen at Act Your Age: what does it mean when an adult actress can convince an audience that she’s 14 but not 30? The other is that I think the movie should end once Marie Antoinette is crowned. By stretching on into her adult years and stopping short of her death, the movie no longer seeks to revise the period biopic and instead becomes one.
But upon reviewing, I find that I don’t buy Dunst at all. She gives a servicable performance if Coppola set out to turn a magazine photo shoot into a movie, an argument I remember my friend Karin making. The movie could be so much more than Nylon’s take on Versailles, but I don’t think Dunst can carry it. I don’t buy her losing her dog, or having a baby, or having a torrid affair, or saying goodbye to the palace and her life. And I never buy the complex angst she’s supposed to be feeling about her sham marriage to a late-blooming Louis XVI (played by Jason Schwartzman) or all of the ridiculous expectations placed upon her narrow shoulders.
This is about as close as Dunst gets to inner turmoil; image courtesy of iwatchstuff.com
One scene completely kicks me out of the movie. Leading into the buyer’s remorse porn that is the “I Want Candy” montage sequence, the dauphine breaks down decides to rebel against the court by turning spending sprees into a lifestyle. This could be a very powerful moment in a very ornate, feminine movie about one of the most maligned and notoriously well-appointed female figure in European history. The camera is uncomfortably close to the subject, peering at her convulsing face and heaving chest with panoramic, voyeuristic intent. This could be an ugly scene with a decidedly feminist subtext potentially in line with Linda Williams’s reading on the abject qualities of melodrama, horror, and pornography in her seminal essay “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Except there is nothing to see. Dunst provides no tears, no facial distortions, no gutteral sobs. It’s all very contained — easily one of the prettiest and most detached fit of hysterics I’ve seen.
It would seem that this is the performance Coppola wanted, and that Antoinette’s release comes from shopping. This perhaps suggests that maybe Antoinette can’t cry, and that her upbringing does not allow her the ability to lose composure. But I have to wonder if it would be easier to empathize with a character played by someone who is acting instead of modeling. For a movie that attempts to humanize a villified historical subject, this scene actually suggests that she’s inhuman. Perhaps it’s because she’s a theory and not a person. And if that person isn’t presented as complex, at least the theories that cultivate her existence are a minefield.
Clamdandy, played by Lori Petty, Shelly Cole, Gina Gershon, and Drea De Matteo; image courtesy of filmlinc.com
The general consensus is that Prey for Rock & Roll is terrible. In fact, the trailer looked terrible.
But it’s about a LA-based band named Clamdandy (shudder) comprised of queer women supposedly past their prime. One of my favorite scenes in Whip It!is when Juliette Lewis’s character Iron Maven admits to Ellen Page’s Babe Ruthless that she didn’t find something she was really good at until after turning 30. I root for the underdog. You know this. Bonus points for a movie that features Lori Petty and Drea De Matteo, the latter of whom broke my heart as Adriana La Cerva on The Sopranos and looks like she was born to play in a rock band.
That said, wow what a pile of garbage Alex Steyermark’s directorial debut is. He’s since retreated back to his roots as a music supervisor and I think that’s for the best. I had no idea that a movie which opens on close-up fragments of Gina Gershon’s bare midriff, leather adorned chest, and open pout had nowhere to go but down.
But the movie has bigger obstacles than poor technical execution. It’s hard to overcome a script as hackneyed as the one first-time screenwriters Cheri Lovedog and Robin Whitehouse penned. Let’s count the regressions and clichés. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t worry about the spoilers. You’ll see them coming.
1. Gershon’s Jacki is a bisexual tattoo artist who discovered the power of rock through Tina Turner and Exene Cervenka. She starts the movie with Jessica (played by Shakara Ledard), an African American woman who she casts aside in the name of rock. By the end of the movie, she’s with a white bruiser convict with a neck tattoo who goes by the name of Animal (played by Marc Blucas, who most Buffy fans will remember as Riley Finn). But don’t worry. He murdered his pedophile stepfather to save his sister, Sally.
