OT: Finally watched Thelma & Louise for the first time - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

And of course, the film also has echos of his "innocent person wrongly accused of a crime" motif, of course the title duo weren't completely innocent.

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And that would have been tricky, as Hitchcock preferred his wrongly accused people to have NOT committed the crime.

But what Louise does to save/avenge Thelma is rather like what Grace Kelly did to her attacker in Dial M for Murder so..maybe. And wouldn't it have been great to see Hitchcock's evil rapist-strangler Bob Rusk(Frenzy) blown away like that?

Hitchcock died in 1980 and it became a bit of a parlor game to guess what movies Hitchcock might have directed had he somehow (a) lived on, (b) gotten 20 years younger permanently and (c) kept all his talent.

So many damn thrillers were made in the NINETIES that a lot of them might have merited Hitchcock's attention:

Misery
Silence of the Lambs
Thelma and Louise
Basic Instinct
Se7en
Fargo
LA Confidential

but...in some ways, the times changed. Hitch wouldn't have made something as overtly sexual as Basic Instinct, or with cops like LA Confidential(which nonetheless has some Hitchockcian surprises in it.)

Indeed, LAC is just one of MANY "crime movies"(with cops and robbers and gangsters) that would not have fit Hitch's pistol. He told some interviewer: "I don't make gangster type stuff." So: no LAC. No Pulp Fiction. No Goodfellas. No Casino. No Heat. No Carlito's Way.

And no "Cape Fear 1991" -- even though it had music by the late Bernard Herrmann(Psycho) re-recorded from the 1962 original. But Hitchcock TURNED DOWN the 1962 original, so it can't do the remake.

Maybe Jackie Brown?

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[–] swanstep (2767) 2 years ago

And of course, the film also has echos of his "innocent person wrongly accused of a crime" motif, of course the title duo weren't completely innocent.
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And that would have been tricky

One plot problem Hitch and Alma would have had with Thelma and Louise is that the women never accept that Louise did anything much wrong by shooting the rapist in something like cold blood, instead all of their discussion about the event equivocates and is focused on how no one will believe their account of what happened because (a) people don't believe women generally or (b) Thelma specifically was seen earlier flirting, carousing with the guy who starts to beat and rape her and so will be unbelievable. But that's all equivocation because their *true* story - we shot and killed the guy when he posed no further threat but goaded us with some backchat - is enough for Louise to have to go to jail.

The movie collaborates with the women in this because, hey, in the movies we *often* cheer on the murders and tortures committed by characters we like, especially where their victims are very bad indeed. But this post-Dirty Harry audience reality of fundamentally unreal (In real life we'd insist their counterparts faced severe consequences) antiheroes (applied to women for the first time, I believe, in Ms 45 (1981)) is pretty alien to Hitchcock. He's a previous generation with a stronger sense of no-excuses right and wrong.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 2 years ago

And no "Cape Fear 1991" -- even though it had music by the late Bernard Herrmann(Psycho) re-recorded from the 1962 original. But Hitchcock TURNED DOWN the 1962 original, so it can't do the remake.
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Scorsese often called CAPE FEAR his "Hitchcock film" (the Herrmann score, Saul Bass opening) but with its over the top violence and in-your-face sexual elements I always saw it as his "Brian De Palma film." Or maybe if we still have to go with Hitchcock analogies, it was specifically Scorsese's Frenzy.... which is kind of like Hitchcock's De Palma film.

Why did Hitchcock turn down the original? Did he ever give a reason?

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[–] liscarkat (19385) 2 years ago

T&L was porn for people who got off watching women abuse men. If it had been men vs. men, it would've been forgotten in fifteen minutes. The "all men suck" message made the movie, not quality or originality.

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[–] swanstep (2767) 2 years ago

@liscarkat. I think I know what you're getting at (though I'd never express it the way you seem to): the screenplay (Oscar-winning for Callie Khouri) and film unapologetically sets out a thesis that US society (like most or even all other societies on Earth) is patriarchal and fundamentally misogynistic and oppressive of women, so it doesn't matter if there's the odd non-sucky guy out there like Harvey Keitel's character, they won't be in any position to prevent the grinding down and death of our anti-heroines at the hands of that overall patriarchal structure. The same, still radical point of view was taken by Promising Young Woman in 2020. That got a screenplay Oscar too, so this sort of radicalism definitely touches positive as well as negative nerves. My own view is that both screenplays were quite rare and original (certainly for Hollywood), and since people are still talking about them I dare say that their accolades were well-deserved.

