Floyd Mutrux's "Aloha Bobby and Rose" (1975), Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" (1960)

In 1971, Floyd Mutrux made his directorial debut with the critically-acclaimed docudrama Dusty and Sweets McGee. Despite the film’s rave reviews, Warner Bros. pulled the picture from release after only one week after Time magazine questioned its graphic depiction of drug addiction. That same year, Mutrux wrote and produced The Christian Licorice Store, and found screenwriting work on Monte Hellman’s classic Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) starring Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson and Laurie Bird. During this period, Variety predicted that the five greatest directors to emerge from the so-called “New Hollywood” era would be Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Floyd Mutrux, Martin Scorsese, and Terrence Malick. In 1975, Mutrux wrote and directed Aloha, Bobby and Rose for Columbia Pictures. Filmed for a mere $60,000, Mutrux’s lovers on the road worked as a sort of homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). Mutrux then helmed the seminal rock-and-roll film American Hot Wax (1978), which has since become a cult hit—despite its prolonged absence on the DVD market—earning Mutrux accolades and rave reviews. For his work on the film, Village Voice dubbed him the year’s Best Director in 1978.

As LA Weekly film writer Chuck Stephens observed, Mutrux was a “white-light guy in the white-heat moment of New Hollywood. His films were funny, freaky, dangerous as rock-and-roll, and portended a potential combination of Mean Streets edginess and Badlands beauty.” However, due to a string of films which have been shelved, rewritten by others, or continue to languish in development hell, Mutrux remains a virtual unknown. After directing the mainstream comedy The Hollywood Knights (1980), Mutrux took a lengthy hiatus from filmmaking. It’s interesting to note that Mutrux has sold over ten screenplays in Hollywood, but most of them have not yet been produced. He conceived and co-wrote Brian De Palma’s hit film The Untouchables (1987), but did not receive any screen credit. In 1990, Mutrux served as executive producer on Warren Beatty’s film Dick Tracy. In 1994, Mutrux returned to the director’s chair for the comedy There Goes My Baby, a semi-nostalgic film set in 1964, starring Dermot Mulroney and Kelli Williams. While the film was well-received, it fell victim to an untimely bankruptcy at Orion Pictures and received a limited release. Some of Floyd Mutrux's favorite films are: From Here to Eternity (1953), Giant (1956), Shoot the Piano Player (1960)—based on David Goodis' novel—, Breathless (1960), Jules et Jim (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Chinatown (1974), and Pulp Fiction (1994).

-Andrew Rausch: Variety magazine once predicted that the five greatest directors to emerge from the seventies would be Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, and Floyd Mutrux. But after filming The Hollywood Knights, you took a fourteen-year hiatus from filmmaking. What happened?

-Floyd Mutrux: Look, I have a lot of regrets. I made a lot of choices that were not smart. I went on to work on a lot of projects that never got made, and wound up feeling sorry for myself. In that period in the late seventies, early eighties, I just sort of dropped out. The pictures I cared about weren’t getting made. I just disappeared from the scene. Then I wrote a lot of scripts. Some executives I knew from the studios got fired, and the pictures I’d written got shelved. Sometimes I feel like the movie business betrayed me, but that’s kind of a whiny attitude. Basically, I don’t give a fuck because the movie business betrayed itself. It makes a lot of shit now. It’s almost unwatchable. There are no longer any movies you really want to go see. Name your ten best pictures of the last five years, and they don’t compare to the best of the Golden Age, the fifties, the sixties, or the seventies. —Fifty Filmmakers: Conversations with Directors (2008) by Andrew Rausch

Aloha, Bobby and Rose: There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Floyd Mutrux, and that’s a shame, because he directed two of the great American movies of the 1970s (no small accomplishment, that). One was the infectiously energetic (and, these days, impossible to find) early-rock snapshot American Hot Wax; the other is this foggy 1975 delight, in which Paul Le Mat and Diane Hull high-tail it out of Hollywood when a date-night prank turns deadly. But Mutrux handily transcends the cliches of the “lovers on the run” movie, thanks to the oddball sadness of his characters and the wild unpredictability of his storytelling. Aloha Bobby and Rose is a primo portrait of 1970’s existential aimlessness disguised as a drive-in movie and is audaciously shot by William Fraker, one of the truly gifted cinematographers of the era. Aloha takes us back to the low-rent L.A. setting to show us how a smidgen of fatality propells the story through its star-crossed lover scenario. Bobby is an unambitious auto mechanic who drives a souped-up ’67 Camaro. When his co-worker Moxey shows enough initiative to apply to transmission school, Bobby derides such blatant careerism. Who wants to wake up that early? 

Bobby is played by Paul LeMat, fresh of his tough guy role as John Milner in American Graffiti. Diane Hull plays Rose, a single mother whose life seems so stifled her boozy mom encourages her to kick loose and go out with Bobby when he delivers her car from the garage. While on their date a dumb prank spirals out of control (leading to one of the cinema’s freakiest car crashes) and the two set off for Mexico in an attempt to escape the law. The 1970’s were the last time that popular films would be so casually fatalistic. Much like DeNiro’s character in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), Bobby is a character that seems less likely to survive the film the more we get to know him. Apparently nearly broke throughout the entire film, Bobby seems to have no visible support, dreams or prospects. He’s more passive than self-destructive but his insouciance seems so profound you can’t imagine the future having a place for this guy. The “Aloha” of the title is a reference to a passing thought about running off to Hawaii, a dream Bobby and Rose seem to choose because of its very improbability.

Diane Hull makes her under-written role appear truly poetic and vivid. But the real star of this film is cinematographer William Fraker. The former President of the American Society of Cinematographers, Fraker shot some of the iconic films of the sixties and seventies, including ROSEMARY’S BABY and BULLITT. In ALOHA he seems to have been given a free hand to shoot some of his boldest work, as Fraker delivers a pictorial essay of L.A. at night. As Bobby and Rose escape towards the Mexican border they end up briefly riding with another couple, Buford and Donna Sue. Played by Tim McIntire (who had a mesmerizing turn playing rock and roll pioneer Alan Freed in Mutrux’s following film AMERICAN HOT WAX) and Leigh French (of the San Francisco comedy group The Committee), this duo pretends to epitomize the American Dream to Bobby and Rose. Buford wears a cowboy hat, owns a Cadillac and with his old lady Donna Sue, seems to just drive around and raise hell wherever he goes. Rose barely tries to play along, quietly distressed at Bobby’s boyish admiration for this insufferable blowhard.