2. Drummer Sally (played by Shelly Cole, who I’m currently watching play Madeline on another WB/CW teen soap called Gilmore Girls) is not only a survivor of sexual abuse. She also gets raped by Nick (played by Ivan Martin), a junkie with a sick rape fetish who dates bassist Tracy (De Matteo).
3. Tracy’s a junkie too. That damn trust fund is an albatross. But don’t worry — she gets clean after Jacki reveals to Sally that she has a similar family history and the band write a song called “Every Six Minutes” about sexual assault. I should be more excited about a song that confronts and indicts rape, but Lovedog isn’t a good songwriter either. For a good example of an anti-rape song, might I point you toward X’s “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene”?
Or, since punk boys often misunderstood its message, let’s listen to The Raveonettes’ “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed).”
4. Sally is a lesbian and is dating guitarist Tracy (Petty). In addition to being punished by having to listen to the half-hearted efforts of lazy guitar students as an instructor, Tracy gets killed by an oncoming car when some no-goodniks of color steal her guitar.
But fear not. The band soldiers on. And yet, I have no real reason to care.
For today’s entry, I consider two scenes from Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar, her second feature and an adaptation of Alan Warner’s 1995 novel of same name. I wanted to see it for these reasons.
1. My friend Kevin’s birthday was last week, and as he studies Scottish media culture and hipped me to Ramsay when we were in school together, it seemed a fitting tribute.
2. My friend Curran thinks highly enough of this film and its titular protagonist that he named his cat after her.
3. The AV Club put this one in the New Cult Canon. In fact, they regarded lead actress Samantha Morton’s work here so much that they considered it one of the last decade’s best screen performances.
4. I haven’t seen Morton in much past a few music videos (ex: U2’s “Electrical Storm” and The Horrors’ “Sheena Is a Parasite“) and movies I didn’t like (Minority Report) or felt torn about (Synecdoche, New York). But I like her and thinks she possesses one of the most interesting faces.
Samantha Morton as Morvern Callar; image courtesy of daily.greencine.com
As this is Ramsay’s sophomore feature, it is also the second movie of her’s that I’ve seen. I saw Ratcatcher, a surprising and assured debut about working-class Scots trying to endure 1973’s particularly hellish summer. It’s great and I highly recommend seeing it, along with reading Caitlin at Dark Room’s entry on it. But Morvern Callar meant more to me. I had little expectation or preconception going into this movie, but was left haunted and dazzled by it. A wonderful surprise.
Without giving too much away, the movie is about a young woman who is coping with her boyfriend James’s recent suicide. Clearly shellshocked but ambivalent about his death, Callar spends much of the movie figuring out how she feels and what she should do. The caliber of Morton’s performance is evident in how successfully she conveys much of Callar’s conflicting feelings without words. Callar disposes of the body, empties his bank account, and takes her co-worker friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott) on a trip to Spain. She uses travel as an attempt to clear her head. She’s particularly haunted by two souvenirs James left her: a novel Callar successfully passes off as her own to an interested publishing house, and a mix tape he made for her called “Music For You.”
As we never meet the deceased James Gillespie and thus never learn of his motives, I’ll give the selfish fucker this: he put together a good mix tape. The movie boasts songs by Can, Stereolab, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and Broadcast, musical acts that could easily be on a young person’s mix tape (mine, for example). Yet we don’t know whose taste the mix is reflecting. They seem to be songs that reminded James of his relationship with Morvern, but we never learn who influenced who. As one of the last scenes in the movie shows Callar packing a bunch of CDs into a suitcase and leaving the apartment she presumably shared with James, I like to think they shared similar musical taste.
There are several scenes in the movie that show Callar listening to his mix tape. I have selected two particularly arresting ones that work wonderfully with the visuals. It might be easy to read these scenes as James serving as narrator through popular music, but the subjectivity is solely his girlfriend’s.
The first scene is Callar reporting to work at a non-descript supermarket. The accompanying music is Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra’s “Some Velvet Morning.” Shortly after this scene, Callar and her friend leave town.
The next scene is the last one in the movie, accompanied by The Mamas and the Papas’ poignant “Dedicated to the One I Love.” Callar is alone at a rave in some unnamed part of the world. She’s away from her hometown and presumably living on the novel’s advance. She’s alone, though I’m not convinced she’s lonely. Grief is complex, and may not feel like grief at times. However she might be feeling, she can always press rewind and play and start the tape back over again.
