The House Next Door

1. Charlton Heston chained to the oars on a slave ship in Ben Hur. Just a kid when I saw it, and the sweat and fear and oppression was tangible and terrifying.

2. The cold amoral manner of killing in the first James Bond films like Goldfinger. Poor sweet painted dead lover of James.

3. The wheel coming off Dennis Hopper's chopper after he got shot in Easy Rider. Goddam toothless rednecks. But now I recognize that killing the hero is the cheapest trick in cinema.

4. Gort! Klaatu verada nichto. The Day the Earth Stood Still. All cars stopped dead on the streets of the city. Creepy synthesizer music of the 50s. Hilarious when Jim Rockford said those words to a couple goons threatening him in the Rockford Files.

5. The heads of Indian women and children lopped off by soldiers and flying toward the camera in Soldier Blue. This was so appalling to me at the time that even though I had a job reviewing films for the university newspaper, I couldn't think of any reason such a film should have been made, so I quit.

No regrets. Carry on, Matt.

Can I add the scene that scarred me emotionally forever to your list of Exorcist scenes? How about the scene where Linda Blair speaks in the voice of the priest's mother? This is what evil must really be like, preying on the guilt and insecurities of humanity. Emotional pain hurts a lot worse than physical pain.

The Exorcist is the first movie I ever saw in the theater. It was 1973, and we were SUPPOSED to go see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Even though I'd seen the movie countless times as a kid, when I finally understood what it was about, I could never watch it again. In fact, when it used to come on Channel 11, I wouldn't even turn my TV past Channel 9. I haven't seen it in 20 years.

If you want to know true Exorcist horror, however, you need to see Linda Blair tap-dancing in Exorcist II.

Other things that scrambled my psyche:

1. Chinatown- The ending destroyed my innocence. I was such a naive kid, thinking that good always won. I never trusted a movie again.

2. The Fly (1958)- Sure the Cronenberg one is far gorier, but I didn't find it as disturbing as the "Help Me! Help Me!" spider scene at the end of the original.

3. Imitation of Life (1958)- One of the few memories I have of my maternal grandmother, who died when I was 4, is her telling me about this movie, and why I should be good to my own mother. I am a big Douglas Sirk fan, but I think the impact of the film's final scenes come from my memory of being told about them long before I saw them. There are other issues in the film that tear at my soul, but my grandmother never explained to me about passing for White or any other theme over the head of a four year old. She only told me that the mother died of a broken heart, which is ridiculously melodramatic. But watching it, I feel a link to a grandmother who actually did die of a literal broken heart, robbing me of the last grandparent I ever knew, and I cry like I'm at a Baptist funeral.

4. Atlantic City (1980)- You want to talk about being thrown into puberty by a movie! Susan Sarandon's lemon bath kick-started my hormones and sped up my baptism by fire into a life of self abuse and being led around by the real reason I am called "the Odienator."

5. Born Innocent (1974) and Trilogy of Terror(1973)- I remember watching both of these on TV. The former had the rawest prison scene on TV before Oz, and the violent intensity of the latter's last tale freaked me out. I rented Trilogy recently, and I was still bored by the first two stories and freaked out by the last one.

As for Benji, that scene of the gay cat rubbing against Benji's johnson in Oh Heavenly Dog is branded in my head forever. Brokeback Benji. Who the hell thought that movie was for kids?

I'm a child of the 1980s and my 'branded' films follow.

1. The Dark Crystal: I think this was the movie that, with its realistic depiction of a clearly defined other world, really turned me on to the power of movies.

2. Poltergeist: Too young to see it in theaters, but I saw it over and over and over again on cable. The guy peeling his own face off was especially riveting to me (and is not an effect that has aged well).

3. E.T.: I hated this movie as a kid for being scary and manipulative, leading to a long distrust of Spielberg that didn't end until about five years ago with the release of another movie with initials for its title.

4. Return of the Jedi: this was the film where I realized that in this type of movie, you _know_ that the hero is going to make it out alive, the question is, how.

5. The Fox and the Hound: for some reason I found this second-tier Disney movie amazingly sad when I was four years old.

The Fox And The Hound broke my heart when I was a kid; it still makes me sad just thinking about it. I should see it again.

I don't know if I can come up with a list of just five here...I'll check back later after I've thought about it.

I don't know if I can come up with five, just like that, but I can do a few at least. In no order:

* Blue Velvet (1986)
There's that part during the climax where Kyle MacLachlan walks into Isabella Rossellini's apartment. Her (presumably) dead husband with the severed ear and the sock in the mouth is effed up enough. But what really got me was the yellow-jacketed man, whom we'd seen sporadically throughout the film, standing upright, but with a massive head-wound that sure looks fatal. He doesn't move for awhile...but then his walkie talkie goes off and he swings his arm, knocking over a lamp. What?! I was about 14 or so, and this inexplicable image, of being in some stage of death (or life), made me feel things I never felt before, things I couldn't explain. That might be why, around this point, I decided I didn't very much like Blue Velvet. But I would wise up.

* This '80s Twilight Zone Episode
Okay, I can't remember which one (though I have looked it up before), but in the episode a small desert town is overtaken by UFOs. I don't really remember the lead-up, but it ends with our leads -- a young guy and his gal -- being beamed up onto the UFO in their stationwagon and meating the big guys. It turns out that the head alien is in fact the girl's father. (Sorry so vague. I haven't seen this episode in 20 years.) The guy, reeling from this unmasking, then turns to his girlfriend, who proceeds to tear off her head, revealing an alien one. I was probably six or seven, and for some reason, this no doubt innocuous but lovingly made (the supporting cast is rounded out by stars of '50s sci-fi pics) episode of the '80s Twilight Zone first made me really think about death, really realize that I, a boy of six or seven, was going to die someday. After watching it, I remember telling my dad I was having nightmares. "About what," he would ask. "About hell."

But I would wise up.

I also want to throw a shout-out to stick figure dude Don Hertzfeldt's animated short The Meaning of Life, which put me in a serious funk for about a week back in November. Beginning at the beginning -- at least for life on earth -- it makes a big pit-stop on humans, then lights off for the future, imagining countless forms human may evolve into. It's one thing to say that humans (let alone you) are insignificant in the universe. It's another to suddenly and fully experience it. Breathtaking, to put it mildly.

Sadly, I will also forever be tatooed with the memory of that time when they replaced Capt. Harris' deoderant with mace. The look on his face...

I actually should have listed that all-time classic 80s movie Red Dawn on my last. That gave me some pretty lasting nightmares.

Odie: "Trilogy of Terror" nearly made my list, specifically the final segment with the demonically possessed African doll that traps Karen Black in the bathroom and sticks a little knife beneath the bathroom and door and goes SNICKER SNICKER SNICK!

Jeff: I'm on the same page re: JEDI. The first heavily hyped, candy coated summer blockbuster of my childhood (technically the end of childhood, as I was creeping up on 15 when it came out) that flat-out bored me. The actors, particularly Harrison Ford, seemed bored out of their minds, the Tattoine sequence took forever, the action wasn't even that exciting, and after revealing that Leia was Luke's sister, they gave her almost nothing to do. If not for the crosscut three-way final battle (which itself was nearly ruined by the Ewoks) it was one big deflated balloon. I actually prefer PHANTOM MENACE because even though that one's a poorly paced mess as well, it at least has a demented visionary quality, a private sense of inscrutable excitement, which is infinitely preferable to JEDI's good enough for government work vibe.

Tim: Remember when James Bond films were shown on network TV with the warning, "Parental Discretion Advised"? Always on Sunday night, too, forcing me to choose between the movie and whatever was due at school the next morning. My friend Steve Nystrom says that to this day, when he hears the Bond theme, he gets knots in his stomach and starts thinking about all the work he hasn't finished.