But there’s no future in being this guy’s lackey and with no real place to run Bobby and Rose have no choice but to turn around the Mexican border and meet their fate. At 88 minutes, ALOHA plays like an American take on BREATHLESS, succeeding at what American films do best: taking a pulpy and recognizable genre and revving it up with an individualistic personal vision. Now, almost 50 years later, ALOHA BOBBY AND ROSE’s period stylizations have mellowed beautifully, turning what might have been a tossed-off youth film into a dreamy, blissed-out and tragic reverie. Source: flavorwire.com

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is a film driven by a series of paradoxes which appear to present mainstream film elements yet subvert them throughout. Godard’s use of key imagery and character traits from the Hollywood film noir genre to create an internal dissonance by visually, such as the lighting of Michel, representing the inverted Hollywood film noir protagonist, using jarring cuts to disorient the viewer. The character of Michel is a direct reference to the archetypal Hollywood film noir male protagonist: he is dressed in a fedora and suit; smokes constantly; provides narration; he sees himself as a seducer of women,  engages in “tough guy” banter; he knows his femme fatale counterpart, Patricia, on the street as she tries to sell him newspapers. While Michel exhibits these traits which initially seem to categorise him as a mainstream Hollywood character, Godard challenges this characterisation through mise-en-scène and negating his protagonist’s overtly masculine dialogue by making him vulnerable visually and in his discourse with the quintessential femme fatale. 

During the scene in which Michel speaks with Patricia as she tries to sell newspapers, the power assigned to the Hollywood film noir male protagonist is given to the woman; even before Michel engages in conversation with Patricia, he has already been disempowered because of how the conversation is begun: Godard chose to have Michel look for Patricia in multiple places until finally finding her, rather than have the female chase after the male’s attention. This dynamic continues throughout and is made increasingly prominent as Michel and Patricia’s conversation progresses. Although the conversation has begun with Michel mocking Patricia, the formation of the misogynistic male archetype is subverted when Godard has Michel talk about his feelings, a subject about which Patricia has no interest in speaking. In having Michel harass Patricia with incessant declarations of love, which continue throughout the film, and speak about his sadness, Michel loses his film noir male protagonist categorisation. 

This paradox of the sensitive gangster created for the viewer is extremely difficult to reconcile and insists in the duration of the bedroom scene as in the rest of the film; soon after Michel acts as the antithesis of the mainstream Hollywood criminal, Godard again disrupts the audience’s attempt to label Michel as either being film noir or anti-film noir when he finishes the conversation with Michel stating in an authoritative and suddenly masculine tone that he has to find someone who owes him money, reintroducing Michel as the fearsome and forceful man character. Godard further argues against film noir’s governing male protagonist in a verbal, and visual, contradiction through Patricia’s stealing of Michel’s narration. At the ending of the film, as Michel speaks, Patricia begins to narrate for the audience and delivers her internal monologue as the camera follows her and ignores Michel, the first instance in which this occurs in the film. This rejection of the male protagonist, which would not occur in mainstream film noir, further disempowers and dissociates Michel from not only being a gangster, but as a leading character in the film. 

Furthermore, since Godard subjects his other characters to filmic darkness, Michel appears vulnerable in comparison to his counterparts by being more visible; other characters in Breathless are allowed to hide visually through the shadows while Michel is unable to do so, akin to the powerlessness Godard verbally represented through Michel’s conversations with Patricia. The final way in which Michel as a character is robbed of power and dignity is the final scene, in which he dies. When Michel is shot by the police, Godard films Michel running, injured, away from the police while Patricia runs after him. In showing the viewer only Michel in one frame then only Patricia as she runs after him and never together creates a haunting power dynamic; by filming them both separately, Godard defines visually the person who is running away and the person who chases him relentlessly, rather than making it appear as though Patricia and Michel are running together as equals by putting them together in the frame. In making this impactful decision, Godard characterises Patricia as the hunter and Michel as the hunted, wounded animal which cannot comprehend its inability to physically run from death. The visual emasculating of a potential film noir protagonist is further impressed upon the viewer when Godard films Michel lying on the ground on his back overhead with the police and Patricia’s feet encircling him, their bodies thereby being made to seem indomitable by comparison, then finishing the film with Patricia speaking and looking directly into the camera, reclaiming the film from Michel, now forcibly removed by Patricia's betrayal.

A major paradox to Breathless is its presentation to the audience of what would structurally appear to be a mainstream film noir in that the major features of the film are centralised around a gangster, money, and a femme fatale, while visually, it is a totally unique departure from the genre to the extent that it transcends its categorisation. A radical component of the filming of Breathless is that the camera is at eye-level with its characters for most of the film; rather than physically moving the camera by utilising high or low-angle shots to set the tone of a scene, Godard instead uses jarring and sudden cuts to create motion in the film. In the beginning scene of the film, in which Michel drives the stolen car along a road flanked by trees, and during the nighttime scene towards the end of the film in which Michel and Patricia converse in another stolen car, for instance, the audience is confronted with an unsettling dissonance: while the car continues to move forward, as does the narration or conversation, without interruption, the background as a result of the cuts, stutters and changes abruptly. 

This in itself creates another paradox embedded in this film: the logical nature of physical and verbal forward movement contrasted against an illogical background of the unexpected disruption of an assumed forward moving scenery. Also, the opening of Breathless is “unprecedented,” in that we never learn what route brought Michel Poiccard to the Vieux Port of Marseille, where he surveys the future from the very edge of France. This first shot strikes a match to touch off an oil fire that will race through the film’s incidents and images, indeed through the New Wave altogether. We can feel Godard’s own outlaw freedom in this sequence, carjacking a Hollywood genre and putting it into drive. The film lurches forward as he shifts up with wild shot changes; it charges ahead on bursts of music and sound effects, and on Belmondo’s spontaneous speeches. Breathless is still the definitive manifesto of the New Wave. The movement was well under way when Godard made his entrée. In a much-discussed 1957 inquest, the pop­u­lar weekly L’express had dubbed the ascendant generation “la nouvelle vague.” Claude Chabrol had come out before the triumph of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour at Cannes in spring 1959. But Breathless sealed the movement, defining it as simultaneously nonchalant and sophisticated. In Breathless, Belmondo gave to his character an engaging insouciance that resonated with Godard’s unapologetic way of making his film. 