The Stains -- bassist Tracy (Marin Kanter), vocalist Corinne (Diane Lane), guitarist Peg (Laura Dern); image courtesy of history.sffs.org
It’s crazy that the movie that is the subject of this post only came out on DVD in 2008. Director Lou Adler and screenwriter Nancy Dowd’s modest feature made its cinematic debut in 1982 (note: Dowd was credited as Rob Morton, a pseudonym the Oscar winner used from time to time — I wonder if having the illusion of a man write the script got the project off the ground). It starred Diane Lane, Ray Winstone, Laura Dern, and Christine Lahti. It featured The Clash’s Paul Simenon and Sex Pistols Paul Cook and Steve Jones. It went on to influence riot grrrl and has been referenced by other musicians (see the music video for Mika Miko’s ”Business Cats“).
And yet the first time I saw this movie was in a class screening. It was during the final days of grad school before the DVD’s summer release. The version I saw was a laserdisc transfer, and included 15 seconds of static from when the person recording the movie flipped the disc. Nutty, right? Kinda informs why I’m a feminist and have an ambivalent relationship with having to dig for representative media texts that I like. I’m proud of it but irritated by it at the same time. If it gets translated into snobbishness, it’s really righteous indignation.
The plot is as follows. Lane plays Corinne Burns, a teenage orphan who has to figure out how she and her sister Tracy (Marin Kanter) can support themselves after being fired from her jill job. While staying with her aunt Linda (Lahti), she starts scheming ways to start a pirate radio station that will broadcast “rock and roll and the truth.” She ends up convincing her sister and cousin Jessica (Dern, whose character prefers to be called Peg) to start a band called The Stains. After catching British punk band The Looters, a fictitious rock band fronted by Billy (Ray Winstone) and manned by bassist Simenon, drummer Cook, and guitarist Jones, Burns’s purpose is clear. She can’t just be in the audience, some chick in the crowd among pregnant teens with nicotine habits and folks squandering their youth at the piss factory. She’s gotta get The Stains on the bill. Like so many rock legends before her, she’s gotta get outta this place if it’s the last thing she ever does.
Corinne Burns becoming rock star Third Degree Burns; image courtesy of fashionista.com
At first, Corrine tries to appeal to Billy as a fan, who is otherwise occupied with a groupie. She is then approached by The Looters’ road manager, a Rastafarian named Lawnboy (Barry Nichols) and gets The Stains booked as the opening act. It seems as though Lawnboy needs his own insurance, as the top-billed act are a has-been dinosaur rock outfit appropriately called The Metal Corpses. They’ve got a heroin addict guitar player in tow. They’re also fronted by a real charmer named Lou (played by Tubes frontman Fee Waybill). You can tell what kind of guy he is when he recounts a tryst with an older groupie acquaintance — apparently she’s as good as she ever was, but that damn kid of her’s would not stop crying and interrupting their “time” together. Class act.
Anyway, The Stains become huge and cultivate a legion of die-hard girl fans. Corpses’ guitarist Jerry Jervey (Tubes’ keyboardist Vince Welnick) inevitably dies of an overdose. This gives Burns an opportunity to spin the story and create her own mythology. Apparently Jervey loved her. She couldn’t reciprocate and he took his own life. This lie turns Burns’s band into a full-blown media sensation. Which is good, because their first gig doesn’t go so well.
But this clip, which features “Waste of Time” (penned by Barry Ford), explains why The Stains garner both an on- and off-screen feminist following (note: to preserve this image, don’t see Streets on Fireas it features Lane playing a rock star damsel in distress). The music suggests post-punk and indie’s lo-fi sensibilities and politicized amateurism. The message is blatantly feminist, and delivered through a girl’s plain-spoken sneer. This girl has as much use for pants as Lady Gaga, but her visible panties don’t mean that she puts out. She’s also equipped a replicable look and quotable opinions about how she doesn’t give a fuck about patriarchy. A star is born, and she’s after your daughters. They call themselves Skunks.