I have six words for you people: Frankenstein's monster and that little girl.

1. My dad was in the Navy and I spent part of my childhood in Japan. We only got japanese television. Many of the american movies we saw in 16mm at the community center made a very strong impression. Through years of detective work, I've managed to identify about 30 movies from this period that branded me in some way. One such movie that really burned into me was Frank D. Gilroy's FROM NOON TILL THREE.
For years as a kid I tried to find out what this mystery movie was. I didn't know the actors, so like an ancient mariner I would stop someone and recount the whole plot, and it is a very plot-oriented movie. At one point, I even asked if it was Gone With the Wind. Finally, some time in the 80's, this Charles Bronson romantic western came on tv. Eureka! I was amazed that I did remember the plot in such detail. I had everything right except for that three hours part (hey, those three hours lasted a lifetime.) It's still a good flick, if you haven't seen it.

2. Cursed be the night back in '78, when I stayed up late to watch one of my favorite movies, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, on the Saturday Night Creature Feature. All I wanted to do was watch Sinbad. But first, our host had to show a clip of this new movie coming out, HALLOWEEN.
I had never seen anything like the masked killer's steady, constant pursuit. Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis just really, well, screaming. Trying to get somebody's attention, even throwing a flowerpot at an upstairs window. The boy in his room with headphones on. More screaming. Boogeyman methodically approaching. Kid finally coming downstairs. She's banging on the door and screaming. Here comes that knife. Kid reaches to open door. Freeze. The End.
All I wanted to do was watch Sinbad. Many sleepless nights after that.

3. At a very young age I saw Disney's THE SWORD AND THE STONE. There is a scene where Wart (young Arthur) is changed into a squirrel, and a cute, female squirrel takes a liking to him. Wart protests her smitten advances, and when he changes back to a boy, she is devastated. The scene closes on her, in tears, atop a tree.
This really bummed me out. Thank God I never saw Bambi at that age.

4. In highschool, the topic of 'what's the scariest movie you've ever seen?' went round the lunch table one day, and when it came to me, I answered THE PAPER CHASE. People probably thought I was joking, but I wasn't.
Watching all those students taking schoolwork so seriously, scared the shit out of me. I still think it's scary, and maybe it's a reason I never went to college. Even today, walking on a college campus creeps me out.

5. Japan again. JAWS. I'm not even talking about the movie, just the poster art. A neighborhood mother had some issues of a woman's magazine. Every time we'd visit, I would find a certain issue, and stare mesmerized at the glossy full page ad for JAWS. It seemed so primal, brazen, and audacious. Big Mouth. Sharp teeth. Coming right at the unsuspecting nude girl swimming. And what 1st grade boy wasn't already obsessed with sharks?
Most parents wouldn't let us see it. Somebody at school saw it, and word quickly got around, and we gossiped and rehashed the story many times over. By the time I finally saw it a few years later on cable (and I loved it of course) I already knew and had reenacted every scene. I had even written an entire novel, JAWS, which didn't do me much good, as Peter Benchley had already written it first.

1. The climactic murder of Maddie in "Twin Peaks" episode 15. Even now, perhaps especially now, the most horrifying killing ever depicted on a network television show, certainly the one which elicited the most empathetic reaction from me. I was 17 at the time and a huge Peaks fan from the beginning (April 8, 1990, 8 p.m.); I remember distinctly how I would watch the entire accumulated series I had taped till that point before the next week's episode. When episode 15 rolled around and Lynch finally revealed the killer of Laura Palmer it was a deep, depressing experience, marked by waves of sadness and horror. Though some had "figured it out" prior to this moment, Lynch made all too clear in those final 10 excruciating minutes how utterly irrelevant the act of detection and determination were to the impact of his grand metaphysical reveal. This was a watershed moment for me because, despite my appreciation for what Lynch had been doing up until that point, I was forced, in those minutes, to confront my own illusions of consolation: I desperately wanted the police to "figure it out" as well and kick the door down and haul the guilty one away, I wanted something to happen to stop the gruesome, prolonged, almost real time murder playing out before me, and I guess I wanted the revelation of the killer to mean less, as it undoubtedly does most of the time on TV mystery shows and certainly as it does now on the godforsaken wasteland of CSI and Law & Order. Peaks was supposed to change television but it was truly too good to do that. At best we got the pale knock offs, quoting cute whimsy like Northern Exposure and Picket Fences. Nobody was willing to take it where Lynch did in those final minutes--a place merging the true mystery of incomprehensible rage, diseased affection and, eventually, the disquiet attending a rift in the universe. Maddie's death is followed by the only appropriate thing--a kind of gentle consolation for our human impotence to stop rage and violence, to ever vanquish them for good, a communal observance of grief for one loss which represents universal loss. Peaks' level of profound empathy at the loss of one person has now been replaced by the fashionable indifference and prosaic procedurals of the CSI's--a world far removed from Lynch but more comfortable to the audience; a world of narcissism in which we can prove our mastery over clues and the victim is "evidence". The CSI detectives would certainly "figure it out" but it would ultimately wind up meaning far less.

2. Alan Parker's Angel Heart--particularly the last ten mintes of that one. I was still at an age where I was open to shock and that's certainly what Parker delivered here. Above and beyond that, this was another deeply horrifying experience for a kid who always took metaphysical/religious subjects deadly seriously. Of course, The Exorcist had that effect too but somehow there was something even more shattering and bleak about Angel Heart. Perhaps Parker's hard cut to the elevator at the end sealed the deal. Certainly Rourke's final line, spoken in a truly defeated tone was bone chilling. But I think it was similar to Peaks, really. Something very primal was at work in both of these. The true nightmare was in the revelation that we cannot ever know enough to be secure and that in order to be human we must invest our feelings somewhere, with someone, no matter what the risk. Parker and Lynch remind us that the risk is always grave.

3. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner: the whole experience. This was the big one for me. I had always loved films but when I first saw this, on the CBS Saturday night movie sometime in the fall of '86, "something crossed over in me" to quote one of Ridley's other heroes and my film love blossomed into something big and often unmanageable. When I think on this now it's really amazing that it had the effect it did, watching it on a 19 inch screen, cropped and edited for TV. I think it suggests something about the power of Scott's accomplishment. As with all the other stuff on this list, there was something indelible about my experience with this movie, almost sacred even. Nowadays we see so much and have access to so much it's hard to remember back to a time when I eagerly longed to catch the ad for the local independent TV station because it had a clip of BR on it and I knew that meant they would someday screen it again. Yet, there's also something wonderful about not having my desires immediately gratified, something that makes the gratification that much more special. I wonder if anybody can understand that now. Obviously Scott's vision of the future had huge appeal to a kid growing up in the 80's but what really made that film for me was the fact that it was very, very serious and extremely adult in its content and themes. You can't fake that and, really, Sir Ridley never managed it again (at least not to this degree). Even the much maligned happy ending in the version I saw felt, and still does feel, wistful and pained--evidencing a genuine regret for the condition of humanity which somehow seems more fitting than the abrupt, bleak closure of the director's cut. The violence was ugly and felt like a tragic inheritence passed on to the replicants (a history of violence?); the atmosphere, meanwhile, was totally convincing and transportive. Ford's greatest performance by far--a difficult, almost impossible balancing act refined to perfection.

4. Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape. I fear I may be revealing too much of myself with these choices and these comments (I can imagine Odie now: "Take your therapy over to Dr. Phil's page!") but I persist. Soderbergh's film was another big formative experience for me. I did not grow up on a steady diet of rough and tumble fare; my home life was very suburban straight laced and therefore perhaps I could relate deeply, maybe way too deeply to this picture when I saw it for the fist time on Showtime in 1990. The ease and naturalness of the characters was something I knew, as was the milieu itself, the kind of community and the tenor of the discourse. This was another picture that struck me because it felt so truly adult and still does in a way most of the awkward indie rip offs in its wake never managed. I fear that perhaps it and my #5 pick have had an unfortunate effect upon the way that I relate to people intimately, but if so it's only because they both seemed so dead on true. Confession time: I made it my business to dress like Spader's Graham for the next couple years (well, that and some of Val Kilmer's wardrobe form John Dahl's 1989 Kill Me Again); as a dear friend says to this day: "I've found my new look for spring (summer, fall, winter, what have you)".