Jean Seberg, though a well-known ingenue (particularly at Cahiers du cinéma, on whose cover she appeared in February 1958), likewise plays at finding her character—perhaps at finding herself, an American in Paris—as she adopts pose after pose for close-ups that come to make up over 20 percent of the film. Similarly, the editing and music constitute elements as well as signifiers of tone and rhythm, visually and aurally structuring our experience. Godard’s writings have always sounded brash, yet his earliest projects often sang the purity of artistic expression. Poe, Baudelaire and Rimbaud were his models. Godard could write without irony, “What is difficult is to advance into unknown lands, to be aware of the danger, to take risks, to be afraid.” Breathless announces this as its principal theme early on, when Michel Poiccard passes a movie poster advertising Robert Aldrich’s Ten Seconds to Hell: “Live Dangerously Until the End!” 

Godard believed that the powerful writers of the past (Stendhal, for instance, who provided the epigraph for Godard’s scenario) would surely have been auteurs of cinema in the mid-twentieth century. Long before Gilles Deleuze, Godard called on popular genres—the musical, the western, and of course the film noir—to address the philosophical issues of his day. Sartre, after all, had worked in film, as had Malraux, who lent his personal support to get The 400 Blows to Cannes. Merciless and intrepid, Godard took himself to be a loner even within the Cahiers du cinéma clan, tying genuine art to courage and solitude. “The cinema is not a craft. It is an art. It does not mean teamwork. One is always alone on the set as before the blank page. And to be alone? means to ask questions. And to make films means to answer them. Nothing could be more classically romantic.” Source: criterion.com

Weird Love Stories: "Strawberry Mansion" (2021), "Aloha, Bobby and Rose" (1975)

Few directors are able to truly grasp dream logic and the surreal flights of fancy that accompany such subject matters. David Lynch’s name comes to mind, given his ability to craft intricate narratives surrounding the imaginary waking world. While the term "Lynchian" is often misconstrued, applied to anything that defies comprehension from a surrealist point of view, this is exactly how Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley’s Strawberry Mansion (2021) can be defined. Combining the delightful and the absurd, Strawberry Mansion is a sweet triumph, an ode to imagination, and a manifesto on the wonders of love. Anabella Isadora (Penny Fuller), is a widow who has not filed her dream taxes in years, as they have been recorded on VHS tapes instead of the mandatory “airsticks.” A maze of conspiracy is revealed: the government surreptitiously places products in people’s dreams, and the taxes imposed are ones that infringe on our innermost desires. Bella is aware of this, and the younger Bella (Grace Glowicki), whose dreams James Preble (Kentucker Audley) is auditing, comes off as mysterious, propelling the dream auditor to fall in love with her. And it is the kind of love that helps shatter the boundaries of reality and dreams, freeing the imagination in the most whimsical of ways, crafting a way for a world where anything is possible.

Considering Strawberry Mansion was made on a scant budget and the filmmakers wear their “go-along-with-your-wildest-visions” badge with pride, the film is a triumph in every sense of the term. Audley and Glowicki play star-crossed lovers divided by the oceans of space, time, and dreams, imbuing their bond with a special brand of whimsical authenticity worth rooting for. Even when the film stretches the limits of imagination, everything is still believable from a dream-logic perspective. There are so many fun connections here: shades of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Stranger Than Fiction, The Congress, and even Kusturica's haunting Arizona Dream, where the four insomniac protagonists wander in and out of each others' often-incompatible dream worlds. Rather, the film’s low-budget virtuosity comes off as an end in itself—as a vital example of possibilities untapped, as an act of resistance to reclaim fantasy for independent filmmaking, for imagination that pays no rent to the overlords of intellectual propriety. Sources: rogerebert.com and newyorker.com

Watching 1975's Aloha, Bobby and Rose on long-time awaited Blu-ray (2018), courtesy of Scorpion Releasing, I became convinced that Floyd Mutrux could have been a great American director and that we failed him. There is so much Americana in Aloha, Bobby and Rose that it should be a movie talked about in the same breath as Badlands (1973). This is the movie that Jim McBride's remake of New Weave classic Breathless wanted to be, and I say that as a fan of Jim McBride's Breathless (1983). Mutrux's film is a neo-noirish poem (which dates back to Gun Crazy) that seeks beauty -- and when it can't locate it invents it -- and then unapologetically indulges in it until it reaches a state of delirium. Bobby (Paul Le Mat, who played John Milner in George Lucas' American Graffiti, 1973) and Rose (Diane Hull, who played Ellen Anderson in Elia Kazan's The Arrangement, 1969) are very much in love, but their future seems bleak. He works at a tiny LA gas station while she struggles to be a good mother. While out in the city Bobby and Rose stop at a convenience store to pick up drinks. When Bobby decides to pull a prank, the owner empties his rifle and accidentally kills the young man behind the counter. The lovers panic and instead of waiting for the police to arrive jump in Bobby's '68 Camaro and disappear into the night. 