A legion of Skunks waiting to see The Stains; image courtesy of photobucket.com
By the way, if either of the dude-friends who run the Lab want to create a Stains t-shirt, I reckon you’d have a sell-out item on your hands. I think the design should include the caption, “They’ve got such big plans for the world but they don’t include us.”
Also, make sure to add YACHT’s cover of “Waste of Time” to your next mix.
Once The Stains break, The Looters bristle at just how much they’re being overshadowed by the opening act, especially since they’re just a bunch of girls (or “birds,” since they’re British). But Billy also seems impressed with Burns. He eventually seduces her, though I doubt the genuineness of his attraction as it seems more like a power grab. He wins her over by teaching her his band’s song “Be A Professional,” a song about refusing to join the army. But their romance is promptly ended by Burns when up-and-coming act Black Randy and the Metro Squad threaten to knock The Stains off the bill. The romance is over, but she keeps a souvenir.
Jilted Billy nearly ruins the band by revealing Burns to be a fraud after she becomes too big for him (she becomes a superstar in a little over a week). However, her fans come through for her in the end, making The Stains a tremendously successful pop band just in time for the advent of MTV. But something tells me they’d be pressured to change the name. Some label exec would try to convince them that “The Stains” wouldn’t look good on a poster with “The Go-Gos” and “The Bangles.”
Corinne faces the dreaded ex while Billy confronts the girl and legend; image courtesy of 24hourpartypooper.wordpress.com
The ending is as good a place as any to address that while I like this movie, it’s far from perfect. There’s the rushed storyline that also requires a considerable suspension of disbelief. There’s the unfortunate romantic coupling between the two leads that feels completely unnecessary and without much motivation. Some of the dialogue doesn’t work and the young cast’s performances tend to be mannered. And the ending casts a dark pall on the rest of the movie. It confirms that the girls totally sold out. More essentializing sorts might read this ending as a self-fulfilling prophecy, that The Stains became what Burns pegged one disinterested female concertgoer as: just girls waiting to die.
Join the professionals on MTV; image courtesy of flickr.com
However, I read the ending more as an indictment on how punk became new wave and how bands like The Talking Heads, The Go-Gos, and Blondie were recast by major label record executives in the process. “Be a professional, join the professionals” on MTV, as “you’re gonna be one anyway.” And when you consider that the movie was made at new wave’s zenith and the cable network’s infancy, it’s a pretty damning ending that I think is in keeping with punk’s cynical, incredulous take on human nature.
Of course, it must be acknowledged that many riot grrrls and their contemporaries who may have been inspired by this movie became professionals too. Queercore legacies Kaia Wilson and Tammy Rae Carland ran Mr. Lady for many years. Miranda July makes movies. Carrie Brownstein works for NPR. Beth Ditto has a clothing line. Kathleen Hanna is an archival subject. Johanna Fateman runs a hair salon. Of course, these are enviable jobs and social positions that work toward resisting patriarchal culture. Professionalism doesn’t have to mean compromise, but it does insure a constant process of negotiation.
But just as this movie is about young women trying to negotiate when to hold on to integrity in the working world, it is also about how they interact and influence one another. Thus, female mentorship informs much of the movie’s narrative.
The Stains are considered role models for their audience. Some commentators believe this be to their fans’ detriment, as the skunk hairdos, extreme make-up, pantsless get-ups, and disinterest toward marriage and babies assuredly will lead to wickedness (thus predicting the moral panic later waged against Madonna and her fans). Most folks who hold this opinion are male. Billy clearly espouses this opinion because he’s jealous of The Stains’ success, feels taken advantage of by Burns after she steals his song, and thinks very little of this emergent aggregate’’s collective intelligence. News anchor and affirmed sexist Stu McGrath (John Lehne) thinks The Stains, and Burns in particular, are bad influences. He also seems of the opinion that they sure are sexy and naughty, which echoes how British television personality and first-rate drunk Bill Grundy seemed to feel about Siouxsie Sioux when she sat with The Sex Pistols during their infamous interview.
