Movies Til Dawn

What are bloopers? Mistakes made by performers or public figures which shatter the illusion that they're attempting to create thereby reminding the audience that all acting and most speechmaking is just bullshit. Usually bloopers involve actors simply forgetting their lines (and then muttering "Goddamit"). Sometimes people simply fall down or become frustrated with an uncooperative prop. And sometimes uncontrollable laughter erupts in a performer for no apparent reason. This last is a very specific form of blooping and it's referred to by the English as "corpsing". I'm not quite sure why the reference to a dead body, but I've heard English actors describe it thusly: it's the moment when two actors staring at each other in mid-scene suddenly realize the absurdity of what they're doing--pretending to be other people and sincerely spouting sentiments which have no true meaning to them outside of the scene. Peter Sellers was a master of the ...

There's "Kane". There's "Bicycle Thief". "Greed" of course (though who the hell has ever really seen it?) "Rules Of the Game", "La Dolce Vita", "Wild Strawberries" and I suppose a few more too famous to mention. On and on--ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Face it, the GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIMES LIST has largely remained the same over the past fifty years. Stuffy, academic and proper as a maiden aunt. So why don't we shake the tree a bit and introduce a few new concepts? Let's begin with the fact that filmed storytelling generally needs to be incredibly functional to be incredibly satisfying. Why this is true is a mystery. The musical play is somewhat the same--fat has no place in this art form, or if it does it's strictly for fatheads. Digressions, diversions, excursions--you can do them, and a few people will appreciate the effort (or pretend to) but in the end we are dealing with bread and circuses . Hold your...

The notorious Bettie Page, one of the great pin-up/peep-show queens of all times, disappeared from view in 1957. For years her whereabouts were a total mystery. Eventually she was "sighted" but she categorically refused to be photographed or interviewed. Then, for some reason, in 1996 she decided to give an interview (audio only) to Tim Estiloz, a skilled, journeyman broadcaster/critic. Why she decided to finally re-emerge (and why she chose the relatively low-key forum Estiloz offered) remain a mystery. But emerge she did. The interview is a nice summation of the first part of her life but doesn't go into the quite tragic second part of her life--schizophrenia, depression and a murder attempt (she had a violent altercation with her then landlord involving a knife... take that, Irving Klaw! ) Page's refusal to be photographed is disappointing at first--but maybe she has a point. "Who wants to see a model when she's old and broken down", rasps the sevent...

Lets cut it to the bone: Blaze Starr was the goddamdest stripper of them all. She was one hot mama and apparently is still alive and well and working as a gemologist. Why I find this so cool I don't know; it's a little like learning that cigarettes are actually good for you I guess. Starr, in her heyday (or hey-hey-hey-day!) was so smoking that the Governor of Lousiana, Earl Long, carried on a torrid, illicit affiar with her that was public knowlege. (I know that sounds like a contradiction but in the fifties and sixties people were still able to have publicly acknowledged illicit affairs--look at Kennedy and Monroe, for Chrissakes). Long's affair with the buxom Ms. Starr actually landed him in a mental hospital shortly before his death in 1960. He left her fifty grand in his will which she refused to take. Their relationship was dramatized (but not immortalized) in the desultory screen bio "Blaze", starring Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich,--in my opinion, one o...

Here's a rare clip of Nicholas Ray (I will not insult anyone's film-telligence by listing credits...such as "Johnny Guitar", "Rebel Without a Cause", "Wind Across the Everglades", "They Live By Night", "On Dangerous Ground", "The Lusty Men", "Flying Lethernecks", "Born To Be Bad", "Run For Cover", :"King Of Kings", "55 Days at Peking"--wait--is that all of them?") discussing the ending of the astonishing 1950 Hollywood noir "In A Lonely Place". He briefly mentions how he was seperated at the time from his wife, the film's co-star Gloria Grahame, but he doesn't mention why. Do you know why? One day soon I'll tell you. Meanwhile:   Subscribe in a reader

Courtesy of Leonard Edit (a pseudonym, natch) here is a fine artiwiki on th e Burlesque Hall of Fame --a place that actually exists in (where else?) Las Vegas. Burlesque is considered the venue in which the striptease was born and flourished and, on the show-biz food chain it was generally considered to be at the bottom. The term itself implied lewdness, coarseness, a cheap laugh and an even cheaper set of thrills to be had watching a woman almost take off her clothes. Burlesque patrons were generally lowlifes who'd wandered in off the street to get out of the cold, a racing form tucked under their arm, reeking of cheap Gin and Old Golds. One didn't set out to be a Burlesque performer--it was a fate that befell you after a series of bad breaks in better venues. Yesterdays Vaudeville headliner could become today's low Burlesque comic simply due to a few bad breaks (like bombing in Peoria...or giving the Syph to an underage girl who turned out to be the daughter of the mayo...

Apropos of my previous post, which was last years last post (as if it matters) which managed to feature the combined talents of director Robert Altman, composer/actor/producer/Julie London-marry-er Booby Troup and Striptease icon Lily St. Cry, I thought I'd begin the year's descent into the "eleysian fields of popular entertainment" (a phrase deployed by Albert Lewin writing to Preston Sturges about a script called "Two Bad Hats" which became "The Lady Eve" as quoted in Hendersons "Five Screenplays by Preston Sturges) with a festive celebration of strippers from the past. Jesus, what a train wreck of an opening sentence. Read backwards, it makes more sense than read forwards. What would the world do without the stripper? They're usually young, friendly and claim to be studying journalism at Columbia University (at least the ones I've met). The history of the "Strip" is one of the more fascinating sideshow exhibits in the show...