Mutrux's film offers one of the purest nostalgia trips that one could get without being placed in an actual time machine. The story and journey that the film chronicles are simply astonishing. The director had a modest budget to work with which is why he incorporated a lot of authentic footage and yet this is precisely the reason why the whole thing feels so special now. From the trendy billboards to the busy fast-food joints to the darker corners of old Hollywood, this film oozes an unfiltered '70s atmosphere that is incredibly attractive. Adding to the magic is a brilliant soundtrack with classic tunes by the likes of Elton John ("Tiny Dancer" and "Bennie and the Jets"), Lenny Welch ("Since I Fell for You"), Stevie Wonder ("Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours"), and Little Eva ("Locomotion"). Some of the segments where the music is used are so nicely done and are so effective that they easily could have replaced the trailers that were cut to promote the film. Mutrux made the film with his best friend, William Fraker, who a few years earlier had lensed Bullitt and Rosemary's Baby. It's a secret American classic (The New Yorker's critic Richard Brody called it "a minor masterwork of doomed romanticism") and makes me think the industry somehow did Floyd Mutrux dirty, because if he had a movie like this in him, they needed to have given Mutrux a vote of confidence. Source: blu-ray.com

Licorice Pizza, American Underdog

For years, I’ve been hoping that Paul Thomas Anderson would turn away from art-house auteur fare, with its shapeless storylines, twisted characters, and exasperating ambiguity. Picture PTA directing Fast Times at Ridgemont High and you’ll grasp the vibe of Licorice Pizza, a 133-minute rom-com in the early-1970s San Fernando Valley interspersed with various SoCal oddballs the youngsters meet while they’re trying to decide whether to start a romance. Licorice Pizza  anti-beauty, indie arrogance even delivers—I can hardly believe I’m typing these words about a PTA film—a big, satisfying smile at the end. The film takes its title from a Seventies Southern California record-store chain. Cooper Hoffman plays a 15-year-old high-school student named Gary Valentine who opens the movie by pestering a 25-year-old photographer’s assistant he meets while waiting in line for his yearbook photo. Alana Kane, is played with low-key appeal by another rookie actor, Alana Haim, for whom Anderson has directed music videos. She intermittently slaps him in the chops or flirts with other guys, but she also keeps hanging around him. Who wouldn’t? The kid’s going places. In his drive to appear smart, Anderson treats each sequence elliptically: Gary’s run-in with Lucille Ball; his TV-interview effrontery with Art Linkletter; Alana’s encounter with William Holden (Sean Penn), Sam Peckinpah (Tom Waits) figures; her defiant trick on Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) and brief venture into political work (Benny Safdie as a local pol). Anderson’s nearly cinema-destroying impudence contrasts with Tarantino’s fan-boy romanticism in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Anderson’s quite ugly aesthetic presumes superiority over the more conventional La La Land yet misses the emotional, life-affirming richness of the former. Despite lively episodes of assorted unresolved interactions, Licorice Pizza’s entertainment value finally gets vague. Gary and Alana's story feels unfinished. Anderson’s role model—Floyd Mutrux—used marvelous ’70s quotidian narratives (Aloha Bobby and Rose, American Hot Wax) and endowed his characters with wonder, using all the elements of beauty in a film artist’s arsenal. Source: www.nationalreview.com

Until the end of “Licorice Pizza,” Alana is in doubt about her relationship with Gary. But a subtle incident leaves behind a major impact on her decision that even clears the air of doubt too. While on a dinner with councilman Joel Wachs, she realizes that with all the men she had been with so far, it was never about her, instead of about them, their desires, their wants, and their public image. But Gary was the only person who never pretended that he cared because, in reality, he actually did.  Alana gets an epiphany of sorts when she finds out Joel Wachs was just calling her to avoid the suspicion that was being raised about him being a gay person. She has a brief conversation with Mathew, Wach’s lover, and for the first time, she lifts the veil and gets clarity. She is done with accommodating the idea of that perfect life and those feigned emotions because no matter how hard she tried, she failed to fit into it. She stops being pretentious and, for the first time, considers Gary as somebody with whom she could be herself. Gary, too realizes that he was done beating around the bush and that he needs to tell Alana how much she means to him. Finally, they meet, removing the ambiguity that smogged their relationship and welcoming each other in their respective lives for a happily ever after, maybe. “Licorice Pizza” leaves you with a cozy and warm feeling that might be said to be a tad bit optimistic but never deceives you by showing the characters in an idealistic light or devoid of any flaws. Source: dmtalkies.com

“American Underdog” is a winner. No single person can attempt to do the impossible; few souls understood that more than Kurt Warner. He was the guy who went from stocking shelves at a grocery store to winning the Super Bowl MVP award. But the good thing about “American Underdog,” the new film based on Warner’s rise to NFL stardom, is that it focuses on the love story with Brenda that helped bolster that Cinderella tale. Played by Zachary Levi and Anna Paquin, Kurt and Brenda faced many adversities and hardships before he took over for the injured Trent Green in what turned out to be a storybook season back in 1999.  While the football scenes are aplenty and slickly filmed, the spectacular debut with the Rams is more of a climax here. So, stop worrying about whether or not Levi can throw a spiral, and just take this as an old school romance with some sports thrown in. Levi and Paquin fit well into their roles, which helps the movie considerably. If you mess up these two roles, “American Underdog” sinks. They share some chemistry, offering moviegoers a small peek at the life these two built out of misfortune and some luck. 

We learn to love them as people first before the national sports power couple they eventually became–just like Kurt learned to love Brenda’s family before marrying her. Levi’s best scenes aren’t on a football field; they’re at home with Brenda’s (and eventually his) son, Zack. This is where the playing field shifts to more the actor’s natural strengths. There’s a gentleness to Levi’s giant here that balances out the life and sports hardships he faced. A key scene involving the Warners’ car breaking down in the middle of a snow storm, with Kurt walking for miles to get gas and return, reaches an epic scale. Levi and Paquin are too old to play the characters at this phase of their lives (Levi is 41, Paquin is 38), but their chemistry is excellent and they're both exceptional actors, so it's not hard to get past all that. The best thing about the film is its refusal to move according to the prescribed rhythms of the standard-issue sports picture. From start to finish, it prefers to focus on what's happening off-field. It returns to the gridiron only when it's time to set up the next career milestone, and the milestones are only important inasmuch as they affect the lives of Kurt, Brenda, and Zack. "American Underdog" is about a couple moving through the years and getting to know each other and look out for each other. This approach might be unique among sports films. In real life, after Kurt Warner was cut from the Packers' training camp in 1994, he got a job working the night shift as a night stock clerk at a local Hy-Vee grocery store, in addition to his work as an assistant coach at Northern Iowa. Warner's future wife Brenda Carney's parents were killed in 1996 when their Mountain View, Arkansas home was destroyed by a tornado. Warner and Brenda married on October 11, 1997, at the St. John American Lutheran Church, the same place where the service for Brenda's parents was held. Warner was still hoping to get an NFL tryout, but with that possibility appearing dim and the long hours at Hy-Vee for minimum wage taking their toll, Warner begins his Arena Football League career. After marrying Brenda, Warner officially adopted her two children from her first marriage; they have since added five children of their own. Source: rogerebert.com 