However, journalist Alicia Meeker (Cynthia Sikes) loves The Stains. She’s excited and inspired by their story. She also plays a part in their success by providing them coverage on local television as well as sticking up for them on the air. She’s quick to point out that these girls aren’t delinquents or degenerates. Instead, she sees them as self-sufficient individuals. She makes no bones about her partiality, and does little to hide her seething contempt for McGrath, with whom she shares a news desk.
Jessica’s Aunt Linda is interesting as well, though misses an opportunity to be a mentor. At first, she seems resistant to her daughter and nieces’ rebellion, and later dismissive of their success. But in a devastating scene that unfolds for both the band and the viewer on a television screen in the display window of an appliance store, it’s revealed in an interview that Linda is proud of them and wishes she was more encouraging. Worse yet, Linda knows all too well what it’s like to grow up in a household peopled with family members who didn’t believe she could amount to anything.
This admission makes an early scene when Linda is first introduced particularly poignant. We meet Linda in her front room, giving herself an at-home manicure with a girlfriend. The ladies break out in an a capella rendition of Carole King’s anthemic “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” Linda nails the song’s high harmonies, but no one hears it. Even the girls ignored it at the time. I wonder if they reflect on it later. I hope they carry on in her memory.
One of my favorite hypotheticals to play is “what’s my dissertation going to be about?” I’ve heard some good ones from friends in the academy, some of whom are putting them together as I type. I often formulate my ideas here, but haven’t nailed it down yet.
It could very easily be about Fox Searchlight and its role in commodifying indie during the 2000s. Read the titles – Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Slumdog Millionaire, (500) Days of Summer, Whip It! Hell, even Darjeeling Limited was a Fox Searchlight picture. And while Wes Anderson’s 2007 India road movie showcases The Kinks and not Vampire Weekend, his quirky aesthetic is all over Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, and Juno.
"I made this happen," says Wes Anderson; image courtesy of theauteurs.com
But I’m a little resistent to the idea of writing about Fox Searchlight, despite the fact that I think it’s essential to formulating theories about the decade when indie broke. For one, I’m not a huge fan of many of these movies (I’m with Annie — Garden State seemed way less profound the second time I watched it). For another, to my surprise, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist was distributed through Columbia.
I saw Nick and Norah during its theatrical release in fall 2008. I hated it. I thought Lorene Scafaria’s script was too slick (perhaps unfairly comparing it fellow Fempire screenwriter Diablo Cody’s work). I didn’t know why headphone-crossed Jersey kids Nick O’Leary and Norah Silverberg (played by Michael Cera and Kat Dennings) had the same first names as the gin-soaked sleuths of The Thin Man series, nor did I understand why their playlist was infinite (maybe I’d have to peruse Rachel Cohn and David Leviathan’s book on which the movie was based).
Some of the hatred was unfounded. Since iPod ear buds appear to form a heart on the movie poster, I assumed Apples were gonna fall on me like I was Isaac Newton. Refreshingly, the movie’s music geeks are pretty low-fi. These kids like antiquated things like posters, fliers, radios, and mix CDs. Me too.
Poster for "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"; image courtesy of musingforamusement.blogspot.com
Annie and I talked about the movie last May. She seemed to think that it was mostly just okay, but liked that there were gay teen characters whose sexuality wasn’t commented upon. But then she also asked me my opinion on a scene that I had completely misread. So, several months later, I finally got around to rewatching it.
Truth told, upon second viewing my response wasn’t quite as venomous. It contained some promising moments, and I do like Mark Mothersbaugh’s score. That said, I don’t think I can in good conscience like this movie.
1. Norah Silverberg has a friend named Caroline who clearly has a drinking problem (kudos to Ari Graynor for playing drunk convincingly, as it’s hard to do well — I also thought she was hot in Whip It!). Caroline stumbles around New York City alone, black-out drunk, and swimming in her own vomit. She’s also positioned as a burden on her BFF who often abandons her to go be with a boy she likes, thus cancelling out any sisterhood this movie could have. All of this, to my horror, is played for laughs. The entire time, I was just hoping she wouldn’t get raped, abused by the police, or die of alcohol poisoning.