Note that Khouri never did anything half as good as T&L again and Fennell has yet to follow-up PYM with anything at all. So it's not as though Hollywood has ever produced/nurtured/tolerated a consistent feminist-ish-activist-firebrand (a Catherine Breillat or Agnes Varda or....)

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

Note that Khouri never did anything half as good as T&L again and Fennell has yet to follow-up PYM with anything at all. So it's not as though Hollywood has ever produced/nurtured/tolerated a consistent feminist-ish-activist-firebrand (a Catherine Breillat or Agnes Varda or....)

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The fate of Hollywood screenwriters in general has always intrigued me. A small number maintained "star careers" and worked for decades on scripts..Ben Hecht comes to mind.

The fate of two men who each wrote a great script for Alfred Hitchcock comes to mind:

Ernest Lehman. Wrote North by Northwest(as an original.) And then got co-writing AND co-producer credit on two big musicals(West Side Story and The Sound of Music) and one big drama(Virginia Woolf) -- all of which were Broadway transplants. And yet, Lehman eventually "ran out of gas" when the big musical Hello, Dolly underperformed(it made big money but couldn't profit) and Portnoy's Complaint bombed(Lehman directed that one.)

When Hitchcock lured Lehman to "only" write the screenplay for Family Plot in 1975, Hitchcock took a little pleasure in Lehman having been 'brought back down to size." Hitch told the press, "I got him because he's available now. Isn't that terrible?" (How Hollywood treated the man.) Still, I think Lehman died very rich from all of his participation in movies as big as WSS and The Sound of Music.

Joseph Stefano. Had written an award winning TV play and one movie(The Black Orchid) before writing Psycho(from Bloch's novel) and making history. Turned down The Birds and walked out on Marnie(turned in a treatment) to produce the very famous TV series "The Outer Limits" -- which only lasted 2 seasons, but more episodes were produced back then. The Outer Limits went off the air in 1966 and now Stefano had to maintain a screenwriting career for DECADES. He seems to have pulled it off -- Movies of the Week were a big help -- but still. Psycho did not lead to Ernest Lehman like riches.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

Which brings us to Khori and Fennell:

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Note that Khouri never did anything half as good as T&L again and Fennell has yet to follow-up PYM with anything at all.

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Even Oscar-winning screenwriters can't always get that "second break" or ...worse for them...they may not have a SECOND great script in them. I expect they can be proud for the rest of their lives about those Oscars(hey, Lehman's North by Northwest script was nominated for Best Original Screenplay but lost to ...Pillow Talk) but the business remains tough on writers.

I always felt that Khouri in particular got double crossed. She got a lot of "OpEd" coverage for Thelma and Louise, and lots of "Women in Film" luncheons etc -- but evidently never got the backing enough of men OR women in Hollywood to write much more. (I'm sure that imdb will show she wrote more, but nothing as memorable as Thelma and Louise.)

Recall the big controversy of Thelma and Louise(SPOILERS) vs Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid(SPOILERS). In both movies, the two heroes launch themselves into certain death. Butch and Sundance into a fusillade of bullets; T and L off a cliff in a car(the Grand Canyon yet). Why were B and S heroic, but T and L merely suicidal(they could have turned themselves in and Thelma might have gotten a light sentence?) I dunno...it always struck me as a false choice -- they ALL decided on dying. But B and S would have been executed on the spot even if they gave up, so there was a difference...choice.

The whole "men versus women, women versus men thing" again, seems to me to be "at the movies versus reality." In reality, men and women often fall in love and have sex and make babies -- or don't -- and everything. Happiness is up to the couple. The politics of oppression is off on a separate battlefield, it seems to me. My lifelong theme has been "90% of women can hate me as long as I can convince 10% of women to love me." So far, so good.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

And I HATE male rapist characters in fiction AND real life.