5. Herbert Ross's Pennies From Heaven: once again, the whole thing. Okay, let's see, where was I when I first saw this? Must have been in 1983 on WGN. I remember seeing this on afternnon TV as a kid and was forever scarred, I kid you not. Since that time I've held this movie up as my example of why the MPAA and TV censorship is irrelevant. This movie was edited for content, removing the nudity and profanity but it wasn't and couldn't be edited for its themes which were startlingly adult. This vision of the selfishness and hatred incipient in human sexuality was taken as gospel by me at the time and I have had, unfortunately, little reason to question its logic since. Admittedly Dennis Potter was a misanthrope but it was never an attitude or a pose; his anguish was deeply felt and sincere--that's why his work is so devastating. It's funny for me to read that the main point of this film was its comment on Depression era needs and how they were satisfied by studio musicals. Certainly that's true but, as always with Potter, that's the surface skin. It was really about how far human discontent extended and how inadequate our attempts to anesthetize ourselves actually were when they simply did not go far enough. One example will suffice: after the Steve Martin character has met Bernadette Peters for the first time he tells his buddies at the bar all about it. Everyone breaks into a lavishly choreographed vaudeville routine set to a romantic melody; Martin and his buddies lip synch the words, suggesting his elation. Ross breaks through this and brings us back down to earth when one of the buddies asks (in voice over from the outside reality) "Did you do it with her in the back of a car?"; then somebody else says, "Did she have big tits?" (of course this was edited, but the idea was clear enough). After each question there is a cut to Martin, still struggling to remain in his fantasy, looking more and more crestfallen. The implication, of course, is that romantic love is a fallacy but a blissful ideal that will be punctured and degraded by the grubby instincts of base human nature (I wonder if Cronenberg likes Potter). For what it's worth, the impact of the film upon me at least made me a Potter fan and I came to appreciate his stylistic devices as much as his human insights--that stuff in turn led me to Atom Egoyan.

Well I hope that voyage through my childhood/adolescent psyche wasn't too troubling. But, hey, Matt, you did ask for it.

Oh no question Cronenberg likes Potter, Nathaniel. He was once pegged to direct the film version of The Singing Detective, and the original miniseries of same clearly influenced the aesthetic of Spider.

Brilliant critique of "Peaks 15," by the way. Indeed, what so fascinated about it and Fire Walk With Me was how completely they exposed the murder- and incest-driven underbelly of that particular metaverse.

(1) My first and most embarassing over-emotional movie moment... After watching it at some too-tender age with my Mom on Channel 38's Saturday matinee -- THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE scarred me for life.

It was the first movie I ever saw "where the good guy died," and I still remember spending the rest of the afternoon desperately coming up with absurd ways Hackman might have indeed survived that final plunge.

("Mommy, do you think maybe he fell into the fire - but I thought I saw some water underneath so that would put the fire that was burning him out?")

To hell with kitsch, that goddamn theme song still gives me chills.


(2) Springing off of MZS' comments, here's my Mom's oft-repeated description of our RETURN OF THE JEDI experience:

"Normally whenever we went to see anything like STAR WARS, STAR TREK or INDIANA JONES you'd come home bouncing off the walls, acting out all the scenes, and then start nagging us to take you to see it again the very next day. But after this one you just shrugged, said 'it was good,' and then never really mentioned it again."

(I got your back on this one Matt, PHANTOM MENACE was better. ATTACK OF THE CLONES, however, is another story.)


(3.) When I was 12 years old my next-door neighbor and I used to babysit our younger siblings, and in preperation we'd always rent "dirty movies" like PORKY'S or HARDBODIES to watch after we put the brats to bed.

(It sure was great to grow up when video stores were still Mom & Pop Joints and nobody gave a crap about the Ratings Board.)

So one night me and my buddy rented this "porno that everybody on the radio was talking about" called BLUE VELVET.

I don't think we even had any idea what we were watching... but I do know we spent a lot of time afterwards running around the neighborhood yelling: "Here's to your FUCK, Frank!" and we both share an affinity for Roy Orbison songs and Pabst Blue Ribbon that continues almost 20 years later.

(4.) Michelle Pfeiffer in that red dress, singing "Making Whoopie" on the piano in THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS... the first (but certainly not the last) bit of videotape I ever wore out from incessant rewinding and freeze-framing.

(5.) So I'm fifteen years old, and I go with two carloads of friends to see the 10:30 PM show of GOODFELLAS on Opening Night. (Again, it was great to grow up before anyone enforced the ratings system.)

We strategically chose a theater located across the street from a mob-run strip joint - so obviously this was one of the most amazing audiences I've ever seen a film with. (It eventually became something of a joke in the local media, as the movie played at this particular venue for something like a year... straight through the video release.)

I was just beginning to understand how movies are put together -- just starting to notice edits, shot selections and musical cues. So you couldn't ask for a more perfect crash-course in Filmmaking 101 than GOODFELLAS!

And what a rotten, awesome, amazingly adolescent attitude that picture had! It was pure electricity. We felt like we were seeing the Punk-Rock GODFATHER - with all the brutality so grounded in the mundane; even when the Feds are following you in helicopters, you still gotta go home and stir the fuckin meatballs.

We all practically sprinted outta that theater at one o'clock in the morning on a cloud.

My best friend and I went back and saw it nine more times before it finished its run, and I don't think we talked about anything else for at least two years.

Time wears on... that pal now toils in film production, and here I am grinding out reviews - so when it's late enough and we're both drunk enough he and I start kidding each other:

"Maybe if we'd just chosen a different movie to see on that October night sixteen years ago... maybe we both might have been able to grow up and get real jobs."

So yeah, I guess that's what you mean by "branded."

The fecal banquet in "Salo".

I saw it twenty-seven years ago.

The image is STILL making me queasy.

Nathaniel: (I can imagine Odie now: "Take your therapy over to Dr. Phil's page!")

I would never do anything as cruel as send you to Dr. Phil! All Dr. Phil has contributed to this life is another funny voice for me to imitate. (You naid ta GET RAI-YEAL!) Getting advice from Dr. Phil is like buying Afro Sheen from David Duke.

Even though you picked movies/TV shows I admittedly did not enjoy (though I'll never forget Chris Walken's tap dancing pimp in Pennies or the overall look of Blade Runner), your post made me want to take another look at a few of them.

Sean: To hell with kitsch, that goddamn theme song still gives me chills.

(Odie singing in intentionally butchered high voice)

There's got to be a morning after
If we can hold on to the night...

I felt bad for Shelley Winters in Poseidon Adventure.

That reminds me of another scene that branded me: Winters' last scene in one of my all time favorite movies Night of the Hunter. That is one of the most hauntingly beautiful shots ever committed to celluloid.

Man, I wish I grew up when they didn't enforce the ratings board! At the Loews theater in Jersey City, the box office people were like the wardens at the women's penitentiary in the chicks in chains movies of that era. It made me an expert at sneaking into movies, which lost all its value once I turned 17. At 13, I snuck into a 3-D porno movie! That branded me forever too. :)

MZS: Since you're always picking on Return of the Jedi, the next time I see you, I'm going to corner you and sing the Ewok song in its entirety. Yub Nub.

Again, another child of the 80's with films that either disturbed me or introduced me to worlds unknown.