1A. Caroline runs into men at port authority who won’t help her get home. One of these men is a ticket taker played by Frankie Faison, who was awesome as Commissioner Burrell on The Wire and several other things you’ve seen him in without knowing his name. The other is a mute fast food employee who lets her eat his turkey sandwich, played with the precisely executed defeat Kevin Corrigan brings to the majority of his sad sack characters. Someone be an ally and help get this girl home.
Nick and Norah holding up Caroline, until they can pawn her off on someone else; image courtesy of areyouscreening.com
2. I find the whole love triangle between Nick, Norah, and Nick’s ex-girlfriend and Norah’s classmate Tris unfortunate. Tris (played by Alexis Dziena, who folks may also remember as Lolita in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers) is a popular girl who would probably only spend time with a dweeb like Nick because he’s harmless and his adoration boosts her self-esteem (perhaps not unlike cheerleader Cindy Sanders dating geek Sam Weir at the end of Freaks and Geeks). Thus, Tris follows Nick throughout the whole movie, first in the hopes of making him jealous at his gig by waving around her new boy only then to be jealous when he starts hanging with Norah.
Oh, and Tris and Norah hate each other. Norah thinks Tris is a skeeze and Tris thinks Norah is a frosty box. Girl power!
2A. Tris gets Nick to drive her home toward the end of the night and does a sexy dance for him on some dock. He strands her in New York in the middle of the night. Yikes! Not the way to be, bro.
3. While it’s interesting that Nick O’Leary is in a queercore band called The Jerk-Offs, his gay bandmates function as little more than the gay best friends (see also: Sex and the City or the mice in Cinderella). They’re cute, fashionable, insatiably horny, and all too willing to be saddled with Caroline so that Nick and Norah can fall in love. One of them is Asian American, which perhaps should be exciting, but he gets little more dimension than the “MySpace is the new booty call” guy from He’s Just Not That Into You. His name is Thom, by the way (played by Aaron Yoo).
The Jerk-Offs; image courtesy of soundofdusk.blogspot.com
Also for some reason, these guys carry a box of push-up bras in their van so they can help make over the supposedly frumpy Norah so she can help Nick get over Tris. These bras fit her, somehow.
Admittedly, they do come up with a good alternate band name. I’d go see Dickache.
3A. There’s some icky homophobia that goes on in Andy Samberg’s cameo. While I’m sure it was deemed good for his brand to be associated with this project, I’m not sure Nick’s crazy homeless sexual predator is quite the angle I’d go along with.
4. I’m not sure how good The Jerk-Offs are, but I doubt they’re big enough to open for Bishop Allen. Just sayin’.
5. It’s much harder to navigate the entirety of New York in a night by public transit. Somehow these kids are doing it on foot or in a van. And they’re always finding a place to park. Infuriating.
6. The entire Where’s Fluffy? storyline is a disaster.
For one, the band should never be named, because any band name Scafaria came up with was not going to serve the mythological importance the band serves for the characters. As it stands, Where’s Fluffy? is on par with Hey That’s My Bike! for worst movie band names (I think the best might be Sonic Death Monkey and Kinky Wizards from High Fidelity, but welcome other examples).
Ethan Hawke's Hey That's My Bike! from "Reality Bites"; image courtesy behindthehype.com
For another, the movie doesn’t pre-date social networking and wireless communication technology, yet you’d think it does. Before the kids got to any gig, someone might have checked Twitter, Facebook, or received multiple text messages from other friends about the status of each show. Instead, these kids rely on the radio, and are thus completely clueless about the status of their favorite band’s show. How’s that for lo-fi?
Oh, the storyline does get one other thing right. Gossip can lead to awesome fake-outs. The funniest example in my experience was when Dinosaur Jr. were rumored to reunite to headline the Merge showcase during SXSW 2006. I think there was a rumor that The Arcade Fire were going to play the same showcase as well. People stayed in line for hours to catch . . . Spoon. Admittedly, Spoon are a great band. But they were local at the time, and pretty easy to catch. Haha.
I think I was waiting to see Animal Collective at the time, which my partner scorned me for because a) the show was kinda boring (err, I mean . . . ”meditative”) and b) Neko Case and Sharon Jones were playing at the same time. Win some, lose some.