Oscar Nominations 2022

Jane Campion's “The Power of the Dog,” a revisionist Western that uses a careworn genre to examine toxic masculinity, dominated the Academy Awards on Tuesday with 12 nods. It was followed closely behind by “Dune,” a sprawling adaptation of a popular sci-fi novel that was once believed to be unfilmable, which defied naysayers to earn 10 Oscar nominations. “West Side Story,” Steven Spielberg’s ravishing take on a beloved musical, and “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age story, each received 7 nominations. All four of those films are up for best picture, joining a race that includes “Don’t Look Up,” “Drive My Car,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza” and “Nightmare Alley.” 

Guillermo Del Toro's neo-noir “Nightmare Alley” has received 4 Oscar nods. “West Side Story,” “Belfast” and “Nightmare Alley” were among the many films that failed to convert critical raves into ticket sales. Oscar voters largely steered clear of more populist choices. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which has become one of the rare post-pandemic blockbusters, was overlooked in the best picture category. Its omission is bad news for the Oscar producers given that the telecast usually gets a rating boost when a popular film is up for major awards, something that happened when “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” and “Titanic” dominated the race. 

Spielberg now ranks alongside Billy Wilder and behind Martin Scorsese’s nine nominations and William Wyler’s 12 nods in the category. Best actor is a race between Hollywood heavyweights Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of MacBeth”) and Will Smith (“King Richard”), along with respected veterans such as Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Andrew Garfield (“Tick, Tick … Boom!”) and Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”).  Best actress will be a contest between Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”) and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”). The 94th annual Academy Awards will be on March 27 at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. The in-person ceremony will be televised on ABC. For the first time in three years, the Oscars will have a host in 2022, Craig Erwich, president of ABC Entertainment and Hulu Originals, announced in January. Variety later learned that multiple hosts will likely take the stage, however no official names have been revealed yet. Source: variety.com

Standards of Masculinity, The Last Duel, Matt Damon and Good Will Hunting

Women who are in a relationship with men and feel that their partner has a fragile masculinity are likely to change their behavior, a new study suggests. For instance, the more women perceive their partner’s sense of masculinity as fragile, the more likely they are to fake orgasms. Furthermore, the more women perceived their partner’s manhood as precarious, the more anxiety they felt and the more likely it is for couple communication to deteriorate. Lead author Jessica Jordan of the University of South Florida said: “One of my colleagues, a collaborator on this study, first raised the idea of studying if men who are insecure in their masculinity are less likely to solicit sexual feedback from their female partners. I immediately thought, “It doesn’t matter if they do, women are not going to give honest feedback if they think their partner’s masculinity is easily threatened.” “If a woman is concerned about inadvertently threatening her partner’s manhood, that could lead to a breakdown of communication,” Jordan explains. A following study on 196 women found that when women felt their partner had a fragile manhood, they were less likely to provide honest sexual communication. A third study on 157 women found that women who made more money than their partners were twice as likely to fake orgasms. However, Jordan says we shouldn’t point the blame on either men or women, and this type of behavior is understandable, though problematic. If men are not made aware that their behavior is creating a problem for their partners, it is hard to address the core issue. “When society creates an impossible standard of masculinity to maintain,” says Jordan, “nobody wins.” The study was published in the January issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. Source: neurosciencenews.com

The first chapter of The Last Duel centered on Jean follows a hero type who might’ve appeared in a classical text. He’s an idealistic warrior devoted to what is morally right and what “should be,” but it becomes evident in subsequent chapters that he’s neither a politician nor particularly adept socially. However, his face shows the scars of many victorious battles. It’s Matt Damon’s best performance in years, and one cannot help but see Jean as a kind of redneck stereotype by the third chapter. His devotion to duty and tradition reads as naively patriotic, particularly after his exploits earn him a knighthood. By Jacques’ chapter, we see that others deem Jean temperamental, a laughing stock, even. Jean sees Jacques as villainous and vindictive and Marguerite as devoted and proud of his accomplishments.  When she tells Jean what happened with Jacques, his reaction: “Can this man do nothing but evil to me?” Jean declares, viewing the incident as yet another personal slight against his manhood. Meanwhile, Marguerite’s sex life becomes a matter for the courts. An inquisitor drills her about whether she experiences the “little death” with her husband in bed, which, big surprise, Jean’s approach to lovemaking cannot produce. She lies and confirms that Jean brings her to orgasm, knowing that the era’s men believed that conception requires pleasure and rape cannot lead to pregnancy. “This is science,” affirms the inquisitor. Source: deepfocusreviews.com

Matt Damon, along with Don Cheadle, David Pressman, аnd Jerry Weintraub, іs one оf thе founders оf Not оn Our Watch Project, аn organization that focuses global attention аnd resources to stop аnd prevent mass atrocities such аs the Darfur war. Damon іs also а brand-ambassador оf ONEXONE: a philanthropic foundation which is working for supporting, preserving, аnd improving thе lives оf children at home іn Canada, thе United States, аnd around thе world. Damon is also one of the co-founders of nonprofits Water.org & Water Equity. 