1. THE FLY (1986) -- I'll never forget being maybe 5 years old and getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and catching one scene in this film. Jeff Goldblum uses his newly found powers in a brutal arm-wrestling match. All I can remember is seeing that biker's arm snap. That scene scarred me for life! It actually wasn't until this past summer that I watched the film for the first time.

2. THE TOXIC AVENGER -- Remember when TROMA tried to make a cartoon version of their sleaze classic? It was popular enough that a kid in my neighborhood had somehow conned his parents into letting him rent it. One day while they weren't home, we watched the first fifteen minutes of it where I saw my first on-screen glimpse of topless women. Nothing was ever the same after that.

3. ROBOCOP/TERMINATOR -- Again, like THE FLY -- gross out body mutilation stuff that I caught glimpses of as a kid that have stuck with me. The Ahnuld scene is where he cuts out his own eye. In Paul Verhoven's film it was the knife in the throat with a geyser of blood that did me in.

4. WATERSHIP DOWN -- It was my older brother's favorite film... The images of bloodied and gored bunnies really fucked me up. It didn't help that when I was a little older I had a pet rabbit that was kiled by a much larger animal.

5. E.T. -- Like Jeff, I found the movie very scary in the beginning and very sad at the end. It just didn't seem worth it to me, as a kid, that a movie should put me through that -- and I still do.

Odie -- Glad to see your back in fighting form!

1. It’s nice to see some mentions of Dennis Potter here. When people ask me what my favorite film is, I deflect the question by referring to the brilliant TV mini-series THE SINGING DETECTIVE, written by Dennis Potter and starring the incomparable Michael Gambon. I saw it as a child and it was one of those moments where you say, “My God, television [and movies] can be LIKE THIS!”

The entire series is profound, a combination of Proustian soul-searching (looking to one’s childhood and adolescence for the keys to unlock the mysteries and struggles of one’s life), pulp affectations (Marlow is a mystery writer and filters his memories through a hard boiled detective story), and the idealized fantasy of music grounded in the grim reality of day-to-day living -- the music of the 1940s reveals what the characters dream of, and by having them lip-synch “sing” in that Potter-esque way it allows them to express something they couldn’t otherwise.

But to be very specific: I have never seen therapy sessions handled so well in a film as the scenes where skin afflicted pulp novelist Marlow is analyzed by Dr. Gibbon (played with warmth, intelligence and a cold dry wit by Bill Paterson). The scene where they play a word game that reveals deep levels of repression is as riveting as the finest tennis match you’ve ever seen, only it’s a match to tap into the recesses of a man’s heart, mind and soul. I could go on for hours about this series, and how I constantly refer back to it to decode aspects of my own life. When Gibbon provides Marlow the chance to rise up out of his chair and walk (to the tune of “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall”), I react to that scene the way many viewers respond to Stallone’s triumphs in ROCKY.

2. Move over, Gunnary Sergeant Hartman! My cousin and I would watch Walter Hill’s SOUTHERN COMFORT over and over again. We learned the art of creative profanity from Powers Boothe, Keith Carradine, and especially the great Fred Ward. When these weekend warrior National Guardsmen are being pursued by killer Cajuns in the Louisiana swamp, they discover a nest of bear traps laid out to surprise them. When he systematically springs the traps, Ward grits his teeth and mutters, “Just like a steel pussy!” Mind you, my cousin and I didn’t even really know what the hell he meant…but we’d wander around saying it because we knew it was tabboo and liked the sound of it. Our grandmother confiscated the VHS tape and locked it away in her cabinet, only intensifying the mystique of this macho, man’s man action-horror film. We learned the power of dirty words before ever hearing of Lenny Bruce.

3. Nuclear war movies would always paralyze me with fear, since I grew up in the 1980s and was terrified that Reagan was gonna nuke the Russkies, and we’d all get wiped out in a nuclear end-of-the-world volley. Dare I say political awareness stems from personal fear? It did for me, anyhow! I know I started reading the newspapers as a result of the cold, sharp shock of seeing THE DAY AFTER (after the bomb goes off, I couldn’t watch any more, and indeed haven’t seen the nuclear fallout scenes in their entirety…though I never forgot the climax where a radiation scarred Jason Robards tells some wandering lost souls, “Get out of my house.”) and, even more harrowing, the British socio-realism film THREADS, which is the be-all to end-all of devastating, nightmare-inducing nuclear war movies.

4. Back to my grandparents. My grandfather is a macho, John Huston kind of guy. But sometimes cinema as poetry can give you insight into a man’s soul, and sometimes the films are unlikely ones. Watching BLUE VELVET with my grandfather allowed him to talk about his intense young adulthood, and he swears that BLUE VELVET is one of the most realistic movies ever made. He spoke of situations he’s been in that directly resembles those Jeffrey had been through (without the crime and killings, more the Dean Stockwell party scene and the intensity of being with a woman who wants to be hit), and streets and rooms like the ones men like Frank Booth inhabit. Gramps swears that BLUE VELVET is accurate in a way most films are not, and that Lynch’s work went straight down the toilet once he started locking into “weirdness for its own sake”. I disagree, being a huge admirer of MULHOLLAND DRIVE and LOST HIGHWAY (the party scene specifically resembles a dream my grandfather told me, with a white skinned man in black like the Robert Blake guy who follows the hero through the party and says he’s in his house). Watching and discussing BLUE VELVET with him gave me an avenue into Lynch’s films that is intensely private, and yet at the same time allowed me to get to know my grandfather’s inner life and his personal history better than I had before.

5. “I want to be that guy!” Have you ever seen a movie where you look at one of the characters and say that to yourself? Mine may seem a trifle ridiculous at first glance, but stay with me here. Robin Williams in Robert Altman’s POPEYE says, “I YAM WHAT I YAM!” and carries himself with a certain dogged, tough-minded determination against all odds. He earns the love of a good woman because he is a completely decent, hard working guy, and he doesn’t take crap from anybody. Robert Altman’s movie is an underappreciated masterpiece because it takes all of the things he does great in terms of character, location, and emotion, and places it in a surrealistic cartoon world where people sing songs to express themselves. It’s great fun for adults to see the savvy grown-up humor and innuendo, and a delight for children to see Popeye beat the corrupt system with a little help from a trusty can of healthy spinach! And every other mantra of his are words to live by:
“Wrong is wrong, even if it helps ya!”

Now, am I alone in thinking there’s a line to be drawn between Popeye’s bluster and McCabe wandering around his hotel room muttering to himself about Mrs. Miller, and Marlow muttering to himself that it’s all right with me? As you can imagine, I am REALLY looking forward to the Altman blog-a-thon, and about someone writing about POPEYE in particular. Altman has made some really awful movies in his time, but also maybe ten or twelve classics, to the point where it’s impossible to decide what movie is best…just what movie you’re in the mood for.

-- Jeremiah

I should also mention that when I was a kid, POPEYE played at my local movie theater for one week (it flopped at the box office), and I went to see it every day -- dragging one relative after another to the theater insisting that this was the greatest movie ever made. A few of them agreed with me, and decided to go more than once.

This discussion forced me to re-live some nightmares I had throughout my childhood, originating in an episode of Speilberg's Amazing Stories: "Mirror, Mirror," directed by Scorsese, with Sam Waterson as a horror novelist who sees a homocidal black-hooded man every time he looks in a mirror. The ending, where every reflective surface in his house is covered, yet the maniac still gets to Waterson through the reflection in his girlfriend's eyes, has stayed with me, though I don't how much of this is real and how much I've filled in after the fact. It would probably make me laugh today, but, at a young age, I associated covered mirrors with Jewish mourning, and the whole thing freaked me out.

Joel

Jeremiah says:" Altman has made some really awful movies in his time, but also maybe ten or twelve classics, to the point where it’s impossible to decide what movie is best…just what movie you’re in the mood for."