Finally, having the kids chase Fluffy around town doesn’t make sense, especially when a far less convoluted resolution exists: the concert sells out. It happens all the time. I bet it really happens all the time in New York, as it has more people and fewer venues to accomodate them, hence why so many alternative venues have formed. No brainer. Also, a sold-out show is a great way to get the leads together. I’ve had some lovely dates as a result of not getting in to a show.
7. If you’ve gotten this far in the list, are you noticing how busy this movie is? It’s only 90 minutes long too. As a result, all plot twists feel hasty and poorly developed. A lot could be cut out of this movie. I’d remove Caroline’s drinking or the love triangle (actually, it’s a love rectangle — I forgot that Norah is sort of dating some rock wannabee named Tal, played by Jay Baruchel). If I kept the love rectangle, I’d have the leads be with nicer people who just aren’t right for them. I feel like this is more interesting, and truer to real life.
So what did you like about this movie, Alyx?
There’s one thing I loved about it, and her name is Kat Dennings, who plays Norah.
Kat Dennings as Norah Silverberg; image courtesy of zap2it.com
I’ve actually liked Dennings for a while, due in part to the fact that her dry, off-kilter cadence reminds me of my friend Hannah from Karaoke Underground. The first time I saw Dennings was as Jenny Brier, an overly sophisticated tween who employed Samantha Jones to put together her bat mitzah in season four of Sex and the City.
"Today, I am a woman!" Kat Dennings as Jenny Brier; image courtesy of nypost.com
I felt she was underused as Catherine Keener’s daughter in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I thought she was cute in the Nylon cover she did with Olivia Thirlby. I will eventually get around to watching The House Bunny for both her and Anna Farris. I like her. Please have her be in more things.
I found Dennings’s performance as Ms. Silverberg to be winning, making all of the insecurity that comes with being the nerdy smart girl high school guys don’t tend to notice until after they’re in college. Norah even gets a few additional layers. Her first kiss was with a girl. She’s the daughter of Ira Silverberg, a fictional producer who runs Electric Lady and not being sure if she wants to inherit the family business or enroll at Brown or perhaps choose a third option that doesn’t evince her privileged standing as an upper-middle class girl who attends a private Catholic school.
As an aside, Norah is but one more free spirit fictional character who considers going to Brown, keeping company with girls like Serena Van Der Woodsen. Perhaps they wanted to follow in the footsteps of Todd Haynes and Duncan Sheik and major in semiology. They also boast a pretty rad student radio station.
I was drawn to this at 17, but knew I couldn’t afford to go or did well enough on the SAT to qualify. I jumped through that hoop just once before the application deadline to UT. I was a Texas scholar, so I knew they’d accept me. Once I got in, my AP test scores qualified me for sophomore standing, allowing me to double major in journalism and history.
But Norah is also interesting because she is proudly Jewish. I wish this had been brought in to her experience at a Catholic school, but nonetheless, I find it interesting that Norah identifies so strongly with both the cultural and religious aspects of her heritage.
Finally, Norah makes me like her relationship with Nick, or at least feel confident about how she’ll get to shape it as an equal. When the movie takes the time to breathe and let the scenes between Nick and Norah unfold, we get the sense that these are two very well-suited people who are out on the town for one night only to discover that they could be embarking on something special, perhaps even transformative, but it isn’t executed in a heavy-handed, obvious way.
Falling in love in a beat-up car with drunk people making out in the back seat; image courtesy of telegraph.co.uk
Which finally brings me to the scene that Annie convinced me I needed to rewatch. It’s their love scene. When I originally saw this scene, which takes place in the recording booth at Electric Lady, I thought it was dumb. Hooray, Nick’s magical penis surges Norah toward a once out-of-reach orgasm. It was especially irritating because the scene originally seems as if it’s going to play out with Norah recording Nick playing guitar, but instead we get to see her climax through the level readings of the recording equipment.
While I still really wish we got to see Norah’s technical prowess and Nick’s vulnerability as a feminized, performing subject, Annie is right. Nick is coaxing her . . . digitally, which allows her pleasure to take focus and has little to do with his gendered anatomy. Interesting. If the movie had made some more surprising turns and given itself room to do it, I might have enjoyed it as much as its female lead.