In Good Will Hunting, both Sean and Chuckie are actual protectors of Will (Matt Damon). Sean is  completely obvious as he helps steer Will into and through his psychological miasma. Chuckie is the one member of Will’s clan who has enough depth of perception to spur Will on to a broader horizon, so when he shows up, knocks on Will’s door and Will isn’t there, Chuckie is happy. Due to past abuses when he was just a kid, Will has a rage inside born of his many foster home experiences including the man who beat him (we actually catch a fleeting image of this tyrant climbing the stairs literally in shadows to wail on young Will). So until Will can confront and embrace those dark memories and associations from his troubled past he will always be ruled by them and his rage. Nor will he feel worthy of love, which is what drives Skylar away in the first place. It’s only after she goes and he has his breakthrough with Sean, compounded by the offer of a job on behalf of the U.S. government, it all congeals into the choice Will makes: To drive off to California to be with Skylar. Source: goingtothestory.com 

American researchers Jean Twenge, Ryne Sherman and Brooke Wells published an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior showing that Americans were having sex on average nine fewer times per year in the early 2010s compared to the late 1990s – a 15% drop from 62 times a year to just 53. The researchers argued the drops may be due to increasing levels of unhappiness. Western societies in particular have seen a mental health epidemic in the past few decades, primarily depression and anxiety disorders. There is a strong correlation between depressive symptoms and reduction in sexual activity and desire. Research connects these mental health epidemics with the increasingly insecure nature of modern life, particularly for younger generations. It is this generation that has shown the highest drops in sexual activity, with research from Jean Twenge showing millennials are reporting having fewer sexual encounters than either Generation X or the baby boomers did at the same age. A mixture of work, insecurity and technology is leading us all to feel slightly less aroused. Drops in sexual activity could be argued, therefore, to reflect the nature of modern life. This phenomenon is a mixture of insecurity and technology. Tackling the sexual decline will require dealing with the very causes of the mental health crisis facing Western worlds–a crisis that is underpinned by losses of communal and social spaces. Source: www.bbc.com

Ozark Season 4: The Beginning of the End

Dr. Thomas J. West: I think that Ozark is significantly more interesting than Breaking Bad. It’s not that I don’t like Breaking Bad. In fact, like so many other viewers, I found myself utterly transfixed by Bryan Cranston’s performance as Walter White, the school teacher who turns to cooking high-grade meth to help pay his medical bills and begins a slide into moral depravity. And it has to be said that in some ways Ozark is a bit derivative of Breaking Bad (though it’s also fair to point out that Breaking Bad was itself derivative of other crime dramas that preceded it). Like its predecessor, it focuses on a mild-mannered man who gets increasingly caught up in the world of drug cartels and money laundering. Marty flees to the Ozarks with his wife Wendy and their two children Jonah and Charlotte to set up a new series of money laundering operations for his drug cartel overlords, as they get further sucked into the criminal vortex.

For far too much of its run, Breaking Bad seemed to work overtime to make Walter White's wife Skyler into the sort of castrating bitch stereotype that is all-too-common in premium cable dramas focused on the “struggles” of deeply dysfunctional men. Ozark, however, takes a very different approach to the question of criminality. To start with, Bateman’s Marty is no Walter White. Though Bateman does have moments of intensity, for the most part he’s a far colder personality, more cerebral and ultimately less hubristic than Walter ever was. More than that, though, the series seems genuinely invested in its female characters and how they contend with changing fortunes of the Byrdes.

One of the fascinating things about this show is the fact that Marty and Wendy, despite everything, do seem to genuinely love one another, and there is never any question that they also love their children and will do anything to protect them. By the time that we get to the 3rd season, Wendy’s own sense of what is best for her family has begun to diverge sharply from Marty’s, in part because, when it comes right down to it, she’s more ambitious than he is. Whereas a show like Breaking Bad, with its relentless and cloying interest in Walter’s toxic masculinity, would paint such ambition as deviant and dangerous, in terms of the narrative it is Wendy’s ambition that keeps things rolling forward and, strangely enough we in the audience find ourselves wanting her to succeed. She’s the antihero that we’re led to cheer for her as she steadily keeps up with Marty, forging alliances with unscrupulous billionaires (and then betraying them), manipulating politicians to get a casino gambling license approved, and cozying up to Navarro. 

Marty is a long way from Walter White. And as played with intriguing opacity by Jason Bateman, those differences are what helps Ozark find its own rhythm. The horror of Breaking Bad was its reveal of the murderous, greedy megalomaniac hiding beneath the surface of a seemingly mild-mannered chemistry teacher. In Ozark, our antihero never deliberately kills anyone, never plots anybody’s death and never really changes from the slightly wonkish number-cruncher we meet at the beginning of the first season. We’re not even sure if he’s actually evil—if anything, Ozark’s horror is that the audience doesn’t know precisely how to feel about this wholly anonymous nobody. In Arrested Development, Michael Bluth was always confident in the fact that he was brighter than all the spoiled idiots in his family—a realization that often led to laughs when his overconfidence resulted in his own comedic undoing. Marty carries that same edge of superiority into every scene he enters, especially when he lands in the Ozarks, using his polite, unthreatening manner to sweet-talk failing local-yokel business owners into selling their shops, presenting himself as an “angel investor” whose financial acumen can turn their stores around. Marty is the very model of a blank-slate financial planner: He’s got a head for numbers and is adept at convincing people to trust him, but he seems so devoted to logic that he’s almost entirely programmed out anything about himself that might be human. Marty justifies his potential involvement with the cartel by explaining flatly, “I wouldn’t be a mule, I wouldn’t be a dealer — I’d be just pushing my mouse around my desk.”

That kind of rationalization is how he handles everything in Ozark. Walter White built his meth empire to feed his need for power, getting off on being the badass after decades of feeling like an ineffectual loser. Marty does nothing out of emotion or for his ego—everything is executed with the bloodlessness and cold efficiency of a keystroke. As Marty’s life gets more complicated in Ozark and different people want him dead, he doesn’t discover a newfound, darker persona or get a taste for killing. In fact, Marty never once even mentions the idea of bumping off any of his many adversaries—a move that Walter White and other characters have discovered is a handy way of getting out of tight spots. Marty is too buttoned-down to ever consider something so heinous. If he’s indeed evil, it’s the kind that’s a lot less showy. 