To quote another Fred Ward classic, "The Right Stuff," Fuckin A, bubba. Interesting how often the greatest filmmakers either produce classics or misfires (the misfires are always interesting, though). I seem to be drawn to these sorts of filmmakers -- Altman, Lynch, De Palma, Malick, Almodovar, hell, even relative newcomers like Wes Anderson, Mel Gibson, David Gordon Green and Sofia and Roman Coppola -- because they seem to swing for the fences every time and are unafraid to fail big.

All of JAWS. The very idea of JAWS. I still hate beaches because of that movie.

I've been trying to think of five and I keep thinking back to "Twin Peaks," since today marks the 16th anniversary of Laura Palmer's "death."

1. Leland's killing of Maddie in the Palmer living room.

2. BOB exiting Leland in the jail cell, but not before causing him to remember all and recount it on his deathbed.

3. The strange death of Josie Packard followed by appearances by BOB and The Man from Another Place.

4. The creepy montage of images (slow pans down the high school hallway and elsewhere set to Angelo Badalamenti's haunting score) before The Giant appears to Cooper to tell him "It is happening again" immediately prior to Leland's slaying of Maddie.

5. On the lighter side, Leland's first appearance in season 2, suddenly with white hair singing "Marzie Doats."

I will never stop loving Return of the Jedi. It was my first movie-going memory, and I'd spend the rest of the 80s renting it over and over again.

Grand Epic: You're safe from the Ewok attack I'm sending MZS. Come on, Matt, you gotta admit that Return is better than the Star Wars Christmas Special!

Jeremiah: My cousins did not forgive me for dragging them to see Popeye, and I don't blame them. They wanted to see Flash Gordon, which opened the same day. Later, I would learn that Flash (Flash...awwww-ahhhh, sings Queen) was FAR FAR FAR worse than Popeye, but I never got credit for picking the better movie. I wasn't allowed to pick the movie for years afterward.

I like the art direction in Popeye, and how Shelley Duvall managed to look terrifyingly like Olive Oyl, but the movie itself is a fascinating train wreck. It's so bad that it ricochets off the negative side of the spectrum and lands damn close to positivity. It has had a permanent corner etched in my brain since I first saw it. It is one of the few movies I could never write a review for, as I'd lose my mind trying to figure out how to rate it.

I could probably sing you every song in Popeye. (Care to duet, Mr. Kipp?) Of course, I could also sing you every song in The First Nudie Musical, so I don't know if that is a compliment.

I'm going to buck the trend here and admit that I vividly recall walking out of JEDI and declaring "That was better than the first two combined!!!" Erm, uh, I've since seen the error of my 13 year old ways.

Lovin' the love for TIWN PEAKS in this thread and jeremiah kipp's grandfather's assertions about BLUE VELVET basically made my day. I do in many ways agree with him that BV was Lynch's highpoint and that his overreliance on "artiness" after that could be viewed as taking a few steps downward. BV remains not only my favorite Lynch film, but my favorite film of all time because of its simplicity and straighforwardness. There's some minor symbolism on display (the robins, the bugs, the dreamcatcher, etc.) but none of it ever gets in the way of understanding the basic goings-on.

But getting back to the the original question Matt posed...

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. I always say that there are two ways I've watched movies in my life: the way I watched them before I saw CLOCKWORK and the way I watched them after. It was that pivotal an experience for me.

I was 15 and prior to that fateful eve, I only knew film as entertainment. I grew up in a small midwestern town, and really nobody in my family had any kind of intense love for film. Everything I knew about flicks I discovered on my own.

I rented ACO for two reasons: 1) I was a huge fan of TIME AFTER TIME and thought Malcolm McDowell was the shit and B) I had this STARLOG Trivia Book that was slowly showing me bits and pieces about films I'd never heard of. ACO was one of these films.

One would think the entire experience was some kind of assault on my brain, and it was, but not in any kind scarred-for-life sort of way. The film quite simply showed me that movies could be about more than spaceships and monsters; that film could actually be about ~something~. It energized and excited me and I suddenly knew there was this whole other side to film of which I was previously unaware.

I knew there was a big message in this film I watched, although I wasn't entirely sure what it was. I spent that entire weekend trying to talk to anybody who'd listen to me about the damn thing. When I took the tape back to video store, I convinced the owner to sell me the rental copy. A few days later, my mother made me take the tape back (that's a whole 'nother story, by the way...).

After ACO, I still didn't really understand the concept of "directors" as I was still hooked in to "actors". The next film I rented was CALIGULA.

odie wrote:

"I could probably sing you every song in Popeye."

I'm curious, Odie, as to how you reacted to PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE's use of "He Needs Me".

To call it inspired seems to do it a disservice.

I'd like to see somebody use something from ANNIE in the same way. I'm a huge fan of the Huston movie, and I picked up the now-inexplicably-out-of-print widescreen DVD some years back and declared to my friends, "I got this GREAT John Huston movie on DVD today. You guys have probably never even seen it!!!"

"Really!?!?! What?"

"ANNIE"

They walked away from me and said nothing more about it.

ANNIE is flawed, and the final action-filled set-piece is goofy as hell (to its credit, at least nobody was singing as it unfolded), but I never really tire of watching that flick (which is not to imply it's something I spin on a regular basis). IT'S THE HARD-KNOCK LIFE is as perfectly choreographed as anything I've ever seen in any film musical.

(Boy was that an unintentional tangent.)

On Popeye vs. Annie: I think my problem with Annie is that it's never as batshit as I want it to be (i.e. as batshit as Popeye), given the rogue at the helm. But Huston's ultra-masculinity had long since manifested itself in spectacle (I think it was Pauline Kael who observed a correlation between the increasing thickness of Norman Mailer's books and the increasing scale of Huston's pictures), and so the film version of a Broadway musical, any musical, was just kind of inevitable. (Whereas hiring Altman to direct Popeye suggests some real-life "Springtime for Hitler" scenario.) Huston's Fat City would definitely be among my movie-watching epiphanies, though, were I to organize them.

This brings to mind two outstanding quotes on the back of the dustjacket of "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls":

Don Simpson on Robert Altman: "None of us really wanted to make POPEYE, and we hated Altman, who was a true fraud...he was full of gibberish and full of himself, a pompous, pretentious asshole."

Robert Altman on Don Simpson: "Simpson was a bad guy, a bum...It's a big plus to our industry that he [died]. I'm only sorry he didn't live longer and suffer more."

Ross: I'm curious, Odie, as to how you reacted to PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE's use of "He Needs Me".

Aw man. Now you are going to get me in trouble. The Paul Thomas Anderson lovers are going to come after me!

The use of music is the best thing about Paul Thomas Anderson's movies. Aimee Mann almost saved me with "Save Me" in Magnolia. And I thought "He Needs Me" was well used because Punch-Drunk Love attempted (and dismally failed) to reach for the cartoony surrealism Altman successfully captured in Popeye. Plus, I wrote in my review that "Emily Watson opens her eyes wider than Marty Feldman, until she looks like a human Pokemon." If the lead actress looks like a damn cartoon, why not use a song from a movie based on one?

As for Annie, it's a movie saved by a wonderfully boozy Carol Burnett. Am I crazy, or does she ask Daddy Warbucks if he wants to eat her pussy? Go back and listen to their duet. I swear she says "you wanna smoochie my little coochie?"

When I saw Annie on Broadway, Annie was Sarah Jessica Parker! So maybe Miss Hannigan was getting sex advice from Sex and the Orphan.

The best use of Hard Knock Life is in Jay-Z's rap song of the same name.

As for Altman, he said some mean things about Gene Siskel when he died too. I'm expecting Altman to say meaner things about me when I die. They won't be worse than the shit I said about Pret-a-Porter.

