crazy heart attack

ok, jeff bridges was great as the lovable town drunk, otis, in crazy heart (2009) but his was a fine performance in an otherwise fair film. personally, i think his oscar was more of the we owe you one/martin scorsese/lifetime achievement award type. but let's take him out of the equation and look at what's left.

colin farrell? stick that pretty boy in any true texas honkytonk and you'll find him sitting in the parking lot picking gravel out of his skin by the end of the evening. outlaw country had to be born to kill countrypolitan in the late sixties. i say it's high time to get waylon jennings out of his cryo chamber and sic him on this new strain of "musicians" that farrell's character represents who rely on their stylists more than any perceived talent they have.

maggie gyllenhaal? a very good actress who has done exceptional work in the past. unfortunately, she isn't given much to do here. the stock character she is saddled with doesn't have much to yield.

redemption? this is what everyone wants to see, right? the standard melodramatic arc of screw up and make it right. well, to hell with all that. why don't you just tie maggie gyllenhaal to the train tracks and twist your mustache while you're at it? remove all these things from this safe, sanitized fairy tale and what you are left with is what i really came here to talk about today - daryl duke's payday (1973).

payday is the story of second-tier country singer maury dann, a monster made of raging id and benzedrine. in the thirty-six hours of his life that we are privy to, he destroys or consumes every single person and thing in his path. the vacant alabama landscapes that pass by his cadillac windows are no match for the burnt out void where any semblance of a conscience might have lived in this man. by the end of the opening scene, he has seduced/coerced someone else's girlfriend into having sex in the parking lot. over the course of the next 103 minutes we will see him visit his infirmed mother who, as it turns out, is just waiting for him to show up and dole out a literal fistful of pills from his guitar case, fire his guitar player after a fistfight and steal his girl, scream down the highway at 95 miles per hour firing his pistol at his band's vehicle, wreak serious havoc with the groupie hierarchy by having sex with one in the back of the car while the other is (mostly) asleep next to them, leave the groupie who has outlived her usefulness to fend for herself by the side of the road, show up unannounced for his kid's birthday (he's not sure which kid, he has his dates wrong by anywhere from four months to four years) and, finally, leave his driver to take the fall for a murder that he committed. in short, he is an unmitigated, unrepentant, complete son of a bitch. you hear that, maury? you are a total bastard.

yeah, that's what i thought.

there are two things i find utterly remarkable about this film.

one - this is no mere artifact. although it was made in 1973, before the mainstream really embraced willie and waylon and the boys, in the thirty-seven years hence no one has made any more accurate a document of the life of the itinerant, shitheel musician. thirty-six hours spent with maury dann feels like a lifetime of dingy motel rooms. you can smell the stale smoke, whiskey and sweat. it's like your movie screen actually has pores. i think it speaks volumes about the film's unflinching approach to the general unsavoriness of the lifestyle that even now, when standards about what you can show onscreen are so much more relaxed, that no one has done it better. you have to remember, at the time, the general public's exposure to country music performers was essentially limited to what you could see on the somewhat sachharine hee haw and the grand ole opry and the opry wasn't nationally broadcast for a television audience on a regular basis until 1978. this movie must have felt like a punch in the gut to the average country music fan who wandered into this thing when it was first released. the fact that some of your heroes are subsisting almost solely on a diet of drugs, liquor and sex - all of it cheap - could not have been easy news for middle america to take. that being said, none of this plays like tabloid material. it is not sensationalized. it is played completely straight. it just happens to be incredibly ugly.

two - my favorite breaker and enterer, rip torn.

this is, hands down, rip torn's finest moment onscreen. he is relentless. no one gets off the hook here, least of all him. he's going to drive this character into the ground come hell or high water. the barely controlled violence within the man eats away at all it touches. destruction is inevitable and it shows up in even the most minor, fleeting moments. he breaks the windows of his own home. he breaks pieces off of the lampshade during conversation. he breaks men and women just as indiscriminately. and when things get to the point that there is nothing and no one left to use up, what does he do? he pushes himself up against that grinding wheel. when the ramifications of the murder he committed can no longer be avoided he simply puts the hammer down and runs until his heart explodes.