Sure, he may launder drug dealers’ millions, but Marty is not a monster, os is he? In the aftermath of Breaking Bad, there’s been a lot of talk about why we watch (and maybe even root for) dastardly characters, and the answer is usually that because they’re such nuanced, compelling figures we become magnetized by their contradictions and mixture of charm and malice. Ozark challenges that assumption by giving us an antihero so plainly ordinary that there’s no sheer glee or revulsion in watching Marty try to outfox his foes. When Mason tells Marty, “There’s gotta be a god, because there’s the devil. I think you’re the fucking devil.” That statement is a shock to Marty—and maybe the audience too. At the height of his power, Heisenberg arrogantly demanded to his underlings, “Say my name.” But most monsters aren’t like that—more often, they’re like Marty, who hopes you don’t notice him at all. Source: medium.com

The Byrde family fans flocked to Netflix to watch “Ozark” Season 4, Part 1, drawing more viewers than any other TV series in its debut week. The first half of the final season of Ozark landed at No. 1 on Netflix’s English-language TV Top 10 list for the week of Jan. 17-23, with 77 million hours viewed in just its first three days. One of the “Ozark” directors, Amanda Marsalis, revealed that Part 2 will drop sometime this May. So, we’re only a few short months away from the end of the Byrd family’s story. Netflix dropped the first seven episodes (Part 1) on Friday, Jan. 21. While Marty seems more jaded on Season 4, Wendy looks even more hardened and controlling. During one sparring session with Jonah, Wendy spits out, “You need to grow up. This is America. People don’t care where your fortune came from.” When trying to woo a potential business partner who’s wary of associating with money launderers, Wendy says, “It’s the only way to make the bad mean something: Bury it. Bury it. Pile good on top of good.” Clearly, Wendy is justifying her own actions this way. As the Byrdes expand from a typical upper-middle class family into a political power couple, they’re becoming more than an oddity; with their win-at-all-costs attitude, ever-deepening pockets, and lack of comeuppance for irrefutable wrongs, they represent the corruption rooted within USA.

One has to wonder if there’s enough truth in Wendy’s convictions to save her family; if her “go big or go home” attitude, paired with a loose moral compass, is just the thing that will get her out of trouble. This is America, and in America, powerful people with lots of powerful friends tend to make out OK. On the other hand, the Byrdes have been toying with folks—the Snells, the Navarros, etc.—who shoot first and worry about the clean up later. If Wendy keeps pissing people off, can she really expect her money, power, and privilege to insulate her from a bullet? And even if she does manage to survive, will she really be able to do enough good to bury the bad she’s already assembled? If she can save her life, can she also save her soul? When Part 2 hits, we’ll finally hear how much “Ozark” has still to say. The beginning of “The Beginning of the End”—the inevitable title of “Ozark’s” Season 4 premiere—flashes forward to a scene still not put in context by the time Part 1 comes to a close. Marty and Wendy are driving down the road, accompanied by their children, Charlotte and Jonah, as well as the smooth voice of Sam Cooke singing “Bring It On Home To Me.” A meeting with the FBI is mentioned. An event at their casino, the Missouri Belle, comes up.  A clock is put, presumably, on their time left in Missouri: only 48 hours to go. As is prone to happen in the rare moments when the Byrdes are feeling good about things, disaster strikes. A car-carrier trailer is in the wrong lane, heading straight for the family minivan. Marty jerks the steering wheel to avoid a head-on collision, but the abrupt swerve sends their vehicle out of control. The crumpled van settles off-road, upside-down somewhere near the woods, and an eerie presence creeps over the area. Source: indiewire.com

Domenica Feraud and the Movie Star

The Movie Star and Me (article published by Domenica Feraud, assistant on the Broadway production of "Sunday in the Park with George", 2016) on Medium.com (January 15, 2022)

He was a movie star (Jake Gyllenhaal?). I was an intern. The producer was my mentor (Jeanine Tesori?). I feel ashamed that seeing his name on a billboard or hearing his voice in a trailer can momentarily paralyze me. I remind myself how much I started to want him. That I spent a year and a half of my life convinced I was in love with him. I’d been interning for my mentor since I was 19, working on a total of six productions together. She had trusted me to care for Tony winners, promoted me to intern supervisor at my 20th birthday party, and believed in my writing when no one else did. I looked up and found the lead actor staring. He smiled at me, and I smiled back: he was the most famous person in the room yet he was the only one looking at me rather than through me. He’d ordered too much food and asked if I would join him for lunch. I declined, but he insisted, Come on. At least a salad? As the day wore on, I began to shiver in the air-conditioned room. He was in the middle of a scene when he ran over, placing his sweater on my bare legs. During lunch he confided, I’m glad I met you. Now I have a homie. I smiled, I’m your rehearsal homie and he shot back, Just in rehearsal? At the end of the day, we performed his big Act Two number for the director. Afterwards he looked my way, proclaiming, She’s fantastic. [...] Later the movie star whispered, Hi pretty, even though he was in the midst of a run-through. His fingers lingered on my skin, and my heart lurched. 

You must get guys hitting on you all the time, the movie star said. I shook my head, and he rolled his eyes, refusing to believe me. Insisting I live up to the image he had projected onto me. He grabbed my hand as we entered the studio, I’m stressed. And I like having you near me. I was mimicking his sleep patterns unknowingly: the word ‘fate’ teased the corners of my mind, like maybe this connection was larger than both of us. You should give into it. The flirting. It’s fun. That it was confusing and stressful, but that if I was also developing feelings for him? Unless, does it make you uncomfortable? he asked. And this is something I still beat myself up for: he gave me the opportunity to say, Yes it does. To say, I don’t like it when you grab my chin like I’m a doll or objectify me to the people we work with. But I hadn’t yet figured out it was natural to feel uncomfortable. Time had gone by, we’d built up a rapport, and I trusted him. So I said, No, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. And having spoken those words, I’ve wondered if I have a right to publish this essay. [...] He texted: We should hang out — just you and me. But this time I smiled, because he was awake too. He texted: Miss you and my smile grew. I showered quickly, agonized over which dress was the right dress. Rehearsal ended early. He caught me in the doorway, Are you going downtown? I nodded. I wish I could too. I just have this interview. Another nod, an understanding one. So I’m not gonna see you? He seemed disappointed, and I felt responsible, like I was somehow abandoning him. My mentor knew the movie star would be an insecure wreck, which was the last thing anyone needed. The show needed me. I walked to his dressing room and raised my fist to knock. I was debating whether this was a terrible idea when the door swung open, Hi. He smiled, providing all the encouragement I needed. He hugged me, You look beautiful. Let me look at you. I indulged him when he asked me to twirl around. He walked over, pulling me into his arms in front of everybody. I lauded, You were incredible! I’m so proud of you. He tightened his grip, his hands circling the bottom of my waist. Our noses were practically touching when his sister (Maggie Gyllenhaal?) approached to let him know she was leaving. He introduced me, leaving us alone when a flock of A-Listers came to find him. After a minute of small talk, she said she had to go home to her daughters. She seemed eager for our forced encounter to end. To be fair, she had probably met dozens of me. But to be fairer, shouldn’t she ask her brother to stop romancing interns? My phone lit up, the movie star: You looked very sexy tonight. Thank you for being there for me. I typed back: And you looked very handsome. Another text followed: We really need to spend time. Just you and me.  