There is no more enraging scene in movies to me, I think, than when Bob Rusk in Frenzy asks Babs Milligan if she's "got a place to stay?" and then so nicely offers her his apartment(I'm going out of town for the week") and then sweet talks her (as a friend, not a lover) up to the apartment(flat) and her death.

Why I hated the content of that scene is because so many of us guys try to legitimately be nice to women and invite them to join us for dinner or drinks at our homes, and Rusk was betraying us ALL. All "good men." Just hated the guy. Wanted him dead. Didn't get my wish.

(On topic!) We don't know it til its the movie is over, but Norman Bates' pleasant aw-shucks manner with Marion Crane is pretty much the same as Bob Rusk's: he serves her a nice dinner in his parlor and brutally kills her ten minutes later. We can say, "No, no, MOTHER killed Marion" but methinks that Norman knew Marion was in mortal danger the second she got to the Bates Motel -- whether from Mother or him, only Norman knew for sure.

So Norman's kind of a swine too. And as one critic noted, "the shower stabbing is a substitute for the rape that Norman dared not carry out."

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[–] swanstep (2767) 2 years ago

Khouri’s script and Fennell’s are both angry as hell. I suspect, however, that the success each achieved for those projects has opened a lot of doors for them and that has in turn made it easy for them to just enjoy their lives, made it hard for them to stay so angry or, more broadly, keep their edge. And, look, if you do keep riding the horse you came in on, keep pursuing your initial obsessions the way, say, Charlie Kaufman or even Wes Anderson has, audiences arguably don’t like that either and start thinking you’re a nut and some sort of extremist.

I guess there are different models of being a successful screenwriter. That Lehman model of producing incredibly diverse scripts *is* appealing still but it’s hard to do in modern Hollywood that makes relative few types of movies.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

And, look, if you do keep riding the horse you came in on, keep pursuing your initial obsessions the way, say, Charlie Kaufman or even Wes Anderson has, audiences arguably don’t like that either and start thinking you’re a nut and some sort of extremist.

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Well...the welcome is worn out. Charlie Kaufman was such an acquired taste I think his career moved backwards. I'm not sure about Asteroid City, but I watched The Grand Budapest Hotel again the other night(it is on streaming in support of AC, I suppose) and it had much more interesting characters and a plot worth caring about, I thought.

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I guess there are different models of being a successful screenwriter. That Lehman model of producing incredibly diverse scripts *is* appealing still but it’s hard to do in modern Hollywood that makes relative few types of movies.

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Lehman really seemed to luck into something ..I don't know HOW he ended up adapting West Side Story, but my guess is that his script (co-written) for Sweet Smell of Success(a quintessential 50's New York movie) and North by Northwest(with its opening act in NYC) made him "expert enough" to help write about the West Side.

Joe Stefano just seems to have been abandoned -- Psycho! The Outer LImits! and...goodbye (perhaps The Outer Limits branded him for TV, but he didn't get another series.) He wrote a pretty cheapjack, barely released Universal thriller called "Eye of the Cat"(complete with an Arbogastian process fall for a woman in a wheelchair) that got some play on NBC Monday Night at the movies. Maybe that helped.

Modernly, our best screenwriters seem to be(as always?) our director-screenwriters. QT. The Coens. PT Anderson. The Original Woody. Aaron Sorkin only directed a couple of his scripts, I guess HE made it on screenwriting alone.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

We've had a few "big names" in screenwriting in recent decades -- at least that I recognize. One called Ron Bass(now 81, says IMDb)...Rain Man, My Best Friend's Wedding, many more. A guy named David Koepp. Jurassic Park -- some bad movies, too?

Spielberg often uses(and collaborates with) a Broadway guy named Tony Kushner, who made his splash with Angels in America. Kushner has given Spielberg Lincoln(pretty great, you ask me) and the recent remake of West Side Story(hello, Ernest Lehman!) and The Fabelmans. Oscar noms but not necessarily hits.