Popeye is one of those movies that I saw so long ago and is so ingrained in my head that I don't really understand why people wouldn't like it, much less call it a train-wreck. Is it the songs?

Man, I just remembered that the Jay-Z version of "Hard Knock Life" was used in GOLDMEMBER, as a duet between Dr. Evil & Mini-Me!!! I had forgotten this because I hated that movie so much - nothing sadder than the moment a cool franchise turns sour.

If I'd seen Sarah Jessica's ANNIE on Broadway, I'd likely put in the Top 5 Defining Moments of My Life. I can take or leave her these days, but back in my pre-teens, I was in LOVE with her on SQUARE PEGS. She was my new-and-improved geeked-out Marcia Brady-esque fantasy.

Also:

A) Carol rocked, there can be no doubt.

B) PTA is more talented than you give him credit for, although I'd basically agree that P-DL was a massive misfire.

C) PRET-A-PORTER sucked and time will never make it a better a film.

D) I'm pretty sure you're right about the implied oral sex offer in ANNIE. And if you're not, you should be.

A friend of mine informs me that while the speech I mentioned in the "Superman" item was later called "the malaise speech," Carter never actually used the word in the text, but did use the phrase "crisis of confidence." So I'm correcting that item.

I know you guys wouldn't want me misrepresenting Carter's record, so i'm keeping you in the loop.

It's Friday night and I just finished writing a shitload of print stuff, so excuse me while I go make myself a snack before returning to prattle with you fine people.

Also, just for the hell of it, here's my 1994 "Dallas Observer" review of "Pret-a-Porter." Which pretty much echoes the general sentiment here. I love Altman, but this one...yeeeeesh.

Nathaniel: Maddie's death was probably the most upsetting fictional event I have ever seen on any television show, network or cable.

After seeing it and staying up most of the night in shock afterward, I really felt numb and violated. I am still not sure if its violence is justified. It's probably the most sadistic scene Lynch has ever directed in the way that it keeps torturing and brutalizing this poor girl to the point where get some sense of the hopeless dread she must be feeling, the sense of being suspended in time and powerless to halt the flow of events.

The thing that really disturbs me about it isn't the violence itself (though that's pretty rough even by movie standards) but by the behavior of Leland Palmer as he symbolically kills his own daughter a second time. He truly enjoys it. We have seen him pretty happy but never more enthusiastic, more full of zesty life, as in this particularly ugly scene. I really feel that Lynch broke some fundamental rule here and made a scene that was equally powerful as art and exploitation. It was so powerful, so necessary in certain ways and so wantonly sadistic in others that it make me wonder whether Lynch thinks about the audience at all when he makes a movie, or if his career is basically an endless exploratory operation on his subconscious, a spelunking expedition to see what sorts of horrible shit might be lurking down deep inside, something he'd be doing anyway, in an asylum on a notepad with bits of soft charcoal, if he was not directing movies.

I guess what I'm saying is that Lynch horrifies and frightens me in ways that go beyond his filmmaking power. When I watch his movies I truly feel sometimes as if I am inside the mind of a madman, a damaged dreaming machine. His movies are art, yes, but they are also the closest thing cinema has given us to psychological torture. I am sure Lynch is disturbing in any language, in any culture, because he specializes in exterminating rational thought.

I think David Lynch wants to see how far he can go before he scares himself to death.

Look out, MZS! Carter is sending you an attack rabbit! You're going to open your refrigerator and then...BAM!

For you younger folk out there, President Carter said he had been attacked, in a boat, by an insanely pissed rabbit. This same, wet rabbit will find its way into Matt's Miracle Whip jar.

If directing that Michael Jackson Dangerous video didn't scare David Lynch to death, nothing will.

Russ: I never said PTA (Harper Valley PTA?) had no talent. He does. What he doesn't have is the ability to write himself out of the corners he writes himself into.

Square Pegs was a great show. As for Marcia Brady, I never had fantasies about her. The Brady Bunch scared the shit out of me. They didn't have a toilet. These are the things you noticed when you didn't have color TV.

Jason: The ending of THE FLY was as powerful to me as the ending of THE FURY. It was a 70s movie ending all the way, profoundly moving as well as revolting. A brokenhearted and now deformed man-fly asking his pregnant girlfriend to blow his brains out with a shotgun. And people think A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE is hard to take?

Jeremiah: The story of your grandfather's love for BLUE VELVET -- and his apparently interest in the rest of David Lynch's career -- is as revelatory to me as any of the anecdotes about moviegoing. That's one of the most inspiring and exciting stories I've heard in a a while because it says to me that the most uncompromising and disturbing art can find a loyal and attentive viewer who does not fit the profile of a typical Lynch lover. (Is there such a thing, though? Isn't everyone who loves Lynch equally strange in their own way?)

Ross and Odie: The more I see PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE the more I like it. With each new viewing I respect its strangeness more . One of the things I love about it is that is is, when you get right down to it, an Adam Sandler movie, complete with temperemental manchild hero, wacky relatives, funny-lonely job and adoring beautiful but personality-free dream-girlfriend whose only plot function is to be an object of obsession for the hero and to occasionally tell him, "You're so funny!" This was also the first PTA movie where I felt he had finally transformed his strongest influences (Altman, Demme, Scorsese, Hal Ashby) into something unified and fresh, something nobody had really seen before. That was the movie where he stopped being a talent and became an artist.

Odie wrote:

"Russ: I never said PTA (Harper Valley PTA?) had no talent. He does. What he doesn't have is the ability to write himself out of the corners he writes himself into."

Stated as if I'm now expected to argue with someone who cannot get my name right! (I kid, because I like.)

I really do dig on both BOOGIE NIGHTS and MAGNOLIA, but PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE and HARD EIGHT left me feeling cold and apathetic toward repeat viewings. There was even something about P-DL that made me feel physically ill, which I guess is a triumph of sorts.

Now that I think about it, I once dragged a friend to see BN at the theatre and somewhere around the point where Macy blew his brains out, he got up, ran out of the auditorium and hurled in the restroom stall.

It's odd that PTA seems to work easier within an "epic" format than he does with two-hourish movies. This is something that I think is not usually the case with filmmakers - or least not any of the newer batch.

I disagree. PT Anderson may prefer the longer format for various reasons (prestige, scale, extra creative legroom) but I think he does better and more focused work within certain limits. To me his first and fourth films feel much more purposeful and lean and on-point than his middle two, which ironically seem more elliptical, random and sometimes cluttered.

"Ironically" in that while he clearly prefers a longer, shaggier sort of movie, it does not necessarily bring out the best in him.

Matt wrote:

"Jeremiah: The story of your grandfather's love for BLUE VELVET -- and his apparently interest in the rest of David Lynch's career -- is as revelatory to me as any of the anecdotes about moviegoing."

Wasn't it though?

At the same time, I'm wondering if I was just stoked at the idea that somebody, somewhere watched BLUE VELVET with their grandfather.

Matt wrote:

"To me his first and fourth films feel much more purposeful and lean and on-point than his middle two, which ironically seem more elliptical, random and sometimes cluttered."

I'd argue that that's precisely why the middle two are better. Certainly I think a huge intentional factor in MAGNOLIA is its reflections on the random nature of people's lives. If it seems to all over the place, I think it means to be. Whether or not this works for you is, of course, not up for debate.

I certainly find the middle films to be far more entertaining & engaging pieces than the bookend flicks.

Matt- not to take things too far afield here, but I wanted to talk about your response to Maddie's death scene. Specifically, about the absolute thematic necessity of that scene inspiring the response in you that it does.

Twin Peaks, obviously, was a show primarily obsessed with the coexistence, within the same entity, of absolutely opposed moral poles. (Right down to its title, in fact.) And the ultimate manifestation of that, the one that sets the show in motion, is the act of a father killing his daughter. (Or, technically, the evil instinct existing within a warm domestic set-up.)