you can pick up a copy of this movie here for a song. for better double feature material than crazy heart, i recommend tender mercies (1983) instead. either way, watch payday. look how happy it would make ol' maury dann.

trailer tuesday

this week's entry is a special little slice of madness - sonny boy (1989). yes, that is david carradine.

my second favorite mom

edwina mcdunnough from raising arizona (1987) is the greatest mom in all of cinema, barrenness notwithstanding. she's a whiz behind the wheel, she knows "down in the willow garden" and she'll make sure you get your dip/tet. most importantly, she loves nathan jr. so much. she walks straight into the teeth of certain doom without flinching to save that baby. she's almost as badass as my mom.

musical heroes

i wish i could play the piano like chico marx.

this clip from animal crackers (1930) is great for all kinds of reasons - the anarchic silliness, harpo plays a little piano as well, groucho provides running commentary. my favorite thing about it, though, occurs at 2:56 when chico really starts to play. the look on his face says it all.

trailer tuesday

this week's entry is for my second favorite robert altman film, the long goodbye (1973). elliott gould plays chandler's knight-errant as if he just awoke from a thirty year nap and found himself in the loony bin that was southern california in the seventies. altman's camera never stops moving but you would never notice it. and the theme music turns up everywhere - on the radio, as muzak, even as a mariachi tune. my favorite version of it, though, is the one they use in the trailer. jack sheldon does vocals on this one. most of my generation will recognize him from conjunction junction. if you've somehow missed this one you really should see it.

we always have a synthetic on board

the final day of texas frightmare weekend was a pretty low-key affair with one significant highlight.

albert pyun, director of the sword and the sorcerer (1982), among other things, was scheduled to lead a discussion in the afternoon but had to bow out due to illness. his absence opened up a spot in the schedule that had festival organizers scrambling to find someone to step in. who could they get on such short notice?

the mighty lance henriksen, that's who.

when i attended texas frightmare three years ago the greatest surprise was the panel they called "inside the B-actors studio". the guest for that event was clint howard and that hour flew by like it was ten minutes. he was self-effacing, down to earth, smart and funny. it was a joy to listen to him talk about his experiences. in an industry where the maxim "don't confuse the art with the artist" was never more true it's always refreshing to come across the ones who seem to be doing it the right way. after yesterday, those guys are two for two.

lance henriksen spoke for an hour or so and was forthright, affable and entertaining. i would like to think these (primarily) genre guys are like that. they know the work they are doing isn't always going to be taken so seriously so they maintain a decent sense of themselves. when it comes down to brass tacks, though, i know that's not going to be true for a lot of them. they are actors, after all. henriksen, though, seems to have found a healthy balance between making low budget films without doing any low budget acting and having fun in the process. all he says he needs are conspirators. if he can achieve an understanding with the people he is working with and they are all striving together then he can find value in any job. he told a handful of great anecdotes about everything from james cameron to steven seagal (apparently insane) to his relationship with his daughter to his need for labor resulting in his pottery hobby. he was particularly enthusiastic about interacting with the fans and hijacked the panel from the moderator and gave it to the audience instead. my favorite thing about it, though, was how simply honest the guy was. it seemed like he held nothing in reserve and answered every question as thoroughly as he could. at one point, he told the assembled, which included a number of (sort of) filmmakers, "i love everything about movies that you guys do but just because you've seen a lot of movies doesn't mean you can make them. it's a craft". i hope some of them took that to heart. after some of the things we had been through in the past couple of days it was all sara could do to not give him a one-person standing ovation right then and there. someone needed to say it and i am glad they heard it straight from bishop's mouth.