Backwards in time: remember Robert Towne? He was a tall , bearded "cool" screenwriter who made his name with "Chinatown" as an original but surrounded it with scripts for The Last Detail(with Nicholson) and Shampoo(with Beatty) and...never fully realized his potential after that. Plus: that book "The Big Goodbye" suggests that Towne had quite an assistant writing that Chinatown script with him..and for him. (Oh, also, Towne wrote that scene where Brando tells Pacino he wanted him to be a Senator, in The Godfather. Just that scene! And some re-writes on Bonnie and Clyde.)

"The Main Event": I looked up Callie Khouri and Emerald Fennell credits on IMDb, and I added one more woman: Diablo Cody, who won the Oscar for Juno. All three women have later credits -- a few movies for Khouri, TV series for everybody -- Khouri ended up producing a pretty garden variety "All About Eve" type series called "Nashville"(not to be confused with the Altman movie.) So: All's well that ends well -- if not at Oscar level. Plus: evidently Fennell has always been an actress, too.

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[–] swanstep (2767) 2 years ago

I followed Diablo Cody's post-Juno career quite closely for a while, seeing both Jennifer's Body (unfairly sneered at at the time because of its Megan Fox content) and Young Adult (w. Theron being very badly behaved). They were both good/worth seeing rather than great, and I kind of stopped following her stuff after that. I'm still with Jordan Peele (another breakthrough screenplay Oscar-winner for Get Out) after Us and Nope but the clock is possibly ticking for him too to write something as immediate and focussed and powerful as Get Out again.

We're all tough crowds I guess.

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[–] swanstep (2767) 2 years ago

Lehman really seemed to luck into something...

Quite a lot of screenwriters used to seem to have the same sort of luck as Lehman. So, for example, Frank Pierson bounced from Cat Ballou to Cool Hand Luke to Dog Day Afternoon to A Star is Born (to Mad Men late in life); Lorenzo Semple Jr bounced from Pretty Poison to Papillon to The Parallax View to 3 Days of the Condor to Flash Gordon. And so on.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

Lehman really seemed to luck into something...

Quite a lot of screenwriters used to seem to have the same sort of luck as Lehman. So, for example, Frank Pierson bounced from Cat Ballou to Cool Hand Luke to Dog Day Afternoon to A Star is Born (to Mad Men late in life); Lorenzo Semple Jr bounced from Pretty Poison to Papillon to The Parallax View to 3 Days of the Condor to Flash Gordon. And so on.

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Yes...those are some other screenwriters who "went the distance" ...until they didn't. (Hollywood seems ruthlessly age-ist or something about ending screenwriter careers on a dime.) Recall that Lorenzo Semple Jr.'s name was on a lot of "Batman" episodes from the 60s.

I suppose what I meant about Ernest Lehman "lucking in" is that he went from a drama(Sweet Smell of Success) and a thriller(NXNW) into not one, but TWO of the Best Picture Oscar winning musicals of the 60's -- and of all time. I'd say "Lehman didn't seem to be a musical guy"...but I'd be wrong. A check reveals he wrote "The King and I" for the screen in 1956, too. Hitchcock seemed to DIVERT him from his musicals.

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[–] swanstep (2767) 2 years ago

Hollywood seems ruthlessly age-ist or something about ending screenwriter careers on a dime.

Interesting idea. It does seem curious that really revered writers should so often seem to get put out to pasture. After all, writing (much more so than directing) is one thing that people should often be able to do at a very high level late in life. Lots of novelists seem to manage this. Margaret Atwood and Joce Carl Oates are still churning 'em out and Cormac McCarthy was too until his recent death. Yet Towne, Goldman and other pros faded away after they were 60 say. Maybe this speaks to something about the medium: films are for the most part these fast-burning, free-standing 2 hour units, more like high-performance poems than novels really. Maybe that get-a-world-going-get-things-done ethos of mainstream film scripts *is* more the natural province of the young. The subtle shadings and elaborations of a seasoned mind (building on lots of previous things) is somewhat lost on the speedy medium that is commercial film. I notice for example, that James Cameron's dialogue is getting weaker and weaker as he gets older. Where back in the 1980s he was in touch with how people the age of his characters talked and wrote great action movie dialogue, now he he's lost touch with the young and writes stuff for those characters that's clunky as hell.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

Hollywood seems ruthlessly age-ist or something about ending screenwriter careers on a dime.