And it was an act we hadn't seen until this moment. (Technically, yes, he's killing his niece. But it's still Ray Wise killing Sheryl Lee, and the parallel escapes no one.) This scene is the one in which the whole idea of the show crystalizes- it's the ultimate transgression, in the nature of the act, the glee Leland/Bob takes in the act, even the sound design, which is genuinely horrifying. (I've read Mark Frost claiming that they didn't know Who Killed Laura Palmer until the end of the first season, but it really couldn't have been anyone else.) And since Twin Peaks was based upon this notion of transgression- both thematically and formally, in its reworking of television narrative form- Maddie's death, the defining moment of the show, has to be as transgressive as possible, not just via the significance of a father killing his daughter, but in its violation of the expectations of us, the viewers, that you, you know, Can't Do That on Television.

None of this is meant to question the passion of your reaction to the scene; I just wanted to point out that inspiring disorienting reactions like yours may well have been a conscious, precisely calibrated choice.

Mark Asch: I totally agree with what you say. I didn't mean to indicate that Lynch should not have done it or that he had no right to do it, because obviously an artist can do whatever the hell he wants, particularly someone as unique and uncompromising as Lynch. He is allowed to go where nobody else is allowed to go because he has earned the right, just as an astronaut has earned the right to walk on the moon.

I was just trying to communicate how profoundly that scene disturbed me. I agree that the scene derives much of its power from the realization that the show, like the father, is not just breaking a lot of primal taboos, he is doing is a second time, basically for old time's sake, because it's just something he needs to do. (There's also that little voice in the back of your head that says, "They cast Sheryl Lee because they wanted to reneact the event but let Laura live!" and then they kill her anyway.)

It's an extraordinary scene, no doubt about, maybe one of the most artistically defensible taboo-breaking scenes I've ever witnessed. That doesn't make it any less savage or sadistic though. This seems like one of those rare cases where an artist becomes evil in order to understand and depict it.

Matt and Mark: I couldn't agree more with your comments. I still can't believe that scene exists. Thinking on it again, I don't really know why I ever expected TV to live up to something like that. In a way, Peaks changed television while it was on and then everything quickly settled back into place once it was gone. It's funny because the actual murder of Laura scene in Fire Walk With Me, though certainly disturbing, has nothing on this TV moment. Partly I think it goes back to what I referred to earlier. The scene is couched in our deep knowledge of what this is that we are seeing(as you rightly point out Mark), but it's also shot through with our dismay because we liked Leland. All the bullshit hype about "Who Killed Laura Palmer?", which tried to turn the experience into a Dallas cliffhanger, was always misguided and trivializing. It set a false expectation. Lynch did not care about the inconsistencies of his clues or about delivering a satisfying resolution. He did care about human connection and empathy and what it felt like to have that torn away and rent before your eyes. Maybe the false expectation was a good thing. It caused genuine devastation and shock when Maddie died which is exactly what it should cause. Like I said, I really truly expected the cops to bust in during that scene. The fact that they did not felt almost unforgiveable, such was the depth of my conventional and consoling viewing assumptions. The final scene in the roadhouse works so well and is so moving because we need the comfort and the allowance for grief that it provides just as the characters do; and, in a way, we can't fully explain why, just as they can't.


I remember that Jonathan Rosenbaum said in an essay on the show (the pilot episode specifically; the essay is in the Full of Secrets anthology) that TV did not suit Lynch because it forced him to restrain his vision. Clearly the consensus is that it did not adversely affect his vision. In fact, I personally feel that TV challenged Lynch--his episodes of the show and specifically that glorious, awsome pilot are sublime and, yes, tear at the fabric of what TV can do. What a grand and noble experiment. It was destined to die, of course. The story is that Lynch at least wanted the actual investigation of Laura's death to go on for five seasons. Even I can't imagine that. I have never been able to tell whether he was naive about what would be possible for him in this medium or just idealistic and ambitious. Either way, I'm grateful the series exists (where the hell is the season 2 box set????).


Oh, and Ross, I'm with you on Blue Velvet. It's a tough call indeed but for me that one endures as Lynch's high water mark. Its precision and surface simplicity are deceptive. It holds just as many worlds of meaning as Mulholland Drive and grants access only through close readings and a gradually emergent multilayered subtext. It's actually closer to the patient gaze of Asian cinema than to the usual freak out head trip Lynch is associated with these days. BV does not demand that you figure out the subtext, as Mulholland Drive certainly does; in fact, it works best when the associations are allowed to ferment and congeal in the subconscious and sudden revelation strikes at sometimes inopportune moments (for instance, when Jeffrey is talking to Sandy in the diner about his stake out on Franks's place, Lynch distracts us with all the surface details but skims past stuff like who the hell Jeffrey is talking about when he says two guys told him the police would find drugs in a dead dealer's apartmet--if we're not to assume these guys are police then who are they???? I offer that one up to you "guys"). While the later films overtly challenge us and force us to enter Lynch's matrix of associations, BV lets the roiling underbelly of the subconscious remain an underbelly; the challenge is not overt and the discoveries are potentially more vital and more vast in implication as the process of audiencing the film is less formally regulated, less restricted by obvious intent. I read someone say somewhere that Blue Velvet only seemed more accessible than Eraserhead. Dead on.

Ross: Stated as if I'm now expected to argue with someone who cannot get my name right! (I kid, because I like.)

That was a mistype. I'm sorry about that. The u and o are only two fingers away! Even though I've been typing over 30 years, I still make the occasional mistake. :) I'm very sorry and embarrassed, because I didn't proofread that post. If it's any consolation to you, the only time I've ever been published in a regular newspaper, they spelled my name wrong.

Boogie Nights is the only PTA movie I favorably reviewed, and even it has big problems (no pun intended--my comment about the fake-looking Marky Mark Claymation prosthetic got me banned from the host of my original review website). I was most disappointed by Hard Eight though, because before the Samuel L. Jackson character showed up, Hard Eight was PTA's best movie. Philip Baker Hall was excellent. PTA seems to do that: get me interested and then punish me for investing my time.

As for Twin Peaks: I watched the first episode and never watched it again. Sounds like I made the right choice.

Nathaniel writes, "I remember that Jonathan Rosenbaum said in an essay on the show (the pilot episode specifically; the essay is in the Full of Secrets anthology) that TV did not suit Lynch because it forced him to restrain his vision. Clearly the consensus is that it did not adversely affect his vision. In fact, I personally feel that TV challenged Lynch--his episodes of the show and specifically that glorious, awsome pilot are sublime and, yes, tear at the fabric of what TV can do."

I'd go further than that. TV didn't restrain Lynch's vision. It freed Lynch's vision. He should be making 13-episode self-contained one-shot series for pay cable. In addition to features, of course.

I will add that it's interesting, appropriate and perhaps inevitable that a thread on movies and TV shows that branded you would circle around to David Lynch, specifically BLUE VELVET and TWIN PEAKS.

I don't share the love for P.T. Anderson. MAGNOLIA and BOOGIE NIGHTS were clearly works made by a guy who is better able to express his interest in movies and movie-making better than he is in expressing his interest in human behavior.

He has clearly studied the Robert Altman films, but by trying to recycle their formal elements he only succeeds in convincing me he's a fan with good taste, not a real filmmaker. I saw very few moments in those films that felt emotionally true. The scene with Mark Wahlberg and his parents in BOOGIE NIGHTS feels particularly false, pat, and one-dimensional -- and that kicks off the rest of the movie.

Since he references maybe a dozen great films and filmmakers in those two films, including recycled Scorsese shots, I failed to see what P.T. brings to the table. Well executed, with some fine performances, but ultimately flat and lifeless...