The Times review was a rave. Ben Brantley tripped over his feet with praise, but the movie star kept his eyes downcast. He seemed happy to see me by intermission, You are so sexy. When do we get to be alone? During the second act, desire spread through my body for the first time. Everyone in that theatre had paid to see him, but he wanted me. It was an intoxicating realization, and it gave me the illusion that I was powerful. Once we were headed downtown, he unloaded: his performance hadn’t been as good, and the review I thought would make him happy had done the opposite. He now had to live up to the impossible standards Brantley had set for him. He looked me in the eye, the cerulean blue never ceasing to take my breath away. I was buttoning my coat when he suddenly took my face in his hands, and kissed me. He leaned his forehead against mine, I just had to kiss you. Somehow, the romance continued. Just when I thought he’d forgotten me, he would text: Hey you! My friends marveled as my phone lit up with his name. I played the game well, rarely initiating a conversation, prompting him to type: How come I don’t hear from you? Thirty-one days since our first kiss, we agreed to get together the Friday after Thanksgiving. I came back from Long Island early, asked what time we should meet. Hours later he replied that he was still in Vermont. When he texted the next day asking to meet up, I didn’t hesitate. My hair was straightened, my eyebrows plucked, my make-up delicately applied, my heart thumping as I rang the doorbell. 

Seeing him after a month of longing was painfully anti-climactic. He looked different, dark and brooding in a way I had previously only caught glimpses of. Conversation had always flowed in the busy rehearsal room, but now it felt forced. He didn’t waste much time, kissing me before I could sip my tea, maneuvering my body like we were performing a dance I was supposed to know the steps to. He backed me up against the fridge within seconds, swiftly moving us towards his bedroom, my top flung off before I could figure out how he’d done it. Things were moving too fast and my brain was trying to keep up. His hands were about to remove my bra and I felt scared by the ferocity of his desire but I didn’t know how to express any of it so I just stood there. Eventually my lips stopped kissing and he asked if everything was okay. This is totally embarrassing but I’m really hungry. I ran to my purse, pulling out a bag of dried edamame. I put my shirt on in between bites as he watched me with a bemused expression. He announced, You’re so different, and all I could think was: from who? He said: What’s on your mind? We were kissing earlier and then we stopped and… did you not want it? I could hear the same insecurities that had wracked him during rehearsal, and knew it was my job to make them evaporate. I wanted to kiss but not like that, not like I was an object. He was 35 and very experienced. I was just 23. His jeans were unbuttoned, his boxers pulled down, and as he maneuvered my body on top of his I realized that if he were to thrust upwards, we’d be doing something I wasn’t ready for. I blurted, I can’t have sex tonight. I could hear the irritation in his voice, Any particular reason? he asked. His tone changed: Of course. That’s totally ok. My breasts were still exposed when he turned to me: You know what’s on my mind? That you’re 23. And we met on the show and… did I somehow take advantage of things? When I looked at his face, I knew it was over. He made me promise I wouldn’t waste any more time before telling me he was glad we didn’t have sex that night. He stood abruptly: his flight was leaving early and he had to pack. My mother had cried when he’d texted confirming our date: everyone who heard the whirlwind tale thought we were meant to be. And now I’d ruined everything. Three months later, he texted: How are you? Hope all is well with you. I pinched myself until my skin was raw, certain I was dreaming. You haven’t seen the show! When I didn’t respond, he followed up with Have you? I admitted I had. Why didn’t you come say hi? I burst into the hysterical laughter of a woman who has justifiably gone insane. Weeks later I was having tea with an acquaintance when she brought up the movie star without knowing our history. Her friend was his publicist and was constantly putting out fires on his behalf. Apparently, he falls in love with these young interns and PAs on sight, pursues them obsessively, and then has some sort of freak out a month in and disappears. I felt like I was falling into an abyss, hearing about my life from someone else’s mouth. And people like my mentor probably tell themselves these young women are lucky, but I’m here to vehemently disagree. Because the aftermath that never ends? It isn’t worth the fairytale. Source: medium.com

Ben Brantley (October 25, 2016): Jake Gyllenhaal shines in a joyous ‘Sunday in the Park With George’, which opened in a gala performance on Monday night and runs only through Wednesday. Starring Mr. Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford, with a supporting cast that glows with top-drawer, Broadway-honed talent, this is one of those shows that seems destined to be forever spoken of with misty-eyed bragging rights by anyone who sees it. “I could look at her forever,” sings Mr. Gyllenhaal’s Seurat, as his model, Ms. Ashford’s Dot, sings in simple, stabbing harmony, “I could look at him forever.” Playing George (and George), the obsessive, intense misfit comes naturally to Mr. Gyllenhaal. (Did you see him in “Nightcrawler”?) But here he also demonstrates both the radiant, centered stillness that can anchor a crowded stage — a clarity within opacity — and, who knew, a voice of richly flexible timbre that confidently elicits the most delicate shades of passion and despair. At the end of their final, magnificently sung duet, “Move On,” about getting beyond the pettiness and obstacles of daily life, Mr. Gyllenhaal and Ms. Ashford shared the most rapt and embracing smiles I think I’ve ever seen on a stage. The idea to cast Gyllenhaal came from Jeanine Tesori, composer of "Fun Home" and an artistic adviser at City Center. The cast also features Phylicia Rashad, Phillip Boykin, and Carmen Cusack, who dined next to Domenica Feraud. Source: nytimes.com