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Interesting idea.

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And I think I know where I got it.

A friend turned me on to an "old"(2000) series about Hollywood called "Action." Its very nasty, pretty funny and rumor is the suits killed if for being too close.

In one scene, a young agent is trying to present an "older man" for a script writing job -- the man has a good record -- and the old man says something "old" and the young agent explodes:

"Dammit. Why don't you just show him your BIRTH CERTIFCATE! I told you to shut up and let me do the talking."

So that's the "Action" take.

But maybe I'm thinking Ernest Lehman. He was "hot" in the 50s and 60s, then Hello Dolly(1969) wounded him (made money, but not a profit.) The big killer was "Portnoy's Complaint"(1972) which Lehman actually directed and "suddenly" -- he was "too old for the room." Moreover a fair amount of the dialogue(about, maybe half) of Family Plot was just...kinda old. Bad one liners. Too much exposition. Lehman is credited with co-writing the Black Sunday script, but I always felt maybe that one was NOT his.

I know that "writers rooms" for comedy shows -- and perhaps even cable series -- are meant to be "for the young only" and YET(as you know, swanstep), Matthew Weiner brought in old guy and Oscar winner Frank Pierson to advise on Mad Men scripts "because he was there in the 60s." But that is very rare.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

It does seem curious that really revered writers should so often seem to get put out to pasture. After all, writing (much more so than directing) is one thing that people should often be able to do at a very high level late in life.

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It would seem so to me. NOVELISTS...like Agatha Christie and Elmore Leonard(mystery) kept going to the end. (Leonard's gone right?)

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Lots of novelists seem to manage this. Margaret Atwood and Joce Carl Oates are still churning 'em out and Cormac McCarthy was too until his recent death. Yet Towne, Goldman and other pros faded away after they were 60 say.

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Well, from everything I've seen and read, its one thing to stay at home and type away and another to have to take all the meetings -- and the notes -- that studios impose upon you. Goldman was quoted as walking out on a meeting with then-star Chevy Chase on "Memoirs of an Invisible Man" saying "I'm too old and too rich to put up with this s..t." Goldman some years later read that quote and said "I don't remember saying it...but maybe I did, and ...so what?"

Though The Last Detail and Shampoo(co-written with Beatty) were big deals at the time(and still are) NOTHING was bigger than Chinatown -- the movie won its only Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and it is cited time and again as "The Great Screenplay to Study." And maybe Towne couldn't take it. It was, after all, HIS idea to mix Los Angeles water history with an equally historic incest plot. Where do you go from there? Tarzan(Towne did). Female runners(Towne did.) And one I had hopes for -- "Tequila Sunrise" with Mel Gibson, Michelle Pffeiffer and Kurt Russell...simply didn't have classic vibes. (It came out in 1988, and pushed the edge by starring Gibson as a "heroic" drug dealer..)

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

The subtle shadings and elaborations of a seasoned mind (building on lots of previous things) is somewhat lost on the speedy medium that is commercial film. I notice for example, that James Cameron's dialogue is getting weaker and weaker as he gets older. Where back in the 1980s he was in touch with how people the age of his characters talked and wrote great action movie dialogue, now he he's lost touch with the young and writes stuff for those characters that's clunky as hell.

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Yes..and hey, I was always a little wobbly on his "Titanic" dialogue -- the Best Picture winner wasn't even NOMINATED for screenplay -- but I saw the movie again a few weeks ago and its better than I remembered. Billy Zane telling his henchman -- "Oh no!" Henchman: What? I gave her my overcoat? And? "I put the DIAMOND in the pocket of the overcoat!!" Henchman: Oh.

A reminder: Richard Brooks was a writer-director who never let people see his scripts -- he was worried they'd be stolen from. He did quite well by that for many years.

My favorite film of 1966 is Brooks' "The Professionals" and even THERE, you can see him slipping, losing track of the times.

Burt Lancaster: Well, I'll be damned.
Lee Marvin: Most of us are.