Now, I agree he was on to something with PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, a movie I actually despised far worse than BOOGIE NIGHTS and MAGNOLIA. Adam Sandler was trying really, really hard -- but gave another variation of his man-child persona and he's unable to summon up anything deeper. And P.T. still can't help but pray at Altman's shrine, yet the use of "He Needs Me" in POPEYE and PUNCH-DRUNK is very different. One is an touching and earnest, quirky and sweet expression of love (by Shelley Duvall) and the other is a filmmaker referencing a better filmmaker. What lasts longer with you as a viewer? The original or the photocopy?

Of course, BLADE RUNNER has been referenced as a big one for many of you -- and it is for me, too. That one's all about the copy being better than the original -- but the point is the copy can go out and create a richer personality ("I've seen things you people wouldn't believe," says Rutger Hauer, wistfully. It brings a genuine tear to the eye.) P.T. hasn't found his own footing yet. I hope he does someday.

Of the two Andersons, both of whom wear their film history knowledge like T shirts, I prefer Wes. He's as technically adept and artistically ambitious as PT, but when I look at Wes' movies I often see images, characters and situations I have never seen before in any other movie. He's adding new things to movies rather than just rearranging what's already been done, an amazing accomplishment.

That said, I reiterate what I said earlier: I've seen a lot of movies in my life, but I have never seen anything remotely like PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE. Yes, it's an Adam Sandler movie, but dismissing it for that reason is wrongheaded and unfair. I am reminded of Sean Burns' comment higher up in this thread calling GOODFELLAS a punk rock GODFATHER, which is right on the money. (Scorsese even makes the connection explicit by ending with Sid Vicious' cover of Sinatra's "My Way.") The specific energy PT Anderson brings to this particular assignment transforms the familiar into the unfamiliar.

Not everything in PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE works, but PT Anderson is really stretching there. It's an astonishingly disciplined, completely imagined comedy that does not move or feel like any comedy that has ever been made before. I wish he'd keep working in that vein to see what developed.

Not only is dismissing Punch-Drunk Love because it's an Adam Sandler movie unfair (to paraphrase), that movie was, for previously condescending me, a call to reevaluate the whole Sandler persona- to see how the shades of insecurity, inarticulacy, and social awkwardness that Anderson drew out were present in Sandler's comedy all along. People (including me, even as a middle-schooler) have been calling Sandler "immature" forever; Punch-Drunk Love is, among other things, a surprisngly and (mostly) compassionate examination of precisely that.

Just to clarify: I didn't mean to indicate that I thought JK was dismissing PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE just because Sandler is in it. Clearly his objections are deeper than that. But I have heard and read many complaints that it's just an artsy-fied Sandler film, unsatisfying both both Sandler fans and to non-Sandlerites who hoped for a stand-on-its-own-two-feet, great movie.

I'm vaguely embarassed to say that I've written a pretty massive amount of stuff about Sandler over the years, starting with a mammoth analysis of why "The Waterboy" was so popular back in 1998.

That NYPress piece isn't online, and luck of the draw meant I didn't get to be the primary on "Punch Drunk Love," but here are links to a couple of Sandler reviews, ""Big Daddy" and "Anger Management."

Just to toss in another couple of quick thoughts on "Twin Peaks."

The series shot the Maddie murder scene twice: Once with Leland as the killer and once with Benjamin Horne as the killer.

As Mark Frost said about "Twin Peaks," it was about the journey, not the destination.

Late and off topic, but here's a thought for the TWIN PEAKS thread. Watching the DVDs of season 1 whenever it was they came out, I was struck by how "film-like" the show was -- not just the pilot, but all the way through. And, while I'm no TV historian, it strikes be that before PEAKS, TV shows looked like TV shows, and now most of the dramas look a lot like movies. Compare HILL STREET BLUES and NYPD BLUE to get a look at what I'm talking about. Is it fair to say TWIN PEAKS made a permanent impact on the look of TV drama? Because that alone would qualify it as one of the most important shows of all time.

I can't agree because HILL STREET came before TWIN PEAKS and had a very filmic style, with an ensemble narrative covered in intricately-choreographed long takes with handheld cameras. PEAKS had an influence, no doubt, as did MIAMI VICE before it, but if I was going to pick a show that imported feature film aesthetic values to TV, it'd be HILL STREET.

Really? HILL ST seems, at least visually, pretty TV-ish to me (I watched the whole run many years ago on TV Land, the last time I was without a full-time job). It was certainly ambitious for its time in terms of plot and characterization, but I don't remember much going on eye-wise. But MIAMI VICE is a good call -- certainly high style on the small screen. Wonder how many times MV and TWIN PEAKS get mentioned in the same discussion.

Well, at the risk of tipping my hand re: the Altman blogathon, when Siskel and Ebert reviewed the pilot episode of HILL STREET (as they did with the pilots of TWIN PEAKS, THE SOPRANOS and some other significant TV programs) they spent much of the time arguing about whether it deserved all the critical acclaim it was getting in light of the fact that many of its then-radical style choices were already perfected in movies by Altman.

1. ANIMAL FARM (1954). As a five-year-old insomniac, I wandered into the den late one night, the silenced TV flickering while my father snored on the sofa. This was the year before my parents divorced; my Dad spent a lot of nights on the sofa in the den that year. It struck me as odd that a cartoon about cute animals was on so late, so I twisted up the volume just enough, then snuggled with my father to watch the story unfold. When Boxer the horse was betrayed, I woke up my Dad with baleful crying. Although I've read almost everything by Orwell since, I have been unable to watch this movie a second time.

2. THE RED BALLOON (1956). A ratty 16mm print of TRB was the only movie every shown in my grammar school, and the last one I remember seeing with a clattering projector. Back then, a 'motion picture' was still a technical marvel to me, and the ability to see the celluloid passing through the projector's gate made 'persistence of vision' a mystery of existence. About the same time, my parents split up, and the day we moved out of our suburban house, my uncle dropped a brass birdcage on the front porch and I watched the family's pet cockatoo rise into the cloudless blue sky like a feathered balloon.

3. TAXI DRIVER (1976). Along with BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GODFATHER, this violent classic shaped my view of the world. My Mom snuck me in to see BAC and TG, but TAXI DRIVER was the first time I saw a quintessential 70s-style downer without parental supervision. I was fascinated by DeNiro’s character study, much more than the blood letting. The final shoot out in the bordello made me vomit in my popcorn bag, and the crowd cheering Travis Bickle like he was Rocky Balboa only deepened my horror. The first murder in the neighborhood convenience store, where Travis shoots the skinny black kid, followed by the white store owner beating the lifeless body with a tire iron... Jesus. Maybe this should be number one on my list, on second thought. During one year in college I saw this movie 28 times (in a movie theater, children, long before Betamax slugged it out with VHS). When I watched it for the 29th time on DVD, the gun orgy at the end struck me as silly, ruining everything that played out before. The lasting horror: I’m still haunted by the casual shooting of that black kid in the bodega.

4. THE BICYCLE THIEF (1948). A few years after the ‘neon realism’ of TAXI DRIVER, I found this classic on my local PBS station. It was part of a weekly series of foreign film masterpieces, including JULES AND JIM, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE 4OO BLOWS, 8 ½. I don’t remember who the host was, but the theme music was the fanfare from Mussorgsky’s PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION. This was decades before cable TV and home video, and it makes me wonder where public TV went wrong. This sort of show is essential even now. Not everyone has access to Netflix or a decent video store. Why not dust off this series and rebroadcast it, untouched?

5. THE SOPRANOS (EPISODE 64 “LONG TERM PARKING”). When Silvio murders Adriana in the woods, Season Five, my soul was sick. It chills me to recall. If David Chase does not whack Tony (and Christopher) for this killing in the final season, I’m gonna pop everybody’s red balloon.