all in all, it was a good weekend. good, not great. loyd cryer and his staff are doing a good job with an event that may be growing a little faster than they can keep up with. in their favor, the guests they book are top notch and have only gotten better every year. that's their sunday punch. everything else is lagging slightly behind. once some of the technical and logistic aspects are fine tuned and the quality of the panels, workshops and screenings is brought up to match the quality of their guest bookings then they're really going to have something. i do think it is heading that way. at five years old, it is still a young event and they are making consistent progress. i would imagine by year ten it will be a proper monster. maybe then we can all have zombie lunchables and dick miller will meet tom atkins in the thunderdome. see you there.

scarecrows don't vote on custom car shows

because they have no brains.

when, upon our arrival, i saw a zombie enjoying a lunchable i knew that day two of texas frightmare weekend would be a significant improvement over day one.

it had its share of pleasant surprises, the most notable of which was the panel discussion of the new remake of i spit on your grave (2009). after the first night of barely literate "filmmakers" having their way with us, imagine my shock at finding the cast and director of this remake (which i am still skeptical of, don't misunderstand me) to be intelligent, thoughtful and articulate about the work they had done on this project. it must have been a daunting task to take on this much-maligned source material. people have been talking about it for thirty-two years now and it is no less controversial today than when it first screened. if you haven't seen the original, i recommend it but be warned, it is a grueling experience. they showed two clips from the new version and, while it is impossible to tell much from a total of about seven minutes of footage, the tension they created was palpable. sarah butler, who is cast as jennifer in this version, seems like a worthy heir to camille keaton and spoke at length about the dichotomy of just how difficult it was to go to such dark places as an actor and the elation that follows from so thoroughly and freely exploring those parts of yourself. in the end, it may not be worth a damn but, at the very least, it was nice to see that the principals were operating with the intent of honoring the original, put a lot of thought and all of their energy into the work, are obviously knowledgeable about the horror genre (and film in general) and appreciate the fans.

the john carpenter panel was marred by audio problems, at least from where we were sitting. that time would have probably been better spent at the movie prop auction taking place just outside. zelda rubinstein's necklace from the poltergeist series of films sold for $1150. chris rock's suit from death at a funeral (2010) sold for $75.

owned, chris rock! from beyond the grave! this auction is clean.

the films were a mixed bag. first up there was an anthology of three short films called curious stories, crooked symbols (2009) made by rodrigo gudino, the brains(!) behind rue morgue magazine (which all horror fans should read. it is head and shoulders above its contemporaries). these shorts were a good deal better than anything we saw yesterday but they were still amateur productions. in their favor, at least their antecedents were hitchcock, cronenberg and lynch. after the first night of slasher/torture retreads with zero personality these were like a palette cleanser. each film was unique, psychological rather than gore-oriented and succeeded on at least some minor level. in a nutshell, i can see what he's going for and eventually he will get there. currently, he is working on a feature length remake of cut throats nine/condenados a vivir (1972) with harvey keitel. i will adopt a wait and see position on that one. sidenote, the table that rue morgue magazine set up had a number of illustrations by "ghoulish" gary pullin that were pretty good and sort of an update of the basil gogos tradition. this was my favorite:

spirit camp (2009) was next. "friday the 13th meets bring it on". how could this go wrong? well, to start with you mixed friday the 13th with bring it on. this was another local entry made with the help of some of the same pool of "talent" largely responsible for everything we saw on the debacle that was night one. it was marginally better than those but still nothing you would rate as more than just fair. there were two different ten minute stretches where they sort of hit a stride and i wasn't hating myself for being there. that feeling quickly faded when the lights came up and i was subjected to director kerry beyer's frosted tips during the q & a. i don't have anything good to say about that.