By the time Brooks tried The Professionals again with Bite the Bullet(Gene Hackman and James Coburn) the dialogue was getting lesser.

By the time he did Wrong Is Right(Sean James Bond Connery and Robert James West Conrad)...out of time.

Still, it would seem that a carefully PROTECTED good screenwriter could/should be allowed to write into his/her 70's.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

PS. One of the sadder scripts to encounter in one's lifetime is the one for "Psycho IV: The Beginning." For this was one where the original Psycho screenwriter Joe Stefano himself was finally given the job of writing one of those sequels(for cable TV only in the US; theatrical worldwide.)

Its not a BAD script; it is just a rather weak script, with some poor lines ("I think Norman has...soul cancer") and a rather wacky giving of Marion's line from the original at her real estate office ("Not inordinately" -- a line that took Janet Leigh something like 20 takes to get right; Hitch knew that happens) to...Norman Bates.

But there was clearly a case of a really hot 1960 screenwriter losing his touch in 1990. No matter, I'm glad he got paid and then in 1998 he got paid MORE than he was paid for his Psycho script to touch it up AGAIN. (With one bad line change: "If it doesn't jell...it isn't jello." Yikes.)

Here were two who rather changed: David Newman and Robert Benton. They wrote the classic screenplay for Bonnie and Clyde and then -- if memory serves - the rather silly one for What's Up Doc?(A movie that's grown on me over the years but that has some really bad comedy lines in it.) Newman died young and Benton got Oscars for Kramer vs Kramer and wrote or directed some great little crime films: The Late Show, Nadine, The Ice Harvest(you could look them up.)

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[–] swanstep (2767) 2 years ago

Another screenwriter who's an icon among screenwriters for his Lehman-ish range: Waldo Salt (great name!). Salt was a victim of the Blacklist during the '50s but came roaring back in the '60s and '70s. He won screenplay Oscars for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home and was nom'd for Serpico. Other notable scripts: Day of the Locust (1975), Blast of Silence (1961) (a cool noir with visuals that Scorsese definitely absorbed for Mean Streets and Taxi Driver), The Flame and the Arrow (1951) (wonderful Burt Lancaster swashbuckler). Was there anything Salt couldn't do?

Note that Salt's daughter Jennifer was in a bunch of early '70s films including lots of early Brian De Palma movies, most notably Sisters. Lately she's had success in the family business behind the camera, writing episodes and producing for Ryan Murphy's empire of TV shows: Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story, Ratched.

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[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

It is a bit of a travel picture, like North by Northwest.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

It is a bit of a travel picture, like North by Northwest.

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These are also called "road movies." Hitchcock made two: North by Northwest and Saboteur(which is actually travelling North by NorthEAST.)

But the travel in North by Northwest is by train, plane and cab. Traditional road movies (Like Thelma and Louise) are about driving cross county in America(usually.) There are a LOT of road movies, and its hard for me to remember them all now. Vanishing Point. Two Lane Blacktop. Harry and Tonto. The first ten minutes of When Harry Met Sally...man I"m drawing a blank and there must be 30 famous road movies.

Come to think of it, PSYCHO is a road movie...for Marion Crane until she reaches the Bates Motel.

And..in chronological order -- North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds -- ALL begin with an urban protagonist from one city(NYC, Phoenix, SF) travelling to a distant location -- Marion Crane by car in Psycho and Melanie Daniels(Tippi Hedren) by car in The Birds.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

Another screenwriter who's an icon among screenwriters for his Lehman-ish range: Waldo Salt (great name!).

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A name honored -- in the inverse -- in the George Roy Hill/Robert Redford movie "The Great Waldo Pepper"(1975)

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Salt was a victim of the Blacklist during the '50s but came roaring back in the '60s and '70s. He won screenplay Oscars for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home and was nom'd for Serpico. Other notable scripts: Day of the Locust (1975), Blast of Silence (1961) (a cool noir with visuals that Scorsese definitely absorbed for Mean Streets and Taxi Driver), The Flame and the Arrow (1951) (wonderful Burt Lancaster swashbuckler). Was there anything Salt couldn't do?

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I remember the screenwriter, his name and those movies. There were quite a few blacklisted screenwriters who came back strong in the 60's and 70's. Dalton Trumbo(another great name) was one(Spartacus, Exodus ..the "us" movies, and Papillon later) and I think Abraham Polonsky was a writer and director (Body and Soul in the 40's, Tell Them Willie Boy is Here in 1969.)

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

Note that Salt's daughter Jennifer was in a bunch of early '70s films including lots of early Brian De Palma movies, most notably Sisters.

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She was a cutie in Sisters and a few others -- she wore that early 70's shag that Jane Fonda wore in "Klute" and she wore it well. She was also a "game but dissatisfied blind date" to divorcee Woody Allen in "Play it Again Sam." I remember her because I remember how cute she was!

I've read that Jennifer Salt and Margot Kidder were the "Malibu beach women pals" to Spielberg and Lucas and DePalma ...taught Spielberg how to dress better and act around women...HATED it when Spielberg brought hottie Victoria Principal to a beach party(thought she was a bimbo.) I think Salt had a shot at American Graffiti and Princess Leia in Star Wars, but her friendship couldn't "buy her" those roles.

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[–] roger1 (4028) 2 years ago

Lately she's had success in the family business behind the camera, writing episodes and producing for Ryan Murphy's empire of TV shows: Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story, Ratched

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Well, good for her. Some of these "nepo babies" succeed down through the generations -- I don't belabor nepotism, its a way of life, and in Hollywood, you still have to "hang in there."

I am so out of the current culture when it comes to so many shows. Stranger Things, American Horror Story...I just don't watch 'em even if I MIGHT like them. My taste runs to movies(over and done in three hours or less) and shorter mini-series. I"m very arbitrary.

OR: the subject matter has to attract me. I very much liked Feud from Ryan Murphy(Davis versus Crawford on Baby Jane). I very much DISLIKED Ratched, which seemed in its first two episodes to betray everything about the character and the classic she came from (Cuckoo's Nest.) I stopped watching. Still...this is maybe more ME than...the current culture. I can't hang on to everything.

Still..knowing myself...I could, in the future, watch an old season of American Horror Story and get hooked four years late. That's happened to me with some other series I've caught on streaming. The Americans...Justified...even Breaking Bad. I started and finished them YEARS after their first cable broadcast.

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[–] swanstep (2767) 2 years ago

I am so out of the current culture when it comes to so many shows. Stranger Things, American Horror Story...I just don't watch 'em even if I MIGHT like them.

For most of the last 10-15 years there's been way *too much* on all the TV/streaming that's out there for anyone normal to watch even everything that's broadly the sort of the thing (or things) that they like. So, we're all in the same boat as you ecarle. Some people are saying that the big strike right now, assuming that it's got a long way to go, is going to allow many people time to catch up with all of the stuff with real appeal for them that they've somehow skipped. For me, on Netflix, Squid Game (I generally love Korean stuff), The Queen's Gambit (I like cold war period stuff, I've liked Anja Taylor-Joy in everything from Split to The Witch) and Alias Grace (I love Margaret Atwood stuff and Sarah Gadon - should have become a big star for her beauty alone! - rocks my world) are now up to bat!

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[–] roger1 (4028) a year ago

I am so out of the current culture when it comes to so many shows. Stranger Things, American Horror Story...I just don't watch 'em even if I MIGHT like them.

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For most of the last 10-15 years there's been way *too much* on all the TV/streaming that's out there for anyone normal to watch even everything that's broadly the sort of the thing (or things) that they like.

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Yes. This begs a question I'm always quite willing to answer: what is the POINT of "watching TV"(or movies, for that matter.) Does that not subtract from the bounties of life in other more healthful pursuits -- like outdoors?

Part of the wonderment of my reflecting back on the movies(and SOME TV shows) of my decades on earth is how important movies turned out to be. Plenty of life is dull. Plenty of life is hard. So culture was developed over the centuries to give us all a way not only to "escape"(which is important) but to contemplate life.