the highlight of the evening was, without a doubt, the screening of the restored, remastered dark night of the scarecrow (1981). i hadn't seen this since its original cbs airdate and i was not certain how it was going to hold up but, in general, it did not disappoint. even without the obvious commercial breaks it certainly plays like a made-for-tv movie. the shorthand they use and the speed at which they (sometimes ham-handedly) establish their premise are distracting but the scene where they execute bubba (a riff on the angry villagers/misunderstood monster trope) is still shocking. in 1981 on cbs on saturday prime time you simply didn't see a bunch of ignorant rabble unloading shotguns into a sweetly retarded manchild. in 2010 it is still sad to see his terror in the face of their hatred. charles durning is the real star of this show and he digs into his first leading role after a life of character work with relish. he is sweaty, frantic, hateful, ugly and desperate. and boy does he get his. the dvd release is slated for 9.28.10 and you can pre-order now. it's like a li'l gift to ten year old me.

day three is going to be all panels, it would appear. albert pyun is going to be here and i would imagine he has some interesting stories to tell. we shall see. wrap-up will be posted tomorrow. see you then.

simply horrible

opening night at texas frightmare weekend was a bust on the film front, and that's being diplomatic.

we saw three, (well, two and a quarter) of the worst movies i have ever laid eyes on. first on the docket is blood night (2009). stale and completely incoherent, this is the filmmaking equivalent of the doctor's little rubber hammer on your knee - not even a genre exercise, more like a genre reflex action. there is no sense to it, it just happens. the addition of horror veterans bill moseley and danielle harris to this, director frank sabatella's first feature (the hell you say), does little to nothing to prop this thing up. one surprising effect with a bucket, maybe several buckets, of blood being thrown from offscreen functions as both the most shocking moment and (unintentional?) comic relief, otherwise this is a waste of time. the misogyny on display certainly gets your attention, though, as within the first few minutes we are treated to the rape of a mental patient and an episode where said mental patient is strafed with bullets by police officers, holding her ground until the climactic head shot. did i mention that she, coincidentally, was completely naked for this?

the next movie, stacy davidson's sweatshop (2009), was somehow even worse. it opens with a police officer strafing an inexplicably naked woman with gunfire until the climactic head shot. what? hold on. yes, it must have been some sort of prerequisite for inclusion in the festival. the rest of the film (which this gratuitous opening scene has nothing to do with) is essentially an extravagant game of whack-a-mole with a bunch of ravers that even my grandmother would refer to as complete douchebags. on the plus side, the special effects were remarkable on what had to be a shoestring budget and i did want every single character to die in the worst way imaginable. every other single thing about this experience was grating. if this is the state of modern horror filmmaking i simply want no part of it. it seems as if every participant has one cynical eye turned toward being the next "franchise" and creating the next iconic character, in this case "the beast".

they seem to forget there needs to be a point to the horror, even if the point is the existential puzzle of the pointlessness of it all. the torture genre just seems useless to me, in general. they kept referring to these things last night as throwbacks or homages to those stalwarts from the eighties but i simply can't believe we saw the same movies. sweatshop, we learned from the illuminating q & a that followed, was originally a porn script in development for hustler in which they simply replaced the sex scenes with kills. that sweatshop would have been better.

hell, watching two hours of this sweatshop would have been better.

the last movie of the evening, texas frightmare massacre (2009), did not begin with a naked woman dying in a hail of bullets so we walked out. actually, it was getting late and, as kristin succinctly put it, "i am not in film school anymore. i don't have to watch this kind of shit". it's kind of a shame it occupied the last slot of the evening, really, because this was the only thing all night that was even slightly clever and had a sense of humor about itself. it was shot onsite at last year's convention and it's pretty much what you would expect from fan fiction shot by horror geeks. in this case, to their credit, the geeks had a couple of good gags and their tongues were planted firmly in cheek. at least for the first fifteen minutes they did. i can't speak to the rest of it.

it wasn't all bad, however, as i did pick up this little gem:

wolfman bobblehead!

we are about to begin day two which promises to be a good deal more entertaining and edifying. i'll let you know how it all works out.