For some in my circle, they love to SIT and watch sports. For me in my circle, I love to SIT and watch movies and TV -- sometimes new, but more often from my past. I can REMEMBER how great it was to see Wait Until DArk with friends and a screaming audience, I can REMEMBER the huge laughs a full house gave as obscure a film as "Freebie and the Bean." I can REMEMBER teenage summer nights at drive-ins in which the movie was "background" to the fun and flirtation of that time of my life. And movies as disparate as The Godfather, Chinatown and North Dallas Forty gave me some maxims with which to deal with real life business challenges. (Hey, maybe "Forget it Jake, its Chinatown" has been the easiest way to cope with all the wrongs of life.)

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[–] roger1 (4028) a year ago

So, we're all in the same boat as you ecarle.

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Its nice to be addressed as ecarle -- the monicker hastily chosen years ago at imdb that held up for years until -- just recently -- I could not get into moviechat without a new name. I chose Roger1 but it doesn't feel the same. But its all I can use -- for longer form stuff.

I AM still getting in as ecarle, because I CAN get in as ecarle...but only on my cell phone. Which means ecarle can only talk for a few words or a couple of sentences. (I'm sure that is liked.)

Anyway ecarle and roger1 are one and the same and perhaps someday -- the battle will be over and the dominant personality will have won.

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[–] roger1 (4028) a year ago

Some people are saying that the big strike right now, assuming that it's got a long way to go, is going to allow many people time to catch up with all of the stuff with real appeal for them that they've somehow skipped.

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Possibly.

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For me, on Netflix, Squid Game (I generally love Korean stuff),

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I watched a few episodes of that -- the early on "bloody set piece" of people trying to advance without being splattered by machine gun fire from a "cute" female child's doll blown up to monstrous size -- WHAT a scene. (SNL did a great spoof of it by focussing on a couple of people as blood splattered from off screen all around them -- but then I stumbled onto that. SNL has about run its course with me.)

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The Queen's Gambit (I like cold war period stuff, I've liked Anja Taylor-Joy in everything from Split to The Witch) and Alias Grace (I love Margaret Atwood stuff and Sarah Gadon - should have become a big star for her beauty alone! - rocks my world) are now up to bat!

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I'm making my own lists, reading reviews, etc.

Right now, I am watching the return of the very twee "Only Murders in the Building" which gave us the core team of "two old guys and a sweet young woman" (Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez)...even as major guest stars turn up (Meryl Streep this season.) Tina Fey, Nathan Lane and Shirley MacLaine(spry at 100 it seems -- no, she's younger) have turned up in the past.

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[–] roger1 (4028) a year ago

I saw "Young Steve Martin, the Wild and Crazy Guy" live in concert in the 70's and I've always been sad how he pretty much threw that character away and became the rather quiet and wry presence of recent DECADES. (Around the time he successfully sold out in Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen, I checked out.) But he has gravitas.

Martin Short -- man, is HE an acquired taste(better in short doses -- he was hilarious real quick-like in Mars Attacks and later in Inherent Vice.) Selena Gomez has a great VOICE and brings youth to an "old folks show." And....I liked the first season best. Feels like it is running out of gas. But I'm there for Steve and my memories. AND...I saw Steve Martin and Martin Short together LIVE a few years ago and "Wild and Crazy Steve" popped out just a little. It felt good.

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[–] roger1 (4028) a year ago

Its been harder to develop memories from streaming programming, but two movies actually made my "best of the year" list from streaming, both from auteurs:

Scorsese with The Irishman on Netflix(but I saw it in a theater first.)
The Coens with The Ballad of Buster Scruggs on Netflix(I didn't see it in a theater first and I regret that. I also regret that this looks to be the "final Coen brothers film" if they don't reconcile.

Otherwise, all those "spy action movies" on Netflix with Ryan Reynolds and The Rock and Chris Evans and Gal Gadot...they evaporate upon watching.

The strikes are an interesting development. Funny how they arrived just as we ALMOST had the return of "the summer movie season" -- Indy Jones, Oppenheimer, Tom Cruise in another epic Mission Impossible, J-Law in a sexy comedy, and the juggernaut that is Barbie....felt like old times.

Where do we go from here?

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